Jun 072013
 

Was hoping for a discussion about claims of the “group” A+ bullying a particular Twitter user as well as many other claims made by that user about A+… I managed to find one person involved in the alleged bullying and no evidence that person is even registered on the forum let alone “A+”. Given the moniker is self applied it makes as much sense to rail against A+ “group” as it does against feminists or MRAs … I personally think *sometimes* MRAs say ridiculous things,  damaging things and identifying as one makes me suspicious. But I’d only hold an MRA accountable for the things xie says and xyr “leaders” like Elam etc say and do – and only then if they agree with them or support his movement.

Anyway Storify here -> https://storify.com/The_Block_Bot/a-claim-of-being-a-cult-weirdness

 Posted by at 2:07 pm
May 312013
 

Had to post on this as its extremely amusing, one of the key parts of argumentation by the Slymepit and its various anti-FTB support team members is the argument in bad faith. So enamoured with this and so used to using it PitchGuest was totally brazen about it in a recent comment… He also made it clear that the Slymepit as a whole engages in this behaviour and he obviously sees nothing wrong with it. At this point I’d suggest you have a look at the article I link to above if you are not familiar with this type of argumentation and how it is an intellectually dishonest tactic.

There was a discussion about women getting rape threats and as usual PitchGuest is there to condescend and belittle any woman’s experience of threats online, they are all *just* trolling comments and nothing to be worried about. Why are you ladiez so hysterical, PitchGuest laughs in the face of rape threats don’cha know! So I comment calling into question PitchGuests claim to have received rape threats himself (*rolls eyes*) ->  Comment here

oolon: Well PitchGuest and pals consider some commenters at Pharyngula saying “go fuck yourself with a dead porcupine” to be a “rape” threat… Seriously. They’ve said as much many times. So don’t take his claims of receiving them too seriously.
EDIT: In fact I can link to their shameful list of “rape” threats with their debunking. http://aratina.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/skepsheik-liar-lunatic-or-lord.html

Bear in mind that I know full well PitchGuest and pals are lying through their teeth when they say this is the case and I’m looking for a reaction from PitchGuest to expose this hypocrisy. In fact I had this lovely comment from PitchGuests pal at the Slymepit, SkepSheik, in mind -> Comment here

Skepsheik: I do condemn bad behavior. As a quick example apart from the pharyngula imagery above, I condemn a lot of the stuff that AVFM do. As for people making threats of rape and other violence shouldn’t we all condemn it?

This was in response to his list of “rape threats” supposedly issued by Pharyngulites and “condemned” by the moral upstanding Slymepitters. (See the link to Aratina’s debunking to see how quote mined they are and how much they fit the description of “rape threat”) Even the couple not quote mined the threat is obviously absurdist humour and not meant seriously in any sense. However the comment policy for Pharyngula for nearly a year has prohibited even surrealist/absurd expressions of violence given they could be misinterpreted. So when “Skepsheik” “condemns” these examples he means no such thing, he is employing our bad faith argument. I know this, he knows this but the Slymepit and its “master debaters” like “Skepsheik” want to establish a false equivalence between their own terrible behaviour and some bad jokey “threats” from years ago on Pharyngula. To achieve this they need to lie and pretend they actually give two fucks about violent language.

Now over to our friend PitchGuest to well and truly let the cat out of the bag -> Comment here

Pitchguest: There’s the problem with your comprehension, oolon. You’ve always been a bit thick. We don’t care about dead porcupines or people telling us to fuck ourselves with them. We care about hypocrisy. I wouldn’t consider it a rape threat because I wouldn’t care. However, the Pharyngulites obviously do care and yet they were the ones who uttered the words, not us.

So when they tell us to go fuck ourselves with a dead porcupine, that’s a rape threat *by their own standards.* Which makes them *hypocrites.*

So, no, not seriously. You’re just too dumb to realise.

