Hugo Detractors - Check your sense of entitlement at the door....

[daveon]

The Hugo mess rumbles on and once more I feel like I'm trapped in a bad re-run of NUS Conference 1990.  Here's another one from Shaun Duke "To the Hugo Defenders, Check your Financial Privilege at the door" (link removed due to Malware warning)

I replied but bit my lip over my gut response of 'oh grow the fuck up.'  And went for some more reasonable stuff.  But seriously, if the crux of the argument is that the Worldcon selects against the poor, then yes, yes it does.  As do many things which are slightly more fucking serious than not being about to get to a convention to help change the way a Science Fiction award works.  How about US Healthcare, or hunger eh?

I'd quite like a Bugatti Veyron, but the man is keeping me down!

Is attending Worldcons on a regular basis something you can do when young? No, not really.  I attended my first convention at 24, at least 6 years after being regularly involved in fanish things.  I didn't get to a Worldcon until I was 37, since then I've attended 3 others.  One where there was a business meeting I could piggy back off, another was fun, a third involved a Business Meeting and sleeping on the sofa.  I am fully aware that it's an expensive hobby.  And I am pretty sick of people assuming that because you do something you're rich and privileged. And oh yea gods how I am coming to hate the way that word is getting used.

Older people having more money than younger people is not privilege.  It really isn't.


Then, in the comments, Jonathon McAlmont turns up complaining about class, age and race.

Class has nothing to do with this.  You get fans from all classes and last time I checked money and class haven't been linked for a while.  Age?  Guilty.  It's easier to do these things as you get older. Assuming, of course, you don't have kids, or a partner who isn't a fan, in which case it's fucking hard to get a furlough for an SF Convention, believe me.  Finally Race.  All I have to say to that is Really you want to go there?  Because I'm fairly sure that Jonathon suffers from that about the same way I do.

Where I get annoyed is simply that I suggested a fix.  There are ways that improvements and changes could be made.  But the Hugo Award is given by the members of the Worldcon and that ain't going to change.  And people like Jonathon were clear they didn't actually want change.

You need to want to engage, even if you can't attend.  If you want to change things, there are ways and means to engage.  Kevin Standlee who has had such a dreadful press stands willing and able to work with people who want his help.  But name callings and moaning about privilege is a pretty poor way to get anybody to work with you as anybody who stays in employment in companies or academia will learn.

Having an opinion on something, and an interest in it, doesn't automatically give you the right to be involved with it.

EDIT:  In my original post I referenced being poor.  And it was pointed out that realistically I'm not poor.  Fair enough.  I'm not really poor.  I am heavily indebted which is causing me a lot of pain at the moment and has happened because I've been starting my own business and will, I hope, be something that changes shortly.  And then, yes, I'll be relatively speaking well off.

I'll be clear though, as a student and in the decade  that followed being a student I could never have considered going to a Worldcon, and during that period I went through a short period (about 5 months) where I was homeless and relying on family and friends for a roof over my head.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

You might want to delete the link to that site: it appears to have been infected with a drive-by malware delivery agent.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Done. Thanks.

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

Um.

Do the Worldcons cater to the non-poor? Well OF COURSE they do. Because if people want to go, most of the time they have to travel to get there. That is not cheap. And many less-well-off people work jobs without paid vacation time here in the U.S., so even if they save and save for that one big trip, they might not be able to get the time off.

Now. Is there some way to fix it so that the Hugos are more accessible to the fans with less money? Well, sure. There could be an even cheaper Hugo-only membership, with both nomination and voting rights. But what I think that discussion misses is that there are other awards than the Hugo. If this type of thing doesn't appeal to the WSFS, a different award could be made. But then whoever sets that up will have to deal with the utter nightmare of administering it!

I guess personally I have more respect for a juried award than a popular-vote award, though it depends on the jury.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Juried awards are hardly lacking in controversy. Can we say Clarke Awards 2013 anybody?

Where I'm less than sympathetic to many of the people complaining is that, yes, indeed, they can set up another award. But they don't want to, they want the Hugos to look like they want them to but without doing the work of administrating them.

