Science Fiction Author John Scalzi's Obsession With Blocking Readers Exemplifies Everything Wrong With Mainstream Publishing
For nearly a decade, science fiction author John Scalzi has tried to turn the sci-fi and fantasy publishing industry into a left-wing social club. Now, the author who gets fewer monthly views to his blog than Fandom Pulse spends most of his days bragging about who he’s blocking on the echo chamber social network BlueSky rather than cultivating and building a science fiction-loving community.
Sci-fi readership is inherently diverse and inclusive, in a way different from the mainstream establishment’s use of the words. Readers come from all walks of life, and many authors at the top of the Amazon charts are politically conservative.
Mainstream traditional science fiction, however, is anything but diverse and inclusive. Authors like John Scalzi consistently try to maintain clout fiefdoms within the industry, ensuring that the circles of influence shrink each year.
Many mainstream people also intentionally remove themselves from the public square to foster an even deeper echo chamber that lacks diversity. This has led many authors to cordon themselves off in the liberal echo chamber of BlueSky, where a toxic culture exists of blocking as many people as possible. This culture of “toxic positivity” comes from corporate America, where whole industries have shielded themselves from criticism over their extremist identity politics.
It's also impacted the content. Authors like John Scalzi used to make sweeping space operas like The Old Man’s War, which appealed to a general science fiction-loving audience of all stripes. Now, authors like Scalzi attempt to rip off movies like Despicable Me with books about genius cats as villains—trying to appeal to the single cat lady crowd.
On BlueSky, as much as people like John Scalzi claim it’s a nicer environment, they spend excessive time discussing how many people they’re blocking. This indicates that the social network is indeed one of toxicity, anger, hate, and bigotry.
Almost daily, Scalzi signals to his audience that BlueSky is intended to be an antisocial network, urging fans and followers to block other users almost constantly.
In a recent post, he said, “Reminder not to engage with obvious trolls in my comments, folks. It gives them what they want (attention) and then I have to hide your comments. Leave them be! There's nothing there for you! I will be along presently to expunge them. 99.9% of you already know this but for that .1%: Don't, thanks.”
He followed up to his own post, The person who replied, essentially, "You can't tell me what to do, you're not the boss of me, I'll do what I want and you can't stop me," is correct, and also blocked, so that they may live absolutely and utterly free of my requests as they regard my own comment threads”
Such posts are more of a regular occurrence than anything else, showing blocking and hating is about the only thing on the author’s mind. He talked about Threads having a robust function for sealing off the echo chamber, “The one thing Threads has that I wish we had here is the "restrict" function, in which people can still read what you post, but all their comments are in a silo where no one else sees them. It's brilliant for the "you aren't evil but you sure are exhausting" category of person who exists online.”
He admitted he has a disordered amount of thought on culling the social network in another post, also confirming his target audience is single cat ladies, “5. Is it possible I think about Bluesky too much? YES ABSOLUTELY. On the other hand, I don't think I'm wrong here, and I'm throwing this out for all y'all to think about and discuss. We now end this thread, AS IS HALLOWED TRADITION, with a picture of a cat. (/end)”
But it doesn’t end there. He’s created a list of people to block for users based on his own block history to encourage everyone to be in his diminishing sphere of influence. “As it happens there is a "Blocked by John Scalzi" moderation list, so if you want to follow along with my artisanal, handcrafted blocks, you may do so. I prefer to do my own blocking, so this list reflects accounts I personally saw being spammy/botty/trolly/chuddy:”
The number of posts Scalzi makes about blocking others is staggering, with the examples here only scratching the surface of the last two days of his terminally online presence and bragging about his inability to interact with anyone who thinks differently than him.
For BlueSky, such is the norm, not the outlier, especially in the science fiction and fantasy professional community surrounding SFWA.
As the publishing industry becomes more politically exclusive, forcing itself into the least diverse or inclusive space possible, its sphere of influence diminishes among regular readers who want to read a fun, well-written book. Shielding itself from criticism only ensures that this crowd will make its work more niche and less influential over time.
What do you think of science fiction author John Scalzi’s obsession with blocking everyone on BlueSky? Become a paid member to leave a comment and let us know.
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In "The Cask of Amontillado," the protagonist didn't voluntarily sieze trowel and mortar, to brick himself inside the niche.
I've never read any of Scalzi's books, like most people.