I’m observing one of the Blog world’s more stupid rituals, by publicly announcing the removal of a link from my site. I have removed Boing Boing magazine from my blogroll.
Boing Boing used to be a pretty good zine about 15 years ago, back when it was solely the product of Mark and Carla. But now it’s been completely taken over by Cory Doctorow, who is a complete and utter asshole. Mark and Carla’s “neurozine” is now infested by Cory’s self-promotion activities, at times the site has been almost 100% advertising for Cory’s new SF scribblings. Sure you have a right to use your site for self-promotion, but this is beyond the pale. Cory has his own site, I don’t know why Mark let Cory take over his pet project and use it for his own purposes.
I think my main distaste for Cory comes from his unhealthy obsession with Disneyworld. I got into a flamefest with him about something he did at Disneyland and wrote about on BoingBoing. He said he gathered a large group of online acquaintances to go to Disneyland as a group, including a woman in a wheelchair. They used the handicapped woman to cut the WHOLE GROUP into the front of the line on the rides. I told him he was exploiting the woman’s handicapped status for his group’s personal gain. He retorted that Disneyland wants handicapped people and their friends to be able to experience Disney attractions together. I wasn’t aware you could get 20 or 30 people into a single car on a roller coaster ride. He said the handicapped woman didn’t mind being exploited. What a load of crap!
And there’s the problem. Cory is a self-proclaimed craphound. I think he’s just full of crap. There’s a fine line between admiration for crappy pop culture detritus, and obsession. Cory is obsessed, he’s the ultimate Comic Book Guy. I won’t refer readers to the site, they have enough links. Life is too short to put up with self-important idiots like Cory.