Ahhh the beautiful irony of it all, I was very gracious given he had just described himself and all his friends at the pit as trolls who argue in bad faith. My reply to complete the circle -> Comment here

ool0n: Haha, cheers PitchG you just explained in clear english for everyone to see that you don’t argue against your opponent’s position but a strawman “understanding” of your own making. It should even have been clear to you that those terms are not rape threats by “their standards”, cos they clearly wouldn’t issue them! You also argue in bad faith as there is reams of evidence of you and assorted Slymers appearing to care very much about being told to fuck off with a dead porcupine. You do realise you just admitted to bad faith argumentation? Otherwise known as trolling? You also implicated the whole Slymepit in that… “We don’t care about dead porcupines or people telling us to fuck ourselves with them”

I won’t say anything about your intelligence, but you really should have thought before posting that comment.

Now onto the rape threats you have experienced, given its your experience then citations will be no problem at all. Over to you genius.

Sometimes I just have to admit Dan Fincke is right, insulting PitchGuest is fun but its nowhere near as much fun as when he puts his size nines in the poo quite as epically as this!  Cheers PitchGuest I’ll be using this as proof of anti-FTB/Slymepit bad faith argumentation for some time. I’m sure Skepsheik appreciates you undermining his list of “rape threats” almost as thoroughly as Aratina.

 

 Posted by at 8:37 pm
May 242013
 

Given one constant criticism of the so called “#FTBullies” is that they never take on board criticism and instead shout “misogynist!” I’ve been meaning to start a page where I catalogue the reasonable criticism of bloggers and commenters at FreethoughtBlogs.com and Skepchick.org … Also other people that have their own blogs or high profile jobs and get dragged in as “#FTBullies” just because they happen to agree with one of the bloggers on those networks or even worse are feminists *spit* (Amanda Marcotte, Melody Hensley etc would be examples).

1. Reasonable criticism of Melody Hensley

Anyway I can start with reasonable criticism of WIS2, unlike anything Vacula managed, Melody Hensley being the “#FTBully” in question. (Definitely not anything Ron Lindsay said as comparing people to North Korean dictators does not count as reasonable)

One thing the Slymepitters come out with is almost true as it feels shitty picking out criticism of Melody when she gets so much unwarranted harassment from the assholes at the pit and on Twitter. I don’t want to be adding to pressure on her when she gets so much from them, reasonable or not. However its so rare for her to get reasonable criticism its worth showing how it actually works. I’m not sure if Melody has seen any reasonable criticism online of her actions before!

http://www.hofstader.com/invisible_blind_man

Brilliant post that shows how shutting up and listening is sometimes paramount when you are speaking to someone who is often erased from the conversation, ignored and their needs disregarded in preference to the privileged majority.  I really feel for Melody here as while she handled this case badly she was under tremendous pressure to avoid criticism of the conference. Its easy in my position to say she shouldn’t have been defensive when dealing with the complaint and should have “Shut up and Listened”… I know that this “#FTBully” will take it on board and improve the conference for disabled people next year. Also CFI as a whole needs to re-evaluate their accessibility provisions, both online and in meatspace as that experience was not acceptable.

UPDATE: As @aratina points out below Melody took the reasonable criticism to heart, weird how that works!

Will add more above the fold as I come across them…. Feel free to let me know if you see any.

 Posted by at 9:12 am
May 212013
 

Disclaimer: From my log of tweets for @hashspamkiller so if Twitter was overloaded then it will not have allowed me to save a tweet so I may be missing a couple. This is hopefully showing that Rebecca Watson was not the only one to criticise the talk… As seems to be some of the opinion on Twitter, Rebecca “starting” a cry about sexism again. Also she never actually mentioned “sexism”… Just that Ron was wrong about the concept of privilege and the “Shut up and listen” meme. For a comment on Ron Lindseys, Watson and Kim Jong Un are one and the same post of calm reasoned civility :-P

** Apologies for slow loading… There are 120 tweets in the iframe below!

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 6:24 pm
May 202013
 

Have to post about the effect of @aratina’s great GreaseMonkey / TamperMonkey script for Twitter…. This reads in a list of the blocked users from www.theblockbot.com and removes them from your timeline. I still think everyone should sign up to Level1 of the block bot given that blocks the stalkers, harassers and fakers on Twitter…. But you can now experience the block bot without having to block anyone. ALSO you can browse #WISCFI, #FTBULLIES, etc…. any of the hashes without having to wade through misogynistic, paranoid, conspiracy led drivel. In fact I found what I thought was a god-bot lurking on #FTBullies and proceeded to be very unpleasant and condescending to her. Serves me right as she turned out to be very reasonable and we actually agreed on secular morality! I’m not used to having reasonable conversations with people on #FTBullies so that was my excuse for being an asshole. (N.B. This does over-ride your followers, no easy way around that. So if you are following someone on the list they will disappear! But why would you follow them?)

