Cory Doctorow Verbally Abuses 99-Year-Old iPad User

While most took the recent story of Victoria Campbell, the 99-year old whose first computer is an iPad, as a heartwarming tale of the benefits of technology, one pundit saw the insidious effects of Apple’s closed and DRM-ridden platform.

Open source and digital rights advocate Cory Doctorow — author of not one but two screeds detailing why anyone who buys an iPad is a terrible, terrible person — flew to Lake Oswego, Ore. to personally chastise Campbell.

“Apparently Ms. Campbell is happy inside Apple’s walled garden,” Doctorow said after being ejected from the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community for haranguing the nonagenarian for a full 45 minutes on the moral imperative of open systems, digital rights and steampunk subculture.

“I hope she’s happy in the infantile world of apps only approved by Apple’s jack-booted thugs,” the author of Little Brother said. “I hope she’s happy being forced into being a content consumer instead of a content creator. And when I say ‘I hope she’s happy’ I’m being sarcastic because people like Campbell really are the worst people in the world. And that includes pedophiles.”

Doctorow believes Campbell should avail herself of any one of the numerous open systems that are just as good, just as easy to use and have just as much content as the iPad.

“I explained to her how easy it is to compile and install Debian on a steampunk casemod of a tablet built by a Japanese company I know of that’s run entirely by bloody nurse cosplayers. You have to reset some jumpers and the sound card isn’t compatible yet, but you can run GIMP on it. Try that on an iPad.

“Anyway, she pretended not to understand what I was talking about. Way to buy into the ugly stereotype of the technophobic nonagenarian with glaucoma in a nursing home, Ms. Campbell.”

The staff of Mary’s Woods was beside themselves.

“This is just awful,” said director Patricia Hershey. “We’re not sure exactly how he got in. We think he might have crawled in through a heating duct that’s only a foot and half across. Although he would have had to dislocate his shoulder in order to fit in it.”

Hershey shuddered. “The staff and the residents are all terribly frightened and confused.”

Doctorow, who will be signing copies of Little Brother at the Bloomington Linux Users Group next week, was unapologetic about his methods.

“Digital rights is the most important thing ever,” Doctorow said flatly. “Way more important than cancer or genocide or child slavery. It’s not even close. They’re like way down on the graph.

“If you are not part of the solution — which is open systems using standards-based formats that allow everyone to freely create and consume openly licensed content while wearing brass-rimmed goggles, leather dusters, tightly-laced bodices and gauntlets — then you’re part of the problem. And Virginia Campbell is part of the problem.”

Hershey said that the incident has forced her to rescind her invitation to have Doctorow conduct a dramatic reading of Little Brother next month to the residents.

“That’s just typical of an organization that promotes closed systems,” Doctorow noted, slipping a copy of Little Brother into the basket of a Mary’s Woods resident’s mobility scooter as she left the facility.

Campbell and Hershey have declined to press charges against Doctorow, stating they don’t think they could bear to listen to him testify.

“I already heard him testify for 45 of the longest minutes of my 99-year life,” Campbell said, not looking up from the poem she was inexplicably creating on her closed, proprietary and DRM-ridden iPad. “That was more than enough for me.”

[Crazy Apple Rumors Site is satire. Added for the irony-impaired who are apparently sending hate mail to Cory over this piece. Seriously, people. Sometimes I don’t know what the hell to do with you.]

119 thoughts on “Cory Doctorow Verbally Abuses 99-Year-Old iPad User”

  1. I never touched the queen !
    I couldn’t : I am from the country whose first lady made such elegant confidence to Madame Michelle O.
    Hence : I’m disqualified to touch any person of opposite sex in real. And that, whatever I’m sexually opposed to.
    That’s why I vote ‘sexbot’ too.

  2. The second page of comments may be the trigger that launches the next Moltz rumor report. And the moon was found to be cheddar.

  3. Moltz… What Moltz ? Isn’t this a social network for older nerds ?

  4. Yes indeed: Moltz has created it to be with his Kind.

    Why has the page 2 overspill (not nearly as exciting as Page 3 overspill, admittedly, chirped Karen, age 19, from Dorset) not precipitated a new post from Our Lord Moltz, hmmm? What are those brains paying him for?

  5. Yes, indeed. We in Outsourceistan are supporting of Doctorow’s agenda. It’s only when paid for software is crushed and extinguished from the earth that true believers will be free to berate anyone of any age, race, color or creed (except open source advocates of course) without fear or favor.

    Please join us as we worshiop at the altar of Torvalds. Then you will be free of the corruption of Western decadent walled garden-ness.

  6. Poh-poh-poh. Please don’t free me of any corruption your crooked mind can think of, please.

  7. 4430
    It’s a magic number
    No more no less

    But will it still be considered as comments, as no one talks about Mr Doctorw anymore ?

  8. Is Mr Doctorw merely a truncated Dr Who?

    I think we should be told.

    Happy now, b?

  9. Zzzz…
    Zzzz…
    Zzz… SNORK! Gasp! Cough!

    Huh? What? 4430?! Already?!

    4431st!!!

    There. Hmmf. Sigh…

    Zzzz…
    Zzz… mmph…

    Whu… iPad? No, thank you, I’m fine. … I can sleep through the whooole night, without aaany problem…

    Zzzz…

  10. I’m laying claim to comment 4444 on the Giga-Post, which will be arriving shortly.

  11. Something wrong there,Ace

    Divide one of the fours by two, then add two separate twos to two separate fours and you only get 664 not 666.

  12. 664, the number of the best.
    If Mr Doctorow is in real Doctor Who, his first name is Ryco, isn’t it ?
    Dr. Ryco Who.
    Not a surprise he took a stage name.

    I though WWDC II was over ?

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