5 ms·

My comments on BasedCon

36 points by mellosouls 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aaronbrethorst 3y ago
I had no idea what this was about, so I went looking for some backstory. https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-co-creator-john-carmack-is-headlining-a-toxic-and-proud-sci-fi-convention-that-rails-against-woke-propaganda/ https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-co-creator-john-carmack-is-head... Attending a convention is a pretty unremarkable thing most of the time, but BasedCon isn't like most. Its website claims the convention "isn't about pushing any particular ideology," while at the same time listing examples of "based beliefs" that the organizers subscribe to: Men cannot give birth Guns don’t kill people; people kill people A fetus is a human being Socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried Discriminating against white people is racism
- Keyframe 3y ago
  I wonder what they consider socialism? Socialism forms as in Nordic countries, Germany, Canada, France, or (some of) unions in USA or full Cuba and Soviet Union?
  - taurawah 3y ago
    currently living in a small town with a lot of folks with similar 'based' opinions. Anything they don't like is socialism, full stop.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  I love this bit from their website: [Cons] were places where people of all colors and creeds could get together to talk and learn about science fiction and fantasy books, games, movies, and TV shows. Then, starting a few years ago, things changed. Cons became increasingly dominated by a small clique of authoritarian jerks who made them into venues for pushing social justice dogma and, in the name of “inclusiveness,” So cons went from being inclusive to... more inclusive?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    I think it's fair for the alt-righters that put this convention together to say they were excluded. Probably fair to exclude them too, but imo making their own con in reaction to being excluded seems like a reasonable decision. the rage bait stuff is lame though.
    - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
      Were they actually excluded, or did they feel excluded because they didn't like the new philosophy? I'm not sure if they were actual rules actually excluding them.
      - philipkglass 3y ago
        There weren't actual rules excluding them. Compare the "about" page for the more mainstream Worldcon with the one for BasedCon: https://www.worldcon.org/about-worldcon/ https://www.worldcon.org/about-worldcon/ https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 BasedCon's "about" has hot takes on guns, socialism, abortion, etc. Worldcon's "about" doesn't say anything about those topics at all. Here's the Registration FAQ for next year's Worldcon in Glasgow: https://glasgow2024.org/get-involved/registration-faq/ https://glasgow2024.org/get-involved/registration-faq/ There are no hot-button American political topics mentioned either way there. The last time I was at a science fiction convention there was a wide variety of political views among attendees, just as there have been among Hugo-winning SF authors. BasedCon seems unusual not in what sort of views it permits but in what it explicitly rejects.
      - manuelabeledo 3y ago
        I would think that they excluded themselves because of what they perceived as too much inclusion, which is ironic in a weird way.
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  What an unpleasant article! We can quibble about the finer points of the first three but definitely not about the last two.
- captainmuon 3y ago
  I don't know why they are afraid of just coming out and saying they are a conservative or right-wing convention.
  - kentm 3y ago
    A lot of them have trouble admitting that their cultural stances are increasingly unpopular and what they view as "common sense" is not and is actually reflective of their politics. Plenty of right-wingers like to talk about being moderate and not wanting to "make things political" while making political statements. Its a bit mind-blowing that someone can name an event "BasedCon" and try to claim that its trying not to be political with a straight face.
- mellosouls 3y ago
  (OP) Thanks for that, the BasedCon "philosophy" page is here fwiw https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 It sounds - as Carmack says - "intentionally provocative" and not a constructive way of countering what the organisers might object to in other conferences.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - krapp 3y ago
    >"Based beliefs"? But they are so clichéd, so mainstream even. That's what's so funny about the modern generation of redpilled alt-right iconoclasts. They're literally just regurgitating beliefs that were banal in their grandparents' time. You're not radical if everything you believe was already being lampooned by All in the Family back in the 1970s.
  - hablog 3y ago
    [flagged]
- thefz 3y ago
  > Discriminating against white people is racism Yeah, not like we haven't learned anything from the Yugoslavia war. But that's too far away from the place this nonsense is playing.
renewiltord 3y ago
Okay, what's BasedCon? Their about page says they're a sci-fi conference but with this angle: > How is BasedCon different from other conventions? > Sci-fi cons used to be a lot of fun. They were places where people of all colors and creeds could get together to talk and learn about science fiction and fantasy books, games, movies, and TV shows. Then, starting a few years ago, things changed. Cons became increasingly dominated by a small clique of authoritarian jerks who made them into venues for pushing social justice dogma and, in the name of “inclusiveness,” shut down any opinions that didn’t align with progressive orthodoxy. You may remember the Sad Puppies saga, which culminated in WorldCon voters selecting “No Award” in several categories of the Hugo Awards rather than reward people outside their tribe. Maybe you’re familiar with the Gamergate debacle. You probably heard about Gina Carano being fired from The Mandalorian because she voiced thoughts outside the acceptable range of opinion. Undoubtedly you’ve heard about the push to get Critical Race Theory and other social justice garbage into schools. And John Carmack likes the sci Fi bits. Okay cool. I'm content now. The name is sort of a clue but honestly I think I like John Carmack and I don't care much for culture war stuff so I'm going to skip this controversy. Summarized here only so you can jump forward without having to search. Btw, Bing AI was great to find the answers to "what's going on with BasedCon and John Carmack"
