More harassment. More complications. More failure to disclose. More clumsy attempts at setups. More provocation followed by noisy media blitz to express outrage at the response to the provocation.
The A-news people, who do that podcast I was invited to do, posted a podcast on Monday, the day I was invited.
Lee Moore, the guy who invited me, never mentioned the podcast, not when he invited me and not yesterday when I told him about the tweet from the impersonation account (one of them) and Paden’s blog post. He never said a word about it. He should have, since half of it is about me (and my incomparable awfulness).
The second half is devoted to talking to some guy called Anton Hill. A few weeks ago this Anton Hill tweeted at me out of nowhere – I don’t know him, I’d never had any kind of contact with him, he was a total stranger to me – to demand that I give him evidence (or maybe he said proof) that the mildew pit is misogynist. I said no, do your own homework.
Oh my god call the cops!
I don’t have time or inclination to explain everything to every stranger who tweets at me. I explain things in blog posts, not in tweets to strangers.
But he thinks this is an outrage. Last week somebody sent me a link to a 19 minute video he did on the subject. Yes really! 19 minutes!
I only watched a couple of minutes. Those minutes are quite self-important. Apparently it’s a huge deal that he hassled me on Twitter and I refused to get into a long thing with him and eventually called him a creep – a huge deal in the sense that I did a terrible thing by not consenting to be harassed and by calling him a creep.
It looks remarkably like entrapment, this kind of thing.
- Provoke her
- Refuse to stop; keep provoking her until she calls you a creep
- Make a federal case out of her calling you a creep
People do it to me a lot. They monitor me and track me and follow me, they get in my face, then they make a federal case about whatever happens when they get in my face. Don’t think there’s any remedy in just ignoring them; then it’s a crime against free speech, it’s blocking, it’s banning, it’s refusing to engage with “disagreement.”
Here’s some of the serious thoughtful “disagreement” of Anton Hill a couple of hours ago:
See how that works? Pretend to be all serious and committed to discussion and disagreement when that works, and admit it’s just pissing people off for fun when there are other funloving Watchers around.
Of course there are people commenting on his video to say that I “compared TAM to Nazi Germany” which is a shameless lie; of course thoughtful Anton Hill is swallowing the lie. On and on it goes.
What more can you expect of someone who proudly calls himself the “Asshole Atheist”?
@PZ, That was gonna be my handle! But Intended it to be… y’know… Ironic.
Well you and I would both probably answer to “asshole atheists” too! If a page went calling through a hotel – “Paging asshole atheist! Paging asshole atheist!” – you and I would both answer, I expect.
:p
(Cackles at #3…)
I can just see that getting all embarrassing…
Sure. I’d hear that, I’d walk up to the concierge’s desk, just get as far as saying: ‘Hey… Did someone page m…’
… and then I’d see you two coming down the grand staircase, and I’d mumble ‘never mind’, turn red, and move on.
Who’s EBW? Sounds like somebody I want to support…
EllenBeth Wachs, and yes indeed you do – but then you probably already do.
Andrew, not a bit of it, we can just all answer!
I’ve already stolen “noisy media blitz”, which I love. The meat of this post, though, is of something quite awful; the things they are doing to you are wrong and harassing and, yes, creepy. They creep me out, and I’m not even the target.
#7:
Ah! I see…
It’s like a hospital page for any available MD. ‘Is there an asshole atheist in the house?’
Phew. The imaginary me at the concierge’s desk is feeling much better.
😀
Well at least he’s being consistent with Mr. Paden and interviewing himself. Has the adult language down, too.
“Oh stewardess, I speak asshole.”
Very like school bullies. Try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try and try to get you angry all day long, and then when you finally yell, run to the teacher and tell her you were yelling at them, and pretend that all the insults and trips and pencil-hiding and so on never happened.
I’d never heard of EllenBeth Wachs before, but from a quick Google, she sounds great.
Although I didn’t turn up anything that would indicate why the mildew hate her. They keep saying they’re the real atheists. Why would they join a fundy sheriff in attacking her?
Apart from her being openly female, of course.
I had a far too long twitter exchange with Anton about it as I’d tweeted him before so felt I may as well ask him why he felt entitled to Ophelias time. His argument was she made the positive claim and was therefore required to prove it… I pointed out she has a blog, but he really didn’t seem to like that she didn’t give him a link! The link I gave him was too biased so no good as proof, actually given the history I meant it as a starting point.
