Esmeme

A barnstar for you!

	The Citation Barnstar
	For putting up with mountains of incoherent word salad, thinly-veiled and blatant personal attacks, being straw-manned, being talked down to, being ignored, and so much more. Thank you so much for your work on Metamodernism. Especially the talk. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:56, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I've just read Talk:Metamodernism and came here to thank you and congratulate you for the excellent work you're doing there. I'm not sure where else this is being discussed but if the harassment from the troll continues, you might consider making a succinct report to WP:ANI. You may get a more decisive response from an admin there. You shouldn't have to go through this. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:03, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Thank you so much, that's so nice of you! I actually lodged a report on ANI earlier today here. Hopefully something can be done, although unfortunately it took many months of similar harassment before anything was done about the last round of sockpuppets. It would be great to hear your voice if you ever feel like contributing to Talk:Metamodernism, as I'm really trying not to let the sockpuppets give the impression that I'm the only one who opposes them - seeing as all their nonsense unfortunately seems to have scared off all the other editors who were active there. Anyway, thanks again for your kind words, that made my day :) Esmeme (talk) 20:34, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I probably won't work on the content of the article. Sorry, I know nothing about postmodernism. But if that troll isn't dealt with to your satisfaction in the next week, could you please let me know? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Yes, will do, thanks! The latest round of posts on there in the last few minutes (referencing my talk page here!) is really quite something... Esmeme (talk) 07:43, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Hello again. Another week, and the user still hasn't been dealt with. In fact, they've intensified their mudslinging and disruption on the Talk page. Is there any way at all you can help with this? My post on ANI has drawn no action, and it has long since become deeply unpleasant to have to constantly deal with. Thank you so much for your help! Esmeme (talk) 17:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

It's bedtime here. I'll take a look tomorrow. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm unwell today. Perhaps tomorrow. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:21, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Sorry to hear that. Hope you feel much better soon! Esmeme (talk) 06:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I restored thread at the administrators' noticeboard twice, and both times it slipped through to auto-archiving without comment. Is this person still causing problems? If so, I'll have a word with User:DeltaQuad (DQ) and see if we can do something to help you there. These things can be quite time-consuming, so first can you just confirm for me that the problem is still a problem? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:13, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your help Anthonyhcole. The user hasn't posted for a couple of days, but it's still a problem in as much as they could return at any time, and this behavior by the multiple socks needs to be put a stop to once and for all, somehow. I've just added a summary of events on the SPA page, and I do hope action will be taken. It seems like we've been waiting an age for a behavioral evaluation by a clerk, and the sock has just wreaked as much havoc as possible in the meantime. Esmeme (talk) 11:26, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar

I can't believe that you're still here. The ceaseless bickering, sockpuppetry, third (fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh!) opinions, noticeboard posts, flat out lies in some cases, and God knows what else that's gone on in the past few months would have led almost any other editor to insanity and, at the very least, a wikibreak. I know I for one found myself avoiding Wikipedia at times so as to not have to deal with Festal's mountains of incoherent rambling and lies. I cannot begin to tell you how much I admire your dedication and patience, for they are far, far beyond my own. You are perhaps single-handedly responsible (and certainly more than anyone else) for the article not having devolved into a despicable mess. Thank you so much for your work at Metamodernism and especially your work at Talk:Metamodernism. Inanygivenhole (talk) 04:16, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Esmeme hasn't logged in recently. Inanygivenhole, how well-accross this case are you? Are you able to put together a concise and convincing argument, based on User:ClaphamSix's behaviour, that it is the same user who was previously balocked for sock-puppetry. It doesn't have to be water-tight (such things never are) but a good behaviour-based analysis coupled with any provable lies and their attitude should do the trick. If you can demonstrate obvious lying to win a point or to discredit an editor, that alone should be enough for a topic ban. (I've only scanned the case, but if no one else acts soon, I'll do the reading. We badly need good editors in philosophy and we need to protect them when this happens.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:35, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I was very well-across until a little before Festal was banned, though I still followed it somewhat. A little while after EsmemeFestal was banned work got busier and I stopped editing entirely for a while. I just recently have had a chance to come back. Esmeme has been following it closely since before I was even aware of the page's existance. I would consider Esmeme to be thoroughly familiar with both the topic and the history of the page and the "cast of characters" (so to speak) in its checkered past. Another user I would consider sufficiently informed on the page is @Felt friend:. Festal (or any of his socks) views on the subject are too warped to be considered seriously in any discussion on the page itself. There are other users who joined in on the talk page afterwards, but by that time I was no longer keeping up with the entire talk page, just a few minor threads in it (Wikipedia really does need a better discussion system, this talk page hilights it!) Inanygivenhole (talk) 22:49, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Looks like you made a slight error in your 2nd sentence there Inanygivenhole ;) Esmeme (talk) 23:43, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