peterfirefly 3y ago
Somebody deleted a completely innocuous response to this that linked to the same pcgamer article that aaronbrethorst links to. Weird.
- blueflow 3y ago
  Sometimes you see the fire and then decide that you don't want to be part of it. I'm still watching with great interest tho.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
malfmalf 3y ago
https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 It's not like they are trying to hide their agenda. Of course politics should be out of the scope of a SciFi Con, any Con. But hosting your own "Super-Alt-Right-Con" doesn't seems like an adecuate response, and going to such a conference seems naive for someone that wants to stay "out of politics"
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  I think it's weird to say that politics should be out of scope at a SciFi con when SciFi itself has literally always been political.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    Absolutely. People freaking out about politics in sci-fi do not seem to know much about the history of the genre. Perhaps a good example is the original Star Trek, which depicts an utopian society where there is no money and beings from all across the universe live and work together in harmony. It was shot in the sixties. And nowadays it is controversial to have a gay couple in the latest movie sequel.
- srdev 3y ago
  Its getting pretty tiresome for people to host super-alt-right events and then claim that they're moderate or politics-free. If your event is called "BasedCon" then you're knee-deep in politics and those politics are not moderate.
  - ajross 3y ago
    Pretty much. Core to the belief system of any extremist view is the idea that its adherents represent the repressed views of "real" people (be they traditionalist christians or proletarian laborers). No one shows up and puts a label on themselves or their movement saying "We need radical social and political change to meet the needs of my obscure niche internet community!"
system16 3y ago
I have no idea what prompted this tweet to justify his presence at this conference, but I'm guessing some of the Twitterati have their pitchforks out and smell blood in the water. For anybody who cares about this sort of drama, I think it's worth giving him the benefit of the doubt and maybe it was just a poor judgement call to speak at this conference. That said, I think he's too smart to not have suspected what type of crowd attends something called "BasedCon".
david2ndaccount 3y ago
Sounds like a lot of controversy over nothing.
seydor 3y ago
Apparently something happened. It wasn't particularly interesting
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Any niche story telling will eventually trend towards Nazism. The real reason Carmack attended was because he wanted to see how different these are from mainstream conventions. He enjoyed it and politics didn't come up as he said. So I don't see what the problem is.
drngdds 3y ago
The con explicitly promotes transphobia, there's really no defense for participating in it. If you think it's a non-political decision to speak at a con that announces "men cannot give birth" on its about page[0] and says people shouldn't expect their preferred pronouns to be respected, that's a good signal that you're either wildly ignorant or actively hiding bigoted beliefs. [0]https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85
- say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
  In 2023, the fights among millions of Americans is about "men cannot give birth"? That's not promising.
  - Dma54rhs 3y ago
    From 3000 year old universe to this blasphemy
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  > In internet parlance, “based” means something like “in touch with reality.” Based behavior is the opposite of social justice activism, which is about meaningless virtue signaling and beating up strawmen. Some based beliefs include: > - Men cannot give birth > - Guns don’t kill people; people kill people > - A fetus is a human being > - Socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried > - Discriminating against white people is racism I sort of disagree with some of those viewpoints. But what is the problem of people that espouse these viewpoints having their sci-fi convention? A bunch of conventions are super-progressive. I have friends that are very progressive, and I also have friends that are pretty conservative. Should I be judged as part of which group? Why is guilt by association a thing? Some people just don't really care all that much about the political talking points in the ongoing cultural war (or about politics as a whole).
  - jancsika 3y ago
    But at a science fiction convention, this is a smell. Person1: Hi, I believe men can give birth. ThisConference: Unacceptable. Person2: Hi, I wrote a scifi novel about a fantastical world where men can give birth. ThisConference: ??? At best the rule implicitly constrains its writers in a way that is at odds with the ethos of the genre under discussion. It's not a left/right thing, it's just bizarre form of problem-creation. Like those devs who publish their shit to github then write blogs about why they ignore pull requests. On a related note-- when I was little there was this dude who had a toy store and hated kids. In all three cases, I was thoroughly entertained by hearing the complaints from these people about the problems they created. NB: please don't respond to this comment right away. I'm about to order a pizza, and I have HN hooked up to a raspberry-pi phone I built where the notifications for responses cause the VOIP calls to drop out.

