This approach, of course, requires good faith.

Takuan @10, they don’t quite come off as frustrated wanna-be artists or writers to me. I think this is another case of “best thing they could think of to do.”

Profofflogic @14, either you don’t know or you don’t care what “histrionic” means. “The response is stereotypical at best, pathetic at worst” just means you were clever enough in high school, but you’ve never updated the insults you learned to use there. I’m not sure what your professional credentials are supposed to tell me. Possibly it’s that you only make things when it’s part of your day job.

You don’t know jack about fandom.

Ross @18, I am ashamed. I must have heard the Amish drive-by joke a dozen times by now, but until you said something, it never occurred to me that it was offensive. Thank you. I won’t make that mistake again.

Jeff @19, you’re an artist, so you imagine these guys are too. I think you’re giving them too much credit.

Jeff again @23: Cory’s usually cheerful, upbeat, uncombative, open to new ideas, and happy to share same. It’s pretty much his normal mode. Does the example he sets keep trolls and jerks from taking potshots at him? Not a bit. That said –

Later on in this thread, Sunnyside makes a major error on that subject. Cory’s not the one who gets super-defensive when people attack him. I am.

Ross @24: That’s lovely. Have you ever read Steam Bird by Hilbert Schenck?

Ethyl @25:

Cory, thanks for posting the video, and try not to let the naysayers stress you out. This unfortunate “Maker vs. NPC” schism has been playing out everywhere fans of the steampunk aesthetic gather (the Brass Goggles forum, LiveJournal, etc.) I’m sorry you’re getting some of the ugly backwash.

Ethyl, can you tell me what’s driving this conflict on other sites? I’ve never known maker types to be big on games of who’s in and who’s out. Even if all you do is glue gears to the outsides of old radios, they’ll happily talk to you about what kind of radios work with what kind of glues.

What I’m noticing about this thread is that the people driving the conflict don’t sound like makers or artificers to my ear. If the same kind of people are driving the arguments elsewhere, there’s mischief going on.

What I know from fandom is that when you get this sort of pointless, useless social split, it often turns out to be driven by people who aren’t all that engaged with what are supposed to be the core interests and activities of the community. (See also.)

Ethyl again @38:

I’m afraid I can’ take credit for [using "NPC"]. The term has been perpetuated by people who give way more of a crap about their status in the steampunk “scene” than I do.

That’s it exactly. The makers I know are into techniques and artifacts and talking to other people who are too. Status is what you get for making cool stuff, or helping other people get to make it. If you’re having to worry about your status in the scene, but the way you boost it is by excluding others you deem to be unworthy, you must not be able to acquire status by making cool stuff.

Did that make sense?

Polomoche @44: Right. You thought their first album rocked, but after that they sold out.

Agent 86 @49: So maybe he’s not a steampunk?

And now we get to Sunnyside @50:

I was first exposed to “steampunk” some years ago. At the time, I enjoyed it — I thought, “wow, that’s so cool, it’s, like, old fashioned and high-tech at the same time!” I appreciated the aesthetic and was intrigued by the idea of melding the modern and the old in something both visually pleasing and useful.

And that makes you an expert on steampunk and its nascent community?

The recent backlash of insults, trolls, and complaints against steampunk, however, should be a hint.

No. I don’t think so. From what I’ve seen, there’s no coherent body of sentiments or philosophy behind the bad-mouthing some people give steampunk. Never mistake a short attention span for art criticism. Besides, there’s no central steampunk organization there to receive a hint if one were being conveyed.

The problem?

You mean there’s just one problem? And you know what it is? Woo.

It just seems,

I know that one! It means “I am about to make an unsupported assertion, and I have no intention of giving it support later on.

and of course plenty of people will disagree with this assessment,

The only reason to say so is to undercut their reaction.

that the label itself has become an excuse for showcasing otherwise uninteresting or shoddy work, just because it has the right look.

Translation: People have been using the term ‘steampunk’ to denote objects that strike them as looking steampunkish, whether or not those objects meet Sunnyside’s exacting standards.

Of course I don’t have to read it if I don’t like it,

It’s a pity the comment didn’t end there.

but I come to Boing Boing to read about new, interesting, and creative trends in the world of art, music, and culture.