My mistake. Thanks for your ever-watchful eyes (and proving my point)! Inanygivenhole (talk) 00:49, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Inanygivenhole and Anthonyhcole - I'm still standing, just about! This whole ordeal has been very trying, but I will try to add a quick summary on the SPI page. There's so many lies, misrepresentations, disruptive comments and examples of harassment that it's difficult for me now to know where to start, and I appreciate either of you taking a quick look as well, so that it's not just me calling him out. A glance at Talk:Metamodernism shows this behavior in practically every one of Clapham's comments. Given the pattern and timing of edits, I strongly suspect this account and the others I added to the SPI page had been set up by Festal when he was travelling out of town, in order to evade CheckUser detection. I am in no doubt, at least, that this is the same user, having endured weeks of this previously, along with Inanygivenhole and the other editors on that page. Esmeme (talk) 10:27, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

If you can put together a concise case proving he lies to discredit other editors or to "win" talk page debates, that should be enough to put an end to it. Concision is everything. (Time is the only currency here.) So, "He said I said (quote and link) but this is what I actually said (quote and link). He said the source says (quote and link) but the source actually says (quote and link). It needs to be damningly obvious and concise. If there is a lot to choose from, discard the convoluted ones that require subtle understanding or lots of reading (but mention you can supply other examples). Ask Inanygivenhole to corroborate. If the lying case is solid, I'll support a block, or at least a topic-ban. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:30, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I will look back and provide some concise diffs to prove this in a little while. Esmeme (talk) 11:51, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Misrepresentations

I've been asked by Anthonyhcole to provide some concise examples of ClaphamSix's lies, so here are some specific diffs that prove this:

• Clapham's claim that "metamodernism is now discussed throughout U.S. major media, and "Esmeme" (a European) has removed all those citations, giving the impression no work on the subject has been done in the U.S. this century" [1] is a complete lie. In fact, the majority of the sources cited on the page, and those that I have added, are either U.S.-published, or about U.S. figures [Edit: 15 out of the 29 sources currently cited appear to be U.S.-published]. See my response here.
• Clapham consistently denied the damning evidence of Abramson's hoaxing, dismissing them as ""hoax" allegations that are not merely counter-factual but nonsensical" [2]. This, despite other editors confirming the hoax beyond any doubt: as Steelpillow said, "The exposé of Abramson's HuffPost post attribution is definitive, unarguable."[3].
• Clapham's statement that I claim to be "a Los Angeles filmmaker" [4] is a blatant lie: I have never made any such claim, nor has anyone else.
• Clapham's statement that "The account for "Esmeme" has been traced to an IP address…" [5] is another complete lie.
• Clapham's claim that Snuffleumpagus is a likely sock-puppet "who appears occasionally simply to note that [one of the people Clapham claims me to be]'s edits are perfect in all respects" [6] is another lie. In fact, my very first interaction with Snuffleumpagus was to revert non-notable content they added to the page [7] (though they agreed with my edit on reflection).

