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Brianna Wu / John Flynt - DEAGLE NATION STILL LIVES
JESUS CHRISTUS! I wanted to read this thing an pick a few sentences apart for the heck of it. But after the first two pages I realized, that literally nearly every single sentence is distilled stupidity. It is one thing to write bad fiction, but this is supposed to be factual account (although we all know it is actually fiction).
This thing starts off with some marvelous bullshit, doesn't it? As long you are still shivering (or "twitching", I guess) you have at worst a mild/Stage-1 Hypothermia. Since Wu was already on the shore by that point (you freeze to death faster in water) she was fine. Also, because it was pitch back outside, it wasn't obviously that cold. Snow makes the night rather bright. In short: Boo-Wu just felt really, really cold.
Besides, who writes a prologue for about 12 short pages? The people already bought the freaking book.
Please note that she omitted the reasons why she 'one of the the most well-known developers'.
[BAD WRITING INTENSIFIES]
I won't comment here on the utter madness that is the sentence itself, but:
Wu already wrote in the sentence prior to this, that she is going tell her life story. This is a book where women write about their lives. The only effect (and reason) this sentence has, is to underline once more how utterly awesome Wu thinks she is. A badly photoshopped image of her saving a kitten out of a burning building, all while dodging alligators and ninjas would have the same effect.
But... this is exactly what is Wu doing right now, you just need to replace "message boards" with "Twitter".
I think the no-self-awareness-singularity has just been reached.
'A river'? The one next to the 'B'-River or what?
If this isn't completely made up, why doesn't she just tell the name of the river?
Even assuming that this hogwash is true:
Wu was only 21, burned $250,000 on a startup, was to embarrassed to tell friends and family (implying that she got the money from them, as either a gift or sold them equity) and then, DESPITE costing them a quarter of a million Dollars, she slacked off for a year. Furthermore, at the end of that year she even had enough money to make a boating trip alone down a river.
In that light the accident feels like a too mild punishment.
Besides, if her "entrepreneurial need for adventure had started to flicker again" why go on a boating trip? Do the fishes buy stuff?
Please don't tell us any specifics on that accident you wrote a flash-forward-prologue about, to lure us in... ON THE PAGE BEFORE THIS!
Again, please don't elaborate on any near-death experiences you might have had, or give us at least a glimpse of what had happened...
Perhaps it's not that bad, if Wu doesn't try to describe how she was saved from the brink of death, because I don't think she could make that story sound interesting - even if her life would have been saved by Ron Swanson.
So, after Wu died from hypothermia and had to be resuscitated by the Department of Wildlife (who for some reason didn't decide to put her down like any other sick animal), she left the ER in a hospital gown? She wasn't at least kept a day or two for observation? Really?
Yes, because this is how things work in the real world: You move to DC and get a job in politics.
In other words: Her parents made her go there, because she burned their money.
So, and how did that work out for you, Ms. 'After I burned 250k, I wasted one year of my life waiting for the pain to go away'?
'Believe me, I am someone important! I won't tell you why, but I am!'
Why would Wu even mention that Mississippi is the poorest state in the United States, when it obviously didn't effect her life at all? Because Wu had to look at more bums in her life than other people?
As we will see later: I believe without a doubt, that if you are the parents of the person, who will grow up to be "Brianna Wu", trips to the lawyer are probably somewhat of a routine for you.
No. Not even if everyone at the table is a tax-consultant.
I guess Wu refunded that one.
As opposed to what other place? What possible place could she have as comparison?
This is how Wu imagines how homophobes talk about gays and lesbians: They pull their dark hoods down, then they start to whisper and their voices gets all raspy and full of darkness, as if they try to summon Cthulhu from the depths R'Lyeh.
...and that would be large scale forgery of documents. This is probably why Ms Flynt had to visit the lawyer with her future daughter several times.
...and that is another trip to a rather expensive lawyer. Also notice how Wu is trying to pass 'stealing official paper to forge report cards' and 'creating counterfeit IDs' off as 'silly things youngsters do'. Although I doubt any of these things really happened. This, and the bit with the 'fake christian conference', makes this entire thing sound as if Wu lifted it from the plot of a bad 80s-Comedy.
And the man? Adolf Hitler.
And as I looked down to the child, I realized that it wasn't a child, but Mahatma Ghandi, clutching the only vial with the cure for cancer in his hands, which had nearly slipped from his hands.