I’m concluding this will really improve the level of dialogue and debate as those reasonable voices with something interesting to say have been drowned out by the loud mouthed assholes.  So onto the before and after images :-D >>

#WISCFI  <BEFORE AND AFTER>

image showing slyme removed by script
What happened to the Vac? Now you can actually see what people interested in the conference more than their own self promotion think!

#FTBULLIES <AFTER AND BEFORE **>

image showing slyme removed by script
Amazing! People actually have interesting things to say on FTBULLIES, who’da thunk it… BTW there will be an option to put in custom blocks so if some pesky oolon is hogging the hash you can sweep them away too!

** Making sure you are paying attention! Definitely not a photoshop mistake…

#ATHEISMPLUS <BEFORE AND AFTER>

image showing slyme removed by script

From transphobe, 911 truther and ironically named pundit to actual atheismplus people with useful information about activism not their own petty hate for other people. (OK one dipshit, but guess who is about to be added to the block bot!)

So in short…

INSTALL IT NOW!

 

 Posted by at 8:35 pm
May 152013
 

So there was this fellow called Justicar who gave some “helpful” advice to Jen McCreight on how not to be d0x’d. Well no, actually he was a condescending arsehole who called her a lot of names for tweeting a picture that could give away her location. Rather than be helpful and tell her, he made a video about it. In that video he set himself up as an expert in not being d0xed and how to be anonymous on the internet.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/05/12/justicarintegralmath-wretched-skeevy-piece-of-internet-offal/

Personally I think if you are not in danger it is a good idea to be open… See my “About Me”. Makes it easier for people to realise you are not a stalker or dangerous when your IRL identity is on the line, probably also holds you back if you are attracted to being a little trollish *looks around, moi?*

So is Justicar an expert on not being d0x’d? Well I don’t think he is as he comments as <nym>-<last name> and <first-name>-<nym> on web forums. Now far from it for me to d0x the little weasel but this is not the action of any sort of expert on d0x’ing! In fact I think there is a case to be made that he d0x’d himself since he uses his real name on the web… Is he actually bothered about it? I’m assuming he is, hence no name. Certainly not the action of the person in the video who claimed to be “careful” about his IRL identity, dipshit.

If you really want to be anonymous, I’m assume you need to be anonymous as your IRL work or identity will be at risk from being an atheist/etc. Not that you are a Z-grade skeeze who gets his jollies harassing women on the internet… Here are some *good* tips.

1/ Choose a pseudonym that is totally unrelated to your interests/work/etc (oolon is terrible as I love Douglas Adams!)

2/ Use Tor or some other IP anonymising service on your computer.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-windows.html.en

3/ Never mention your work, your location or anything specific about friends and family

4/ No images, google image search can locate you! Also EXIF data in images can be extracted if you upload the image unprocessed. Some cameras/phones even add GPS information, you’d d0x yourself to the nearest couple of meters!

EDIT: Someone pointed out another method, as I got “d0x’d” by the Slymepit doing a lookup on my oolon.co.uk domain. So….

5/ Don’t register any domain names with your real name/address. Use a proxy registration service or just blog on wordpress.com with a pseudonym.

–> Basically its a pain, you’d only want to do it if you were doing illegal things (Harassing women) or actually in danger if outed as atheist/gay/trans/etc. (Edit: Should also say you’d also want to do it if you are a potential target of Justicar and his friends, sort of obvious given the post subject. However not a good state of affairs when atheists are probably in more danger of being harassed by other atheists (than theists/scientologists/anyone!) just because they call themselves feminists as well)

Oh, and never take the advice of “experts”, mine included, do your own research!

