Go home, pineapple


Another cartoon, not quite as funny as Bjarte’s, but still funny, in its way.

[Art removed at the request of the artist. It was a cartoon of an angry scowling pineapple next to a sign with an arrow pointing to “Home.”]

[The art can be seen here.]

[Missing art compensated for with amusing Twitter exchange.]

moremayhew

Sara E. Mayhew‏@saramayhew

@daiapmorgen It’s a pineapple, not an argument. Chill out. Just a doodle of a funny sounding phrase.

Justin Vacula@justinvacula

@saramayhew May I use this picture w attribution for tonight’s #bravehero podcast? http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bravehero/2013/03/03/go-home-pineapple …

@justinvacula rather not. It was just supposed to be a doodle of how funny the phrase sounds, not about Benson.

Don’t geddit? It helps to know that my Facebook profile picture is a pineapple, and that Sara Mayhew told me to “Go home, pineapple” on her Facebook post in which she picked a fight with me. Justin Vacula found that so amusing that he echoed it. Then he was so taken with that that he decided to do a podcast titled “Go home, pineapple!” for a new series titled – I’m not making this up – Brave Hero. He’s named it after the obsessive loon who does the “ElevatorGATE” blog and Twitter account.

justin

Justin Vacula Introducing the Brave Hero podcast with hosts Justin Vacula and Karla Porter…we’re just two young muppets in a balcony.

Episode one — “Go home, pineapple!” — will be aired Saturday (3/2/13) at 7:00PM EST. We would be honored if #bravehero Sara E Mayhew would call in.

Be a #bravehero and join the growing resistance movement today! Callers — no matter their viewpoints — are welcome and encouraged. Save the online atheist community, save the world.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bravehero

www.blogtalkradio.com

Weekly live episodes of ‘As The Atheist World Turns’ with @JustinVacula, @Karla_Porter, and guest callers. Drama never dies. #bravehero

He’s thorough, isn’t he. Brave Hero as a nod to the guy who taunted Rhys Morgan for failing his exams and for having a chronic illness. Two young muppets in a balcony as a nod to Sara Mayhew’s taunt at Stephanie and me and Daniel Waddell’s ditto. “Go home, pineapple!” as a nod to Mayhew’s telling me to “go home” as if I had started this brawl when in fact she started it. “Join the growing resistance movement” as if we were the Nazi occupation. “Save the online atheist community” as if the bloggers that Vacula has contempt for were destroying it. “Drama never dies” as if nonstop harassment and denigration of women were “drama” and as if Vacula weren’t an enthusiastic participant himself.

I think telling me to “go home” is especially notable. It’s of a piece with his “advice” to feminists who get harassed by him and his friends, nearly all of which boils down to telling us to stop blogging – in short, to go home. It’s notable that Vacula apparently has no qualms about ordering a woman to “go home!” – as if he’s completely oblivious to the obvious overtones of men ordering women to go home. He’s a strange guy.

Update Sunday morning:

Mayhew is still at it.

mayhew3

Update 2:

Vacula is actually proud of that podcast.

episode

Proud of it. Of doing a whole hour’s podcast, with another adult human being, to discuss my comment on Mayhew’s Facebook post about me. A whole hour! Two people! It’s like being proud of spending two weeks making a peanut butter sandwich.

Comments

  1. says

    I wonder, at what point we may consider Vacula’s and that ElevatorGate guy’s compulsive obsession with you (and Rebecca) unhealthy, pathological and deeply disturbing. To my mind, that point is way, way past already. These people need serious medical help.

  2. Bjarte Foshaug says

    With my psychic powers I see another donation coming one of the first days of next week.

  3. says

    A robotic atheist boy wonder was sent back in time, some say because the future didn’t want him stinking up the place but he insists it was to stop the rise of the FTBullies before they unleash their feminazi drones and wipe out all of mankind.

    We’ve been fighting a long time. We are out numbered by FTBullies working around the clock without quitting. We pitters have a photoshopping ability that cannot be measured. This is Vacula. If you are listening to this, you are the resistance.

