June 18
She just can’t stop.
June 16
A whole week with no documentation! That was a nice break.
June 9
A new one.
I borked the last tweet and the account (it was a new one, six tweets, all of the same type) is gone, so I’ll include the screencap too.
June 3
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/saramayhew/status/339179886746935296″]
Wow. She tagged Michael Nugent. She’s actually actively trying to get me disinvited from a speaking engagement at a conference. Now that’s harassment.
It’s a lie, too. I don’t bully secular women. I don’t, for instance, do what Sara Mayhew does. I don’t endlessly tweet about people I dislike. I don’t try to get them disinvited from things. I don’t make up shit about them. I’ve never bullied Sara Mayhew. I’ve done my best to avoid her. But it does me no good – she still forced herself on me at Eschaton, when I was sitting at a table with Eric and couldn’t escape. She still tweets about me every few days, apropos de rien, just to be malicious and persistent and nasty.
May 31
Diplomacy in action.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/karla_porter/status/340541800349581312″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Zaminuszen/status/340544673993089024″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/karla_porter/status/340546141387124736″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/AmbrosiaX/status/340548916946808832″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/SubManUSN/status/340549535145291777″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/AmbrosiaX/status/340561273794199553″]
Old old old old bread, you see. Stale. Old. Stale.
May 28 2
Intensifying. Or maybe not, I don’t know – I don’t see “Mykeru” much. I happened to see one though, and where that was there were more. It seems pretty intense to me. Some random guy ranting about me.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Mykeru/status/339513455717523456″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Mykeru/status/339512994830614529″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Mykeru/status/339468233272852480″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Mykeru/status/339464102827147264″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Mykeru/status/339458549480566785″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Mykeru/status/339460524364423168″]
May 28
Hahahaha so funny.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Mykeru/status/338846474400038913″]
May 27
Twitter Twitter Twitter. This business where people you’ve blocked turn up on your timeline anyway when someone else replies to them – it’s irritating. My timeline keeps getting all messed up that way. Like right now.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/saramayhew/status/339181626770735104″]
What prompted that? No idea. As always. And what does it have to do with anything? No idea, again. Michael Nugent is running an atheist conference, not an academic conference. It’s not limited to academics; why would it be?
I’m not an academic. No indeed, and I never said I was. Ho hum.
May 26
Another sample. (It’s always a tiny sample you know. I keep seeing people saying I’m documenting the harassment. Ohgodno. Only a tiny sample. Only from Twitter and the occasional blog or FB post. Tiny sample.)
Mykeru tweets
@gbarajas3 As I’ve said in vids,@opheliabenson plays victim so she can victimize people. She’s a sack of shit@justinvacula#ftbullies
@Ametkhoshascake Apparently@opheliabenson enjoys playing first-person shooters by proxy#ftbullies
@opheliabenson Refuse to take down Katie’s personal information and you’ll own any consequences. Stop playing games with people.#ftbulliesJustin Vacula tweets
Ophelia Benson refuses to honor request asking to take down private tweets? – https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/05/more-documenting-the-harassment/#comment-552670 … + https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/05/more-documenting-the-harassment/#comment-552671 … –
#ftbullies
Daneil Waddell tweets
@AmbrosiaX@OpheliaBenson Is fucking insane. Her response to Katie is psychopathically dismissive#wiscfi#ftbullies@aratinaOpheila Remove Katie’s twitter timeline. Her family’s lives are on the line too.
#wiscfi#ftbullies#goingtoofar https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/05/more-documenting-the-harassment/
May 25
On it goes. I did have plans to talk about now for something completely different today, that is, to talk about a lot of things that have nothing to do with local harassment, but – it keeps rolling in and some of it needs documenting.
I got a Facebook notification this morning that Reap Paden had tagged a photo of me. Oh goody. I clicked on it to see what variety of shit it was this time. It took me, for some reason I don’t understand, to Vacula’s re-posting of it. This photoshop:
This is a bully-trope that I particularly detest – this business of relentlessly harassing people, then when the people say stop harassing me, pretending the harassed people are actually nursing a secret love for the harasser. ElevatorGATE’s impersonation Twitter account with my name on it was doing variations on that on #WISCFI during the conference – using profile logos saying “I heart Justin” and the like. Yeah no. I like lots of people. I love quite a few people. I do not love or like any of my harassers.
I told Vacula to leave me alone. He said no.
Ophelia Benson Don’t tag me. Leave me alone.
David Nonsearchable Vacula, stop harassing people. Seriously.
Ophelia Benson Reap Paden, too. He also tagged me. Leave me alone. Stop harassing me.