 Posted by at 10:31 pm
May 122013
 

So there are two new people blogging over at FreeThoughtBlogs. Good news for all the fans of the network, also good troll fodder for the anti-FTB people? This is an extension and update to a comment I posted here, I’ve added the two word clouds below as I had all the text from the first comments by the anti-FTB brigade so thought it might make for a nice visual aid.

So why not check out the comments from the group of FTB haters who just exist only to “ridicule” FTBs… Would there be a difference in comments from Ally Fogg vs Yemisi Ilesanmi (Yemmy)? Both profess beliefs that could be described as strongly feminist, although Ally doesn’t use the label. Both use terms like patriarchy and rape culture… Ally’s blog is provocatively called “Heteronormative Patriarchy for Men”, surely a red rag to the anti-feminists that hate FTB’s and the “gender feminists” therein? They also use these terms and they elicit derision and hatred from the anti-crowd. Watch out Ally! Yemmy on the other hand is a respected activist, deals with unpleasant homophobic and anti-atheist theists on a regular basis. So while she owns the label “feminist” and “A+” surely this track record of achievement in activism (a common criticism of A+ people is they lack this) will put her in good stead?

Well lets look at Ally’s reception… First comment from an anti-type is analysed by my totally objective brain [not], so take the analysis with however much salt is permissible while keeping your blood pressure under control.

Ally’s Word Cloud:

Ally Fogg word cloud from anti-FTB comments

Big reference to his name there, so he is being referred to directly, “like” is big, overall impression is positive I think its fair to say… So first comments broken down by post and an observation on the overall tone of the debate from the anti-crowd, split by nym.  You can find each post under the links for each blogger which I give above, can’t link here or I’ll spam them both with trackbacks from WordPress.

Intro Post,
- PitchGuest, “amusing” comment
- Metalogic42, pally hello
- Tigzy, appreciative of Edward Woodward joke
- John Welch, one word, wut?
- johngreg, respectfully asks about commenting rules
- Lsuoma, friendly hello
- Skep Tickle, nice welcome, alludes to “outsider” status
- Damion, welcome and gossip about squabbles
- Renee Hendricks, enthusiastic welcome

Tone: A little banter between PitchGuest and an FTB’er but all fairly friendly

Global Inc post,
- Theetar, respectful confusion, very friendly reply to answer
- Damion, “it seems”, respectful comment
- Steersman, “nice analogy” kickoff to comment… Civil bloviating for rest of post.
- Metalogic, very civilly made point, told he misunderstood, takes it very well
- johngreg, civil exchange while disagreeing

Tone: Little spat between John Greg and skockna, doesn’t get too rude.

White society post
- spacklick, respectfully made point
- johngreg, respectful, civil
- PitchGuest, animated, lots of “if we are…”, challenging to the posts viewpoint

Tone: No real antagonism detected

Empathy Post
- Steersman, straight into civil bloviating.
- PitchGuest, pretty normal assholery aimed at me

Where are the anti-crowd? Apart from Steersman’s vast word count they have all gone after the initial excitement in the intro… Did Ally not provide what they are looking for! But overall have to say they don’t really detract from the blog posts or mess up the comment sections (As long as you skip Steersmans comments, but you do that already, right?)

Onto Yemmy, her Word Cloud:
Yemmy word cloud from anti-FTB comments
Uh oh, really doesn’t look that positive from the anti-crowd here. I wonder how the comments on her posts go…

Intro Post,
*crickets*

Why I am an atheist post,
*crickets*

Debunking homosexuality myths posts,
*crickets*

Her book post,
*crickets*

[Jeez, where are they all? Both bloggers were announced to some fanfare so they couldn't have missed her! Ahh, mention A+ and suddenly they all find her below... I'm sure they remember to say welcome and hello like they did for Ally?]

What are anti-A+ ppl afraid of post,
- Damion, helpful links to why A+ is awful, condescension about emotion on A+ forum
- PitchGuest, condescension dialled up to 11, poison the well for poor old oolon [wah]
- Camomile Lox, weird and vague as usual
- johngreg, denying hate and tantrums exist, feigns ignorance

Tone: Bad. The thread goes downhill faster than Eddie the Eagle on meth. PitchGuest “apologises” for being patronising in an incredibly patronising comment. Damion dials up the condescension about Yemmy’s experience on the A+ forum *without* asking what experience she has! PitchGuest carries on his condescending asshole performance to the end of the thread.

