Anyone here seen the "Requires... Hate" Blog

[Nerdanel]

Some random bits on the subject:

- Laura J. Mixon's detailed report on Requires Hate's activities recently won a Hugo. Requires Hate must be very unhappy. I don't think her career will recover from this.

- For those who don't know, Requires Hate was revealed (but not in Mixon's report) to be from a politically-connected family of Thai plutocrats who can make potential criminal investigations against them go away. So oppressed.

- I would characterize Requires Hate's writing as Benjanun Sriduangkawan as a thick layer of word salad over a core of soulless, nihilistic hatred. She seems to be emulating a style that currently wins awards but doesn't sell many books. Perhaps she hoped to win a Hugo in one of the less contested categories. I suppose littering a story with opaque similes that obfuscate rather than give mental pictures can work to hide lack of talent too, as long as the audience is the type to be impressed by something being difficult to understand and using big words.

[I'm Murrin]

I should note that details in your second point come from a self-confessed stalker who is (as they admit) deliberately trying to cause as much harm to Sriduangkaew as possible. Doxxing of this sort should not be encouraged or rewarded regardless of the persons involved.

I happen to enjoy Sriduangkaew's work, and I've yet to see any actual evidence presented that she has continued her toxic behaviour in recent years. (The worst I've seen is that she is sometimes very quick to label someone "white supremacist" for perceived racist attitudes. I generally disagree with her use of that label, but I don't think she's being disingenuous about her perception of her critics.)

[Avatar]

Nerdanel, nice to see you around.

--A

[Nerdanel]

@Murrin, I haven't been following the matter that closely, but I don't think she's changed. She just laid down for a while and is now back to her old ways, only with fewer followers.

I was actually surprised to hear that she had become so influential as Requires Hate. A good, close look at her blog should have revealed people that she was totally trolling and that she was passing herself off as something she wasn't. She just hid it better than most troll blogs. I hear that "(The empire) requires only that you hate" comes from Warhammer 40k, but her intended audience wouldn't have known that. I didn't either, being aware of the game but not a fan, but there were other clues too. She even put trollery in her "protective coloration" articles, but I guess most people skimmed those or only read the first paragraph and the review score. I read her four-star-equivalent Robin Hobb review... It should have been clear to those who paid attention that Requires Hate wasn't a honest reviewer. It's known that she lied about a lot of other things too, such as claiming as Benjanun Sridungkaew to be a total newbie to science fiction and fantasy.

I think her Benjanun Sriduangkaew stories aren't her doing her honest, serious best according to her true tastes either. I think firstly she isn't a fan of that sort of literature and secondly I think she intentionally inserts trollish content because she can get away with it. It goes further than positive portrayals of genocide too...

I'm trying to keep this little casual post from becoming an essay. I hope you don't mind the lack of detailed argumentation. Basically I think Requires Hate is a serial liar who should never be trusted, even when - especially when - she pretends to be promoting a good cause.

[I'm Murrin]

Someone no-one's heard of called Édouard Brière-Allard has written up an extensive analysis of the Mixon report, looking into the various claims made and generally finding them to be false or weakly substantiated. Very long read. I tend to agree with the conclusions (and the evidence in Mixon's collection of accusations is certainly lacking), but I can't say it is entirely unbiased.

(Apparently a lot of people are immediately jumping to the conclusion that this is a fake persona belonging to some other supporter of BS/RH. Who it is is certainly an open question.)


Edit: Sorry Nerdanel, I never saw your reply for some reason. All I can really say is my own observations of her twitter feed and her fiction don't really agree with your assessment.

As to her Requires Hate blog, it was openly a case of performative rage for entertainment value (which was nevertheless also trying to make sincere points about racism, sexism, and colonialism), that sometimes crossed lines with personal insults and violent hyperbole (which she's apologised for, and stopped doing years ago as far as I've seen). I don't think there was any kind of trolling going on with the blog's title - I recall her discussing it being from Warhammer 40K quite openly.

[Nerdanel]

Here's some documentation about Requires Hate a.k.a. Winterfox:

failfandomanonwiki.pbworks.com/w/browse ... =Winterfox

I read the comments to the Mixon report. There were a lot of people with experiences with Requires Hate. I don't think all those people were lying.

One thing thing that particularly annoys me about Requires Hate is how she justifies abuse with "punching up". The concept is nowadays used to mean that any abuse is allowed as long as it is directed to a more "privileged" person. I think this is a horrible, evil ideology. And then take into account that Requires Hate is in truth filthy rich and from such a high social class that she is almost royalty. This is the privilege that truly matters. None of her targets are like that.

[SerScot]

Nerdanel,

Not to mention the fact that some of her more nasty behavior as "Winterfox" didn't come anywhere close to "punching up".