Awards, Conventions and similar are not things that run themselves.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Right now, as the rules are currently written, a Worldcon could, on their own initiative, establish an inexpensive (theoretically even free) membership class that had only Hugo voting rights. It's not prohibited by the WSFS Constitution. But it may be, eventually. When certain people on The List That Must Not Be Named twigged to that, they immediately got together and drafted a constitutional amendment that will probably be presented to this year's Business Meeting that would prohibit Worldcons from selling a membership that includes voting rights for less than the cost of a Supporting Membership.

(The cost of a Supporting Membership is, in turn, set by other factors that probably force it to be no less than about US$30. I'll explain those if you want to know, but won't digress there unless asked.)

I strongly oppose the proposal to place a lower limit on the price of a membership that gives members the right to vote on the Hugo Awards. Although no Worldcon has done so, I want to continue to give Worldcon committees the opportunity to do so if they think they can make it work for them. While I don't think a free or $1 membership is a good idea for different reasons, I also don't want to force a floor price cap onto Worldcon committees by legislative fiat.

But of course, according to the McAlmonts of the world and the people listening to his whinging, I am the person trying to keep them away and impose barriers upon them. By actually showing them where the levers of power are and by offering to help them craft actual working proposals rather than "Wahh, gimme what I want for nothing and you do all of the work," I am "policing the discussion" and oppressing them. Oh, yes, that's a great way to win friends and influence people: tell the folks most likely to actually get anything done that is even close to what you say you want that they are the problem and that we should just die already so that Real Fans like them can have their way.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking that many arguments have a lot in common with arguments around Gallifrey One this year. How dare they run the convention to suit the people who, you know, register for and attend it?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Ulrika O'Brien made an interesting point in the pub on Sunday about current online fandom lacking common points of community and reference, which I just tried to write down. I think she has a point.

While it is unfair that you can't afford to do and take part in all the things that you want to do, I'm not sure that anybody should be surprised by that being the case. But the awful truth is the duty of care of the people arranging these things is to the people who turn up and take part.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there's the basic reality check: unless you're a writer, you don't need to attend SF conventions to advance your career. And even writers don't have to do that to advance their careers.

Compare the cost of Worldcon to academic and professional conferences. In many cases the mere registration for one of those is greater than a whole budget for attending a SF con.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well indeed. I'm well known enough in my industry now that I tend to get invited to attend for free, at least to the ones that matter, but I still have to cover airfare and accommodation even if I'm speaking. If I didn't get free tickets to MWC that would cost $900 just to attend the Exhibition, an actual event pass is north of 2000EUR.

I've had to skip a couple of partner events I'd like to have gone to because they were over $1500 just to attend and with flights and hotels it would have put the entire thing closer to $3000.

In comparison, even staying in the convention hotel, you can probably do a Worldcon, with some advance planning, even in another country for $1500 including membership, flights, hotels and entertainment. That's still a lot, but compared to a lot of professional events it's a huge amount of content for the money. Between parties with subsidized partying, free or subsidized food (at least at US Worldcons), a half dozen program tracks running morning to night, with a wide range of evening events. There isn't a professional event that remotely comes close.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Dave, I really find it difficult to agree that you're poor. You have dogs that you can take to the vet when they need it, you have property in London, you are paying your bills and not worrying where your food is coming from. Poor people don't have those luxuries, or things like DVRs and cable subscriptions and if they have a surround sound system they don't need any more they try to get money for it, they don't give it away. No matter how knotted their backs get, they don't pay out for a massage. I'm not saying you're rich, or really comfortable, but I can't categorise you as "poor" and I can easily see why people are throwing around the "privilege" label if you think you are. Seriously, Dave, you're doing pretty bloody well. As am, I actually, and the only reason I can afford a Worldcon is because I paid early and it's happening in my home "town" of London next year.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Alright, fair point, although, honestly, at the moment I'm pretty close to the edge in terms of money and keeping up with mortgage payments and the like.

I'll not deny that I've been well off and plan, at some stage in the future, to be so again.