If you’re that much of a culture vulture, you should know that artistic movements turn up all kinds of experiments, trials, and odd applications of their tropes and techniques. This is especially true with new ones that are still figuring themselves out.

Also, if that’s truly why you come to Boing Boing, either you usually find what you come in search of, or you’re a blockhead.

Of course, I’m not going to find every post interesting, and I wouldn’t expect to.

That was another good place to end the comment.

But on the other hand, I tire of seeing such a narrow set of views represented.

Oh, you poseur.

First: if that’s your actual opinion, you must be a dunce to keep coming here “to read about new, interesting, and creative trends in the world of art, music, and culture.”

Second: isn’t that exactly the same thing everyone says about Boing Boing — that it’s narrow, doctrinaire, programmatic, and tightly focused? God’s mercy, it’s so obvious it hardly needs to be said. … Not.

Third: why don’t you submit less narrowly conceived material as suggested links for Boing Boing? We could all become more educated and refined while becoming broader — sort of like attending Relief Society, only without as much Jello.

There are plenty of other interesting things going on in the world that merit discussion and exposure.

Do you really think so? Is that your genuine point of interest? Because if it is, and if you don’t want to submit all that material for possible links, the thing to do is to start your own weblog — no doubt subtitled A directory of interesting things that merit discussion and exposure — and start blogging about all this great stuff. If people agree with you, they’ll come and read your site, and spread your links far and wide.

So: why aren’t you out there starting a weblog? If what you want is to point out especially good art, that would be the way to do it. Hanging around here and deploring our taste in art is so massively ineffectual that one has to wonder why you do it. Could it be that the actual point of the exercise is to swan about in front of Boing Boing’s audience, displaying the delicate, quivering, hair-like filaments of your superior aesthetic sensibility?

Of course, you may disagree with this assessment, but I think it has real possibilities.

A couple of examples from the art world – my father’s friend Jeff was a machinist for most of his life and in his spare time amused himself by welding sculptures out of scrap metal. Over the years he got quite good, in spite of his complete lack of formal art training — he now makes beautifully ornate and detailed sculptures with a level of creativity and inventiveness that I could never, ever rival.

How very interesting. Now: where’s the URL? Has it escaped your notice that this is a weblog? How do you expect Boing Boing to function as a directory of wonderful things on behalf of this art, if the art isn’t in a place that directories can access?

If you read that request for the URL as having overtones of “put up or shut up,” you got it right.

Unfortunately, however, his favorite subject, gunslinging cowboys, would seem to disqualify him from mention on Boing Boing.

False, and you know it. A weblog with Boing Boing’s enthusiasm for challenging content is not going to balk at a little cowboy art. All that’s required is that one of the Boingers think it’s wonderful.

A good friend of mine only paints female figures, often nude or semi-nude. There’s a certain lack of refinement in her works that again would seem to disqualify her,

Now you’re just being stupid. Have you seen some of the images Boing Boing runs?

but they’re nonetheless brilliant works, just dripping with a raw eroticism that I’ve never seen elsewhere.

Uh-huh. Let me repeat: is there a URL? If not, why are you taxing a weblog with not having featured this art? Have you given this any thought at all? Do these artists exist, or are you making them up to give yourself something to whine about?

Both are brilliant artists, and by any sense of the word are outsiders in the art world.

No. They’re only outsiders in one sense of the word, which is that they’re not part of the fine art establishment. All but a tiny fraction of the artists in the world are outsiders by that definition. By the other definitions given to Outsider Art, your invisible friends don’t qualify.

So we return to the original problem, why the backlash against steampunk?

One hates to be impolite about these things, but last time you mentioned The Problem, it was a different problem, and that it caused the backlash. Not to mention that you never produced a speck or particle of evidence to support your thesis that any backlash exists.

In my case, it just feels like it detracts from other, better work.

What an enormous load of codswallop! Did you drag it in all by yourself? You must be very proud.

First: you keep invoking the existence of this other, better work. You’ve never recommended it as a Boing Boing link. You’ve never featured it on a website of your own. Even when you’ve been creebing at Cory’s taste in this comment, you haven’t given us the name of a single artist, or a URL where we can go look at their work. You’re big on art? Prove it. So far I’m not seeing any evidence.

