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Or that is the accepted take on the Puppies now? "It never happened, and if it did, they deserved it"?
I was very sympathetic to the Sad Puppies because a lot of the modern Hugo stuff really was "how the hell is this SF/Fantasy?" and was being patted on the head simply because it was written by a woman/POC/LGBT author.
What I read back when the Sad Puppies were getting going, is that one particular author/member of the SF community claimed that the WorldCon committee was nudging the scales when nominations/awards were going on, so that they could present a slate of preferred (progressive leaning) authors. The counter-claim was "this is impossible and would never happen", so he set it up to show that not only could it happen under the rules, it was perfectly possible. A slate of non-woke nominees followed, much anger from the WorldCon set, and we're off to the races with the Rabid Puppies (since Vox Day could not resist this chance to make trouble) and then the Sad Puppies, and then the purging and now the new, unchallenged, woke in control Hugos which impeccably nominate and vote for non-white, non-male, LGBT+ authors every time.
The one minor kerfuffle that amused me out of the aftermath was one Bogi Takács who was oppressed, persecuted and vilified by the horrible transphobic monsters in control, because some poor over-worked volunteer doing cut'n'paste bios of finalists slipped up and called em "he" instead of "e". Oh, the humanity! E is of course intersex, agender, trans, disabled, autistic, Jewish-Hungarian who uses Spivak pronouns, all of that is so simple to remember that naturally it couldn't have been a mistake, it had to be deliberate and malicious misgendering. Of course e felt so unsafe and threatened by such acts of villainy, e was not sure ey could attend a pit of vipers like WorldCon 2018:
They wanted this, and they got it, full and plenty. And by God, they deserve it.
See, the thing about the Puppies is I agreed with them about a lot of the recent winners, but not that therefore "Low-brow pulp action should get Hugos." Like, I'm sorry, but a Hugo was supposed to represent something worthy of becoming a genre classic. I actually enjoy Larry Correia's books, but his writing is strictly derivative action-adventure with no small amount of wish fulfillment. Vox Day is not actually a very good writer (though admittedly his nominations were pure trolling), and Brad Torgerson tries to write in the old classic SF style but he doesn't have the chops for it.
As much as I appreciated the puppies' campaign for its entertainment value, I don't think their tastes in "literature" are any better than the woke cabal's, it just runs in a different lowbrow direction.
True, but looking back at 2016 Sad and Rabid Puppies Hugo nominees, ironically one of them is "Ancillary Mercy" by Ann Leckie (low-brow pulp action?). Some of their nominees, I agree, are low-brow pulp and are there mainly as friends/supporters/'up yours' to the opposition, but not all:
Sad Puppies list:
Best Novel
Somewhither – John C Wright
Honor At Stake – Declan Finn
The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass – Jim Butcher
Uprooted – Naomi Novik
A Long Time Until Now – Michael Z Williamson
Seveneves – Neal Stephenson
Son of the Black Sword – Larry Correia
Strands of Sorrow – John Ringo
Nethereal – Brian Niemeier
Ancillary Mercy – Ann Leckie
Rabid Puppies/Vox Day:
Seveneves: A Novel, Neal Stephenson
Golden Son, Pierce Brown
Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm, John C. Wright
The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass, Jim Butcher
Agent of the Imperium, Marc Miller
And seemingly in 2015 the Puppies nominated and voted for The Three-Body Problem but this was bad because it was ideological right-wingism and not because they thought "yeah, this is good hard SF":
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I don't know what this is supposed to mean. The nominees prior reflected a left-skewed and "literary" preference. Enter Correia and Torgersen complaining that not enough stuff they like is getting nominated. I missed the part where they claimed the process was rigged, which just makes them look worse because what transpired was the opposite of what you'd expect from a rigged process. Putting together an organized slate successfully got a bunch of their preferred candidates on the ballot, whereas if there were people putting their thumb on the scale behind the scenes that would have failed. What they did do was piss off a lot of people, resulting in people openly organizing against them. Instead of it being vaguely left-inflected, ideological conflict was made explicit. After a couple of years the effort petered out, but left behind their ideologically motivated adversaries. It's not "they deserved it" it's "they catalyzed the process".
Can you give examples? Looking at Hugo Best Novel winners from the pre-puppy era, we (going backwards) have: Among Others (female straight white author, primary world fantasy), Blackout (straight white female author, time travel), Windup Girl/City and the City joint winners (both straight white male authors, cyberpunk and social science fiction, respectively), The Graveyard Book (straight white male author, fantasy), The Yiddish Policeman's Union (bi? white male author, alt-history), Rainbow's End (straight white male author, not-really-cyberpunk-but-that's-probably-the-closest-relative), Spin (straight white male author, classic sci fi), Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (straight white female author, historical fantasy). That takes us back to 2005. You can look back further, but I don't think it is going to reveal anything.
As far as I can tell, the "woke" trend in the Hugo Awards started after and in reaction to the Puppies. Hence my remarks above. The only that seems to even come close to the critique is Among Others.
And the sneering that the Puppies were all racist sexist bigots? That didn't happen either and didn't matter?
Ah, right: science fiction is now about social justice, not, you know, science fiction.
My sympathies with the Sad Puppies were not "I think trashy pulp skiffy should win" (though again, trashy pulp skiffy can be just what the doctor ordered at times), it was "Well if I'm a racist sexist bigot for liking this kind of story and not that kind of story where a trans (possibly) non-white (possibly) lesbian (possibly) paleontologist gets beaten up by gin-swilling rednecks for being (I quote) "a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not" because I don't think the latter is quite SF, then I'm a racist etc. etc. etc. because I would prefer to read SF/Fantasy and not poor quality literary magazine rejects".
Oh, it definitely did. Because a quite a lot of the Puppies were racist, sexist bigots, most prominently Vox Day and his followers. Especially considering that Vox Day was more successful than Correia or Torgersen. If the shoe fits, wear it.
It wasn't the about the not-liking, it was about the vicious backlash to, essentially, two short story nominations.
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