Monday 16 November 2009

I have no idea how I haven't seen this before.

So, I was doing some light research this morning when I came across and interesting blog post that I somehow missed first time round. Back in March of this year Anti-Snark did a pretty good article on Bengo.

Actually, it's a damn good article. I'm not usually one for that sort of blog personally, but that article is spot on. Well done.

In the article Piratezim covers Bengo's inability to understand what How To Make Webcomics is actually going on about, his refusal to actually post evidence or even the statistics he claims to be looking at, his distrust of Dumbrella, his taste for libel, his failure to understand fan behaviour in any way and other flaws in the good old Floating Lightbulb.

"After this less than damning evidence against Gran and Kurtz is presented, Gordon begins the most troubling part of his "report." He begins listing names of people he believes are fake Twitter accounts, with nothing more than the names of the people he thinks created them. Failure to grasp the behavior of Twitter in the hands of webcomics fans will be Gordon's undoing; these people are merely fans who wanted to follow their favorite creators. They signed up for Twitter just to follow these people, because otherwise they'd have no reason to have a Twitter account. People really are capable of realizing that their lives aren't interesting enough for other people to read about, and therefore feel no need to use this service for themselves. This behavior, continued in later blog posts by Gordon, is reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy naming suspected Communists, with no evidence whatsoever."

That's a pretty good point that Piratezim has there. Well, two actually.

Firstly the fact that not everybody does actually want to talk about themselves, or talk to other people even. Creator's Twitter accounts often contain a lot more than their RSS feeds do, showing off half finished sketch versions of pages, content in bonus galleries that the RSS feed doesn't pick up and posting links to comics and articles that they find interesting and well, if you enjoying one person's writing or art enough to want to know whenever they update there's a certain logic to the idea that you stand a good chance of enjoying the same comics and such that they do. It's good logic, which is probably why Bengo has failed to register the fact.

The second point is the comparison to Senator Joe "Foaming At The Mouth" McCarthy. It's a pretty good one, which I find hilarious considering Bengo's choice of subjects to write about. Mr McCarthy needed to show no evidence, only to state that such evidence existed in order to make his claims and in the same way Bengo feels that he is above giving evidence too. His word is good enough.

Bengo responded to these claims of journalistic bias with such nuggets as "Your assumption that I have enemies is hysterical writing. I'm sure I have some people who hate me because I've shone light on their behavior, but that's their issue, not mine" followed by "I don't have a manufactured grudge against Scott Kurtz. I have a real grudge. I did him a favor and he responded by being an absolute prick to my wife and I. That's the grudge, and the readership knows it".

Wait, what? So someone you have a grudge against because he acted like a prick to you and now you attack him at every opportunity isn't an enemy? Right...

Oh, and he claimed that Piratezim appeared to have a mental illness too. Does he do this with everyone? I wonder which one I'll have if he ever bothers to respond to this blog.

It's a good article. Go read it.

In other Bengo news, the top search result when I look for sites discussing Floating Lightbulb is now the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on him. I'm surprised it took that long considering how much more deserving his behaviour has been than many others who have had articles created about them.

2 comments:

  1. I'm disappointed at how little there is on the ED article. A rather large amount of it is dedicated to his attacks on me, when I'm really just a tiny little blip in the big picture of Bengo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad you liked it. I've done a few posts on him, and in fact, he was what inspired me to start writing Anti-Snark again in the first place. If he ever posts again, I'm sure he'll start saying other stuff worth commenting on, and if he doesn't then the Internet will be a better place.

    ReplyDelete