Second: art appreciation doesn’t work that way. If you see art you like, art that means something to you, it tends to make you want to see more art. If on the other hand you get told that the art you like is crap, and that you ought to like some other art because it will be good for you, it’s likely to give you a poor opinion of the whole damned enterprise. (Shakespeare used to be popular with the working classes, right up to the point where they started getting told they were enjoying Shakespeare for the wrong reasons, and the plays started getting produced in properly respectful and artistic fashion. Shakespeare’s popularity has never recovered.)

Cory, we don’t hate steampunk.

Let’s see. You’re neither a king nor an emperor nor an editor, and you don’t have a mouse in your pocket. Furthermore, I don’t see where you get off claiming to speak for anyone but yourself. Your confederates haven’t been in evidence before this point. I therefore find it inexplicable that you’ve suddenly taken to speaking in the first person plural.

[We] like the occasional *really good* piece of steampunk art.

You’ve never said what you think is good steampunk, either by laying down principles or citing works. Therefore, this statement of yours is meaningless.

[We] frankly just tire of these apparent obsessions,

Personally, I get tired of pseuds, frauds, poseurs, and talentless gits trying to headtrip Cory and the other Boingers. If you succeeded in making them so miserable they stopped writing, you couldn’t replace them.

the seemingly endless string of steampunk, Tibet, and DRM-related posts.

Hold it. This comment has been about steampunk. Now you’re dragging in Tibet and DRM, to which none of your earlier arguments are pertinent. Also, if you dislike steampunk and Tibet and DRM that much, why are you reading Boing Boing in the first place? Go away.

I like steampunk,

And that’s why you can write this many words about it without mentioning a single work.

I’d just rather there was a better filter on what makes it onto the main page. …

This is getting unbelievably dreary. I had planned to make various further remarks in response to the rest of this comment, but I can’t go on. I’m too bored. Sunnyside’s just another demitroll saying things he doesn’t believe for the sake of his argument — and it’s still a lousy argument.

(Why is it that readers who creeb and whine about how bored they are never stop to wonder whether they’re being boring?)

I’ve already disemvowelled the end of Sunnyside’s comment. All I have to do is extend the disemvowelling further up the into the comment so that it takes in the next paragraph or so, and then I’ll be finished and can do something else.

Sorry. I can’t resist. The prospect is just too attractive.

Good night, all.

Before this tread, I never would’ve even given the steampunk subculture a second thought. Call yourself what you want. Wear what you want. Doesn’t bother me.

I might, however, take a look at someone’s steampunk project and say “meh, that’s just some watch cogs glued to an old radio,” or “the beauty and craftsmanship of this piece has induced an apoplectic state of aesthetic ecstasy and I think I just messed myself.” (It’s often the latter) That’s just normal liking and not liking.

But every time I see “steampunk” in the headline of a boingboing post I click on it because overall I find steampunk stuff exceedingly fascinating. And that’s what boingboing is all about. Finding stuff exceedingly fascinating. Or is it finding exceedingly fascinating stuff?

You really should take care of that. It’ll keep you from making the same mistakes over and over again. If free speech is important, surely it’s worth taking the time to find out what it is and how it works.

Nick Paine, I suggest you do the same.

I’m not going to stop disemvowelling and/or removing bad comments. This one’s simple. Trolls, demitrolls, rhinoceri, and other mannerless internet species have no problem operating in forums full of thoughtful, civil participants. Trouble is, those thoughtful, civil participants won’t stick around in forums full of trolls.

As I said in the comment thread following the posting of the moderation guidelines, I get damned tired of being accused of censorship and suppressing free speech. There’s far more internet discourse lost to casual rudeness and trollage than is ever lost to moderators.

We read what falls under our eye. If I leave bad comments lying around in plaintext, every person who comes along will read them and get a hit of their nastiness, or mendacious headtripping, or whatever’s going on in them. “Free speech” doesn’t fix that. It doesn’t lift the weight off your heart, or clear the crap out of your memory.

I can deal with that. So can you. A lot of people can’t. And oddly enough, a lot of those people who can’t take the constant headbutting and unpleasantness have more interesting things to say than your average internet rhinoceros.

If you think an individual’s right to say anything he wants, in any way he wants to say it, is the most important thing the internet has to offer, all I can say is that Usenet’s still there.

