"I, seriously, was like the Lindsay Lohan of scrapbooking"

January 14, 2008 9:51 PM

It's a familiar story, a young upstart goes against the rules laid down by the establishment, gets smacked down but somehow rises from ruin. It's just not a story one usually associates with scrapbooking. Kristina Contes (blog, flickr page) of scrapbooking group Effer Dares became the most vilified person in scrapbookdom ("Has KC ever done a layout that didn't feature a photograph of herself?" "My 4 y.o. does better with stickers." "After you have viewed her work you know she has no class." "I just want to . . . slap her!"). The L. A. Times tells her story.
posted by Kattullus (73 comments total)

Great post!
posted by msalt at 10:11 PM on January 14, 2008

What I know about scrapbooking could be tattooed on a gnat's junk, but the samples in the post are very impressive. It's a shame that a bunch of sour-faced harridans flipped out over an honest mistake - especially one that Contes herself pointed out. Get a hobby. Er, a different hobby.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 10:19 PM on January 14, 2008 [6 favorites has favorites]

Compelling story (I never thought I'd say that about scrapbooking) and I love the stuff on her flickr. Thanks!
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 10:21 PM on January 14, 2008

This is a really interesting story. Who knew there was such intrigue in the world of scrapbooking?
posted by amyms at 10:23 PM on January 14, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

i read that story in the times the other day. somebody else, a friend of ms. contes, took a photo which ended up in ms. contes' scrapbook submitted for a competition, and this "transgression" came to light when ms. contes herself called the competition authority and requested a photo credit for her friend, which doesn't sound at all unethical or dishonest to me, and then all these freakazoids came out of the internet woodwork and slagged her. from the surprise she expressed, it must have been her first time.

(as i informed artists/prospective clients who wanted to sue critics, on several occasions) you don't fight art critics with litigation or blather, you fight art critics with art.
posted by bruce at 10:23 PM on January 14, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Neat post, exactly why I come to MeFi.
posted by mediareport at 10:34 PM on January 14, 2008

Put a smile on my face.
posted by humannaire at 10:47 PM on January 14, 2008

I had no idea scrapbooking was more than just provincial teatotalers in the suburbs cutting out doilies and snowlflake patterns for bibliographic shrines to eternal youth and innocence. The kind of people that...

"...admitting that she, too, had entered a contest once, and later realized she had broken the rules. "For about 10 minutes I kept thinking 'Don't worry about it, nobody's gonna know,' " she wrote. "But then I thought 'You and GOD are going to know.' " She withdrew from the contest so her children would still be able to look her in the eye, and then "proceeded to cry for about 3 days."

It's gonna make some reality-tv producer's wet dream when her daughter loses her virginity out of wedlock. On TV.
posted by Extopalopaketle at 10:52 PM on January 14, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh, and great post. I did enjoy it.
posted by Extopalopaketle at 10:53 PM on January 14, 2008

I'm glad for the happy ending: the haters didn't crush her, and the product is something thought-provoking and fun to look at. I get PostSecret feelings looking at some of the examples.

(Looking at this can of worms but not wishing to open it,) I hope the craft jumps the gender gap: I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.
posted by not_on_display at 10:57 PM on January 14, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I used to deal with scrapbookers and their materials and what they produce, and 97% of it is the worst crap in the universe, but since scrapbookers fanatically insist on using acid-free materials (while van gogh painted on cardboard or whatever) so all those sparkly 3-D pages devoted to Billy's first birthday will last until the rapture.
posted by tula at 11:04 PM on January 14, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.

Their offices.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:05 PM on January 14, 2008 [9 favorites has favorites]

Decisions, decisions... do I immediately start scavenging candle stubs, razor blades and ammunition, or do I, while it is still fresh in my mind, try to write down and preserve for my infant son my recollections of the exact moment when I realized that modern civilization was on a fast and irrevocable spiral into complete collapse?
posted by nanojath at 11:09 PM on January 14, 2008 [14 favorites has favorites]

You get a gaggle of people together over ANY topic, and they're looking for someone to hang. (Say!) Some day, I'll have to tell the story 'bout the internet Duranies waaaay back in ninety-nine and a warring faction who called themselves "The Zoids."

*puts dentures in a glass*

But anyway, this woman's scrapbooks are gorgeous. I always turned my nose up at scrapbooking, myself, but now I feel sort of ashamed about that.
posted by katillathehun at 11:15 PM on January 14, 2008

Very interesting post! Wow, that LA Times article was great. I see a Best In Show-type mockumentary in this story.

