Violet Blue Sucks
| July 1st, 2008There’s a huge kerfuffle in the blogosphere right now because the people at BoingBoing removed all the old posts that contained Violet Blue, or were about Violet Blue. For those who don’t know, Violet Blue is a sex blogger, a chick who writes erotic fiction, and a San Francisco tech scene fixture. There’s a lot of people supporting her right now, and calling for BoingBoing’s blood. I will, however, not. I actually feel I have some authority to trash her here, because one of the BoingBoing posts removed was my blogging of Violet Blue’s teledildonics talk.
I dislike Violet Blue. I think she’s an egotistical hack. The first time I met Violet Blue (the blogger, not the porn star, who the blogger is suing!), she gave a talk at DorkBot about teledildonics: The art of manipulating someone’s naughty bits over the Internet or phone line. I am not quite sure how she managed to do it, but VB made a talk about sex toys–and featuring a live sex act performed between SF and NYC–into the most boring Dork Bot presentation ever. She spoke in a monotone, she read everything from her notes, she talked too fast, and the actual demonstration had huge technical troubles.
I took a buncha bad pictures and detailed the event on this blog, when it was still Gism Blog 2.0 (we’re in version 3.4 now), and it thus got BoingBoing’d. Now it’s gone. I couldn’t care less, but evidently, Violet’s pissed, because she’s giving interviews to the LA Times and other news outlets. These aren’t exactly unbiased reports, but whatever. If someone flushing their archives is news these days, fine.
You know what isn’t news? Anything Violet Blue writes or films. She took over Geek Entertainment TV for a bit, and she covered the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 at the Computer History Museum. I was there too, covering it for the now defunct GameTap media outlet (Wow, another post that’s been deleted from the archives, or soon will be! Call the New York Times!
I got all my interviews and photos without bothering anyone. I did blind Jack Tramiel with the flash on my wife’s Nikon D4, but that’s par for the course. Violet, however, was not so nice. She dragged Jack around and asked him the STUPIDEST questions, as though she had no fucking clue what a C64 was. Then, she shoved a newspaper reporter out of the way and took Woz from him, mid question. I’m not even joking. She’s super rude, and obviously knows nothing about journalism. For one thing, when yer interviewing someone on film, shut yer god dammed trap when they’re talking. We don’t need you to say “oh? Wow! really? Huh.”
That newspaper reporter went and bitched to the event organizers about her, and they talked to her a bit. She then chuckled and made fun of them behind their backs with her camera crew, who at least have talent. I didn’t think it was possible, but Violet Blue makes one long for the quiet dignity of Irina Slutsky.
God, I hate getting all blog catty here, but I just got so pissed when I saw the BoingBoping thread on the removals. BB isn’t saying what it is she did to piss them off, but knowing Violet Blue, I am sure it was well warranted.
I go out of my way to remain somewhat mysterious on my blog and site. But when you log into Violet Blue’s blog, the first thing you see is a 3 paragraph byline, singing her praises, calling her a best selling author (writing 1 porn story for a porn collection does not a best selling author make!), and drops names like the Wall Street journal and Forbes.
Fuck blog drama and blog wars. I’d say fuck Violet Blue, but who the hell would want to!?
BTW, thanks to Scott Beale for the photo of Violet, above.