Life for a lot of people now is hard, and it's currently harder for me than it's been at any time since I got divorced and was dumped with an underwater house which I couldn't rent while living in another, much more expensive, part of the country. And when that was the case, I generally didn't go to conventions and certainly not Worldcons.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Conversely, I know folks who find a way to regularly afford Worldcon while living on a fixed income, or low income. They just make it a priority and budget and scrimp to make it happen. Some of them will not be able to attend London, not because of the travel costs, but because they have health issues that make air travel impossible. It's not just "poor" that's a barrier.

The people tossing arounf "privilege" aren't really "poor" either. If you look at what they're writing and saying, they have stable lives, comfortable homes, luxuries like audio production tools, high-speed Internet access and their own domains on the Internet.

They're appropriating the mantle of "poor" (tattered and threadbare as it is), and denying that any of us who have moved up in the world could possibly know where they are coming from. It's the reverse of "in my day we walked to school in the snow, barefooth, uphill both ways, lost our feet to frostbite and had to grow new ones every night!"

[daveon.livejournal.com]

You grew new ones? We wore down our ankles to the knees....

Yes. Indeed.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a fair point. I have a good paying job (albeit that it pays less than the median income for the county in which I work), and I've devoted an inordinate proportion of my resources to attending every Worldcon since 1989.

I'm also a big fan of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. If instead of being an SF fan, I was just a baseball fan, I could spend the same proportion of my income on season tickets to the team, as well as using up my vacation time and any other spare income to travel to away games. So you can probably classify me in my "commitment" to my fandom the way a really dedicated sport fan is to his/her favorite team. But having that level of commitment doesn't mean I'm unsympathetic or antagonistic to other people who can't participate in that monomaniacal way.

Worldcons are expensive. One of the reasons they are more expensive than comparable events of their nature is because they move around. We could make them cheaper by holding them in the same place annually, run by the same group, and by growing the event to a more practical size. Dragon*Con and ComicCon are examples of this; they cost significantly less per member to operate due to various economies of scale that we need not discuss here unless you want to do so. However, precisely because the Worldcon moves around, there's a decent chance that for many people, there will be one within "striking distance" at least once a decade. I happened to be lucky, and at the right moment (1984), a Worldcon happened in Anaheim, which was at least the same state in which I lived, albeit roughly equivalent of my living north of Edinburgh and hearing of a Worldcon in London, without anything near a decent train system like you have in the UK. So I rode a bus all night long and had the time of my life and was hooked.

Personally, I want to encourage people to participate in the ways that they can, including purchasing supporting memberships so that they can have a stake in the Hugo Awards, every year, while they look for the opening that will allow them to attend the event in person when it gets within their personal range. This isn't practical for everyone, everywhere in the world, but it's unreasonable to expect 100% coverage.

What galls me is people who want to do nothing except whinge, and who expect others (like me) to do the heavy lifting for them, and then when we point out that this is not reasonable, we are told that we are "oppressing" them.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Splutter. Only a USian would say the UK has "a decent train system".
From someone who lived 40 years in the UK then moved to Japan. Now, Japan has a decent train system for most of the country and most of the residents (I recently visited Okinawa which even on the main island has one monorail from the airport to downtown and nothing else anywhere - then again it was ruled by the US from 1945 to 1973 when the rest of the country was rebuilding the train network after the war).
Seriously, though. My point is that everything is relative, including one's definition of "poor". It's relative to what your costs are and your priorities. Yes, there are people who could never afford to attend a Worldcon even if it was in their own city. They have far more serious problems than Worldcon and the Hugos, though. One of the reasons Worldcon moves around is so that it will be accessible to more people who can't afford (for some value of afford) to attend them in the regular sites. One of the reasons I'm bidding for Worldcon in Japan is that there are thousands of Japanese fans who attend conventions here but for most of them Worlcon is not reasonably feasible. At the very least it's hard to persuade people to attend Worldcon at the significant intercontinental expense until they've had a chance to experience it locally at much lower expense (local can include somewhere it's possible to get to by cheap transport like a coach within one day's travel, or stretching it to a cheap airfare).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I wondered if anyone would rise to that particular bait. Agreeing with you about the excellence of the Japanese system, I would expect that any American (in its broadest possible sense including South America) would agree with my assessment. (Remember that I also subscribe to RAIL Magazine, so I'm aware of a lot of the British rail warts.)