(Psst, Christopher Guest--call me.)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:22 PM on January 14, 2008

More verification of the fact that for every activity under the sun, somewhere there is a group of people wholly and fervently dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in it.

And being on the right side of its attendant snobbery.
posted by heathergirl at 11:35 PM on January 14, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Hmm... I find it a little odd to see people bashing the people who got angry about this when we had our own little internet freakout recently, over similar issues (playing by the rules vs. playing "fast and loose"). Obviously if you listen to one person's side of the story, you are going to take it. But it seems like the world is just crawling with plagiarists and hacks these days. So who knows if the reaction is warranted.
posted by delmoi at 11:45 PM on January 14, 2008

I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.

exgfs.net
posted by dhartung at 11:52 PM on January 14, 2008

i wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like

here's a picture of my kitty
a picture of my three big ganders
my expired 2007 oregon fishing license and salmon card
a cork from a bottle of chateau calon segur
front view: new 4x4
rear view: new 4x4
is this a cougar skeleton? i found it in the woods
i found some really neat rocks here
i grew more varieties of basil and heirloom tomatoes this summer than you did
photo of chessboard in final position when most recent challenger resigned (i'm black)
i just invented the prosciutto quesadilla
this is the wreck of one of my outbuildings after the early december storms
here's a funny albino spider that lurks on flowers and grabs bees when they zoom in
i drove across this stream here and didn't get stuck
here's a photoshop of me doing paris hilton
my kitty just killed this really odd-looking rodent
posted by bruce at 11:53 PM on January 14, 2008 [25 favorites has favorites]

My Keyboard Has A Shift Key.
posted by ericb at 12:06 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

e. e. cummings, archy the cockroach and i fart on your shift key.
posted by bruce at 12:17 AM on January 15, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

I came here to ask "what the hell is scrapbooking?" but I accidentally clicked on a link first and was astonished to find that it is what it was 30 years ago. I was certain there must be a modern twist... or that it meant a completely different thing.

So now I will just say that she has impressive gazongas.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 12:24 AM on January 15, 2008

And once again our scrapbooking klatsch is ruined by the bumbling and lewd behavior of a mere man. Go back to your beer can collection, your scratching of your genitalia in public, your caveman-like sideburn growth, your sideways baseball cap, and your Eminem albums and leave us fans of the art of hypomnemata to our unsullied pleasures. THIS IS NO BOYZONE.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:35 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Just for the heck of it and with the hope that we've all learned our lessons from the Giftwell debacle: the current anti-Contes thread on Two Peas.

I really don't get scrapbooking. Maybe it's because I'm male. No, it's because scrapbooking doesn't feature complex and obtuse statistics you can use to start arguments in bars.

(e.g. Derek Jeter is a crappy fielder. See? UZR proves it!)
posted by dw at 12:43 AM on January 15, 2008

we've all learned our lessons from the Gifthub debacle

All that Brilliant Satire must have dulled my brain.
posted by dw at 12:52 AM on January 15, 2008

I don't think that anybody who scrapbooks has any business snarking on anyone.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:54 AM on January 15, 2008

a pox on thy shift key
posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 1:12 AM on January 15, 2008

posted by not_on_display I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.

Here are mine.
posted by fandango_matt at 1:15 AM on January 15, 2008 [12 favorites has favorites]

I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.

I'm gonna go with "goatse."

And it looks to me like everybody in this situation made careless mistakes but rectified them as necessary--Contes didn't try to claim credit for photos she hadn't taken (which she'd have done had she realized she'd broken a rule in the first place and really wanted to get away with it), and the hall of fame was correct to rescind her admission. Everybody except the lynch mob, that is. There's something chemically wrong with those people.

Also: excellent thread.
posted by Epenthesis at 1:17 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Fascinating. These people make a Seventeen Magazine starring themselves to stay young.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:22 AM on January 15, 2008

#835030 +(2478)- [X]
(Khassaki) HI EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!
(Judge-Mental) try pressing the the Caps Lock key
(Khassaki) O THANKS!!! ITS SO MUCH EASIER TO WRITE NOW!!!!!!!
(Judge-Mental) fuck me
posted by loquacious at 1:56 AM on January 15, 2008 [10 favorites has favorites]

I've been tracking this story on Journalfen since I heard about it on Kottke (disclosure: I'm the OP of its wank post, but I'm not entirely sure if I should link it here). This thing just keeps growing and growing and BLOODY GROWING. Even Lee Goldberg (whose sisters scrapbook too) has picked up on it, and so has Jezebel.