Justin Vacula Go home, pineapple. I didn’t tag you or anyone for that matter. I uploaded the picture, gave credit to reap, and went on my merry way. Funny you want to post here and complain claiming “harassment” although you were absolutely uninterested in discussion at #WIScfi. You are a coward and a fraud.
And on it went.
May 15
Sigh. It just won’t stop.
It’s a bit like taking mentions in a police report as a flattering form of interest.
No.
May 13
I managed five days without adding anything. Cause for optimism, don’t you think?
AmbrosiaX tweets
.
@opheliabenson Surprise, surprise, you find a way to malign someone in another forum and then you’ll feign harassment here… (1).
@opheliabenson What good excuse to you have to insert yourself into more drama and release information about where Justicar might live?(2).
@opheliabenson I’ll help you w/ the answer. You have no excuse. And since when have you been concerned w/ keeping personal info about (3).
@opheliabenson women for their safety? You have told many ppl that I hide behind being anonymous which only encourages ppl to find out (4
I don’t know what she’s talking about with “malign someone in another forum.” As for “feign harassment” – what a joke, given her persistent harassment (and maligning) of me. As I think I’ve said before, I have literally no clue why she is so fascinated by me and so enraged by me. As far as I can tell it’s just some inane bandwagon thing, but why this particular bandwagon I do not know.
Then “insert yourself”? That’s bullshit. I didn’t “insert myself”; Justicar named me in that video. My name is the first thing he said after the introductory throat-clearing. I am one of the people he harasses. And I didn’t “release” info about Justicar, he has said he lives in or around Seattle.
Ambrosia tweets
.
@opheliabenson women for their safety? You have told many ppl that I hide behind being anonymous which only encourages ppl to find out (4.
@opheliabenson where I live. How is that ok, Ophelia? Have I ever encouraged ppl to look for personal info abt you or anyone? I haven’t (5.
@opheliabenson If you’re going to continue to be despicable, Ophelia, at least give your audience the full story. You are a true coward.
I have said that it’s easy for her to dismiss the harassment of people like me (including me) when she does it under a fake name. I say it again. Using a fake name makes it easier for her to harass and belittle people without repurcussions in her real life.
I can’t give my “audience” the full story because that would require screen capping tens of thousands of words every day, and looking at them in order to screen cap them. But I do not think I’ve given them a distorted story. And no I am not a coward. I dislike being harassed. I dislike it when total strangers to me such as “Ambrosia” make it a hobby to talk shit about me on social media. That does not make me a coward.
Ambrosia tweets
@Euwood_lox@aratina He will twist anything you say and try to make it look offensive so he can gossip with OB like wash women.
@Euwood_lox@aratina And he is anonymous and we have no idea what is the truth from him. Yet, OB finds it ok in his case.
“He” there is Aratina. I consider Aratina’s pseudonymity fine because he doesn’t use it to harass people.
@GeoffJones970@Eunecromancer For all we know,@aratina could be Ophelia.
Just one more heedless casual lie. Just one more breezy casual attempt to trash the reputation of a real person for no apparent reason except malice and stupidity.
May 8 2
Big disagreement with Sara Mayhew here. What is “creeping”? She tweeted to Improbable Joe that I “creep” her. I replied that it’s not creeping to check on what people are saying about you. She says that’s exactly what creeping is.
I don’t see it. I think “creeping” (I usually call it monitoring or stalking) is checking what people are saying, tout court. I think checking what people are saying about one’s own dear self is in a different category, especially when said people have a history of unilaterally arbitrarily for no apparent reasonly saying hostile unpleasant things about said dear self. Mayhew has a history of doing that to me, so I look at her timeline sometimes.
May 8
Ah yes, the ever-popular “she’s so old and ugly!!” trope. There must be only young pretty people in Our Movement!
Sara Mayhew tweets
Old dramallamas pzmyers opheliabenson. Replace them w/ bright future skeptic leaders. Btw, I’m sending 6 to TAM2013 http://risingstar.saramayhew.com/
May 7
One of my documented Watchers seems to enjoy the attention and long for more. She’s been yammering about me on Twitter all day – tweet after tweet after tweet. Talk about obsessive.
Nah. I’m not going to indulge her.
May 6
Wow – this one I wasn’t expecting at all. Not even a little bit. The post about whether skepticism is really a movement was just a thinking aloud post. It wasn’t an insult or an attack or even a criticism.
And yet – somehow – it was taken as such.
Sara E Mayhew tweets
“A Motionless Movement” says Ophelia Benson. From someone who does zero writing, research, outreach, or popularising of skepticism.
Well. That’s put me in my place. But I wasn’t saying skepticism is an underachiever or anything. I was just trying to figure out if it really is a movement, if I think of it as a movement, and the like. Lots of very good things are not a movement.