Oh, we laugh, no doubt about that.
No, that's called "professional development".
Wu sure likes the word 'hell-bent' a lot.
...and you couldn't do one first and then the other because...?
Said the person who got a few women to make a downloadable iPad-only-game for her, which isn't even available right now. A person who twitters and games all day, travels around the US to address 5-10 people per conference room, so she can repeat over and over how much non-existent harassment she receives and who is over 12 months overdue with the steam port of her game. Truly a "leader" in tech.
Renovating any house is disgusting and backbreaking, but it took hundreds of hours for the wallpapers only? Do you live in a maze? Wait... did the Gorgon live in a maze?
'Glad that didn't change.
How nice of Wu to piss all over her husband for being a stupid male, who didn't see the beauty of Amandas art style. It's not like Frank knows how to paint or something.
Don't you mean "the four heroines and the villainess"?
Everyone in Rev 60 is tranny! Deal with it!
...I think Wu want's us to imagine, how she rides her motorcycle at full speed through hordes of GamerGate-Shocktroops. She is heading to the big Steam-Tower, where she needs to plug in the USB-Stick with her master-copy of "Rev 60 - This Is Not How Hypothermia Works Edition". With the stick between her snarling teeth, a Katana in one hand and an assault rifle in the other, she shoots and beheads GamerGaters left and right, who try to harass her with pre-prepared bad reviews.
Wasn't that: "Lie, Lie, Lie until it hurts!"?
How has that worked out for you so far?
I bet, because it is a really poor attempt at making Wu look cool. All she did accomplish here is to prove, that she was an entitled brat at a young age, made bad decisions in school by forging documents, then burned 250k as she was 21, then - after a boating accident - she had a revelation and went to DC, because she was 'hell-bent to get a job in politics'... which she never got, otherwise she would have mentioned that. Then a lot of nothing happened - for about ten years - and suddenly she wanted to make a game with no idea of how 3D works.
I guess 'hell-bent' is a Wuism for 'not wanting at all'.
In my area lots of people didn't have computers. Especially the poor families. But they definitely were not rare.
There's a whole section on Wu's life as a juvenile delinquent that I believe to be a complete fabrication, it's shot through with detectable lies, like this one:
When I first got interested in Photoshop, it was because I wanted to learn to make fake IDs to go clubbing. I found a blockbuster that was going out of business and bought their lamination machine. I bought a $1500 printer. I made a LOT of money my freshman year of college. This is not far from the golden age of Napster, which I heartily participated in.
Exactly when was John working at a grocery store? His parents were letting him rewire cars and be all creative and entrepreneurial by being a total geek and buying him printers and laminating machines for thousands of dollars so their son would be accepted in school by the cool kids for running a fake ID business and selling personally to Miss MTV Summer.
Spacer made a good case for software, so I'm going to argue aestetics. Do you know what's REALLY "butt ugly, but built to last?" A fat girlfriend. You can get one for a lot cheaper than a pretty one, as far as dates go. They even have the same, cough, specs. But almost no one is interested in this option.
I was originally going to quote the part about needing someone else to change the oil in her Vespa but that was way better.
And with not working on "practically-finished-and-ready-to-ship" Abomination60, the money won't be coming back any time soon.
But there's always time to play mobile games and give them a bit of cash too. Being a (space) feminst ist all about making sure that people know you can get into the top 100 of some mobile game that's going to be dead in another 6 months.
That's so weird. Why would she alter the story? The IGN version is believable if you know nothing about Wu, the book version is patently false on its face.
It does show how long this personal mythos has been brewing though. Just randomly telling fake anecdotes about yourself on a message board for no conceivable gain is such weird behaviour.
Flynt/Wu really should devote some time to eliminating easily spotted inconsistencies and anachronisms in his backstory. They are legion is just the few quoted paragraphs.
The OP -- and others -- hit most of the high spots, but I think these three points also need to be noted.
(1) The idea that 12-year-old John Flynt and his computer-illiterate mom sat down and started reformatting hard drives and "updating" hardware so that it could run new software is ludicrous on its face.
