Midnight Corey A Knife in Your Eye

The Wonderful World of Horror

To preface my comments, I have some homework for you. Read this article: FreeDUMB of Speech? . . . which is in response to this article: An Open Letter To Gorezone Magazine. Please take the time to read the article and its comments, and you'll understand why I and a lot of others are so upset.

Thank you to @thedarkhours on Twitter, who reportedly scored this article from @MikeCadaverLab.

To summarize, Dangerous Jamie wrote an open letter to Gorezone Magazine, respectfully criticizing their lack of proofreading and their continuous exploitation of women. Since then, Gorezone has threatened the author with legal action (calling the article "slander") and has sent scores of its "faithful" readers to comment. The comments attack Dangerous Jamie personally, and are threatening. Gorezone readers have promised to spam the site until it crashes. The editor himself has commented (various spelling/grammar errors blemish his post), and he behaves just as ridiculously.

He posted his email address, so if you feel like you want to respond to Gorezone's unacceptable actions, feel free to email him (I have): b.hammond@gorezone.co.uk

I'm not surprised. This has been my experience with so much of the "horror community" since I've become more and more involved in it in the past three years or so. "Horror fans" (many of whom often consider themselves to be the be-all-end-all of horror) who write, publish, blog, podcast, or whatever, tend to be hyper sensitive when it comes to criticisms about their own product, taking anything other than "Great job!" as a personal attack. And "horror fans" who religiously cling to some figure in horror -- whether it's an actor, director, magazine, podcast, blog, or whatever -- also take criticism toward their beloved figure as a direct, personal attack (under the guise of being "loyal" or "faithful"). These people are no different than the terrorists who carry out actions because of their loyalty to Al Qaeda. That's right.

I hold some pretty unpopular opinions. There have been times when I've expressed them -- respectfully, thoughtfully, and without namecalling/attacking/etc. -- and I am mobbed by angry Internet people who hold a different opinion, and don't think that I am entitled to mine. It's happened time and time again -- I've experienced it directly.

It's sad. Diversity of opinions is a wonderful, healthy thing to have. Yes, some people are right and some are wrong, but when respectful debate rots away to attacks, namecalling and threats, it's out of hand.

The "horror community" already has enough negative stigma attached to it -- everyone knows that. And things like this do nothing to clean up that image.