Consider that there is exactly one train per day between Los Angeles and San Francisco (and that doesn't even actually go to SF, but to Emeryville where you transfer to a bus to get to SF). It takes 12 hours to make the 469-mile trip.

A comparable UK city pair would be London-Glasgow (403 miles via West Coast). Travel time: about 4.5 hours. Frequency: hourly much of the day.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

As I said, "It's all relative". To a USian the UK train system is pretty good. To most Western European's it's pretty poor and to Japanese people it's terrible. But, it still exists. The prices these days are crazy unless one can commit to a pre-booked seat weeks in advance, though.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

To your substantive point: As you know, I went to my first Worldcon (ten years before the photo attached to this post, which was at the Winnipeg Worldcon) by overnight coach travel. That train I mentioned above actually would have got me there, but I didn't even know it existed at the time; also, my grandmother who drove me to the bus station might have balked at taking me to Marysville at 4 AM to catch the train and to collect me around 2 AM on the return trip.

My rule of thumb at the moment is "about one Worldcon per ten years within 'striking distance.'" It's not perfect, and it of course depends on fans being willing to bid, but it's helpful to visualize the distribution of sites.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

My first Worldcon was 1995, to which I got the coach from St Andrews to Glasgow and couch-surfed with a friend who lived within walking distance. My second was 1997 when I was still a PhD student and had a US conference in New Jersey, could just manage to pay the extra flight cost to San Antonio and crashed on the floor in the hotel room of Dave Powers and Jim Briggs.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I'm bidding for Worldcon in Japan is that there are thousands of Japanese fans who attend conventions here but for most of them Worlcon is not reasonably feasible. At the very least it's hard to persuade people to attend Worldcon at the significant intercontinental expense until they've had a chance to experience it locally at much lower expense (local can include somewhere it's possible to get to by cheap transport like a coach within one day's travel, or stretching it to a cheap airfare).

I think that's it. You'll never win over the people who aren't going to go. Give the people who are interested a chance to go, and you have a chance to win them over.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

For me this is the crux of it. Based on the conversation with Jonathon and others they don't like nor do conventions and don't really get it over blogging and podcasts. They're feeling marginalized by a part of Fandom they see as being full of old farts who don't understand why this is so important.

Younger people thing older people don't get what's important to them. Shock!

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I'm bidding for Worldcon in Japan is that there are thousands of Japanese fans who attend conventions here but for most of them Worlcon is not reasonably feasible.

Any comments on Nippon 2007? Ideas for things to do better, or lessons learned?

Worldcon visiting Japan every ten or twelve years sounds good to me, in the abstract, but I didn't make it there in 2007.

[retro-rider55.livejournal.com]

Hi; referred to this post by Kevin Standlee. To the whingers, whiners, kvetches & toffs (thought I'd throw a bit of Brit in there): Oh, bosh. Include Disney, Florida while you're at it, as it's also something the average Bernard (Joe wasn't available as he's a Priveledged Anglophone - on vacation) doesn't live there, and may never see it, period, as he doesn't make that much money/has too many kids too feed (by his own choice)/ has a criminal record & thusly is restricted in his travel rights (shouldn't have been dealing dope in high school when ya knew it was illegal)... why is the World Con supposed to be a balm/have answers for all the injustices in life, alluva sudden?

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week; try the veal...

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Well, we are unlikely to be going to either WFC or Worldcon in the UK, because we can't afford the petrol at present or the sign-up costs. I certainly don't consider us to be poor - that would be ludicrous, but we have severe cash-flow problems at present and can't afford things that are essentially luxuries, like cons. Which is just as it is at the moment. I can't say that I see myself as being discriminated against....

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I'm certainly not doing Lonestar, no way on Earth we can make that work. But with a fair wind, a lot of advanced planning and all my remaining airmiles I think we're going to be able to do London.

I used the wrong word in my first go. Severe cashflow problems is a better one. We had a major supplier fail to pay us a non-trivial 5 figure amount for 3 months and I had to carry the difference... Anyway poor is relative and as Andrew pointed out, none of the people involved in this are actually very poor. I know some people in fandom who manage to get to Worldcons and I have no idea how they manage it on their incomes.