Gosh. Paula Kirby made a funny on Twitter.
Paula Kirby@PaulaSKirby
Ladies and gentlemen, may I request a moment of silence in honour of CrucifixionPlus (Restored). pic.twitter.com/17wLZhof
That’s kind of startling. As I said before, when she called me a Feminazi and Femistasi and part of the Sisterhood of the Oppressed, I liked her a lot when I met her at QED. She was friendly to me, and I thought we’d had a good rapport – or to put it another way, I thought the liking was reasonably mutual. Clearly it wasn’t.
Fine; nobody has to like anybody. On the other hand, calling people totalitarians and Nazis and Stasi (when they’re not)? And circulating sneery caricatures? That’s…well it’s not very adult, for a start. And it’s nasty.
I’ve said this before too, but I’ll say this again too. I’m supposed to be such a monster, but I don’t do shit like that.
Mind you, the restored Jesus still makes me laugh; it makes me laugh every time.
But Paula Kirby? No. I don’t find her funny.
Why go to so much wokr on the shoop and then get sloppy with Rebecca Watson?
Yes, it’s stupid, nasty and doesn’t seem to articulate any meaningful point. But it is does contain some self-goal type hilarity.
Just so, and that’s so odd. I mean jeez, apart from anything else, it’s so childish. You would think that would be the last thing Paula would want to appear.
I recognize everyone except the guy looking over PZ’s shoulder. Who is that?
That’s supposed to be Richard Carrier.
Why is Carrier smiling? Is it because he’s looking at mushface jebus and realizing the mythicists are going to have to re-assess their position? Enquiring minds want to know! 😀
Photoshop is such wonderful software!
@ Tis Himself Richard Carrier.
You’re looking very regal Ophelia. I know her intent is nasty but without that context it’s pretty funny and if you didn’t know the backstory you wouldn’t know it was meant to be mocking. So a bit of a failure on that front. I’d get it on a t shirt or buy the poster. Funds to Atheism Plus.
(and if she complained about using the image we could squeal about false DCMA claims and copyright enforcement as the greatest threat to freedom known ha ha)
I wonder whether it’s deliberate that all are fairly competently done, except Rebecca.
Ophelia, I’m sorry that Kirby has escalated from insults to flat out harassment. It’s so easy to caricature people we don’t like as “monsters” who deserve the hatred thrown at them, but people–no matter how horrible we feel they act–are still real humans with real feelings. I don’t know how much her actions affect you, but I can imagine that it doesn’t feel good to be demonized.
Well, tekanji, Kirby’s witticisms aren’t as trying as having “Original Cindy” [shudder] keep including me in tweets to other people so that I keep receiving them even though I’ve BLOCKED HER.
Thanks for identifying Carrier for me. The picture of him on his blog doesn’t look much like that.
I think it’s a pretty good representation. Nice work actually. But that’s just my subjective opinion.
Oh, but don’t you see? The funny is that Atheism+ is a religion! Because…uh…because….
Look! Photoshop!
What exactly was she even going for with this one? That you guys are somehow secretly Christian? Forget the fact that it’s not funny because it’s malicious and childish and badly done, it’s not funny because it doesn’t even make sense!
Wow that woman is vindictive.
But, of course, it’s you all destroying the movement and driving everyone apart.
Oh go fucking troll somewhere else #16.
They also picked that snap of PZ with his tongue out. But yeah, Rebecca’s face is basically the wrong size while everybody else is in proportion.
And our host is looking very fine in that red robe thing.
On an uplifting (but off topic note), this reminds me of a Robertson Davies’ novel in which an art forger paints The Wedding at Cana, but gives all of the people in the picture the faces of his relatives and friends. Kind of a cool book. (And Canadian, so one half of one diversity point for me.)
Which one? I love his funny ones.
Boy, that “make my enemies ridiculous” prayer just keeps on paying dividends, doesn’t it?