The odd (and rather sad) thing is, some people have decided to troll the scrapbook-related blogs with anti-scrapbook messages (along the lines of "scrapbooking is for gay lusers") and yet everyone else thinks that's Kristina and her friends posing as trolls. It's like the rest of the world doesn't exist for those people.
posted by divabat at 2:25 AM on January 15, 2008

I belonged to a small, local classic car club when I was a youth that actually had a coup d'etat, where the harmless president was forced out by ambitious rivals.

All you need to know about any hobby is that the people who actively seek to be known as experts or actively seek positions of "power" (as opposed to reluctantly serving because no one else will) are the people who are turned down by Herbalife for being too zealous.
posted by maxwelton at 2:32 AM on January 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.

When I was about ten I filled a scrapbook with Star Wars post cards and Star Wars transfers of stormtroopers and rebels firing at each other with carefully drawn dotted 'blaster' lines. It rocked.

Thanks for showing me a world I never knew existed... young hip edgy scrapbooking (and the resultant bitchiness). It's like something from The Onion.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:24 AM on January 15, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

This woman is an artist, it's no wonder that so many people want to shred her to threads--she's like, actually Talented.

One person condemned Contes' lack of shame, admitting that she, too, had entered a contest once, and later realized she had broken the rules. "For about 10 minutes I kept thinking 'Don't worry about it, nobody's gonna know,' " she wrote. "But then I thought 'You and GOD are going to know.' " She withdrew from the contest so her children would still be able to look her in the eye, and then "proceeded to cry for about 3 days."

Heh, if your children aren't going to be able to look you in the eye because of an innocent mistake in a freakin Scrapbook competition, then you've got more serious problems to cry about.
posted by hadjiboy at 3:25 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Reading dw's link to the Two Peas message board gave me the impression of a hundred Jean Teasdales ripping on the poor woman. Evil sniping bitches... but boy do they love their kids!
posted by micketymoc at 3:41 AM on January 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

small, local classic car club when I was a youth that actually had a coup d'etat

A little deuce coupe d'etat, no doubt.
posted by Sparx at 4:36 AM on January 15, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

Disgruntled scrapbookers besieged the Creating Keepsakes chat room threatening to cancel subscriptions, boycott and sue. Scrapbooking bloggers called it "Hall of Fame-Gate," naming it the top scrapbooking scandal of 2007. They compared it to the performance-enhancing-drug controversies involving major league baseball player Barry Bonds and Olympic track star Marion Jones.

Jesus really was a naive son of a bitch, wasn't he?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 4:38 AM on January 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Hmm... I find it a little odd to see people bashing the people who got angry about this when we had our own little internet freakout recently, over similar issues (playing by the rules vs. playing "fast and loose")
posted by delmoi at 11:45 PM on January 14

If you don't see the difference between the executive officer of a charity engaging in deliberate, premeditated deception and obfuscation, all the while trying to hide his tracks, versus a scrapbooker calling up a contest organization to let them know she didn't take one of the pictures in her piece, being upfront about it the entire time, then I pity you.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:42 AM on January 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

"Apparently, many lives have been destroyed by this catastrophe..."

I hope thats sarcasm.
posted by monkeyJuice at 5:06 AM on January 15, 2008

I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.

It looks like a shoebox.
posted by smackfu at 5:32 AM on January 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

...the top scrapbooking scandal of 2007.

Wow, and I bet it sure had some strong competition!(????)
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:50 AM on January 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like.

It's called a junk drawer. The more obsessed have garages fulla shit. Better yet, have you seen my house (before the lil' lady moved in)?
posted by notsnot at 5:53 AM on January 15, 2008

I love her responses. Truly; she seems very well adjusted and a little more sane than the rest of the internet.

I've long been meaning to give proper scrapbooking a shot, but never mustered the energy to go beyond modern journal type scribbling, which in all honesty has many, many merits of their own. See this to get the slightest glimpse into the world of journaling. At times emo, granted, but very raw.

Contes' work is beautiful, albeit in a different way, and rather inspiring in its polishedness. The Dares, especially, are five degrees of awesome. Very, very cool post.