  4. says

    In 10 or so years (if he’s lucky or capable of growth) Vacula’s going to look back on the things he’s written, said, and done and be painfully embarrassed. Or he will continue to be a jerk. I tried reading his blog a while back on issues other than the fights those folks pick and even in that writing he sounded like an inexperienced dildo waxing rhapsodic, the vibrations of his own voice eliciting orgasms of ego in his psyche.

    Without, y’know, having a real point or understanding of the facts. In fact I just tried to go look that post up and got tired of reading the titles of his posts.

    Ophelia, there’s an added level or irony to “Go home, pineapple.” Didn’t you pick that avatar for reasons related to your treatment by these gibbering hyenas?

  5. Kelseigh Nieforth says

    All I can think of is how grateful SCA Pennsylvania must be to have dodged that particular bullet. Over and over again, he’s proven how much better off they are without him in a leadership (or indeed any) position.

  6. Bjarte Foshaug says

    @oolon #6

    A robotic atheist boy wonder was sent back in time, some say because the future didn’t want him stinking up the place but he insists it was to stop the rise of the FTBullies before they unleash their feminazi drones and wipe out all of mankind.

    We’ve been fighting a long time. We are out numbered by FTBullies working around the clock without quitting. We pitters have a photoshopping ability that cannot be measured. This is Vacula. If you are listening to this, you are the resistance.

    If this was Skepchick, it would be COTW 🙂

  7. Kelseigh Nieforth says

    @Captaintripps #7

    …dildo waxing…

    Now there’s a career I’d never considered!

    As to Vacula, he seems to have no capacity for self-reflection at all. The stuff he’s produced and the stuff he’s been openly approving of has been nothing less than embarrassing to to the point where I think that deficiency is a defense mechanism. If he actually looked at what he was doing and who he’d thrown in with, I’m sure he’d have a breakdown from the utter shame of it all.

  8. says

    Again, with the shifty blogging practices—you can’t copy paste artwork without the creator’s permission, which you didn’t obtain.

    Please remove it. The proper thing would be to link to the original work instead.

  9. says

    @Bjarte, maybe we can get Justin to do another dramatic reading with the terminator music as background 😉

  10. hjhornbeck says

    Donated!

    They really aren’t out to educate people, are they? Who would get the “pineapple” bit, or the “brave hero” bit, unless they were already quite knowledgeable about the Slyme Pit? This is either an admission they’re outright bullying, or that they’ve lost so much perspective that they think those obscure references are known by everyone.

  11. says

    hj – first, thanks!

    Second – well probably anybody who would listen to a podcast by Vacula is knowledgeable about the slyme pit. I don’t think he has a huge audience beyond the slyme pit and its fans and colleagues (like AVFM).

  12. A. Noyd says

    sarahmayhew (#12)

    Again, with the shifty blogging practices—you can’t copy paste artwork without the creator’s permission, which you didn’t obtain.

    I’m sure you’re equally quick to admonish the shitty blogging practices of your pals who use the artwork and photos of Skepchicks and FtB folk w/out permission all the damn time. Right?

  13. stewart says

    The implications of “resistance movement” are so deliciously rich. In fact, it’ so amusing that if I were you I’d ask PZ and Ed to make a gesture of thanks for it and have a couple of Vacula’s friends released from concentration camp. They can always be re-arrested later.

  14. Stacy says

    even in that writing he sounded like an inexperienced dildo waxing rhapsodic, the vibrations of his own voice eliciting orgasms of ego in his psyche.

    You deserve an Internet full of Otters for that, Crommunist. Two of them.

  15. Sassafras says

    Again, with the shifty blogging practices—you can’t copy paste artwork without the creator’s permission, which you didn’t obtain.
    Please remove it. The proper thing would be to link to the original work instead.