I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never understand the time and effort that so many people seem to pour into hating on others. It exasperates me to contemplate such wasted effort (the time! the resources! egad!) but having them continue to prove our points for us certainly lightens our load a bit. Ah, silver linings.
Well it’s because the shoddiness of the RW shop job ruins the whole thing, just like RW ruins everything…its like so meta, or something.
I like it. It made me smile. PZ’s adorable and I like how she did you, Ophelia, even is she meant it in a negative way and I’m probably not looking at it the way she means it. However she means it. For having issues between you two, she did a great job with photoshop, except with the sloppiness of Rebecca, whether she meant to or not. I think laughing, not taking insult by it, and moving on would be the best thing to do, regardless of her intent. Is it really worth getting upset about someone photoshopping in this manner? I think, personally, there’s more in this world to worry about than a silly picture, but that’s just me.
Looks like one of Sigmund’s babies. Minus the context it was presented in, it is pretty funny given the ‘touched up’ Jesus.
It is just so very high school, isn’t it? And clearly, Kirby has a sad because hardly anybody really gives half a shit about her, so the only way she can get anyone to pay attention to her is to associate herself with FtB. I’m going to be charitable and feel sorry for her, and it makes me feel less angry! 🙂
I think it should be titled, “Let Me Fix That For You”.
Hang about she is neither a US citizen nor a US resident and the image was not published in the US so how is the DCMA relevant? Copyright is another matter, under Scottish law she would probably have to use the fair comment defence to justify publishing the image in the first place and she would hardly be in a position to object to anyone else publishing it.
I once had a soft spot for our Paula after she referred to me as her knight in shining armour. I have to admit that the glowing feeling has been fading somewhat recently.
Yes, Mriana, that’s just you; everybody else thinks there is nothing in the world more worth worrying about than this picture.
One of Sigmund’s?! Does it? God, I hope not – now that would make me have a sad, because we used to be friendly.
He does have some mockery of atheism+ at Sneer Review.
@Bernard Hurley, I was making a snarky reference to recent manufactured outrages about such things by creeps harassing Surly Amy. If you are unaware of it, you should be glad to stay that way. 😉
@Mriana (#22)
One, don’t lecture people based on what you assume their emotions are (upset, worrying, insulted). Two, don’t tell people how to deal with attack-y shit. If there’s a more effective method, just present the evidence for it. Three, this is hardly a random, isolated incident. It’s a hell of a lot harder to move on when the influx of shit like this is unending and targeted at you. Four, why don’t you go tell the people who made it “there’s more in this world to worry about than a silly picture”?
This is what we have been reduced to. Answering mockeries made by what should be allies. How utterly appalling and ridiculous. I have been subjected to these for the last year but mine have been by someone I know to be mentally unstable. When I see these being disseminated by people that have been former friends and others that I admired for their work and achievements I am just flabbergasted.
It’s about at the level of that ‘shop of Steven Novella eating a baby.
Ridiculing people because they disagree with you.
The maturity is astounding.
This reminds me of when the nuts at Age of Autism shooped a picture of a bunch of scientists eating a baby for the crime of believing the high quality evidence that vaccines _don’t_ cause autism instead of their testimonials and anecdotes.
That is the new low that Kirby has sunk to.
Will you just quit being a FtB Bully already!
You’ve clearly bullied Paula Kirby into tweeting some juvenile photoshop of Jacob Jordaens’ Pieta.
And in the process, you’ve made Kirby look like more of an irrational jerk than she did when you previously bullied her into calling you a “feminazi” and “femistasi” by totally taking away her ability to offer any dissent to your opinions.
And now you get to blog–again–about stuff you’ve bullied Kirby into doing–and make more people aware of how nasty and immature Kirby is.
And it’s all Rebecca Watson’s fault!
Amanda thanks for informing me, mea culpa, I can’t even make the lame excuse of doing a Ustinov, because I wasn’t.
A slow news day….
Just a misguided hunch that I had because I don’t remember Kirby being known for snarky photoshop jobs, but I see that it might have come from that elevatorgate blog, whoever runs that.