I should apologize. Dear Skepticism: I apologize for saying I wasn’t sure you’re a movement. I’m very sorry. I had no idea it would upset you. If you like to think of yourself as a movement, go ahead.
May 5
AmbrosiaX tweets
@clownshoe@ElevatorGATE You don’t know who I am,@OpheliaBenson ? Why haven’t you asked me if your loins are burning with this question?
@clownshoe@ElevatorGATE Just ask SurlyAmy who I am,@OpheliaBenson . She tried to pull the same shit a yr ago & I happily told her my name.Keep going
@OpheliaBenson … I am happy to show everyone how full of shit you really are.And any spineless assholes who want to have a pity party with
@OpheliaBenson , feel free to direct your comments to me instead.This shit? What shit? Documenting the fact that you talk a lot of lying smack about me?
Full of shit? Why? Because I point out (and document) that you talk a lot of malicious lying smack about me?
She’s so angry, and apparently it’s all because I point out what she is doing. That’s odd.
Actually,
@OpheliaBenson , why don’t you ask Melody who I am. I had no clue who she was and she blocked me after my conversation with Amy.Would you like to meet me at WIScfi,
@OpheliaBenson ? Would that even the playing field?Oh, great. Does that mean I have to worry that every woman I don’t know at WiS2 might be “AmbrosiaX”?
ElevatorGATE tweets
Oafy by name. Oafy by nature. We should get Oafy some crayons too.
Yeah. He has a “parody” Twitter account under that name.
clownshoe tweets
@ElevatorGATE who is Eneraldo to cast aspersions on@AmbrosiaX? NOBODY knows Eneraldo. By Ophelia-“logic”: Eneraldo’s opinion is moot.No, it isn’t. Eneraldo has an apparent name, not a mere handle. Sure, it could be an alias, but “clownshoe” and “ElevatorGATE” and “AmbrosiaX” are self-evidently aliases. The three shit-talkers make it unmistakable at a glance that they are not accountable for their harassment because they do it under a false flag, like those corporations that don’t want to pay for double hulls so they sail under the Liberian flag, instead.
Ambrosia tweets
@clownshoe Thanks. She is such a duplicitous, talentless, desperate woman.
And all three of them are in a big old snit because…because they cyberharass me and I document their cyberharassment – so they’re in a rage at me. Makes a lot of sense.
Does anyone take them seriously? I mean, really. They’re ridiculous.
But, just because they annoy me, I’m throwing some filthy lucre in your filthy lucre jar!
“AmbrosiaX” using the the phrase “Pity Party” defies metaphor. (I tried, but got stuck in Godwin country.) All she ever does is whine piteously about how ghastly the “FTBullies” are.
Anyone? Yes. Michael Nugent for example. But also just some people – not a huge number, but enough so that I get shit no matter where I go now. Enough people believe the lies that “Ambrosia” & co tell that the lies get spread around.
And thank you!
Still waiting for you to offer evidence for the claims that Ophelia “applauds any article that makes men look bad” and doesn’t do any critical thinking, AmbrosiaX.
I care about good writing, and this sort of herp derp really pisses me off. There are objective standards by which writing can be judged, and Ophelia is clearly, notably, talented. I’m sure any honest person who knows good writing when they read it would acknowledge that, even if they disagreed with her on all of the things. Only someone with zero understanding of the craft could say something so plainly false. “Duplicitous” and “desperate” are mean-spirited and spiteful, but “talentless” really points up Ambrosia’s own dishonesty and desperation.
And why “woman” as part of this string of insults? Even if Ambro-sax is woman, it seems telling.
Been talking to her on twitter, not really learning much except when you just chat she is fine but any criticism or pointing out she is wrong doesn’t go down well. Usually get a load of deflection ad homs about me being cranky or incivil or more recently blocked. So I doubt its Ophelias intention but twitter conversation will get you no where.
Did learn that the issue is the usual story, apparently Ophelia, PZ and RW are the focus of obsession due to something incivil aimed at her. Not sure if from all or one and the scope includes friends and colleagues.
The bit about being a bad writer is funny, what got me blocked was a combination of things. Mainly I suspect reading her lovely posts on elevatorgates blog, where she is coblogger. One was a weird fantasy about PZs ragegasms or something. Second had an out and out untruth in that Ophelia calls women she disagrees with chill girls. Pointing this out resulted in an avalanche of tweets, none of which dealt with the lie. Final straw was I think laughing at how a notorious stalker with some major issues was more on the ball than her. Dawn Gordon pointed out the obvious that acid references could be perceived as threatening, much chaff about her not knowing the details ensued. Somewhat misses the point that unless you “know” Ophelia in the way they think they do it is pretty bleedin obviously threatening. Which is alot of the issue, it seems AmbrosiaX and her ilk have abandoned scepticism when it comes to Ophelias intentions. They know she is enacting some master plan so all the “professional victim” cookies are belong to her. Therefore any threat is just really what she wants and not anything to be concerned about, they even went off on some conspiracy theory stuff about Conlon being an FTB troll and the threat was staged.