36 points by mellosouls 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

I had no idea what this was about, so I went looking for some backstory. https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-co-creator-john-carmack-is-headlining-a-toxic-and-proud-sci-fi-convention-that-rails-against-woke-propaganda/ https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-co-creator-john-carmack-is-head... Attending a convention is a pretty unremarkable thing most of the time, but BasedCon isn't like most. Its website claims the convention "isn't about pushing any particular ideology," while at the same time listing examples of "based beliefs" that the organizers subscribe to: Men cannot give birth Guns don’t kill people; people kill people A fetus is a human being Socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried Discriminating against white people is racism

Keyframe 3y ago
I wonder what they consider socialism? Socialism forms as in Nordic countries, Germany, Canada, France, or (some of) unions in USA or full Cuba and Soviet Union?
- taurawah 3y ago
  currently living in a small town with a lot of folks with similar 'based' opinions. Anything they don't like is socialism, full stop.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
I love this bit from their website: [Cons] were places where people of all colors and creeds could get together to talk and learn about science fiction and fantasy books, games, movies, and TV shows. Then, starting a few years ago, things changed. Cons became increasingly dominated by a small clique of authoritarian jerks who made them into venues for pushing social justice dogma and, in the name of “inclusiveness,” So cons went from being inclusive to... more inclusive?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  I think it's fair for the alt-righters that put this convention together to say they were excluded. Probably fair to exclude them too, but imo making their own con in reaction to being excluded seems like a reasonable decision. the rage bait stuff is lame though.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    Were they actually excluded, or did they feel excluded because they didn't like the new philosophy? I'm not sure if they were actual rules actually excluding them.
    - philipkglass 3y ago
      There weren't actual rules excluding them. Compare the "about" page for the more mainstream Worldcon with the one for BasedCon: https://www.worldcon.org/about-worldcon/ https://www.worldcon.org/about-worldcon/ https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 BasedCon's "about" has hot takes on guns, socialism, abortion, etc. Worldcon's "about" doesn't say anything about those topics at all. Here's the Registration FAQ for next year's Worldcon in Glasgow: https://glasgow2024.org/get-involved/registration-faq/ https://glasgow2024.org/get-involved/registration-faq/ There are no hot-button American political topics mentioned either way there. The last time I was at a science fiction convention there was a wide variety of political views among attendees, just as there have been among Hugo-winning SF authors. BasedCon seems unusual not in what sort of views it permits but in what it explicitly rejects.
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      I would think that they excluded themselves because of what they perceived as too much inclusion, which is ironic in a weird way.
peterfirefly 3y ago
What an unpleasant article! We can quibble about the finer points of the first three but definitely not about the last two.
captainmuon 3y ago
I don't know why they are afraid of just coming out and saying they are a conservative or right-wing convention.
- kentm 3y ago
  A lot of them have trouble admitting that their cultural stances are increasingly unpopular and what they view as "common sense" is not and is actually reflective of their politics. Plenty of right-wingers like to talk about being moderate and not wanting to "make things political" while making political statements. Its a bit mind-blowing that someone can name an event "BasedCon" and try to claim that its trying not to be political with a straight face.
mellosouls 3y ago
(OP) Thanks for that, the BasedCon "philosophy" page is here fwiw https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 It sounds - as Carmack says - "intentionally provocative" and not a constructive way of countering what the organisers might object to in other conferences.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
[flagged]
- krapp 3y ago
  >"Based beliefs"? But they are so clichéd, so mainstream even. That's what's so funny about the modern generation of redpilled alt-right iconoclasts. They're literally just regurgitating beliefs that were banal in their grandparents' time. You're not radical if everything you believe was already being lampooned by All in the Family back in the 1970s.
- hablog 3y ago
  [flagged]
thefz 3y ago
> Discriminating against white people is racism Yeah, not like we haven't learned anything from the Yugoslavia war. But that's too far away from the place this nonsense is playing.

renewiltord 3y ago

Okay, what's BasedCon? Their about page says they're a sci-fi conference but with this angle: > How is BasedCon different from other conventions? > Sci-fi cons used to be a lot of fun. They were places where people of all colors and creeds could get together to talk and learn about science fiction and fantasy books, games, movies, and TV shows. Then, starting a few years ago, things changed. Cons became increasingly dominated by a small clique of authoritarian jerks who made them into venues for pushing social justice dogma and, in the name of “inclusiveness,” shut down any opinions that didn’t align with progressive orthodoxy. You may remember the Sad Puppies saga, which culminated in WorldCon voters selecting “No Award” in several categories of the Hugo Awards rather than reward people outside their tribe. Maybe you’re familiar with the Gamergate debacle. You probably heard about Gina Carano being fired from The Mandalorian because she voiced thoughts outside the acceptable range of opinion. Undoubtedly you’ve heard about the push to get Critical Race Theory and other social justice garbage into schools. And John Carmack likes the sci Fi bits. Okay cool. I'm content now. The name is sort of a clue but honestly I think I like John Carmack and I don't care much for culture war stuff so I'm going to skip this controversy. Summarized here only so you can jump forward without having to search. Btw, Bing AI was great to find the answers to "what's going on with BasedCon and John Carmack"

peterfirefly 3y ago

Somebody deleted a completely innocuous response to this that linked to the same pcgamer article that aaronbrethorst links to. Weird.

