I love Boing Boing. It is, as it’s very own tagline states, a “directory of wonderful things”. Unfortunately they have one member of staff who, rather than post wonderful things, decides to use it as his personal platform.
I wouldn’t have a problem with this if he had something interesting to say. I do have a problem because he doesn’t. His posts seem to fall into the following distinct but dull-as-fuck categories.
Copyright law. Don’t get me wrong, there needs to be change to copyright law. The current system strangles artistic expression. But he’s just a poor man’s Lawrence Lessig. Everything he writes on the subject is just regurgitating the same stuff Lessig has been banging on about for years. The only difference being that the whine level is turned up to “child who can’t play on his Xbox”.
Best of all he doesn’t have a fucking clue about the law as it stands. I know of at least one case where he managed to piss off one of his fellow authors by printing, in full, a copyrighted short story. He still claims, because the story was only 600 words, it fell under fair use. It doesn’t, he’s wrong and yet he acts like the emperor of copyright reform activists.
His books and short stories. Sorry, his “Award Winning” books and short stories. Every time he mentions his own work he has to mention which award it’s won. My old blog picked up themetro.co.uk’s Blog of the Week. Technically it’s award-winning but I don’t go around saying “I used to write an award-winning blog” because it would make me a self-aggrandising cunt. I only mention it now to make a point.
Some geeky tat on sale on some shitty website.
“Oooh look, it’s a birthday cake in the shape of Cthulu!”
“Jeepers! It’s a plush toy Pi symbol!”
No, it’s a piece of geeky shit that would cause any self-respecting bird I manage to get home for a grope to run like fuck. I might as well spend the money on getting chemically castrated.
It was while reading some pitiful whine about his problem getting his BT line installed that I decided it was time to do something about him polluting my eyes.
I heard about Yahoo Pipes fucking ages ago but I’ve never had any cause to use it. It lets you take your RSS feeds and fiddle with them. I’ve only really scratched the surface so I’m in no position to tell you everything you can do with it but I can tell you one thing.
You can filter authors. That’s right bitches. If you like Boing Boing but hate Cory Doctorow, copy and paste this sweet little link into your feed reader of choice:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=iOZ0jQKL3BGXuJJTjtzu1g&_render=rss
There you go, all the nutritious healthy fun of Boing Boing without the rotting, cancerous testicle.
ps – This is one of many identical feeds but I just wanted to play with Pipes for myself. You can browse the many feeds and find filters for all of the editors. You can even find a Cory Doctorow-only feed if you’re a fan of shamanic trials.
(Edit – If you’re wondering why this posted three times it’s because I’ve been using a spiffy new browser called Flock. It has a nice little blogging tool but unfortunately it appears to be a bit rickety. I didn’t think this was even posted until I got an email saying a comment had been left.)
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5 November, 2007 at 5:54 pm
He came to speak to us at work. He is a fat speccy cunt. At my school he would have been described as ‘he thinks he’s it’. This was usually followed by a bogwashing and a number of Chinese burn/nipple cripple type punishments.
6 November, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I’ve seen him giving a speech somewhere on Youtube (He was on Youtube, the speech was on copyright). He reminds me of someone I know but don’t like. Looks the same, mannerisms are the same and unfortunately that nasal whine is the same.
I was thinking about adding something about how if he were at my school he’d have got his head kicked in but you did it for me. So….thanks.
13 November, 2007 at 1:38 am
fantastic!!
17 January, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Thank you so much. You have affirmed all my beliefs about doctorow. I have tried my best to like him, I really have.
But..
a) I am sick of his slickly placed, sickening self-praise.
b) Yes, copyright law has its weaknesses, but FUCKING HELLO! There are so many other issues out there that keep on getting overshadowed by his ONE obsession. Pipe down already.
c) His writing is, at best, “interesting”. And Ive read ALL his short stories. (I told you I have TRIED to like him.) It is good that they were free to download because I would not have spent any money on them.