Scepticism is something they go on about a lot but don’t use, if you can stomach it have a look at Ambrosiaxs contributions to EGs blog, scepticism free zone. Assertion free of evidence, much of it clearly wrong, or the equivalent in blogging terms to a dramatic reading from the Vac.
Kerching!
AmbrosiaX must be raising quite a bit for Ophelia, but then she deserves it. (Ophelia deserves the money, that is.)
Ophelia is “duplicitous, talentless and desperate” on some planet where the sky is yellow.
Accusations of being a bad writer is a bit curious though. Given that those of us without a raging hate-on can read things written by Ophelia without landing at the torturous conclusions they do one starts to wonder of the alternative have occurred to them: That they are shitty readers.
I mean, just about every time they try to claim that one of their opponents have said something terrible they have to contort what was actually said to such a degree that putting the actual statement and their interpretation next to one another leads one to say: “Yes, they are similar in that they use the same alphabet.”
Which is why my assumption that a given pitter lies is not the result of someone poisoning the well, it is just a useful heuristic produced by reading what they have said. To date it has not failed me, except in the most trivial way:
They: “Rebecca Watson said a thing, …”
Me, in my mind: “Well, she has said lots of things throughout the years, so saying that she has said a thing is non-exclusively true. What thing where you thinking about?”
They: “… *complete and utter lie*”
But since reading what they write is so damned dreary I might have missed all their truthful writings. I mean, it’s not like I follow them them around the whole expanse of the the internet to read everything they write. That would be creepy.
Amazed she hasn’t been offered her own page at SIN.
[cross-posted from Ed Brayton’s blog, because it’s too delicious to stay in one place.]
I only spotted Fogg’s intro post via a chance glance at the sidebar. It was quite a shock to see a near complete roll call of Slyme Pit members stopping by to say “hi.” How the hell did they beat me, a fairly frequent reader of FtB, to a new member of the network? Some puzzling led me to this post, which explained that.
Then a memory struck me.
Most of the Slyme Pit just willingly outed themselves on Fogg’s blog, on the very first post. Not only were they trolled with trivial ease, they fell for it TWICE!
Bravo, Brayton. Bravo.
Also, handed over another donation. Not to Benson this time, but to the FtB collective in honour of the new additions and Brayton’s wonderful trolling.
I think the term is ‘breathtaking inanity’. Now every time I see Sara Mayhew’s name I can’t help but mentally insert a ‘Palin’ in between given- and sur-.
What has Mayhew achieved, that enables her to so confidently rubbish the career of someone who has written 3 books, and numerous articles?
Co-written three books. 😀
Remind me–The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense and Why Truth Matters were about interior decoration, right? And this blog is about fashion tips?
@Wowbagger, Designated Snarker
I like what hyperdeath said about Mayhew on the first Page o’ Nonstop Monitoring and Harassment:
Sara Mayhew:
The first pages of two thirty-second Google searches:
Anyone surprised? Anyone?
C’mon–it’s hard for someone like Sara Mayhew to be a skeptic, what with having to know what hard words like ‘zero’ mean.
She forgot the question mark. Or purposefully left it out. Either way, the presence of the question mark changes the entire meaning of the title of the blog post. You see?
“A motionless movement.”
An assertion.
“A motionless movement?”
A question.
…
Jesus. I wonder how many people are going to attend her TAM talk and go “WTF did I just hear?”. Maybe she should just show them pictures.
Ophelia Benson
Given your coauthor, you probably deserve double credit.
Are you planning to coauthor a book with Franc Hoggle next?
@Wowbagger #20:
She most certainly should NOT just show pictures. She did that last year, and I have never before seen a TAM presentation so poorly prepared. The conference asked for feedback, and it was the first time I’ve EVER singled out a presentation as being unsuited to the venue. A manga how-to is somewhat interesting, but the connection to skepticism was tenuous at best, she wandered back and forth between how-to and biography, and she had lengthy technical issues getting the content to the screen. No clear story, not even an identifiable message.
Note that I had never heard of Sara Mayhew before I saw her speak. Had no opinion of her, and thought a visual artist at TAM might be interesting to hear. Since then, I’ve seen that her tweets show the same depth of awareness as her presentation did. TAM can do better with its stage time, even if just by granting more time for the speakers with actual research to report on.
numenaster
Ugh. I just watched that, or at least as much as I could bear. Why exactly did they invite her back?