    Did you get written permission to use the photos from Sammydress.com that you “copy pasted” into your blog, Sara? Or any of the other photos by other people that you’ve posted on your blog rather than just linking to them? I just want to make sure no one’s engaging in any “shifty blogging practices”.

  16. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    A. Noyd wrote:

    I’m sure you’re equally quick to admonish the shitty blogging practices of your pals who use the artwork and photos of Skepchicks and FtB folk w/out permission all the damn time. Right?

    Yeah, as if.

    Sara, as she’s demonstrated, may not be very bright, but she’s worked out that if she offends the alpha creeps from the scum-hole they’ll turn on her in a millisecond and give her the same treatment she’s cheering on when it’s done to people like Ophelia and Stephanie.

    Maybe one day she’ll develop some character. Maybe.

  17. Eristae says

    Before this even starts, I’d like to say that I think that Ophelia did the right thing in taking down the picture that the creator’s request. I think it’s the decent thing to do and I support it completely. What I am about to write is not meant to be an indication that I think she should have done anything else.

    However, two things came to mind when I read what was going on.

    Again, with the shifty blogging practices—you can’t copy paste artwork without the creator’s permission, which you didn’t obtain.

    Please remove it. The proper thing would be to link to the original work instead.

    First, I was under the impression that it is perfectly fine to post a picture of an artistic piece when talking about that artistic piece by virtue of falling under “fair use.” I am of the perhaps erroneous belief that one does not, in fact, need to link to the original work rather than posting it while discussing it. Am I wrong about this?

    Second, if someone is going to make a piece of art about a person, it seems weird to get all gasp gasp offended when the person uses said art in a post that responds to the art.

    Anyway, that’s all that really came to mind.Well, other than I think the pineapple is cute, although the circumstances that surround it clearly are not. *sigh*

  18. says

    Shhh, nobody tell Sara Mayhew about Tumblr.

    Basic netiquette is that if you’re going to use someone’s image, you give credit and/or link back to them, and you don’t hotline it off their site. The copyright and fair use laws tend to be more stringent, which is part of why, if the content owner/creator asks you to remove or give credit for the image, most people will apologize and happily oblige.

    The exception is when it’s those cases where the Streisand Effect comes into play. In protest of some attempt to unreasonably hide information, people take advantage of the fact that, copyright law or not, there’s not much the content creator can do more than ask politely, especially when the content is proliferating across countless places around the Internet.

    This has been a lesson in Internet 101 for the people whose sloppy writing obscures more complicated reality behind casually-tossed absolutes.

  19. A. Noyd says

    Whoops, I guess that was “shifty” and not “shitty.” Maybe I misread because shifty is just such an odd choice of words. Even though it’s generally used pejoratively, it also implies a high level of cleverness.

    ~*~*~*~*~*~

    Eristae (#23)

    Second, if someone is going to make a piece of art about a person, it seems weird to get all gasp gasp offended when the person uses said art in a post that responds to the art.

    But, but, according to Mayhew, it was about “how funny the phrase sounds,” not about Ophelia. Totally believable, right?

  20. stewart says

    Oh, I just got it now; how stupid of me!

    “growing resistance movement” – movement against growing, as in “up.”

    My apologies.

  21. musubk says

    Eristae:

    First, I was under the impression that it is perfectly fine to post a picture of an artistic piece when talking about that artistic piece by virtue of falling under “fair use.” I am of the perhaps erroneous belief that one does not, in fact, need to link to the original work rather than posting it while discussing it. Am I wrong about this?

    It’s legal, but bad manners. Artists usually appreciate you to link back to them when you repost or even make derivatives of their work so they get credit and exposure.

    But then, when your artwork was originally intended to offend someone, it’s pretty disingenuous to admonish that person for a bad-manners response. Rehosting the artwork without linking back to the original source is easily the lesser offense, even from the POV of the original artist.

  22. says

    Eristae, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really take it down to be decent. I took it down because I thought it was such a pathetically ridiculous thing for Mayhew to make a stink about. Since it was about and aimed (aimed like a mudpie) at me in the first place, I consider it fair use. But Mayhew wants to look pathetically ridiculous, so I obliged her in her wish.

