Linkspam vs. The World
- Linda Holmes talks about ‘Scott Pilgrim’ Versus The Unfortunate Tendency To Review The Audience. Choice quote:
Here’s what I’m saying: I’m a woman, I’m in my late thirties, I can’t handle first-person shooters, I’m afraid of Comic-Con, and I really, really liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
I hope I’m not, you know, blowing your mind.
- Moose J. Finklestein talks about how insensitive and condescending she finds the statement Except for *you* within the context of “I hate people who…”
- Combatting Imposter Syndrome? This company will provide Awesomeness Reminders for starting at $10/month. They suggest getting gift subscriptions for friends. I don’t know what to think of this.
- Sixth annual Summer of Code flexes some serious geek girl muscle — The google blog profiles 4 of the very many women involved with Google Summer of Code.
- Inside Higher Ed provides some survival strategies for women graduate students in the STEM fields
- Tired of explaining how “compliments” on your appearance can be irritating? Here’s a comic on street harassment that might help get the point across.
- Inspired by all the fuss about women entrepreneurs but don’t know where to start? Here’s a geeky way to think about business: 10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons
If you have links of interest, please share them in comments here, or if you’re a delicious user, tag them “geekfeminism†to bring them to our attention. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).
Thanks to everyone who suggested links in comments and on delicious.
I’m not sure paid compliments help with impostor syndrome. Further more, the “gift” sounds downright creepy to me; they don’t explain how they ensure the recipient actually appreciates this.
The juxtaposition with the comic about compliments and harassment is interesting, to say the least.
I’m not sure either how it would help. I guess having a friend think you’re awesome enough that it’s worth buying a subscription is kinda affirming, though? I’m torn, because I’ve found that occasional personal awesomeness reminders can make a huge difference, but it seems weird when it’s a commercial thing.
And yeah, the juxtaposition is kinda interesting, now that you’ve pointed it out.
It’s just noise, ain’t it ? Communication has value because there’s a meaning in it. If someone calls you and tell you you’re awesome, that rocks, if it’s someone whose opinion you care about, and someone who thinks you’re awesome because of YOU.
If, however, the person says it only because he/she was paid to say it, I don’t see any point to it at all, and indeed would consider it extremely annoying.
Terri, truly *is* awesome. Whenever she linkspams, I always peruse all the links, knowing that 9 cases out of 10 they are interesting, thought-provoking and/or just plain fun. Thank you !
I’m not sure I understand your comment. Are you saying that, because “it’s just noise,” it can’t also be harassment?
No, I’m not saying that because it’s noise, it is harassing (allthough to some people I’m sure it could be considered annoying: I would *not* appreciate it, but I reckon they’d respect it if I clearly asked them to cut it out)
I’m saying that because it’s just empty words, with no actual real feelings behind them, hell the person who says I’m awesome, probably wouldn’t know my name if it wasn’t listed on the screen in front of him, because of this, it has zero value as a compliment.
It’s not necessarily empty words: the person who sent it can specify a message. Which pretty much makes it the same as sending flowers, note-wise, just without the flowers.
@ Eivind While I appreciate the compliment (and the point you’re trying to make!) I should point out that even though linkspams have names attached to them, they’re generally group efforts: everyone contributes until we get enough to make it worth posting. So the name on the post is usually the name of the person who contributed the first or last link. I rarely even choose the names for the linkspams I start (although as it happens, this particular linkspam mostly came from people I follow on twitter…)
Too bad Ms. Holmes pulled out that classic BINGO card trope for us: “I’m a woman, and I didn’t think the ridiculously sexist plot was offensive!” Gee, that’s nice.
I completely disagree. She wasn’t arguing anything about the plot. What she was saying was that one can be a fan of the movie and not fit the stereotypes that many reviews seemed determined to focus on. That’s a very different, and actually fairly important point since she’s highlighting the issue that this particular “geeky” movie was heavily stereotyped in reviews as not for women, perhaps even not possibly appealing to anyone other than a heavily stereotyped demographic that doesn’t seem to reflect reality.