I hope these representative examples help to put the matter beyond doubt, and action can be taken to stamp this out once and for all. Esmeme (talk) 13:20, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

(I moved the above comment by User:Esmeme from the sock puppet investigations page.) Addressing your first bullet point: In it, you link to your post at Talk:Metamodernism, which refers to another of your comments where you quote Zavarzadeh p.75

"I am using this term to refer to a cluster of attitudes which have emerged since the mid-1950s. I shall use the term 'metamodernist' in conjunction with three others to describe various aesthetic and ideational approaches to the art of narrative in the present century.…Some critics use the single term 'Post-modern' to describe these new developments. However the term is too general to catch all the nuances."

and say that ClaphamSix misrepresents Zavarzadeh. Can you paste here a claim made by ClaphamSix (in an article or on a talk page) that clearly misrepresents that source. Misrepresentation of sources is about the worst crime one can commit here. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Certainly, Anthonyhcole. Here are some statements by ClaphamSix clearly misrepresenting the source:

• Clapham states: "Zavarzadeh called metamodernism a discrete cultural and historical phase" [8]. This is untrue: he does not, nor does he ever use the term metamodernism as an -ism here (which is key). Clapham has repeated this misrepresentation several times.
• Clapham states: "on page 74 (the preceding page), the metamodern era is described as both an "historical phase" and a "cultural phase"" [9]. This is also untrue. The word "metamodern", "metamodernist" or "metamodernism" do not appear on this page at all, nor does the word "era". He is describing something different, and the full quote for the context of the phrase "historical phase" on p.74 is:

  "The novelist now finds himself in the middle of an historical phase that denies him an integrated view of reality and the innocence of moral or metaphysical certitude. He lives in the 'age of suspicion', an age in which the 'reader is suspicious of what the author's imagination has to offer him'.

• Clapham also made the following misrepresentative statement: "I invite anyone to read the Zavarzadeh article, which is plainly about the state of American literature in the mid-1970s, long after "postmodernism" was common parlance in the American academy. I have no idea what this "1950s" citation refers to." [10]

Because of this I felt the need to copy out the entirety of the footnote from p.75 in which Zavarzadeh explicitly introduces and defines his usage of the term 'Metamodernist', and it is clear that he is talking about literature from the mid-1950s onwards, and he is using it as a more specific term for a type of postmodern literature (contrary to Clapham's clear misrepresentations above):

I am using this term to refer to a cluster of attitudes which have emerged since the mid-1950s. I shall use the term 'metamodernist' in conjunction with three others to describe various aesthetic and ideational approaches to the art of narrative in the present century. I retain 'Modernist' for the ideas associated with Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner and their followers. The reaction against their poetics in the 1950s by such writers as Kingsley Amis, John Wain and C. P. Snow I label 'Anti-Modernist'. The modified and sometimes radicalized continuation of the Modernist aesthetics in the works of Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov and others I shall call 'Para-Modernist'. Some critics use the single term 'Post-modern' to describe these new developments. However the term is too general to catch all the nuances. Ihab Hassan's Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971), for example, discusses Kafka with Hemingway and Beckett. boundary 2: a journal of postmodern literature (1972- ) has a grab-bag approach to recent writing, covering such an assortment of items as to make the term synonymous with 'post-war literature'. Gerald Graff's 'the myth of postmodern breakthrough', in Triquarterly (no. 26, pp. 383-414) lumps together everything published since the decline of the Proust-Mann-Joyce-Pound-Eliot tradition. (Zavarzadeh 1975, p.75)

I hope this is definitive, and sorry it's not more concise! Thank you so much for your continued help with this. Esmeme (talk) 14:52, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

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Jesse Damiani

Hi,

Just noticed your reference to an article about a Jesse Damiani. I have never seen this article. Has it been deleted or does it have a different title? By the way, thank you for joining in at Talk:Seth Abramson. The more genuine voices the better. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Steelpillow, I don't believe Jesse Damiani ever had a page, but he was/is co-editor of Seth Abramson's Best American Experimental Writing. I remember his name cropping up several times on the metamodernism page, first when he was added to a list of "notable metamodernists" here: [[11]]. Then, more tellingly, during the whole Abramson/Huffington Post hoax-academic articles ordeal, which I outlined in some detail on the talk page here: [[12]]. Hope this helps. Thank you for your continuing level-headed contributions on the Abramson page! Esmeme (talk) 19:26, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome. Thank you for clarifying. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:17, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

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