Imagine the thought process going on here.
“This’ll show them! This’ll make everyone see that we’re the rational ones!”
I’m so old I can remember when trolls confined themselves to comments on others’ blogs. Now trolls have their own.
just for aesthetic reasons:
http://yfrog.com/z/jtz38qj
sorry, I can’t help it.
I choose to take it as mocking silly christian religious artwork.
I’m so happy I have no reason to learn more about that woman.
The Robinson Davies is “Bred in the Bone”, the beginning of another trilogy, though I can’t remember its name at the moment.
Back to the OP, this is just pitiful.
Paula Kirby seems to think this ridiculous thing says, “Look at these stinky FTBullies! They’re just like those Christians with their persecution complex!”
What it really says, however, is, “If Atheism were a church, these people would be the inner cabal in charge, because they’re SO INCREDIBLY AWESOME.”
Here’s a little advice for humor and insult: If you want to ridicule someone, it helps if you actually make them look ridiculous.
At least it’s not prima facie horrible like the one from the TIME cover–or, in other words, this one is so fucking inept that it doesn’t even communicate anything! Of course, that doesn’t take away from the sentiments behind this ‘shop, and how they are manifesting these attitudes in many other ways, and the fact that people are stooping to this level of bullshit to discredit the values of equality.
That said, if I saw this without any context, I would assume this was made by a fan to mean something about how you’re all de-fanging religion with your brilliant mockery, and I would find it pretty hilarious (although, yes, the photoshop job on Rebecca is just plain disappointing and detracts from the work as a whole). In some kind of bizarro-world way, on that level I kind of like it…even though I know that’s not what it actually means!
It seems fairly clear this silly Photoshop didn’t originate with Paula Kirby. Why she is tweeting it? – I guess it’s just more of the reality inversion field of the #FTBullies hashtag, which has long since stopped being about how a subset of the bloggers on FTB have supposedly been unjustifiably mean and nasty to other people in the atheist movement who don’t share social justice concerns, and has instead become a conduit for the really nasty haters to peddle their bullying of the FTB bloggers and Skepchicks. Paula’s tweet wasn’t on that hashtag – but it’s of a piece with the infantile stuff that’s been going around, like the reworked cover of Time magazine featuring PZ and Rebecca.
Oh, snap, both Alyson and LeftSidePositive preempted bits of what I was saying by all of 2 minutes! Beware the groupthink!
So, this picture just reinforces that you all are atheists plus skeptics, right? I mean, Jesus is dead and you want to collect the evidence. Pretty clear to me.
The next painting is of PZ and the FTB tech team setting up a Google+ (ooh, there’s that symbol again) stream to record anyone tampering with the tomb. You gotta stop those urban legends before they get out of hand.
Philip Legge says @45:
“It seems fairly clear this silly Photoshop didn’t originate with Paula Kirby.”
Maybe you are right on this:
https://twitter.com/PaulaSKirby/status/240903028230721536
Ah, I like bad jokes. But there is one condition: they have to make me laugh.
Alas PK’s work fails in this respect. Not even the smallest muscle in my face tended to quiver.
So thumbs down. Point (whatever it was supposed to be) not made.
Anyone remember Richard Dawkin’s reaction when Bill Dembski posted a similar attempt at visual rudeness?
Original exchange here
Are you fucking kidding me?
What the hell is going on in Paula’s head.
She seems as disassociated from reality as everyone who spoke at the Republican National Convention.
Wow. Just… wow. Until recently, I never had an opinion about Paula Kirby, but this is just vindictive and mean. The anti-A+’ers seem to have some incredible drive to attack, denigrate, and ridicule. On the plus side (see what I did there?), each time they do this, it just adds that much momentum, energy, and justification to the A+ movement.
Tony (#51)
More like the people throwing peanuts at the black camerawoman, saying, “This is how we feed animals.”
Josh’s post @ # new_16 is much more funny.
