I suppose everybody has seen that charming characterization of Sad Puppies by one of Tor’s creative directors, Irene Gallo.

What I find particularly insulting is that I have been following #Gamergate for quite a while, since at least Internet Aristocrats original Quinnspiracy videos, and I am extremely right wing (Nazi’s and Neo-Nazi’s aren’t though, fascists really were/are kissing cousins of socialists), and I can tell you for a fact that the talking heads of #Gamergate like Sargon of Akkad are thorough going leftwing moderates, they just aren’t frothing at the mouth SJW’s (I guess that makes them “far-right” in SJW land). I’m insulted as an arch conservative and reactionary to be regarded as basically the same as such thorough going hippies. Hmpf.

On a serious note though, I wonder what Tor or their owner Panmacmillian will do about this? There was talk of people boycotting Tor and others saying they will never buy another one of Tor’s books while Gallo works there are so on. Others suggested that what she said was libelous, although I have it on good authority that, at least under US libel law, it isn’t. She didn’t name anyone specifically so no one would have standing.

That being said, Tor books does a large sideline in Game and Movie tie in novels and more than a few of the Sad Puppies authors are published by Tor. If you worked at Tor or Panmacmillian and you had an employee that answered to you making public statements that calls your customers and your authors the current spectrum of unsavory names, what would you do? The book Gallo mentioned in her post that started this might be something she wants to trumpet but does anybody expect it to sell half as well as movie and game tie in novels that Tor likes to publish?

I was recently reminded of the Eich incident of a few years ago recently when Brendan Eich resigned from Mozilla after someone discovered he gave a donation to support the Prop 8 Yes vote, and this upset some of the thugs in the LGBT community that started calling for his head. There was a backlash against this failure by the Mozilla Foundation to stand up to such bullying of their employees and a lot of people decided to stop using Firefox as a browser at that point. Recently Firefox has been wailing and gnashing its teeth about dropping browser share. There are lots of reasons for this, but choosing the side of the SJW hasn’t helped them any.

Sargon of Akkad also had a rather interesting video on the question of how valuable it is to pander to SJW’s(4 min) (TL;DW, it is worthless).

So I will be interested to see what Tor and Panmacmillian do about all this. Do they want to take the side of their employee, who is quite happy to call Tor’s paying customers and published authors a host of vile names in a public forum, or do they want to take the side of the people who put money in their coffers? Will the calls for boycott make much of a difference? Maybe, maybe not. I expect, like with Firefox’s decline, the effects will take a while to show up and much of this might have blown over by then. That being said, knowing that Irene Gallo, a big wig at Tor, feels like this, next time you are browsing for a book and have to choose between two titles, one from Tor and one from somewhere else, assuming you feel about the same level of desire to read each, where will you spend your money?

I have had this issue already after watching the way John Scalzi has been carrying on for a number of years. I enjoyed a number of his books, in spite of the hate it has got from many, I really enjoyed Red Shirts, it was a fun read and I also really enjoyed Agent to the Stars as well. That beings said, I haven’t picked up Lock In and don’t plan too either. Now, I am not boycotting Scalzi and trying to make him suffer for disagreeing with me. I don’t really care, he can hold whatever opinions he likes, but at the same time, my time and money are finite and if I am going to spend them on books to read, given approximately equal quality, i’d much rather give the money to someone who hasn’t made public statements about how much they hate “my kind”.

I guess I will add the whole of Tor to that list at this point as i’d rather not do business with people who despise me where I have a choice.