OK, OK. I just googled “Sara Mayhew TAM” and started watching an interview of her done at the 2012 meeting. In it, she discusses all her mangas and how she sells them. So can someone remind me, who is riding coattails for cash again? Who is trying to get noticed by stirring up drama on social media? (Mayhew has lots of things to sell. Hurry and buy them while the controversy is still fresh and hot!)
Ooh, that has to sting. “Less remarkable than Sara Mayhew” is not something I’d care to put on my business card.
I first read that as “all her manginas”, and a Sara Mayhew story almost got kind of interesting for a second.
You probably just don’t get ‘tongue-in-cheek’.
</tongue-in-cheek>
You’d think. *bites tongue, hard*
Which is particularly important since she neither read nor addressed anything BUT the title of the post.
They’re so divorced from reality at this point that I have trouble imagining how they continue to communicate with one another. It’s like a group of people debating gun control on the basis of their recent dreams.
“Did you hear what some of the Newtown parents said yesterday?”
“Well, they would have had an actual point if they hadn’t morphed into Lamprey paparazzi during the press conference.”
“That’s true, but Dostoevsky’s arguments about public sex in Amsterdam were well taken.”…
*embarrassed laugh* I saw that too after it posted. Oh well. I suppose they’ll be saying I did it on purpose soon on Twitter.
Anthony K @18:
I couldn’t resist the urge to FTFY.
Someone who cares about her should really tell Sara that her excessive vanity is not attractive. And she is vanity personified. There’s nothing wrong with paying careful attention to one’s look if that’s one’s thing, but with her it’s so conspicuous. It fairly screams “look at me I’m primped and pretty.”
As one of the old ugly superannuated geezers she hates, I’m surprised she hasn’t noticed that I’ve been saying for years that we need to encourage more young and diverse people to step forward and be represented at these meetings. It hasn’t been about sending all the over-thirties to Carousel, though, but about expanding the base.
Oh, I’m sure she has noticed, she just wanted to make the point that she’s young and pretty and we’re not.
Oh, great. Sending more young and pretty people, especially young pretty women, to their meetings is exactly what the skeptic movement wants.
I’m old enough to get that reference, (having seen the movie in a fucking theatre when it first came out…)
Does that mean I have to leave now?
Vexingly one has to wait a long time to see a person such as Mayhew get her comeuppance. Like all of us, she will age, she will become “old” [read: not sexually or professionally marketable, culturally irrelevant, invisible]. This is especially true for women, who are treated first with mockery then ignored as invisible as they age.
As one of the pretty boys at the meat market in my extreme youth I look back with horror on the contempt I lavished on “pathetic old queens,” and at how vicious I was about older people who “didn’t know one thing and just got in the way of this Bestest New Generation.” Things look very different as one gets older, and not only because one becomes the target. Hopefully they look different, also, because one develops a more humane and less self-centered view of the people in the world around us. And maybe just a teensy, tiny bit of empathy and a sense of human community.
Or, if you’re really lucky, an object of disgust, contempt and loathing to people who hate you because feminism.
Yeah, that too. Some girls have all the luck, don’t they?
Well, I had no idea what she looked like, so I had to check it out.
Yep, she’s pretty.
Sadly, there is no correlation between “looks” and “smarts”. Or if there is one, it’s in the opposite direction. The better looking, the less likely someone is to actually work hard at academics/critical thinking/social intelligence.
Pretty gets stuff handed to them without trying that hard. I’ve watched this over and over and over again. And there’s a ton of sociological literature to back this up. Pretty gets the job; pretty gets the promotion (but only so high and not higher).
Yep, she’s pretty. What else you got, Sara? I’m thinking the answer is “not much”.
Now THAT is funny
clownshoe tweets
@ElevatorGATE who is Eneraldo to cast aspersions on @AmbrosiaX? NOBODY knows Eneraldo. By Ophelia-”logic”: Eneraldo’s opinion is moot.
3 anonymous assholes cowards wanna know WHO I am.
Ei sapatão-de-palhaço! Quer saber quem sou? Go learn portuguese you babacas escrotos.
For me I don’t need to know who the hell you are. I know everything I need already.
I don’t know Portugese, but “escrotos” tells me enough. Heheh.
Ophelia
I think I deserve my FTBullies Official T-Shirt now, right?
Josh sez:
Eneraldo – you do indeed.
Where did I call you ugly? There’s nothing that referes to either you or PZ’s appearance (or mine). How do your commenters justify making assumptions about how I feel about my own appearance? Assuming I’m vain because you think I’m pretty? So, because I’m pretty, you can make assumptions about my thoughts?
Old drama Llama: it means you’ve been one for a long time now. So don’t project your feelings about your appearance onto me.