Also, fandango_matt, that rocks on so many levels!
posted by Phire at 5:57 AM on January 15, 2008

The Internet Scrapbooking is Serious Business.
posted by rusty at 6:34 AM on January 15, 2008

Scrapbooking by either gender looks like unpublished zines, with a better picture to word ratio. I'm not clear how they are sharing the scrapbooks in these competitions, but it seems to erase all distinctions entirely.

Hasn't every arty person since 1920 gone through a collage stage?
posted by msalt at 7:00 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

First of all, I was going to make a snarky post about how all scrapbooks are trash and all scrapbookers are Oprah-obsessed shut-ins. And then fandango_matt totally schooled me, so I'll shut my mouth about that.

On the other hand, am I the only person who thought Kristina Contes came off as a narcissistic, angst-ridden, hipster crybaby? By the end of the article I wanted to slap her.
posted by The Bellman at 7:24 AM on January 15, 2008

On the other hand, am I the only person who thought Kristina Contes came off as a narcissistic, angst-ridden, hipster crybaby? By the end of the article I wanted to slap her.

I felt that way too... until I went over and read the forums and discovered that her enemies are also narcissistic crybabies, just of the bitchy harpie variety.
posted by dw at 7:31 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

1. This has slightly altered my attitude about scrapbooking. Not a lot, but some. 2. The Moleskine my sister gave me for Christmas 2006 sits, untouched, unmarked, and radiating a quiet hurt on my bookshelf. Mea culpa, maxima mea culpa.
posted by everichon at 8:28 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Honestly, scrapbookers have always seemed to have a bit more of Teh Crazy going on than other crafters do. I hate to say "bored housewife syndrome", or dog on other crafters, but COME ON, PEOPLE. This has gone way beyond what it should have. There are bigger issues out there to go nuts about than one dang photo credit.

That said, man, the comments on MeFi cracked me up. Thanks, guys. Love your scrapbooks too, fandango_matt.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:34 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

My wife is heavily into scrapbooking but I had no idea it could get so out of hand. I will definitely show her this to see what she makes of it.
posted by TedW at 8:45 AM on January 15, 2008

scrapbooking -- in all its forms -- exploded into a $2.6-billion industry where enthusiasts young and old, conservative and radical, grudgingly put aside differences to compete in national contests, attend global conventions, build blogs, join chat rooms, create online portfolios, and view YouTube and other online instructional videos.

wow. Isn't the world amazing? Always unexpected surprises. Whoda thunk scrapbooking was such big biz? I genuinely like Contes' design sense. Very now. Not surprised she became famous and interested to see the envious bruhaha created by fellow scrapbookers. Contes was pedestalized then demonized/scapegoated. That seems to be common in any cult of celebrity and frequent in many different types of group dynamics. It's an area of psychology that I find very interesting:

Group dynamics l Scapegoats, transferring blame l theme of scapegoating l Group process and group phenomena on the Internet l psychodynamics of scapegoating [pdf]

Excellent, interesting post Kattullus.
posted by nickyskye at 9:11 AM on January 15, 2008 [6 favorites has favorites]

Bruce: e. e. cummings, archy the cockroach and i fart on your shift key.

Bruce, I don't think anyone here will ever mistake you for e.e. cummings. And you forgot k.d. lang. And it is annoying. But IT'S BETTER THAN ALL CAPS. So, thank you. I guess.
posted by applemeat at 9:44 AM on January 15, 2008

Also, archy was a cockroach who could only hit one key at a time by hopping about on the keyboard. Do you share these limitations, bruce?
posted by lekvar at 9:58 AM on January 15, 2008

scrapgoating: The process nickyskye describes.
posted by scrump at 11:03 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

TRIPPY STUFF. I NEVER REALIZED THE WORLD OF SCRAPBOOKING WAS SO COMPETITIVE. I GUESS IT'S JUST ANOTHER CASE OF ANONYMITY ON THE INTERNET ALLOWING PEOPLE TO BE TOTAL DOUCHES. AMIRITE?
posted by eyeballkid at 11:23 AM on January 15, 2008

Those links on scapegoating were very interesting, nickyskye. They describe a process I've seen/been a part of a few times, unfortunately. I used to jokingly refer to it as old guard vs. young upstarts, but when you're personally involved it's not actually that funny. It's weird how this kind of thing happens over and over again, even among people who really ought to know better--social justice advocates and feminists, for example, are not immune. (And I say this as a social justice advocate and feminist.) Goes to show we're all human, I guess.

I liked the way Contes came off in the article. She seemed to have a refreshing amount of perspective on the whole thing, although she was understandably upset.