Is the A+ label confusing post,
- Phil Giordiana, civil comment. [Shows how much use "civility" is since the content is bullshit about A+, see "narrative" below]
- Theetar, drive by whining comment

Tone: Not too bad (Compared to above), but only Phil here. Phil also goes on to talk past Vall who tries to engage with him. Ignores me as he is toeing the anti line of oolon=troll. He gets steadily less civil as the thread progresses.

Mother Nature poetry post,
- tigzy, troll on!
- Lsuoma, not at all civil, bad pit mod!
- Skep Tickle, not civil, looking for things to be offended about in a poem!
- johngreg, demented rant
- theetar, rude, off topic pot shot at A+ with extremely tenuous link

All the anti-crowd comments direct to Ally were nice hellos or respectful disagreement, just what they always engage in right?

No as Yemmy apparently didn’t have the whiff of Heteronormative Patriarchy that Ally could muster so got no friendly or even unfriendly hellos (Well one “Hello!” from Phil G). First interactions from the anti-FTB’ers with Yemmy were them being condescending assholes and it managed to go downhill from there somehow.

What did Yemmy do to annoy them so much? Why are they so universally welcoming of Ally and universally not so to Yemmy? Personally I’d say these things factor in.

Ally does not call himself a feminist, it doesn’t matter if the duck quacks and lays eggs on a regular basis this will confuse the anti-duck anti-FTB crowd considerably. They are easily confused to be fair.

Yemmy is A+, she is also a great role model for the A+ community, works hard as an activist in marginalised communities and loves what A+ brings to the atheist movement. This is damaging to the anti-FTB/A+ narrative of A+ being a white feminist slacktivist playground where they can pretend to care about the brown/poor/trans/marginalised people.

The narrative, given most anti-FTB/A+ ppl get their cues from each others distorted memes and shared circle jerk it’s not surprising they have a *very* similar reaction to each blogger. Ally is “nice”, Yemmy is “nasty”… These sentiments will have been expressed in their safe spaces, forums, groups on Twitter etc so they all join in as one hivemind. If Ally is too critical or posts something positive about A+ the mood will likely switch the other way and the majority of the anti-crowd with bend with the wind like so many obedient blades of slimy grass.

–> Finally on the “narrative”, I’ve purged references to the “Slymepit/ters” from the original comment and made it “anti-FTB/ers” for a reason. The forum called the Slymepit is just one place that anti-people can build their narrative for each other to stick to. Twitter is at least one other place. Certain drama blogs at ScepticInk network or random Twitter loons blogs would be yet more. So while that place is definitely devoted to building and maintaining the anti-FTB and anti-A+ party line it is not the only one.

Unfortunately this self-reinforcing groupthink results in a large consensus on certain points. You will see the vast majority, if not all, of the anti-A+ people recycle a scripted opinion about Richard Carriers “Us vs Them” sentiment on A+ over and over. Some lovely examples in the wild from Phil Giordiana’s “civil” comment to Yemmy ->

…The problem of A+ is … that those not embracing the label are somehow bad persons (racists, misogynists, rape appologists…etc). Richard Carrier has made this very clear.

Phil, like most of the anti-crowd, doesn’t bother with primary source material. He is happy with the partially digested pieces of information he gets at the Slymepit/Twitter/SkepticInk network etc. So when Richard Carrier said very clearly that he was against the harassers and assholes and its A+ vs them alone, not all other non-A+ atheists this didn’t get through to Phil. He probably never read the actual post he alludes to but has read this meme repeated over and over in the various places these anti memes are promulgated. Have a look here (http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2207) he clearly marks the harassholes as the ones to kick out of the movement, even provides some helpful examples. If Phil et al want to identify with those atheists then good luck to them.