(2) Flynt/Wu has claimed that in his teens he was such a beautiful woman that he thought of moving to the coast and becoming a model. This grants automatic admission to the "cool kids" club at any high school in the land. But Flynt/Wu had to produce fake IDs in order to gain acceptance, probably because he was actually the fat, greasy, sociopathic, autistic, gay guy in his class. The idea that his parents bought him many thousands of dollars worth of high-end hardware and software so he could manufacture fake IDs is -- you guessed it -- ludicrous on its face. As is the idea that some worker at a Blockbuster that was going out of business illegally sold him the store's laminating machine. This entire episode is an autistic fantasy.
(3) There seems to be no such thing as "Miss MTV Spring Break." And even if there was, when John was 16 in 1993, the 56K modem was still four years away from being released. So he didn't use $300 from the nonexistent Miss MTV to buy a nonexistent modem. When the 56K modem was released, John was busy being the 20-year-old fat, greasy, sociopathic, autistic, gay guy who was flunking out of Ole Miss.
1. Wu knows nothing about hardware in the 80s
In the 80s, this was still the dominant home PC in the US (and it and its successor would remain the front-runners until 1989):
It had no hard drive compatibility by default and most of the time used disc or tape drives. The reason for the Commodore 64's supremacy was cost, compatibility with TV sets, and sheer, balls-out availability; the Commodore had massive production runs which dramatically lowered its unit cost and made it marketable in electronics shops. The more-or-less comparable Apple II and Atari 800 weren't as powerful and also cost more. Even better, the Commodore had been around for over a decade and had a thriving market for literally everyone, making it one of the only platforms to emerge from the gaming crash of 1983 unscathed. It was common enough that everyone had one. If you didn't, you knew someone who did, or had one of its predecessors like the hilariously-named WANG, or the Commodore PET.
I bring this up because the 8086 wasn't anywhere near as prevalent or utilitarian. PCs as we know them didn't really start to take off until the early 90s with the likes of the IBM 286, with the 8086 being mostly the purview of veteran tech-nerds who either needed it for business or had the time/patience/autism to learn how to use the thing on their own. Wu provably barely knows what the fuck she's talking about in regards to current technology. If you think Wu actually had the time or patience to use a 8086, I'll sell you ADF's totally-not-still-attached-to-him balls.
2. Blockbuster "Going Out of Business"
Blockbuster Video was at one point the largest rental place in the US. As a franchise, it started to die off around 2004, and was outright dead by 2008. What killed it was the profusion of Redbox machines and the Internet; between Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and more, Blockbuster's ridiculously inconvenient nature and steadfast attempt to only stock the newest movies led to it being DOA thanks to the Internet. The only rental places to survive the proverbial apocalypse were local mom-and-pop chains, which could stock pretty much anything, and still do so; you can find them especially in rural areas.
So, about Blockbuster's use of laminators. It wasn't unique, a lot of video stores had laminated cards for membership. So what's the problem? Well, Blockbuster was a franchise. That means when one fails, the assets other than the movies aren't sold off (the movies are, it's cheaper and easier), they're returned to the company, who helped acquire them in the first place. So all the cash registers, laminators, laser readers, etc all go back to the parent company as part of the closing.
This is also important because of the cost. A fairly-standard laminator in the 1990s went for around $2000-3000, minimum. Assuming Wu got it for 75% off, that means she still spent over 600 on the fucking thing if true, and I believe that about as much as I believe that Wu has a degree.
3. Revolution 60, it's Awards, and Similar Shit.
I've covered this. Countless times. The only people giving Wu's shitty game glowing praise are people Wu is personal friends with.
All in all, @Norvic's reveal is a great example of just how divorced from Wu is.
"Getting to the crux of this editorial, a fair amount of people seem to be content with pushing the false narrative that Dragonspear’s problems begin and end with the NPC “Mizhena” and her speech about her male-to-female transitioning. While it certainly is the most obvious and outrageous example of Beamdog’s tumblr-ization of the game, it is not the only one. Sadly, because many accept what they read online to be true, or simply despise doing any research beyond reading PR blurbs, you have a great many folks who are parroting the “It’s just one tranny-gendered NPC” lie."
Why? Just why? It is a high-fantasy setting! Just, go to your local witch, arcanist, or something and ask for a gender change. There is even a cursed item in Baldurs Gate that does that!
That's so weird. Why would she alter the story? The IGN version is believable if you know nothing about Wu, the book version is patently false on its face.
It does show how long this personal mythos has been brewing though. Just randomly telling fake anecdotes about yourself on a message board for no conceivable gain is such weird behaviour.