  23. athyco says

    I wonder if/how she discussed with Vacula his January 19 Twitter interaction with Surly Amy when he again used a photo of her art (without notification or attribution) on his donation page for WiS2.

    Why the hell, if they keep claiming that they want these rifts to be healed by reasonable people, do they keep providing evidence that they’re not reasonable people?

  24. says

    It’s good to remove the image, but it strikes me as odd on Sara’s behalf. Vacula’s rise to fame started when he posted a photograph without permission. When he received the take down notice, he started his campaign against Surly Amy rather than take down the image. Just seems inconsistent for her to go after Ophelia, but stay silent about Vacula’s actions.

  25. says

    @Stacy #20: While I certainly admire Ian’s writing, I certainly am not him. However “Captaintripps & Crommunist” as a podcast title has a nice ring to it.

  26. Lofty says

    Ophelia, by posting Mayhew’s pieapple picture you withhold page views from her blog. Everyone knows that self worth on the internet is calculated in page views. I hope Mayhew is deliriously happy with a few extra hits since you took down her pic. 🙂

  27. athyco says

    Vacula’s rise to fame started when he posted a photograph without permission. When he received the take down notice, he started his campaign against Surly Amy rather than take down the image. Just seems inconsistent for her to go after Ophelia, but stay silent about Vacula’s actions.

    Naw, not in their eyes, cethis. You see, Vacula got a lot out of it. Articles here and there, videos that could be triggered by T’f00t complaining about a Michael Nugent blog post in December, an early February interview on A-News with Lee Moore, famous for stepping up for PEACE. That interview irritated the hell outta me. It was about the peace process, right? But Vacula dragged back in the Surly Amy DMCA.

    You know what someone who was interested in peace would have done about that incident? Looked into what had changed between then (over in early October 2012) and his interview (early February 2013). He would have commented on Amy’s update of her position on “jewelry,” her release of material to CC, her lack of blogging/tweeting anything controversial for a long period of time, her cheery January “Thanks and enjoy” tweets to him to request that he attribute another photo of hers that he put on his damned donation page.

    Someone interested in peace would have noted such things without prodding. I wrote two comments in the Lee Moore interview thread about it. I wrote two more in different Vacula comment threads about it. About 30 minutes after the last one, he did a “point to her” in his comment on Steven Novella’s post about Amy and Harriet making peace. But he couldn’t do it without a dig at Rebecca Watson probably being unable to do the same thing and providing that copy/paste of advice he’d already written to chide Amanda Marcotte for a tweet.

    He can’t bring it up again because it’ll make his #BraveHero Sara Mayhew look meaner and pettier than Surly Amy. Silence on that point is once again the watchword.

  28. Stacy says

    Captaintripps #33

    While I certainly admire Ian’s writing, I certainly am not him. However “Captaintripps & Crommunist” as a podcast title has a nice ring to it.

    Captaintripps, I am so sorry! *hangs head in shame*

    If it’s any consolation, I did confuse you with a damn good writer.

    To make up for my mistake I’ll send you a few extra internets. I hope you have plenty of closet space.

  29. maryblythe says

    Btw Ophelia, you put out more work in two weeks on this blog than Mayhew has in two years.

  30. maryblythe says

    Shes a waste of space. Her only real skepticism is to occasionally blog about things that your average skeptic knows…. and I think shes even more of a nobody outside skepticism

  31. athyco says

    I listened to the Brave Hero broadcast. They call it a “Dose of Drama and Comedy: As the Atheist World Turns.”