"Apparently, many lives have been destroyed by this catastrophe..."
I hope thats sarcasm.

Yes, it was. Contes was commenting on the wailing and rending of garments among other scrapbookers.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:44 AM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

nickyskye has it exactly right; I was just about to post about scapegoating and how it's used to purge the anxieties (or, relatedly, envy and resentment) and to reinforce the structure of a group, but she's done a much better job than I would have.

I hate to say it, but this seems to be largely, at least in my experience, and in this culture, something that women and girls do to each other. Men, I suppose, have other ways to manage aggression within groups or to carry out similar types of purges from the ranks.

That thread on the Two Peas message board gave me nauseated flashbacks to high school. The self-congratulation, the self-righteousness, the slander, the smugness. Ugh.
posted by jokeefe at 12:52 PM on January 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

"Scapegoating"... at first I read that as "scrapgoating", which is a nice term anyways that everyone should use.
posted by smackfu at 1:26 PM on January 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I'll stick to knitting for now, thanks.
posted by troubadour at 1:49 PM on January 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I hate to say it, but this seems to be largely, at least in my experience, and in this culture, something that women and girls do to each other. Men, I suppose, have other ways to manage aggression within groups or to carry out similar types of purges from the ranks.

What I was going to say last night, but deleted because I decided it sounded too sexist, was that men can be catty with one another, but we mainly solve our disputes through some level of violence, whether physical violence or violent language. And men, I've found, tend to settle things quickly and either agree to disagree or just outright hate each other. Either way, with men things don't tend to sit at the low boil the catty posters on the Two Peas thread have it at. We are either angry or we're not. And that still sounds a little sexist, but in general I find we men get angry and make up a lot quicker than women.

(YMMV, of course, offer not valid in some states, always wear your seat belt, professional driver on closed course)

That thread on the Two Peas message board gave me nauseated flashbacks to high school. The self-congratulation, the self-righteousness, the slander, the smugness. Ugh.

And as a father of a daughter, that all nauseates me. I want my girl to grow up where she's free to pursue what she wants to pursue without the back-biting and backstabbing of other women. Which probably means I'm going to dissuade her from scrapbooking, or at least scrapbooking on this competitive level.

These community behavior reinforcement actions just don't make any sense. Why SHOULD people have to be just like these bitchy sorts? I mean, sure, this woman was a little self-centered and a little whiny, but the hypocritical righteous indignation towards her is just something else.

If this was a contest with men, we would just go on about it on scrapbooking call-in shows and that would be that. It'd be like Denkinger's blown call in 1985 World Series or the Fifth Down -- stuff we talk about in bars. But we've move on soon enough. I don't think, even 23 years removed from this, that these scrapbooking women would have the perspective I've seen in St. Louis Cardinals fans over Denkinger's call. They're still upset, but they're not running around being catty, vindictive, and bitchy about it.

(Of course, it did help that they won the Series in 2006.)
posted by dw at 2:27 PM on January 15, 2008

And I should qualify all of that with "not all men/women are the same" and "NOTSEXIST".
posted by dw at 2:29 PM on January 15, 2008

"you make me hotter than a stick of hot glue, and I'm scrapbooking everything that we do..."
posted by echolalia67 at 7:03 PM on January 15, 2008

this woman is so talented. and I never thought scrapbooks could look so cool. Thank you Kattullus for your post, and for opening my eyes to something new and beautiful. This is why I return to Metafilter.
posted by seawallrunner at 7:26 PM on January 15, 2008

dw, better you allow your daughter to scrapbooking or whatever she pleases. It's not the hobby or the gender to blame. Scapegoating is a social dynamic practiced by both genders and, bottom line, is an inability to cope with feelings.

Better to teach her about taking responsibility for her feelings, thoughts, words and actions and that some people aren't able to do that and unfairly blame others, so she can understand some of the longstanding frailty of simply being human.

Scapegoating definitely is done by both genders and sometimes to the death, even on a massive scale. I'm talking 6 million people gassed in ovens kind of scale. Scapegoating has been done around the planet by both genders for millennia.

Stoning to death is an example. It's not merely killing an offender, a simple execution, it's encouraging people to gather as a group and slaughter another human being brutally. Jesus talked about this in relation to Mary Magdalen, as she was being scapegoated. As the New Testament goes, Jesus stood in between Mary Magdalen and those who would stone her to death for being a prostitute and said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." So stoning to death was in practice then. And before that it was an Old Testament practice, , using a scapegoat, a literal goat.