“Hang about she is neither a US citizen nor a US resident and the image was not published in the US so how is the DCMA relevant? Copyright is another matter, under Scottish law”
DMCA takedown notices are copyright claims.
The EU has the EUCD, which includes a similar takedown mechanism.
So under Scottish law nothing changes apart from the acronym.
“she would probably have to use the fair comment defence to justify publishing the image in the first place and she would hardly be in a position to object to anyone else publishing it.”
The problem with DMCA/EUCD takedowns is that hosts tend to obey them without question.
It would be a shame if people weren’t to see Kirby’s work because of this though. They might continue to credit her with having something intelligent to say on the subject.
Think yourself lucky. I’m so old I remember when trolls confined themselves to living under a bridge and harassing that noisy pest Billy-Goat Gruff for trip-trip-trapping over said bridge and keeping the trolls awake. They were the days when one could feel sympathy for the trolls, but boy have they changed? I blame the interweb.
Clearly, to this day I had a great flaw in my language skills. For all this time I heard that FTB were ridiculous bullies who engage in insults, ad homs and such and the other side, especially Paula Kirby engaged in reasonable, polite, honest discourse.
Now I think I fundamentally missunderstood the words:
-ridiculous
-bully
-insult
-ad hominem (and that’s not even English)
-reasonable
-polite
-honest
-discourse.
English as a foreign language sucks.
Paula Kirby is seeming more and more like one of those tedious ex-patriot types who have been all over, haven’t learned a thing anywhere, and who spend all their time drinking and whining about The Natives.
It’s like listening to my English neighbor, who informs me that Spanish speakers who pronounce a double L as a Y are simply WRONG, that’s all. I didn’t even bring up the Puerto Ricans who pronounce double L as a J. They’re obviously just BEING DIVISIVE!! 😉
The RObertson Davies book is “What’s Bred in the Bone,” which is part of The Cornish Trilogy: “The Rebel Angels”, “What’s Bred in the Bone”, and “The Lyre of Orpheus.” My favorite of his completed trilogies, actually, though I’ll read any of ’em any day of the week.
hoary pucoon
[derail]
Wait, does anybody except your neighbour and those crazy people in Valjadolith ever pronounce it different?
[/derail]
I don’t think Paula Kirby is evil, but she seems compelled to defend her side in arguments, regardless of facts, and regardless of who she makes allies with. She did it before, during the Richard Dawkins forum fiasco. I don’t think the fact that her side (i.e. Josh Timonen) succeeded in utterly destroying the forum (plus the little matter of him embezzling money from the foundation) really mattered to her. As she put it herself, “this is war”.
Well I don’t think “evil” is even a relevant category.
This seems to separate me from the more hardcore people on the Other Team, who have to think that the putative “bullies” of FTB and Skepchick (make a sign of the cross and hiss) really are “evil,” because why else would they set aside time every single day to obsess about them (us)?
I don’t think Paula Kirby is “evil” either. In many ways I think she’s swell. She does good work; she’s an excellent writer. She was nothing but friendly to me in person – actively friendly, tapping me on the shoulder to introduce herself friendly, treating me and Author and Rhys and Paul to lunch friendly.
But what can I say? Clearly she also has a little well of nastiness, and she indulges it when she gets pissed off enough. She’s also not fair-minded (when she gets pissed off enough). She doesn’t say X has some good qualities but. She skips that part.
You know, I’d like it if the anti-FTB crowd would just do their own thing, but if they’re going to keep poking, they need to accept that while they’re great at shitty, they’re crap at witty.
@hyperdeath, you’re saying two things in your comment – the latter of which I strongly take issue with:
You seem to be saying that the decision to close the RD forum was made by Josh. What is your source for this information that it was even his call to make? I’ve heard Elisabeth Cornwell state publicly that the decision to close the forum was made by the Foundation’s Trustees . Josh may have been tasked with executing but this is beside the point.