    It was just…sad. They did a dramatic reading of the Facebook wall exchange between Sara Mayhew, Ophelia, and Ellen Beth. Justin Vacula was Ophelia and Ellen Beth. You know, reading the Twitter exchange between Justin and Sara that’s replaced her pineapple art, I’m thinking Sara Mayhew realized that her weak disclaimer that the pineapple didn’t mean Ophelia just would NOT fly if she didn’t drop it quick. if she’d allowed Justin to use it or called in to the podcast, the three of them wouldn’t be able to avoid sounding just like some middle schoolers getting together to say, “Can you believe that she came up to me at my locker like that?!? She really really hates it when people talk about her, but she’s okay with coming up and talking to them. Uh…I mean…Oh, some people just have a lot of aggression.”

    Hey, I don’t think they avoided it myself, but they think they’ve successfully walked the tightrope.

    Justin and Karla don’t know what “fat-shaming” or “age-shaming” or “hyperskepticism” mean. Justin Vacula is OK with the Slymepit because there is “no violence, nothing over the top; nothing is legally actionable.” Karla Porter says that it’s “a big mix” and “eclectic,” but she does say that some things are over the top.

    The callers were Lee Moore, Reap Paden, and Brian Allen. Reap Paden and Brian Allen added nothing.

    Lee Moore wanted to “salute you [Vacula] for what you’re doing in a nice, civil manner” because Vacula’s writing was “diplomatic and nice about your criticism; very honest; upfront and kind, constructive.”

    But a weekly Dose of Drama and Comedy is how Vacula and Porter intend to spend their Saturday nights for a while.

  32. great1american1satan says

    I remember once upon a time we could laugh at Deep Rifts, because back then it was splitting hairs – fairly collegial stuff. Dawkins and Hitchens disagreed about a point of public policy, or blah blah. I don’t remember the first place where it entered the vocabulary on SciBlogs, but I recall it was a theist or some such opponent overplaying an insignificant dischord at a time when secularism was kicking major ass.

    Now a yucky chunk of the secular movement has decided to form a truly Deep Rift, to cut itself off, for…

    Defending misogyny? I would have thought this was a bad fuckin’ joke if it had been told to me from two years ago. “The resistance”? Resisting basic human decency? That’s something I’d want to join?

  33. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    Shes a waste of space.

    No. She is not a ‘waste of space.’ That went way too far into ‘better off dead’ territory. Don’t do that, please. It’s a very nasty sentiment to have about anyone or anything.

  34. stewart says

    They read the Facebook exchange…? [jaw drops ] No, I do not intend to listen to that. Not the first time he’s done something like that, is it? Maybe he thinks it’s comparable to Dawkins reading his hate-mail. Vacula was not on my radar before he became controversial, but I am finding it difficult to see what ever possessed anyone to consider him leadership material. The word that keeps coming to mind for this bunch is “juvenile,” and I am capable of saying it briefly without photoshopping it (I did once do a small clay bust of a demonic-looking character with horns that I identified as my brother, with whom I was then on bad terms, but that was when I was in early primary school, when it was more age-appropriate).

  35. leni says

    That went way too far into ‘better off dead’ territory. Don’t do that, please. It’s a very nasty sentiment to have about anyone or anything.

    Agreed.

    And this:

    …and I think shes even more of a nobody outside skepticism

    was nearly as bad. We are all nobodies outside skepticism here, maryblythe, including most of the bloggers. And you, I might add.

    Also, aside from being it just in general a shitty thing to say, it’s not a valid reason to criticize her actions.

  36. Matt Penfold says

    Yeah, Mayhew makes bad arguments, seemingly based on erroneous information. Now, taking Finkce’s position of taking the most charitable reading of what she had said, the conclusion must be she is guilty of willful ignorance. The alternative is to consider her so limited in intellect that she would be considered “special needs”. The other alternative, that she is simply mistaken, is not credible given how many times she has repeatedly made the same inaccurate accusations, how many times she has been corrected and how many times she has ignored those corrections.

  37. stewart says

    If they wouldn’t bother people, I wouldn’t much care what they did, but it’s rather bizarre that they do them with such a flourish, implying that they’re expecting to impress someone.