Argh. Had long response. Was eaten by “text was wrong” error.
If you feel like making a go at untangling it, this thread on the BG Forum might be a good start: http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/bg-forum/index.php?topic=7122.120

(Steampunk singularity in the Diamond Age come 2015? Does that mean we’re all going to be having lots of tantric sex?)

I have been a professional product designer in NYC since 1976 and I have seen many design styles come and go.

Regarding Steampunk, specifically, I found it to be one of the most unique and visually exciting styles in the last 30 years. Since contemporary design and ‘mid-century modern’ have become so ubiquitous, I was beginning to worry that the great, traditional schools of architecture and design would not appreciated again for years to come. Steampunk has been the very first style on the horizon to reverse the current ‘De Riguer’ design trends and does so with great panache, creativity and a genuine love on the part of it’s fans and creators.

Regarding the fans of Steampunk who don’t actually create anything, I say this:

The Arts would be NOWHERE if it weren’t for the fans and people who appreciate genuine artistic effort. You don’t need to be an actor or director to appreciate film, nor a musician to appreciate music- and if you really enjoy the Steampunk aesthetic, enjoy it all the day long.

My Best,

Art Donovan

hp y ll cn tk ths n th sprt dlvrd, but CRIPES!

bnch f hngrs-n, “dtt-hds” t bst, ds nt sb-cltr mk. nythng ls s “Psr Cnvntn”, nd thr r s vry mny “psrs” clttrng th lndscp.

Thmbs nd crtns, r f*ck ff, sy. W’r nt ll ‘mkrs’, bt w cn’t ll b Stmpnks, thr. Lf s nt fr.

Jake, I wish you well, bt m srsly cncrnd bt flks clmng sbcltr stts whn thy cn’t vn mk thr wn prps.
Mght s wll ll wr strng ts, wrk n ffcs, nd vt fr ‘Dby’.

thnk th flks n lthr rlly nd t chck thr prrts n lf.

Who *cares* if “subculture” or “movement” or “esthetic” is the right word for it?

Didn’t you get enough of arguing about whether so-and-so is a *real* goth/punk/whatever when you were 16?

If Jake wants to call himself a steampunk, more power to him! If someone else who likes top-hats wants to say the same, yee-haw, follow your weird, buddy, and more power to you!

Christ, anything you can do to have a good time, feel good, and make the world and more interesting place, allez!

And anyone who says you’re using the wrong word to describe what you do, or that it’s lame because it is the wrong color or not interesting to them, they can pound sand. Griping about other peoples’ passions most assuredly does NOT make the world a more interesting place.

Creating an account for the sole purpose of posting a message that tells people who are having a fun time playing around with culture, fabrication, and identity that they are insufficiently edgy because they don’t make their own top-hats is really dysfunctional.

t s nt hwvr, gng t stp m lghng t ths wh prtcpt n ths crg clt mvmnt f mltng th mtns f ths wh rlly cn nd d mk thngs.

How about “celebrating?” How about “enjoying?”

Yes, you sit there on the sidelines, sneering at the people who are having a good time, telling them that they’re not *really* enjoying themselves. Give the old spleen a good workout. I’m sure that when you lie on your deathbed, you’ll smile grimly at the productive hours you spent spoiling other peoples’ fun.

You know, “making things,” doesn’t technically including “making people miserable.”

This one – not so much.

PS:ProfOfflogic, you don’t make any of the stuff that you use to be a 21st Century Westerner. Doesn’t make you any less of one, but apparently does make you a hanger-on poser 21st Century-ian.

ProfOfLogic and CptNemo (both newly registered, presumably just for this thread) are complaining, in the comments on someone else’s blog, that certain people aren’t doing enough original work? That they’re just hangers-on to other peoples’ originality?

It just begs parody, doesn’t it?

As far as the bulk of the self-identified “Commenter” subculture, well… “show me something” is all I ask. What have the vast majority of the “Commenters” accomplished (as opposed to, say ‘Bloggers’, fer instance?)…”Commenters” claim a contribution to the conversation, yet I ask at least some of them to show some gumption, instead of “not-me”isms.

or

It is not however, going to stop me laughing at those who participate in this cargo cult movement of emulating the motions of those who really can and do write things.

Thank you.

Yours is a very healthy and truly mature observation.

say… what IS yer address anyway?