…Ceepolk and Setar are shinning exemples of what not to do (it’s not a personal attack. I don’t know these people in real life, and have never interracted with them online. But their very prominent posts are just shameful…)

Leaving aside the epic stupidity of claiming a personal attack is not a personal attack…. Phil admits he doesn’t know these people, he has never interacted with them on the forum where they post. So it would occur to a reasonable person to ask how did Phil read their “prominent” posts? He must hang out there, right? Newp… Phil again has been getting his confirmation bias handed to him on a plate. In this case at the Slymepit where one post is dissected, out of context, with a very biased interpretation of the posters words.  The posts are only “prominent” because they have accorded the haters an avenue to lie and distort about what was said and present their own narrative. Again, no need to actually read any of the primary source material, let alone *interact* with the objects of his distain and actually discover they are decent human beings. Unlike I’d propose those who dedicate their online life to following them around and trying to find any avenue for attack in their words.

Been a little unfair to Phil here, he is a “reasonable” pitter in that he is not one of the batshit foaming at the mouth types. But this shows a typical window into the mind of the anti-FTB/A+ collective and their thinking processes, or lack of thinking. Rather than join in and find out for themselves they’d rather digest others words and opinions after its been through the anti-FTB/A+ prism of ridicule, distortion and outright lie. And they are deluded enough to call themselves “freethinkers”… Sceptics… Critical thinkers… Hmmm!

 Posted by at 9:54 pm
Mar 112013
 

You may have missed it but copying thousands of tweets out of context, misunderstanding, adding your own completely distorted commentary is apparently now the new gold standard in reporting! You heard it here first… Well actually I got it from this bloke on Twitter, I’m sure he couldn’t be wrong?

Given I am one of those claiming EG smells distinctly of “Obsession for Sad Haters” I guess I’d better try out this “reporting” technique and see how hard it is.

So what is rule one of this reporting technique? Seems to be pick your targets and mine, mine, mine away all day and all night. Given I value my sleep and sanity more than ElevatorGate does I’ll just give it a quick go… #Haters = Joke?

So my good old pals D4M1ON and Chassy Jeff copied me on some random tweets… (See I give up my sources, unlike EG!)

WTF does that mean? So I follow the thread of the conversation back and it seems to all start with an exchange between Elyse and Rebecca Watson…

Seems reasonable? A sarcastic comment ridiculing the position of the Reddit “free speech” crowd… No one could object to that? Certainly not the #haters who are the ones with a sense of humour… I mean “having” a sense of humour means actually understanding humour not just shouting poo as loud as you can and running away, right? Wrong…

LOL! Seems Sara is so desperate to gain some points against her targets she has a brain-ectomy and shoots herself in the foot. Oh well none of the other #haters would be as dumb? They’ll obviously set her right so she stops making a fool of herself? Wrong…

and

and

So yeah the other #haters are as dumb as pulverised brick as well. But… But… She was only having a laugh? She didn’t really misunderstand such an obvious tweet? Wrong…

The penny is well and truly dropped.

Oh dear… But when Elyse points it out they will all be scrabbling to apologise and *facepalm* and laugh at themselves? I mean the #haters always say they don’t take themselves seriously its the #ftbullies who do that and never have a laugh? Wrong…

So yeah they refuse to respond or carry on digging down to Australia!

Hmmm someone who has the reading comprehension skills of a 6yr old should really have more sense than to claim maturity. Oh wait, no they shouldn’t!

I’m no follower but I’m guessing she is one seriously butthurt #hater who in her attempts to get one over on the targets of her hate often fails miserably because she is as dumb as the now famous Reap Paden brand pulverised brick.

She has form here, I won’t go into the details but suffice to say Sara thinks its a good idea to claim “rag on” is a gendered insult! ROFL! #Haters == Joke!