Whenever I am annoyed by a post in Boing Boing, it has always been because it was written by Cory Doctorow.
Thank you for this application. You are a genius.
17 January, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Yes I am. Glad you like it.
21 January, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I see I’m not the only one.
Of course, he has a perfect excuse for his behavior: since he doesn’t have a large establishement organization pumping money into promoting him, he needs to do it all himself.
I’m particularly fond of the way he ducks the issues when confronted by statements that contradict his ‘everything must be free’ mantra, but then, that’s good self-promotion too…
1 April, 2008 at 2:05 am
Genius! My feelings on Cory summed up in one neat package… I thought I was alone.
23 May, 2008 at 4:22 am
I agree with this completely. Cory strikes me as the embodiment of someone nobody wants to be: the person who acts as if he’s tremendously interesting, all the while a chorus of people silently yawns. What’s worse, I think he knows he lacks a certain quality that his fellow BoingBoing editors have. His almost compulsive posting of trivial items that appear to engender him with depth and interest strikes me as a transparent attempt to manufacture depth.
As has been said elsewhere in this thread, it’s not that he’s an awful writer or terrible blogger; he’s just average, yet makes himself noxious through backdoor self aggrandizing.
26 September, 2008 at 12:16 pm
THANK YOU FOR SAVING BoingBoing
30 October, 2008 at 6:28 pm
http://www.thegestalt.org/simon/cunt/
6 December, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Just came across this post and HAD to say thank you for voicing what I have always thought.
I cannot stand Mr. Doctorow and his self-serving “love me because I’m geeky and therefore different” mannerisms. It physically irritates me when I see this kind of self-inflicted celebrity and pseudo-subtle self-importance. He is a prime example of what is bad with blogger culture.
Someone should tell Cory what most kids learn in junior high – it’s those that TRY to act cool that are the LEAST cool.
4 March, 2009 at 5:53 pm
My god…I feel like I’ve stumbled across an oasis of sanity..I cannot abide Cory Doctorow. And when I’ve voiced my views (politely, mind) on BoingBoing…guess who never allowed them to be published?
Is it me or is using a website subtitled ‘A Directory of Wonderful Things’ to consistently plug your own projects, both an abuse of your position as one of the co-editors and evidence of an off-the-charts level of conceit and vanity?
I thought it was called BoingBoing, not PlugPlug..
And here’s why I find him disingenuous and untrustworthy: he’s a sycophant of the highest order, especially when it comes to ‘praising’ other writers or sci-fi figures. He does it either to garner their favor (so they can return the favor by providing him with a quote, for one of his average novels) or to promote himself as ‘one of the heavy hitters’.
The final denouement is, as I mentioned earlier, how he won’t publish commentary that opposes his own, even if that dissenting voice will enrich the discussion. Given his professed activism in net neutrality and the field of copyright and intellectual property rights, I can’t help but be struck by the brazen irony of his stance: free ownership but not free expression?
Or, let me summarize it, more succinctly: he’s a cunt.
4 March, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Two year on and I’m still right.
Back. Of. The. Net!
10 June, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Oh, Mr. Blackett, would I have read this useful post only a few weeks sooner, I may still have been able to post on Boing Boing, instead of being banned, as I am.
I didn’t even say anything that bad, I don’t think. If I remember correctly, I praised a guest blogger and offered Cory and his “increasingly shrill screeches about copyright law” in trade for her.
But that’s life.
It’s also life for people like Doctorow to be given a wedgie in public and trundled off for a swirlie. I’m not saying this should happen, mind you; I’m just saying it would not be surprising if it did. In fact, it would be hilarious.
There was a guy I went to high school with. He hung out with the brains, but wasn’t actually one of them. See, the brains actually were smart, which, by the time you’re leaving high school, most people have figured out kind of excuses their odd behavior. This guy, however, was just a poseur.
His name wasn’t Cory, but it might as well have been.