What’s with all the negativity toward David H. Wilson?

David H. Wilson, author of How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion and Amped wrote an essay for io9.com entitled “The Two Stages of a Hollywood Soul-Crushing”. He describes some of the experience of having a novel optioned for a movie, then the slow “soul-crushing” experience of never seeing it happen.

I found the essay informative and light, and felt Mr. Wilson used exaggeration well to emphasize his point. I could be wrong. Maybe it wasn't exaggeration and he thought he really would be riding wave runners with Mike Myers. But either way, I don’t feel it deserves the vitriol being spewed in the comments section (and here's a whole post about how awful the essay is over on Badass Digest).

There are two main points I’d like to make:

First, if you say something along the lines of “this author’s work is pure garbage” and then don’t provide any supporting statements for your position (i.e. constructive criticism), then you’re a troll, plain and simple.

Second, no matter what you think of his work (I’ve never read any of his books BTW), why would it upset anyone that he’s disappointed his book—which was optioned to be made into a movie—wasn’t made into a movie? One clever commenter used the First World Problems meme but did it wrong. That has to do with trivial problems. I would submit that watching something you’ve created get so close to reaching a whole new audience before crashing to a halt is not trivial. What’s more, the author states explicitly he can’t expect any sympathy and doesn’t ask for it!

I’ve never understood the argument which boils down to “this guy can’t complain because his life is better than some other guy”. I understand no one (including me) likes a whiner, but that wasn’t the purpose of the piece and it—to me at least—didn’t come across as such.

Then there’s the problem of infinite progression so someone who has a legitimate problem isn't allowed to voice it.

Person 1: “I don’t care about anything anymore. I think I might be clinically depressed.”

Person 2 “Oh, boo-whoo! At least you’re not starving. Some people have no food so they have to eat there shoes. Then they have no shoes.

Person 3: "So what? I was just eaten by a shark."

Person 4: "You're lucky. My life sucks so hard, I wish I could get eaten by a shark."

And on and on, ad infinitum...until no one is allowed to complain about anything. And how stupid is that? Everyone needs to get something of their chest once in a while, even if it's not the most important thing to everyone within earshot. Or in this case, eyeshot. (Is that a real thing? Eyeshot?)

It’s possible some people are confused. There are certain situations when it’s justified to tell someone to STFU. A celebrity complains he can’t shake the paparazzi but goes to Chateau Marmont (a known paparazzi hang out) every night. Or someone complains about something which is literally trivial (e.g. I can’t believe they put lettuce on my fish sandwich!). But I—as well as most of the planet—can count on no hands the number of times I’ve been contacted by Steven Spielberg about anything, ever. So maybe we’re not in the best position to judge the level of disappointment and discouragement that comes from a deal like that falling though.

Just my two cents. Or adjusted for inflation, 0.0002 cents.

FIN