My understanding is that he was sued, however the charges were dismissed and this is a matter of public record: http://dawkinssuestimonen.com/
I’m going to be optimistic and say it is a good sign really – how can anyone claim to be against bullies when they indulge in such activities? How can anyone but a few nutters take them seriously when they are actively comparing FtBs and bloggers to the Nazis!
I thought Godwinning was something sceptics avoided as an example of ridiculous hyperbole and a lost argument. At the moment it is their favourite meme – can only lead to more reduction in credibility really. The more extreme they get the less moderate or undecided people will take any notice of them – which has got to be a good thing 🙂
You’re pretty new to this whole game, aren’t you?
How? By saying that whoever made the caricature is smaller than the dreaded gigantic all-powerful “bullies” of FTB and Skepchick (make a sign of the cross and hiss). Of course it’s pretty absurd to try to claim that Paula is smaller, given that she’s a regular on the Washington Post blog
and, you know, the head of RDF UK…But no problema, because whoever made the caricature is no bigger than an ant. No really.simonsays says:
I didn’t mean to imply that. However, Timonen (assisted by Kirby) was the one who turned it into a fiasco. A normal person would have cooperated with the offers to reestablish the forum under a different name elsewhere. Timonen pursued a salted-earth campaign, where anyone who criticized the move had their profiles and entire posting histories deleted.
Dawkins’s position is that Timonen is guilty, but that there’s very little chance of getting the money back, and that it’s is not worth pursuing.
[derail]
Beyadolith
[/derail]
It is pathetic to see intelligent people flail and froth in lieu of offering an insightful or constructive contribution.
They have literally nothing more than pathological grudges and barely-coherent negativity when it comes to this. They lack even the self-respect or restraint to even make a show of high-mindedness.
Not sure that starting a forum elsewhere is something that requires permission-especially under a different name. But assuming that RDF needed to provide said permission, again it seems to me that this is something for the Trustees, given that they made the original decision to shut it down.
So what you are saying now is that Dawkins himself has made such a statement on the record after the case was dismissed?
Your original comment was “(plus the little matter of him embezzling money from the foundation)” without any qualifier which seems to indicate that this was your opinion.
Even *knowing* the back-story, the pic still struck me as funny at first sight — I think because I can’t see point being made, or how it relates to the back-story. Adopting (for the sake of desperately attempting to understand the message) the POV that FTB/A+ is a nasty exclusionary cabal, then….?
Nope, still doesn’t make sense.
@Giliell, so you are thinking there is no shortage of nutters on the internet? I suppose that is sadly true…
This Kirby woman fails at wit, relevance, and having a point.
I think I can see the intended point of the image. The corpse is AtheismPlus and the image as a whole represents a forlorn attempt to breathe life into the idea.
But that doesn’t fit with what comes next in the story, does it? It also doesn’t address why the “restoration” is photoshopped in there. Nah, it is most likely they were trying to insult FTB bloggers by comparing them to followers of a silly cult.
Still, I think it can work the other way if you see it as what atheists will do to a freshly crucified god: expose him as a piece of fiction, a mere painting. And they do it all with a smile. Those in the top row are all laughing at you for believing that the deity was real, some more than others. “Heehee. It was nothing more than a painting all along.” “We did try to tell you.” The bottom row are poking and prodding the deity in jest. Rebecca: “You actually thought this [she gestures] was real?” Jennifer: “Does this tickle?” Greta: “Ohh, does someone have a booboo?”
Now that is funny!
Graham says:
I really wish they’d make their minds up. Is Atheism Plus a lost cause, or does it risk dividing the movement?
Yes.
:b
Well, duh: Atheism+ is divisive because it’s a lost cause, meaning that its critics simply have no choice but to mock it, which creates division!
(Seriously, there’s a strong air of “look what you made me do!”)
And some “whistling past the graveyard.”
“I’m so old I can remember when trolls confined themselves to comments on others’ blogs.”
I’m so old I can remember when trolls just lived under bridges.
Even knowing the backstory, this was my first take on it, too; especially with the ‘fixed’ Jesus face symbolizing the many faces of Christianity?