Wow.. That took me all of 5 minutes. I like ElevatorGATEs new reporting method… Find stupidity (Or not doesn’t matter in his case) … Laugh at it…. Feel superior. #winning

UPDATE: Couldn’t resist adding this in, sums it all up nicely…

 

 Posted by at 11:20 am
Feb 252013
 

So the block bot is dead… I created as a beta to see if it might be a useful service for people not wanting to get harassed by people on Twitter or even get into long boring arguments with known proponents of long boring arguments! I was surprised anyone wanted to use it, let alone the number that did or that they found it a useful tool. So a success in my book even if I failed in my attempt to be “most popular kid in skepticism” as suggested by our favourite internet kook Franc/Felch/Devils Ivanoff himself -

So its too late to add to my friends list now, you had your chance. But fear not – the block bot lives on in the guise of the A+ Block Bot… Now with three levels of nastiness and no unpleasant side effects, like swelling my ego ;-)

 

Long Live The A+ Block Bot!

Go here to read about it and sign up –> www.theblockbot.com

Now its in the hands of the serious A+ crowd here are a few of my favourite comments about the bot and how western civilisation has never experienced such a hideous device of pure peach freezing evil!

As you can imagine things started slowly as we are first and foremost a community of sceptics so no one would leap to hyperbole, right?

Wrong :-) The poor ole block bot is an “atrocity”… Sob!

Yes we really need to worship at the altar of everyone’s opinions to not be an “echo chamber”! Just like those evilutionists who refuse to listen to Ken Ham, A+ is totes an echo chamber …

That’s right report a service for spam that is not actually spamming anyone to prove you have ethics greater than A+…. And Ana above says we need to listen to these “logical” arguments from great “skeptics” in order to not be an echo chamber? Right!

Also nicely proved the bot does not cause anyone to be kicked off Twitter either given half the pit blocked and reported for spam and it is still there!

We even got a “parody” in double quick time, unfortunately lacking in the AI that makes the one and only block bot so unique.

Amidst all this rubbish are the pertinent points, how else to explain the fury at a service that allows people they don’t want to talk to ignore them?

Are we really losing that much by ignoring these Twits?

I’ve said it before, its all about the winning with these guys… Follow away, its been noted idiots often follow idiots so nothing new there.

Once they realised #professionalvictim cookies were available at the Slymepit the block bot was suddenly their best mate.

They get pretty desperate, but the bot wouldn’t take anyone this pathetic. Maybe the A+ bot will be kinder?

Secular Steve helped us out debugging the bot by changing his Twitter id over and over and over… He was a very happy camper, until…

… it sort of backfired when he lost his secular_steve handle :-D (Xanthe did give it back, eventually!)

Some people even turned over a new leaf by accepting the block bot into their lives as their personal saviour… (Not really)

It’s probably best they don’t try and use the bot as they really don’t know how it works. Reading comprehension fail! If you are following someone it won’t block them… Was it all a misunderstanding?

Nope as daft as ever… Maybe a turtle sized tin foil hat will stop us beaming A+ feminazi mind control waves at the poor little dear?

So that’s it, there were more bullshit tweets about “freeze peach” and even a blog post exclaiming the bot leads to less freethought and skepticism! … On Twitter! Yes you heard it here first, scepticism and freethought are conducted through the medium of 140 characters by idiots who express the sort of opinions you have just been exposed to….
Dads army image with character saying we are all doomed! DOOMED!

 Posted by at 10:17 pm
Jan 232013
 

Many people seem to really dislike being called a misogynist on the internet, this post is a response to a particular example of this but if you are not interested in the history the next paragraph and hidden text can be skipped. So how should you react to being called a misogynist? Well read on, I’ll use Reap Paden as my poster boy on how not to deal with a misogyny accusation…

I was recently the star of ReapSowRadio and my new best bud Reap Paden was rather upset about being called “a misogynist” by some bitchfellow atheist-sceptic on a blog post. If you want the background there was a kerfuffle when an atheist activist named Justin Vacula was named as a volunteer leader for the SCA, the person leading the removal of him from that position was one Stephanie Zvan of Freethought blogs. Her petition is here and blog post describing the petition. Many people agreed that he was not suitable given his history, most of which were from Freethoughtblogs.com which is a red flag to a section of the atheist community but others also spoke out. Justin eventually admitted he had made mistakes, but refused to apologise for them.