There's the putting people in a stockade type of scapegoating too, forcing a person to sit in a public place and be humiliated by the group at large.

The term scapegoat, however, has evolved to refer to individuals or peoples who are symbolically or concretely made to bear responsibility for the faults or problems of others. For individuals, scapegoating is a psychological defense mechanism of denial through projecting responsibility and blame on others. It allows the perpetrator to eliminate negative feelings about him or herself and provides a sense of gratification. Furthermore, it justifies the self-righteous discharge of aggression. For the perpetrator, it can provide a firm separation between good and bad. Others describe scapegoaters as insecure, motivated to raise their own status, particularly relative to the target. Having firmly convinced oneself that the other is responsible, it seems only logical to displace punishment as well.

There is scapegoating due to prejudice, to superstition, to fear, to envy, mob mentality, projected rage. Families can pick a child to blame, displacing the addict-parent's inability to cope, gangs can go it, fascists can do it, online groups do it, mobs do it, men do it, women do it, kids do it, sportspeople do it, witch hunters did it for centuries, the Inquisition did it for 7 centuries. Joe McCarthy and his cronies did it.

Backstabbing is without gender too. Et tu Brute? And Iago come to mind as male backstabbing archetypes.

Owning one's feelings and processing them is something human beings are learning how to gradually do better because it's permitted now to talk about feelings, about having them, all of them with less judgment.

As a woman I've experienced first hand group scapegoating, when I chose not to mother others but take care of myself. I was astonished by the rage that ensued. What is common between male and female scapegoating is the righteous indignation of the mob. It's a wall of intense feeling which cannot be deconstructed in order to have a rational conversation.

On the Benazir Bhutto assassination thread I was fascinated to learn in my research about a group of people who have taken it on to strategize working on conflict resolution with those who would otherwise hate each other, intractable conflicts. It's called Track II diplomacy, which works on changing views of The Other. I know little about this whole topic but am curious both about how a group's free floating negativity can all of a sudden become a tornado, wreaking havoc on a scapegoat and on how to de-escalate this mob rage.

What I do know is that being able to weather these fickle, freak storms of emotion and still go on can determine whether a person who has been scapegoated suffers clinical depression, suicidal ideation or brushes off the slander and gets on with life. I wish Contes is able to do the latter.
posted by nickyskye at 7:32 PM on January 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Scapegoating is a social dynamic practiced by both genders and, bottom line, is an inability to cope with feelings.

I totally read this as "Scrapbooking is...bottom line, is an inability to cope with feelings." and I was like, man, someone's about to start a shitstorm. (Then I scrolled down and saw it was posted by nickyskye, and realized it couldn't possibly say that.)
posted by Locative at 3:55 AM on January 16, 2008

Excellent use of the "labelwhore" tag.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 6:01 AM on January 16, 2008

grapefruitmoon, I've so missed your wry and wonderful comments here on the blue. Nice to see you again this December and January.

and realized it couldn't possibly say that

Locative, ha. Thanks. It's that sc at the beginning of scrapbooking and scapegoating. Totally confusing. Scrapgoating is a delightful conflation that smackfu came up with.
posted by nickyskye at 7:33 AM on January 16, 2008

dw, better you allow your daughter to scrapbooking or whatever she pleases.

Oh, there ain't nothing I can do. She inherited her father's impetuousness and her mother's bull-headed stubbornness. The best I can do is get the heck out of her way.

And she's only three.
posted by dw at 9:50 AM on January 16, 2008

nickyskye, so we're all equal?

That is full-on awesome. I like how there's no difference between men and women.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 7:12 PM on January 16, 2008

"I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like."

It gets called "collage" and taken seriously.
posted by klangklangston at 11:09 AM on January 17, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

"I wonder what mens' scrapbooks would look like."
It gets called "collage" and taken seriously.

Dude, does this mean I'm a man now? Awesome!

(As a collage artist, I would say that there is a fundamental difference between collage as art form and scrapbooking, namely that one is about creating something because it has a certain aesthetic "voice" and the other is about creating a representation of an event or an emotion.)
posted by grapefruitmoon at 11:32 AM on January 17, 2008

Pssh. False dichotomy. The artist Jess, whose collage work is some of the pinnacle of the form, often created collages to represent an event or emotion. Similarly, zines and flyers, both often created through collage, are all about the temporal. The only thing that makes scrapbooking different from collage is how the final products are treated.
posted by klangklangston at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]