Sara – don’t play dumb. There’s masses of stuff out there about what an old ugly monstrosity I am, and you can’t possibly have missed all of it. You also can’t possibly have reached adulthood in North America without knowing that calling people “old” is not a compliment.
And as for drama – you’re the one who keeps tweeting shit about me out of the blue, not the other way around. I have no idea why you keep picking fights with me, but you do. The “drama” is all of your making.
Oh. We’re just old.
I find it twisted that you think the causal chain is that you’re pretty, therefore everyone thinks you’re vain. Not every attractive person is considered vain, you know; it’s not necessarily a property that goes with that bit of territory.
I’d tell you to dig deeper, Sara, except that it’s clear you’re all surface.
Ophelia – I don’t think she’s “playing” dumb. I don’t think she’s intellectually capable of following your line of thought.
It’s like me trying to teach my dog chess. Not a productive endeavor, because the capacity for learning only goes so far.
Kevin:
I get that impression as well. She launches these random unprovoked attacks on Ophelia, and then cries “drama” when Ophelia reacts. It’s possible that she’s using the “stop hitting yourself, Ophelia, stop hitting yourself” school-bully technique, but it’s more likely that she’s just choked up in self pity. She thinks that because the incoming insults sting more than the outgoing ones, then she’s the one being wronged.
Ah yes, the age old “YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO FIGHT BACK” response of the terminally lack-witted. Why do people in this day and age think that if they start throwing feces at someone, that the target just might decide to go find all their friends and build a fucking shit-a-pult in retribution? Fucking hell. Noone remembers the important lessons from grade school.
Given that Sara Mayhew has comported herself horribly throughout this whole thing I’m loath to defend her, but post 41 really is pretty below the belt.
You can’t even lie well, Sara.
I was SO SO HAPPY to be included today!
Apparently, Mayhew is a grossly incompetent communicator… at least, I think that’s what she was trying to get across, her incredibly poor communication skills make it difficult to know for sure. Her defense of the “old dramallama” comment was that she doesn’t understand that calling people old stinky animals is insulting, and further she claims to not understand that insulting people is attacking them… I guess she thinks insults are a close cousin to a warm hug and some hot cocoa. Again, you can’t be 100% sure since she’s using the “I don’t know what words mean, I was raised by wolves and communicated by grunts up until a couple of years ago” defense for being an asshole.
@54: How so? How is the observation that “pretty” has privileges that “not pretty” enjoy hitting below the belt?
I’ll just post the abstract to a single scholarly article on the subject.
How many more do you need? Because I can do this all day.
Pretty gets advantages that they’re not even aware of. Don’t have to work as hard for grades. Therefore have zero incentive to develop intellectually or emotionally. They get a free pass because they’re pretty.
And in addition to the REAMS of scholarly literature, I can give you tons of anecdotes from my own experience about hiring managers who hire the pretty ones without a second thought while the drab ones who have to literally claw their way inside end up doing all the productive work. Because the pretty ones — by and large (so as to avoid the over-generalization charge) — tend to be less-than-average in their capabilities. Nice to look at — not all that helpful in the professional environment.
Just because you don’t like an accurate observation, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Sara, as someone pushing fifty (and therefore younger than some here but older than others) I give you this advice: don’t get old. Because if you do, I promise the world will look very different to the way it does to you now.
In fact, now that I’m in high dudgeon over this, I’ll add a personal anecdote.
I’m not great looking. Average height, no hair, pot belly, myopic.
Some years ago, I was hired by a Manhattan PR firm to do some writing. One of the first people I met there was a supervisor who an extremely good looking guy who had been hired some time prior, also as a writer.
Turns out, this pretty guy could not write a lick. Had no idea how to turn out one good English sentence and then another. As a supervisor, this guy ended up loading me with his work in addition to my own. And took full credit for it. But because he was pretty he got a pass from the higher-ups; even though it didn’t take that long for them to figure out who was really churning out the copy.
Pretty gets privileges. And come to expect them. And then to demand them.
@PZ
This is all made even stranger given that the first I heard of her was on Pharyngula when you linked to a video recording of her questioning Deepak Chopra’s nonsense on national television.
So checking occasionally to see what nasty thing Sara’s said about you (when she has a history of saying nasty shit about you) is creeping, but regularly making nasty comments about your tweets or blog posts is NOT creeping? How does that work? Is the fact that she doesn’t have the attention span to get past the titles the reason?
“It’s really creepy of you to keep noticing when I talk shit about you.”
Re: Sara making excues: LOOK EVERYONE! A BACKPEDALLING ASSHOLE!
yup, great defense there. Whine about people wondering about what sort of shit your spewing IN PUBLIC, because it’s ‘creeping’ (‘Netspeak for Stalking) is the BEST DEFENSE.