So Reap Paden disagreed with Stephanie Zvan on this topic. How did he express that disagreement? With a well thought out rebuttal of her points? Not exactly as while he may have made some rational argument against her position this was drowned out by him calling her a “fucking bitch” over and over in a podcast of his. Referred to here and the start of the you’re “a misogynist” accusations to my knowledge. Looking through that thread he was mainly called out on his “misogynistic” language which is an important distinction. It seems that when called a bigot of any type the usual reaction is defensiveness and then often anger as the person *knows* they are not a bigot! Their friends are black/gay/women and they don’t complain about their attitudes or use of language! From here it degenerates into name calling and hurt egos. The thing to realise is that bigotry is a default position for human beings, we are hard wired to make distinctions about people based on their differences from ourselves. When we repeat sexist stereotypes it is often without even realising it, but as a sceptic I would hope this is obvious and something to be welcomed when pointed out as it gives us an opportunity to address it (I’m naive). There is plenty of research showing we are subject to stereotype threat, we are effected by microaggressions. This is well researched social science not a fiction any more than confirmation bias or other cognitive errors. If you think it is fiction then please produce evidence as nearly all the objections I see are “My friend/acquaintance is gay/black/a woman…. and they don’t have a problem with … X”. This is clearly not going to meet any level of proof given in the stereotype threat research this is an unconscious effect built up over years of exposure to negative stereotypes that have intertwined themselves with that persons sense of self worth. They are not concious of this bias against themselves which they have had inculcated in them by a bigoted culture from birth.

So… Going off topic here as I am just looking at the definition of misogyny. Should be pretty easy given dictionaries hold all the “real” definitions of words in existence, right? Nope. In the call above this was repeated over and over, they “know” what the “real” meaning of the word is and dictionaries back them up. When presented with the recent Macquarie update to the accepted definitions of  the word “misogyny” Reap and his friends accepted this but as it is an Australian dictionary that only applies in Oz… To be clear it is an English language dictionary and is sold across the world. Have a look at Wikipedia this is not something unique to Australia or a bunch on bloggers you disagree with. The meaning of words change and it is not a dictionary that is the causative factor behind this change, it is the culture or cultures within which the word is used. So when you are called a misogynist you are not being called out as the most hideous woman hating bigot in history, as lets be honest can you name anyone that hates *all* women? Seriously, even the Pope doesn’t *hate* women he just has a religiously inspired view of his inherent superiority due to his having a Pope-wang.

The meaning of words change and frankly dictionaries take time to catch up, good on Macquarie for being the first of many. Don’t get me wrong this is far from an absolute, many of these definitions by women commentators in the guardian are not in agreement. But the meaning of words is never an absolute, they have *many* meanings arising from context, be that the way it is used in a sentence or the person stating it. In Reaps case it was clear as the person accusing him of misogyny has this to say about it and it ain’t “You hate all women”. The reaction to further trot out sexist stereotypes and dig holes is quite epic in scale, you don’t want to end up in the same boat as Reap so what to do?

Swallow your pride and accept you have inherent bias and bigotry in your make up because you are human! If you are called a misogynist ask what meaning are they using? Do they mean unconscious bias or a concious anger and hatred of women? Someone accusing you of misogyny is expressing dismay that you are adding to the culture and environment in which stereotype threat and microaggressions thrive.  You’ve probably made a faux pas, dropped a bollock,  gaffed, so just apologise and if you don’t understand what you did then ask for clarification. You are not being insulted, really, the person accusing you could well be angry but that is because they are upset at you adding to this bigotry that likely affects them day in day out. Summon up some empathy and look at it from their point of view and try and understand. What ever you do don’t go the full Reap and dig yourself a misogyny grave so deep that you’d end up in Australia….

Finally focus on this point of view from Crommunist over at FreeThoughtBlogs.com

I don’t support the use of the word ‘misogynist’ to identify people. Not because it’s not nice, not because it’s bad tactics, not even because it’s awkward English. We shouldn’t call someone “a misogynist” for the same reason we shouldn’t call someone “a racist” – because it’s inaccurate and places the blame in the wrong place. Ideas, institutions, systems, and behaviours can be misogynist, but to call a person “a misogynist” is too global to be accurate.

You can remove this behaviour and bias, but you need to acknowledge the possibility it is present first…. Over to you.

 Posted by at 12:15 am