Doh, should watch the video in question before posting. I see some of my amazing tweets from the link above were included. Well anyway having seen a 20 min video on someone not doing Anton’s work for him on Twitter and how annoying that was for him I have to think I nearly got it right in one of our subsequent exchanges
Leaving aside the whole being horrible people thing, where do these assholes find the time to do this? How can they possibly have the time to make a 19 minute video about a minor twitter exchange, and the time to go around on twitter and blogs harassing people, going round to youtube or the slimepit to thank their admirers, etc. so constantly? Do they not have jobs or lives? I mean, between work and spending time with the people I live with, I barely have time to spend on blogs, and I don’t post on mine anymore (although admittedly that’s only partially due to time per se). I just can’t grok spending that much time and energy abusing people, even if you do hate them for some reason (However stupid and absurd it might be). I do spend some time insulting trolls and whatnot, but I usually try to include some actual argumentation in there too. Admittedly, it helps that I try to have a legitimate case when I post something, which the likes of Anton can’t seem to be bothered with.
Entitled much? Why does the guy feel you owe him your time? As if people don’t have anything better to do than to please personal, specific demands from random internet strangers.
Reminds me of a line from avatar:
Wow. From the last two posts, we can distill the pure essence of entitlement in these guys.
In that 19 minute video he went on for 5 or 6 minutes on how wrong it was for Ophelia to use of the words “educate” and “homework” in one of her tweets. Awesome.
a 19 minute video about a minor twitter exchange
Coming soon to a PBS station near you – Frontline examines the slightly hostile tweet an openly feminist atheist sent to a dudebro and how it brought down the government of Panama.
Coming soon to CBS, sixty minutes exclusively investigates how the CIA used excitable MRA’s to bring down a foreign government that has been reported in the media as an examination of
. The CIA knew they had a potent weapon on their hands, after years of genetic tinkering with the basic MRA DNA showed that they had the sight and rage of a Rhino when presented with a mild rebuke from their natural enemy, the emancipated female.
Why do their tactics remind me of the Westboro Baptist Church?
*win*
My extra layer of irritation is OT, but dammit, since I listened to the whole 66-minute podcast, I’ll vent it.
Anton and company didn’t start their TOT (Terrible Ophelia Tweets) discussion until they’d finished with Donald Zeff, a guest interviewed because he and his wife started a secular disorganization (Mr. Zeff’s term) to feed the homeless in Raleigh. Anton A. Hall clanged pots, clinked dishes, and ran rinse water in the background through the full 14-minute interview.
Indeed.
Just to clarify his name is Donald Zepp and the Human Beans Together project can be found at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Human-Beans-Together/146089765511390?fref=ts
Thank you, Mr. Allen. It was my oversight, not scrolling down from the links to find the correct spelling of his name. His wife Carmen did have a wonderful idea, didn’t she? She sounds like a smart, foresighted woman, too, calling the ACLU in advance about their use of the park.
It’s your business whether you want to report on any comment made by Mr. Moore and/or other co-hosts to Mr. Hill in reference to his distraction during a guest’s time. I’m sure that you’ve determined it won’t happen again, rather than someone jokingly referring afterwards to the sound of making a latte.
Wow. I listened to a few more pieces of Anton Hill’s video about me – his 19 minutes of video talk (in coolio shades) and Reading Of Ze Tweets about me – and there’s one place where he actually says, responding to my assertion that it’s not my job to educate him, that yeah, actually, it is my job to educate him.
Really. He actually says that. Having had some weeks to think it over.
His reasoning is that I made a claim. If I make a claim, and he asks me a question about it, yes, it is my job to educate him. Because I made the claim.
No. It isn’t. It isn’t anyone’s job to educate people one at a time simply because they ask a question. Your asking a question does not create an obligation for me to answer it. That’s especially true when you are a complete stranger to me and asking me out of the blue on Twitter.
He does have an eye condition that requires the dark glasses. But I can’t find anything else in his tweets or video or podcast presentation–if he were to stop eliding information and being far more generous to himself than to you, Ophelia–that he wouldn’t be embarrassed by in any other circumstance. I mean, WTF, he came after you with a sarcastic first tweet and the phrase “fucking #misogyny happy” in the second. My hat’s off to you; I think I would have been far less informative in my next reply. And nothing yet–his video, his podcast appearance, his comments on his video–have shown that he’s remotely interested (now that you’ve turned him down) in educating himself on any of it.
Anton Hill made a Dear Rebecca video over a year ago (a piece of snark saying that he was going to boycott multiple people–even his fiancee) that got him 2,100+ views. His next highest in views (all still under 1,000) are about near death experiences, couples counseling, and Nintendo–things that are going to come up on searches that have nothing to do with atheism. More than half of the rest have fewer than 200 views. He didn’t follow through on the fiancee boycott, so I hope he turns his attention to a nice first anniversary present.
And another Anton Hill contribution is on Lee’s Facebook page today in a post about Lee’s diplomatic mission.
I’m on his ass. He picked a fight with me and then did two extended public yammers about my irritation with being fight-picked – but I’m the one who’s on his ass.
My chin is beating the crap out of his fist, I tellya.