Guest Post by Jack Seney

Mr Seney muses on online abuse regarding his writing.

"Social media" are quite the things if you would like strangers to shove their face into your own little spot on the Internet and start spewing nonsensical venom at you. People who know that I write movie reviews for a Facebook horror flick group and write other things right here on Facebook proper should not be surprised at some of the invective that comes my way from mainstream Facebook writers. To wit:

"You are an inconsistent hypocrite! You berate modern pop novels for their lack of meaning, but constantly watch cheap horror movies just as much without meaning!"

You are wrong right from the outset, mainstream Facebooker. Cheap horror movies are not in general without meaning. I can stack up ten bestselling modern novels as opposed to ten cheap horror movies including some that I don't even like. I will then easily demonstrate why the ten mainstream books are all essentially of a piece - following the formulas for popular books as set out by a wealthy publishing industry.

I will then demonstrate that the ten B horror movies are NOT all of a piece for the most part, that their lack of a budget has made them MORE rather than less creative and that their plots are many and varied and dictated by no industry. This will even include the plots that I don't much care for.

"So then, you would equate B horror flicks with publishers who print great classics of art?! Then you must be crazy."

YOU are comparing B movies with what you call classics of art, Facebooker. I am looking at B movies as part of their world and classic art as part of its. I am taking the rational route. I am saying that underground art is its own thing, with occasional crossovers to mainstream art but essentially its own thing. It is to be judged on its own terms and not by the touted standards of other types of art. Just as high art is not to be judged by B standards. There is nothing irrational about this. But everything is irrational about judging B art by high art standards as you would.

"But much of the B movie world is full of sexual exploitation, gore and all sorts of other offensive stuff! You are helping to perpetuate this, Seney!"

No one points it out more than me when B movies are doing exploitative, pornographic, etc. things with little or no point. The whole purpose of my decades of writing about B movies has been to winnow out the wheat from the chaffe and the decent from the bad.

But who is pointing out the insipid, empty AND exploitative nature of much of modern literature? Of its "rom coms," its fantasy and its sci-fi? Of its "Oprah's Book Club" sort of "literature?" Who is finding the fault in politically correct but morally wrong bestsellers and films? And who is criticizing the feted, big-publisher, bestselling, prize-winning authors who for the most part are not at all daring or creative but who are entirely willing to sell their work to the highest bidder?

Where is your support of new and original authors like Sayaka Murata or Missouri Williams or Fernanda Melchor? Or of other people like them who write oddly and weirdly but with a great new creativity that cannot be easily categorized and is all the greater for this?

I negatively criticize B flicks and other B art forms with at least half of my writing time. How often do you mainstream Facebook and You Tube critics do so with mainstream, big money stuff? Maybe 15%? Does the book industry give you a quota each year on how many negative criticisms you can actually make, and that's it? Otherwise, no more free books and other perks for you? Blah, just get outta here, will you!?