Good fucking dog, where do these kids learn to argue? Jersey Shore? (Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know)
The best move here is for Sara to drop the whole thing and leave the shitting on people to private communications. Then, if someone hacks her email/phone, she can whine about ‘creeping.’ The passive aggressive sniping is reminding me less of a skeptical advocate and more of the BCA’s responses to Simon Singh.
Fuck.
This seems a fair and just summary.
Ophelia,
BBC news has a fresh article about the same kind of treatment happening to women in India. “Why are Indian women being attacked on social media?” By Divya Arya — http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-22378366
…
…
I wouldn’t say they are all male or all introverts. Instead I think of them as “bro-kin”.
I just noticed that Mayhew posted a comment here earlier. She must be checking to see what you’ve written about her.
How creepy of her…o_O
@41 I’m aware of the generalities of the literature. Regardless of whether or not it applies in this case (I don’t know if it does), lines like this sit badly with me:
“Sadly, there is no correlation between “looks” and “smarts”. Or if there is one, it’s in the opposite direction. The better looking, the less likely someone is to actually work hard at academics/critical thinking/social intelligence.
This isn’t what the literature suggests. It suggests that such people have advantages in their interactions – not that it has any effect on work ethic. And your own experience, while unfortunate, is hardly sufficient to start casting aspersions on strangers.
Above all, it strikes me as a simple tit-for-tat. Sara behaved horribly with her ageist remarks, and this is just as bad. I’d rather leave this kind of shit to the ‘pitters, personally.
@kevin, it might be interesting to have that “pretty privilege” discussion elsewhere, but it’s more complicated than you present. Pretty can carry disadvantages for women too. We walk a fine line: too pretty=airhead, bimbo, slept her way to the top; not pretty enough=frump, dyke, unprofessional.
But I think it’s not helpful here, as it’s a distraction from the main point. It’s about harassment, not the merits or otherwise of specific insults.
Very well said, 68.
It’s interesting that Mayhew spent months whining to anyone and everyone who would listen about how Melody and someone else made a mean joke about her that one time–
–to sniping daily at Ophelia and criticizing her for calmly documenting and responding to a small portion of the sniping before moving on.
And Ophelia’s the “drama llama.” Hokey doke.
–and now snipes daily at Ophelia and criticizes her for calmly documenting and responding to a small portion of the sniping…
Had two different versions of that thought in my head and mashed them up.
I love the ‘oh my god, why are you eavesdropping’ complaint, as if that breach of social courtesy is somehow worse than loudly talking about someone behind their back, or the internet equivalent thereof.
Also, there’s a difference between the usage of “old” to imply/explicitly state that some people are useless/worthless/obsolete/need to be replaced, and the usage of “old” to criticize the generational homogeneity of the speakers we consider prominent. One is offensive ageism, the other is (as usual) a call for greater diversity. We shouldn’t want our speakers to all be twenty-somethings any more than we want them all to be octogenarians.
I was just about to make the same point as Tom Foss on how noting Dawkins’ age is a matter of bringing attention to a lack of variety, not of bashing him for being old.
Justicar has been framing his video as helpful advice to Jen. But he did not directly send his video to Jen–he just named her in it, and expected her to find out through the network of losers that constitutes the ‘pitters.
So they can take their narrative that you and others are poring over all of their tweets looking for gotchas and shove it up their cloacas. Justicar just fucked them out of it. I hope they enjoyed it.
How else are people to find ‘helpful advice’ from the likes of The Justicar?
Ambrosia calls herself “slightly delusional protector of the #bravehero” … She did go through a phase of describing Aratina as “JT”, turned out she thought he is a sock puppet of JT Eberhard! I think we wrote that off as a “joke”. But now she thinks I and Aratina are one in the same person. But not me Aratina or Aratina me, we are a mysterious third party who is running both of us as socks. O_o … This is what you get if you try and talk on Twitter and disagree with her, the conspiracy theories are presumably to “rationalise” cognitive dissonance.
Who knows what she means by “another forum”, I fear you’d be wasting your time trying to get to a truth that is not motivated by some delusion or other.
Oh yes the last thing was Aratina could be Ophelia “for all we know” according to Ambrosia… So presumably I and Aratina are your sock puppets. Fancy disabusing everyone of this Ophelia! I think we deserve to know the truth, especially Aratina and I, could we be characters in some story of yours?
Couldn’t resist dropping in on the slymepit to see if Justicar’s latest had been mentioned.
It has, and the clueless clown show continues.
Apparently Justicar was just being helpful…you know like when men helpfully advise women on how they can avoid being raped (presumably by dressing more modestly or not going to bars so as to not provoke those poor helpless men; the person making that comment isn’t very specific about this…)
I know this is irrelevant, but… Since when is running a fund-raiser and getting $ from other people “I’m sending…”? Is collecting donations equal to doing the donation, oneself?