I'm forever being astonished by how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I was on the fence about Natalie's existence, because on the one hand we had Wu's bizarre behaviour surrounding the GSXOffice twitter account and her supposed ignorance of what she was going to be doing next week, but on the other hand inventing a phantom employee is such a huge lie that people in her life would have to be in on it. Then we discovered that Wu had prior form, inventing Lauren Milovy from whole cloth.
I've always been on the fence about whether Wu was adopted. On the one hand, she does look quite similar to her parents. On the other hand, if it's a lie it has been one she's fairly consistently told and seemingly for no particular purpose. Now I find out that she has a history of trotting out false anecdotes about her past, seemingly for no purpose other than to make her seem ore interesting.... Well, what do I believe now?
There really is no one in the world quite like Wu.
Don't compare Rev 60 to Tron 2.0.
Tron 2.0 is actually a pretty good game, even better than that second movie.
It's like comparing a turd to something actually enjoyable.
Totally agree, I'm just saying that John/Bri seems to have copied the art style of that game, which at the time in 2003, was pretty awesome. In 2016, however, it looks dated, just like his game.
If you want to get even further in to the weeds of it, you have to wonder just what exactly this computer Wu has was. I don't think it can really be an 8086, "late 80s" would seem to prohibit that.
They still existed, but the late '80s would be the time of the 386.
I don't believe John "My parents bought me the latest best everything" got an 8086 when it was long obsolete.
I also like how John can't keep it straight whether his parents were abusive monsters or the incredibly generous, money-hurling millionaires they were such that he grew up in absurd privilege unknown to most Americans.
And total fantasies about how he was a girl during a period where it's exhaustively documented that he was actually a weird, nerdy fat guy. It's as convincing as Chris-Chan's boob massage video.
The funny thing is, John seems to have (at one point, at least) had some self-esteem / self-worth issues, whether evinced through his obesity (which I always wish we had more pics of) or his tranny identity; there was definitely a bit of self-hatred there. So where did this megalomaniacal ego come from?
It had no hard drive compatibility by default and most of the time used disc or tape drives. The reason for the Commodore 64's supremacy was cost, compatibility with TV sets, and sheer, balls-out availability; the Commodore had massive production runs which dramatically lowered its unit cost and made it marketable in electronics shops. The more-or-less comparable Apple II and Atari 800 weren't as powerful and also cost more. Even better, the Commodore had been around for over a decade and had a thriving market for literally everyone, making it one of the only platforms to emerge from the gaming crash of 1983 unscathed. It was common enough that everyone had one. If you didn't, you knew someone who did, or had one of its predecessors like the hilariously-named WANG, or the Commodore PET.
Other computers I remember from early 80s. The TI-99/4A. Also had the TV thing, was barely functional. The Timex Sinclair. The Coleco Adam, or the Aww-Damn as it was called. TRS-80 (Trash-80). The color version, the CoCo. My parents did have an actual IBM 8086 machine, but it was an office machine. The first computer porn I saw was ASCII tits printed out on a daisy wheel printer from this.
And of course the Apple Macintosh existed by this point, although a lot of people still had Apple //e-based systems, the last glorious remnant of this line of systems that I think was the last one they still manufactured after the Macintosh graduated from being a mere overpriced novelty.
But even in the late 80s, if you had an Intel based architecture, it was way more likely to be an 80286 or 80386, and that's what the kind of person who would get top of the line stuff would get. (Quick fact check, the 486 was actually introduced in 1989 so there was that too.)
Frank you do know that marriage itself is a tradition dating back thousands and thousands of years for the purpose of procreation, and very often also as a way to bargain your daughter off for political/monetary leverage, right?
The tradition of marriage itself is many times older than wedding rings.
Please stop culturally appropriating marriage. If you're not having kids, you're not fulfilling its tradition.
The alternative version of this tale that's worth considering is that the Flynt family really did have an 8086 for doing the accounts, and that John was a toddler when they got it, had no part in setting it up and never showed any interest in using it, let alone programming for it.
Makes for a more congruent tale with Wu's Christmas NES fantasy.
I like how near the end of the chapter, Wu can't help but jump at one more chance to scream about misogyny even at the expense of Frank's reputation. "Frank cruelly rejected Amanda Warner's resume because her art portfolio was too girly, but luckily John Flynt's progressive feminist ideals selflessly carried the day and generously gave Warner a foothold in the male dominated video game industry"
Wu is.
