#indie scifi

Every conversation naturally reaches its end, when you realise that you’re repeating what you’ve already said.

Now is that moment for the Twitter-based slander campaign against AltSciFi.

Since the facts have been revealed to show that their claims are nonsense, the campaign’s perpetrators are using desperate last-ditch attempts to distort the meanings of facts themselves.

Thankfully, those distortions are easy to spot, and that’s what this blog entry is all about.

Beyond this blog entry, there’s nothing else to say about the slander campaign. That snake can only continue to eat its own tail from here on.

One good outcome of this situation is that AltSciFi is now also dedicated to helping artists protect themselves against being taken advantage of online – that includes dealing with copyright issues intelligently without harming other artists or fans, and protecting themselves against being slandered by malevolent groups of trolls. Both of those are major problems on the web and in social media especially. AltSciFi can now speak about both from the perspective of first-hand experience.

Distortion #0.

Distortion #0: “Your faux intellectualism is a continual self-perpetuating narrative stroking your overinflated ego.”

Aside from being a tortuous sentence of near-gibberish, its creator barged into a conversation that was about helping another artist in order to post this little gem of muddled prose. Talk about an overinflated ego.

Here’s the more insidious point, though. This frames any attempt at self-defense by AltSciFi as “a continual self-perpetuating narrative.” Notice how it not only ignores the fact that this “narrative” exists to fight back against people like him who slandered AltSciFi – it also pretends that any attempt by AltSciFi at defending itself is due to “overinflated ego”. This is a classic tactic used by emotional abusers, called “gaslighting”.The term gaslighting has also been distorted and misused in service of slander, as you’ll see below.

Distortion #1.

“Look,we all know you stole and tried to steal art….”

This is a rhetorical gang attack called an appeal to popularity. Whenever someone says “we all know that…” or “everybody knows…” without presenting any evidence, you know they’re probably lying (or being manipulated, as someeone has lied to them and they chose to believe it).

Distortion #2.

“The facts were presented prima facie...”

This is an amusing attempt at legalistic jargon that backfired completely. “Prima facie“ means “at first glance, without further investigation“. Facts presented ”prima facie“ are not evidence until you discover the story surrounding the little bits of data visible at first glance.

Distortion #3.

“…you don’t get to backpedal and cite them as rumor because it’s convenient in painting your side as just.”

The “facts” are detailed at length, here (click here). Read them yourself; that was the whole point of writing the blog entry.

Notice the tactic here: they can’t disprove the facts, so they try to distort what the facts mean. AltSciFi has never needed to “backpedal” nor cite facts as rumours. Read the blog entry for yourself. These are the facts.

Distortion #3.

“There was so much evidence presented by multiple parties involved…”

Wrong. There was only one incomplete AltSciFi website, on a site for web development, with four pages that a few people mistakenly believed were “selling art”. The rest of the slander story was based on a complete lack of “evidence” (because there was no “evidence” to be found, and never was any). This distortion unintentionally reveals the problem itself: no one knew what they were taking about before trying to slander a project that hadn’t even started yet. Even worse, no one bothered to ask before jumping on the slander bandwagon. That was the scary part. Everyone swallowed the rumours and no one asked for the context surrounding the “evidence”. The excuse given was “it’s not my job to find facts”. Wrong again. That’s always your job – also known as basic adult critical thinking. Facts are meaningless without context.

Distortion #4.

“…and your interactions with them that the public lambasting your project received was justified.”

Notice the grandiosity here. “The public lambasting” refers to a campaign that began with a few bored artists on Twitter, starting with one who manufactured a disingenuous “white knighting” campaign – a borderline conspiracy theory to save the “The (Twitter) Artist Community!”  – that turned out to be factually false and full of nothing but mean-spirited trash-talk.

Distortion #5.

“Be careful what you post AltSciFi, the art community doesn’t soon forget.”

Yes, darling, thank you for the reminder that these blog posts were written and posted publicly for a reason. Nice little stalkerish implied threat, there, too.

Notice how the person impersonates “the art community” when in fact, his “community” is a few artists on Twitter who took the opportunity to loudly bully a group they knew nothing about. That phrase should read “the art community (of bored idiots on Twitter with deficient reading comprehension skills and too much time on their hands that would be better spent creating art)”.

Distortion #6.

“The easy shortcut you could’ve done is to just say "hey, I was wrong, I’m sorry, I’ll fix it.” and then fix it. But that’s not who you are and not what you did. Quite the opposite in fact. “

As usual, completely wrong. From the very first conversation on Twitter, even before the slander attack began, AltSciFi apologised for mistakes made – but also held the artist accountable for her decision to send a mob of Twitter users instead of finding out the facts first.

The original tweet is timestamped 7:36am - 17 Jan 2018:

[Λ•]ltSciFi - @altscifi_  - Jan 16

Here’s the grown-up perspective: We both made mistakes here. You made a dramatic mess for no reason. And the bit about a strawman is nonsense because you’re just misusing the word, along with "gaslight” and “victim-blame” in a victimless situation.

Followed by:

[Λ•]ltSciFi - @altscifi_ -7:41am - Jan 17 2018

Your reaction was valid, yes. As a professional, it makes you look like a bitter spoiled child to act like a Twitter bully, misleading hundreds of people, instead of simply finding out what was actually happening. Are you adult/professional enough to accept your responsibility?

And:

[Λ•]ltSciFi - @altscifi_ -8:27am - Jan 17 2018

Don’t pick a fight, and you’ll get a very different response. When you talk about being a professional, does a professional send a Twitter mob against people? Or is that a juvenile thing to do? Ask yourself what response you intended to get.

Unsurprisingly, she gave no answer to these questions.

Since the perpetrator is a narcissist (and quite likely a sociopath, given recent events involving another artist),  the mere possibility of her not being seen as “saviour of The (Twitter) Art Community” only enraged her further. She couldn’t admit her own mistake, and instead dug herself in deeper.

—

So now you see the tactics behind this game of rumours, distortions and lies.

For the artist being taken advantage of by the perpetrators of this slanderous mess, AltSciFi only has one note of caution. It applies equally to all indie sci-fi artists and writers, perhaps including you:

Be careful who you call “friends” – especially if you paid them before they befriended you.

Beyond that, the slander campaign is now eating itself; AltSciFi will play no further role in it. There are more important things to do, and hopefully you’ll join us. In the meantime, enjoy creating art. We’ll have more exciting news to share soon. :)