blueflow 3y ago
Sometimes you see the fire and then decide that you don't want to be part of it. I'm still watching with great interest tho.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

malfmalf 3y ago

https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 It's not like they are trying to hide their agenda. Of course politics should be out of the scope of a SciFi Con, any Con. But hosting your own "Super-Alt-Right-Con" doesn't seems like an adecuate response, and going to such a conference seems naive for someone that wants to stay "out of politics"

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
I think it's weird to say that politics should be out of scope at a SciFi con when SciFi itself has literally always been political.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  Absolutely. People freaking out about politics in sci-fi do not seem to know much about the history of the genre. Perhaps a good example is the original Star Trek, which depicts an utopian society where there is no money and beings from all across the universe live and work together in harmony. It was shot in the sixties. And nowadays it is controversial to have a gay couple in the latest movie sequel.
srdev 3y ago
Its getting pretty tiresome for people to host super-alt-right events and then claim that they're moderate or politics-free. If your event is called "BasedCon" then you're knee-deep in politics and those politics are not moderate.
- ajross 3y ago
  Pretty much. Core to the belief system of any extremist view is the idea that its adherents represent the repressed views of "real" people (be they traditionalist christians or proletarian laborers). No one shows up and puts a label on themselves or their movement saying "We need radical social and political change to meet the needs of my obscure niche internet community!"

system16 3y ago

I have no idea what prompted this tweet to justify his presence at this conference, but I'm guessing some of the Twitterati have their pitchforks out and smell blood in the water. For anybody who cares about this sort of drama, I think it's worth giving him the benefit of the doubt and maybe it was just a poor judgement call to speak at this conference. That said, I think he's too smart to not have suspected what type of crowd attends something called "BasedCon".

david2ndaccount 3y ago

Sounds like a lot of controversy over nothing.

seydor 3y ago

Apparently something happened. It wasn't particularly interesting

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Any niche story telling will eventually trend towards Nazism. The real reason Carmack attended was because he wanted to see how different these are from mainstream conventions. He enjoyed it and politics didn't come up as he said. So I don't see what the problem is.

drngdds 3y ago

The con explicitly promotes transphobia, there's really no defense for participating in it. If you think it's a non-political decision to speak at a con that announces "men cannot give birth" on its about page[0] and says people shouldn't expect their preferred pronouns to be respected, that's a good signal that you're either wildly ignorant or actively hiding bigoted beliefs. [0]https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85 https://www.basedcon.com/?page_id=85

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
In 2023, the fights among millions of Americans is about "men cannot give birth"? That's not promising.
- Dma54rhs 3y ago
  From 3000 year old universe to this blasphemy
surgical_fire 3y ago
> In internet parlance, “based” means something like “in touch with reality.” Based behavior is the opposite of social justice activism, which is about meaningless virtue signaling and beating up strawmen. Some based beliefs include: > - Men cannot give birth > - Guns don’t kill people; people kill people > - A fetus is a human being > - Socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried > - Discriminating against white people is racism I sort of disagree with some of those viewpoints. But what is the problem of people that espouse these viewpoints having their sci-fi convention? A bunch of conventions are super-progressive. I have friends that are very progressive, and I also have friends that are pretty conservative. Should I be judged as part of which group? Why is guilt by association a thing? Some people just don't really care all that much about the political talking points in the ongoing cultural war (or about politics as a whole).
- jancsika 3y ago
  But at a science fiction convention, this is a smell. Person1: Hi, I believe men can give birth. ThisConference: Unacceptable. Person2: Hi, I wrote a scifi novel about a fantastical world where men can give birth. ThisConference: ??? At best the rule implicitly constrains its writers in a way that is at odds with the ethos of the genre under discussion. It's not a left/right thing, it's just bizarre form of problem-creation. Like those devs who publish their shit to github then write blogs about why they ignore pull requests. On a related note-- when I was little there was this dude who had a toy store and hated kids. In all three cases, I was thoroughly entertained by hearing the complaints from these people about the problems they created. NB: please don't respond to this comment right away. I'm about to order a pizza, and I have HN hooked up to a raspberry-pi phone I built where the notifications for responses cause the VOIP calls to drop out.