> Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to _why in the extreme.

On the other hand, _why is just an online persona created and portrayed by an
actual person. When he says "I truly hope that Jonathan is ok," he's referring
to the actual person, not to the online persona... The persona is fictional. A
farce. A farce in the name of art, but a farce nonetheless.

It would be like Zed trying to talk about the guy behind 'Fake Steve Jobs' by
constantly referring to him as 'Fake Steve Jobs' rather than by his real name,
Daniel Lyons. If I said, "I hope that Fake Steve Jobs is in a good frame of
mind," most people will not take that to mean, "I hope that Daniel Lyons is in
a good state of mind." In the same way, saying, "Fake Steve Jobs is acting like
a dick," is not the same as saying, "Daniel Lyons is acting like a dick."

I seriously think that people are taking this "Zed and _why are two polar
opposites" idea way too far. Zed is basically saying that _why can do whatever
he wants, but to create a bunch of projects that people rely on (even if these
projects are your art) and then abruptly, without notice pull the rug out from
under these people is an asshole move.

Let's bring all this into a small example. Say there's this artist whose art
strikes such a chord with me that I invest every penny I own into putting on a
spectacular art show to showcase this artist's art to the world. Let's say that
the artist and I spend months and months planning the show and collaborating on
it. Then comes the big day of the show, and I go to the location to find out
that the artist has up and disappeared, taking all of his art with him. Leaving
me with nothing.

If the artist and I have no formal argreement that he has to show his art there
he has every right to walk out like this. But it is a very asshole move to
leave me hanging after I've invested all of my time in money into it, no? Or do
I just scratch my head, say "I just don't understand his art" and call it a
day?

This is the same case here. There are things like his twitter
account/tweets/blogs/blog entries/etc which pulling from the web isn't that big
of a deal. On the other hand, all of his software projects/code are things that
people have come to rely on and invest time into contributing to. He basically
giving all of those people the finger when he just cuts out everything like
this. Without taking the time to organize for these projects to be taken over
by someone else (or at least leaving the hosting up for them), he's saying that
all of those people, all the effort and time they've spent mean shit all to
him.

Being 'artsy' and 'artistic' doesn't excuse you from being an asshole. I mean,
Caravaggio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio) was a 'ruffian' and a
murderer. While his art still stands on its own, he was a dick of a person.
Just because a dick of a person produces great art doesn't mean that we
hand-wave away all their misdeeds with nebulous phrases like, "You just don't
understand his art."

What if Caravaggio decided to pull a _why? Let's say that he broke into all of
the places that his paintings resided (cathedrals,churches,mansions,etc) and
destroyed every last piece of art that he had created. Should we excuse this
behavior as "Well, it's his art and this action is just an extention of his
art. You just don't understand his art?"

This has become a bit long-winded, so I'll just cut it here with this. Zed
isn't tearing down _why's art. But some parts of _why's art have crossed over
from just being 'just art' to being 'art plus' if you will. In this case, it's
'art + software project.' The fact that part of it is art doesn't mean one can
ignore that the other part is a software project.