  38. maryblythe says

    You are right. I shouldn’t have said that. Its not productive or helpful. Im sorry. I’m not anybody either, but she’s really hurt a lot of my friends. D

  39. says

    I love it that the callers were Lee Moore, Reap Paden, and Brian Allen. That’s hilarious.

    A total of five people spent an hour talking about me, and specifically, about some comments I posted on a post of Sara Mayhew’s on Facebook that complained about what a bad lazy blogger I am.

    Five people. An hour.

    I must be REALLY important!

    😀

  40. fmcp says

    Hi there. I’m de lurking for a moment even though I’m not only late to the conversation, but also not really involved (beyond rolling my eyes at the childish snickering and recoiling at the cruelty and ageism). Having said that, I try very hard not to ignore comments that are hurtful to people with mental illness. Klausik, in the first comment you said that these people need serious medical help. Well, I need serious medical help, and I honestly believe that my kindness and fairness to others are my best and most important qualities. If Vacula is living with a mental illness, then a) this behaviour is not necessarily a symptom and b) it’s not a fair point of attack.

    I don’t mean to derail – I’m just on a bit of a campaign right now. Thanks.

  41. A. Noyd says

    leni (#46)

    …and I think shes even more of a nobody outside skepticism

    was nearly as bad. We are all nobodies outside skepticism here, maryblythe, including most of the bloggers. And you, I might add.

    Yes, but I think the point is that most of us recognize that instead of acting as if we shit gold bricks and puppies and can cure AIDS with a wink.

  42. doubtthat says

    I haven’t listened to the podcast, I’m not going to, my question is simply this:

    Is that really their ambition? Is that the goal they’ve set their sights on?

    I was having some amount of fun arguing with them, but this is just getting boring. I realize no one is harassing me, so I’m not arguing for Ophelia, Stephanie and others to give up or ignore the unignorable, I think I’ve just hit the “9-11 Truthers” wall, where the continued stupidity is so contentless, and the points are so vapid and repetitive that the little bit of joy obtained from destroying poor arguments generated by silly people is gone.

    The idea of that podcast is frankly sad.

  43. clamboy says

    This “movement” reminds me of the movements that happened after I (unwittingly) drank giardia-infested water.

  44. Bjarte Foshaug says

    @Ophelia #50

    I must be REALLY important!

    The Mothership is in orbit and ready to attack on your command, your highness.

  45. Aratina Cage says

    I am finding it difficult to see what ever possessed anyone to consider [Justin Vacula] leadership material.

    The first time I heard about him was when he submitted an application to advertise “Atheist.” on a bus and it was flatly rejected, thus proving the idea that what is really controversial about atheism is the word itself. I think he even wrote up a press report about it. What? Doesn’t that make him a brave hero of the atheist movement?

  46. leni says

    @ A. Noyd- most. But not the comment I was critical of.

    @maryblythe- I get it. I share your frustration even if the targets aren’t personal friends of mine. Sometimes I write out the mean stuff for cathartic purposes and then delete it before I post. Sometimes I don’t delete as much as I should.

    Thank you for not escalating and I raise my coffee cup to you in a toast to harnessing our evil for the power of good, at least most of the time 🙂

  47. says

    Well said, fmcp. I think that reminding us to use language that doesn’t unfairly marginalize people who have nothing to do with those who are mounting the attacks against is totally NOT a derail. So thanks for speaking up.

  48. maddog1129 says

    “Go home pineapple!”

    I keep thinking of the pineapple named “Mohammed” that caused the kerfuffle at the student fair or whatever. That’s what those kids got told, to take their pineapple and leave, because the Muslim kids could not tolerate seeing a pineapple named “Mohammed.”

  49. says

    maddog – well exactly. That pineapple is the reason my Facebook profile pic is a pineapple, and that’s why Mayhew told me “pineapple go home!” and that’s why Vacula thought it amusing to tell me the same thing. I’m pretty sure neither of them had any clue about the meaning of the pineapple, because all they know of me is what they learn from other harassers.

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