Do you find yourself getting caught up in following an internet kerfuffle about something you know nothing about that you randomly stumbled across? To the point of forming opinions and mentally taking sides, even though the core issue remains impenetrable to you?

Apparently it all started when someone named Alex declared in Why I will never be clean again..., "With a heavy heart, and with very little jouissance.... 'I hate Badiou.'"

Now all I know about Badiou is that he's a trendy French philosopher, the latest in a long line of trendy French philosophers. Where 'trendy' means intellectually fashionable, though for all I know, he may also be a style icon, but that seems unlikely. I don't know anything about his ideas or writing; I looked him up some time ago when I first heard his name, and frankly it all seemed too dull to pay attention to. I am pretty sure that his first name is Alain, but I can't guarantee that since nobody involved in the current blog contretemps refers to him as anything but Badiou.

So Alex hates Badiou, and people react and respond, and apparently someone somewhere dismisses Alex' critique as fanboyism gone awry, according to k-punk in Fans, vampires, trolls, Masters:


Ah, but wait! Anodyne Lite intervenes in Sexuation and fandom: there are no girls on the internet:
And thus did the fanboy/fangirl debate arrive at the cutting edge of philosophy, which (fittingly?) is apparently going by the name of speculative realism these days.

I will give Alex the last word here, if only because his renunciation of Badiou could only be better if it had been published as an op-ed in The Onion:


Hey Alex -- if this is your idea of the future of philosophy, I think 4chan got there first.