Two nerdy white guys are fighting on the internet. It must be Tuesday. This time around, it involves the creators of two of television’s most well-known shows: George R.R. Martin, the man behind Game of Thrones, and Damon Lindelof, the guy responsible for LOST. Let’s break it down!
Martin was recently interviewed by film critic Leonard Maltin on the podcast Maltin on Movies. Between reminiscing about fanzine culture and talking about how much he loves movie theaters, Martin had a few things to say about the state of internet discourse. “The Internet is toxic in a way that the old fanzine culture and the fandoms — comics fans, science fiction fans — in those days, was not,” he said. “Yeah, there were disagreements, there were feuds, but nothing like the madness that you see on the internet…It did not empower anonymity, the coward’s means of discourse.”
He doesn’t say so explicitly, but you have to wonder if Martin isn’t talking about the fan backlash to the final season of Game of Thrones, which got pretty heated. Lindleof, who has worked on everything from Star Trek to The Leftovers to HBO’s upcoming Watchmen series, read it that way, and took the opportunity to throw some shade on Instagram.
I agree with you, George. And I remain a huge fan of your work. That said, I’ve always wondered if you’d be House Stark or House Lannister…now I know it’s House Glass. Let’s stop throwing stones, shall we?
Okay, someone’s feeling salty. What gives?
Apparently, Lindleof has not forgotten comments Martin made to The New Yorker back in 2011, shortly before Game of Thrones debuted. “[I] watched [Lost] every week trying to figure it out, and as it got deeper and deeper I kept saying, ‘They better have something good in mind for the end. This better pay off here.,’” he remembered. “And then I felt so cheated when we got to the conclusion…I want to give [Game of Thrones viewers] something terrific. What if I f*ck it up at the end? What if I do a Lost? They’ll come after me with pitchforks and torches.”
So when Lindelof accuses Martin of throwing stones in glass houses, that’s what he’s talking about.
Hopefully these two Jersey boys can squash this beef. Alternatively, they can engage in an epic flame war for the ages, with casualties on both sides. As toxic denizens of the internet, we’d really enjoy that.
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h/t Uproxx
