John Carmack responds to criticism of congress attendance

Legendary game developer John Carmack has defended his decision to attend a science fiction and fantasy conference for non-left-wing writers after criticism on social media.

Carmack announced that he will be attending BasedCon this week via Twittersparking outrage from followers upset by the description of the event as an alternative to “the publishing industry’s hostility to authors who are critical of progressive dogma.”

The name of the event is derived from the Internet slang “based,” which is proprietary to BasedCon About the page described as “the opposite of social justice activism” and identified through “based beliefs” such as “discriminating against white people is racism”, “men can’t give birth” and also “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.

“If you think people of a certain skin color can’t be racist, or expect people to use made-up pronouns when talking about you, you might want to do a reality check before coming to BasedCon,” the page continues.

Carmack is listed on the BasedCon website as a guest after appearing at the same event last year, where he gave a talk on AI and took part in panels on aerospace and fact-checking novels.

“Politics never once came up in my conversations,” Carmack said now in a lengthy speech post published in response to criticism.

“It’s a shame that Rob (Croze, event organizer and author) made BasedCon so deliberately provocative,” Carmack wrote. “I told him a lot after the event last year – I felt a bit uncomfortable. There are demographics that welcome in-your-face posing, but repulse nice people who would otherwise be happy to talk about crafts, stories, and technology.

“Even when someone gives you a clear signal, it’s a mistake to extrapolate that to a whole constellation of beliefs and behaviors and then assume they’re contagious by association.” This misleads many people.

“I’m not a culture warrior and I don’t want to strike at anybody. I don’t follow activists on either side, including Rob, because I tend to think that all the negativity and resentment is harmful to both author and target.”

Carmack says he was just interested in attending as a fan of “hard sci-fi stories with a bit of competent libertarian flair”… “as opposed to the big commercial SF/fantasy conventions I’d attended”.

BasedCon will be held for the third year this September at a hotel in Michigan. The exact location of the event has not been made public for security reasons, according to its website.