Is it a conspiracy when individuals, reacting to the same wrong, take independent actions that appear to be similar? No, it’s just good people doing the right thing.
Others would have us believe that when a handful of people stop along a road to rescue a litter of abandoned kittens, we’re engaging in conspiracy. (Did you see that? EVERYONE there wanted to hold those kittens, give them food and water and take them to a shelter for a vet checkup. It MUST be the Save the Kittens Cabal!!! I heard that cabal is a bunch of social justice warrior, left leaning communist leftists out to tear down the very fabric of our nation by rescuing kittens!)
Here’s a Hugo example. Someone put together www.NoAwards.com in order to help out those fans voting for the Hugo Awards.
Headlined with a very funny take on the Hugo Awards service mark, created by another fan who thinks that voting slates are wrong.
No one at Amazing Stories had anything to do with creating the website or the image.
Let me see if I understand this. Any work which has been picked by a slate is to be placed below No Award irregardless of the merit of the work or even whether they had anything to do with being picked by a slate? The fact that they chose to not turn down the nomination is casus belli for demonizing them? Have I got this correct? Not the hallmark of intellectual integrity IMHO
I will write this in outline form to be as clear as possible:
1. organized campaigning and voting for the Hugo Awards is
A. Bad
B. Unfannish
C. manipulative
D. not that smart
E. completely against custom and tradition
2. Nothing is sufficient justification for breaking those traditions
A. not even the whacked out perception that the awards have been fixed for the past ten years – or longer. (why that time frame…?)
3. It must be made clear that this activity is not acceptable to the worldcon community
4. Voting No Award for any reason is completely in line with both practice and tradition of the Hugo Awards
5. It is completely hypocritical to argue in favor of organized campaigns/slates but against voting No Award
6. My personal methodology will be to read and evaluate those works that do not appear on a slate and vote for them accordingly:
A. based on my personal, subjective take
B. influenced by no one but myself
7. I will then place NO Award in the next highest slot on the ballot; that could be the number one slot if no work in a category qualifies, so far as I’m concerned.
8. I will then review the remaining slate-based works. If, in my opinion – not yours, not anyone who agrees with me, not anyone else’s – they would have been ranked on a ballot absent slates, I will then mark them onto the ballot accordingly – the slate based work I think best in the highest slot below No Award, and so on.
People making the argument you are trying to present continue to operate from the belief that everyone is voting in lockstep – either for puppies or for no award. Since I know for a fact that this is not the case (in fact, the only people who will be voting in lockstep will be puppy sympathizers), your side-by-side comparison immediately falls apart. There is no equivalence. People voting in the manner I suggest are CLEARLY casing their vote against the concept of slates and campaigning. That’s all I’ve ever focused on, written about, chatted about. The Hugos are not your toy to play with – they’re everyone’s.