@A.Hermit, Oh yeah on Twitter its PZ’s fault for bringing attention to the video – not Justicars at all, as no one watches his videos presumably! Would be ROFL, if not so bizarre a sentiment.
But you see, Oolon, Justicar was trying to warn McCreight without contacting her, and since she couldn’t possibly have seen his video it isn’t harassment, just a friendly warning…that she couldn’t be expected to see…
…or something…I kind of blacked out from the whiplash at that point I think
@Euwood_lox and @Eunecromancer are both sockpuppets of the woman who wrote bizarre pornographic fiction about Jason Thibeault. She went by the name Eucliwood on the Slymepit, and Robitussin on the Atheism Plus forum.
Marcus Ranum:
I was wondering that.
When Surly Amy raised money for TAM (before being driven out by people like Mayhew), she did so by selling things at market price, and then donating some of her profits. She didn’t solicit money, she made money, and then donated it herself. Mayhew on the other hand, is just handing out trinkets to people who donate to TAM in her name.
Also, who is choosing the winners? I notice that @telomericfusion (the friend of the @ElevatorGATE troll, whose picture currently graces the background of his Twitter page) is there.
So, I was recently listening to a Nerdist podcast with comedian W. Kamau Bell* and there was this great discussion in which the host, Chris Hardwick, describes mean humor as more or less handing your audience a bag of shit.
You hand some people a bag of shit and not everyone is gonna appreciate it. Feigning surprise at that is basically just handing them another bag of shit. This is what Sarah Mayhew is doing on Twitter. Handing out bags of shit and then wondering why it isn’t received well.
Perfect analogy for so much of this.
* I highly recommend this episode for you Ophelia, I think it might be a nice break from the bags of bullshit. I regularly listen and often think of you, because the host frequently asks his guests about their experiences with online trolls and abuse. And they joke about it, not in a dismissive way, but in a refreshingly comical, smart way. Even people hardened by years (or decades) of doing stand-up get hurt by it. For those of us that aren’t professional comedians, it’s goddamn cathartic to see the tables get turned 🙂
Sara Mayhew is not pretty.
She is one of the ugliest people I’ve encountered.
Ugly on the inside – where it counts.
@hyperdeath, yeah it looks like at least one of Sara Mayhew’s “winners” is a Slymepitter. You couldn’t pay me to go to TAM. At least I have some great memories of the TAMs that I attended in the past.
Kellym, are you referring to Ana/@telomericfusion, or is there another one in there? I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the applicants are being screened for political orthodoxy. (Assuming they’re not just Mayhew’s friends, of course.)
That’s the one I saw.
Remember the first rule of the Slymepit is ‘thou shalt commit false equivalence’; that his threat to harass you in person isn’t even on the same planet as your documentation of his and his pals’ online harassment is just another reminder of why that is.
The funny thing about his parasite comment? You were around before Vacula, write about numerous things that don’t have anything to do with Vacula, and – most importantly – will still be around when Vacula has been forgotten and remembered only for his asshattery and stunts, mentioned in the same kind of nostalgic remembrance of losers past as ‘Tom Johnson’.
If I had more time, this is just the sort of thing I could have fun with: counting and comparing mentions/post. I know who I think mentions who more often, percentage-wise, but don’t actually have the time to do the work to prove it.
“I wonder, sometimes, whether we have a parasitic relationship.”
You do. He is indeed a parasite. Does he mean “symbiotic” or something?
@ ^ Dave W : “If I had more time ..”
Ahh, if only! Yes. Story of my life and I suspect many others. Of course there’s so much else I could also and would rather do if I had the time. So many good books, blogs, places to visit, etc ..
Which does make me wonder – How do these misogynist trolls find the time and have they really nothing better to do and obsess about?
Sigh.
@ Ophelia Benson : I am sure you know this already but I’ll say it anyhow You do NOT deserve this campaign of hatred against you by these misogynist sexist low-life dropkicks.
You have my sympathy and support for whatever little it is worth and internet (((hugs))) if you want them. I don’t know what I can do to help here but if you have any ideas or requests for me please say so.
No one deserves this sort of constant unjustifiable harassment.
Its one thing for people to disagree and argue reasonably – its quite another to keep up this vile campaign aimed at silencing voices and hiding perspectives these scumbags disagree with.
The people doing this need to stop and rethink their lives and views.
Shorter version : Ophelia Benson – is there anything we can do to help?
Vacula: You attempting to foist yourself on anyone who has made it clear they don’t want to deal with you is harassment. And harassment is grounds for action, including the possibility of ejection from the conference. Yes.
(It’s not like this is rocket science.)
SC:
I loled. Own goal to Vacula.
These people are terrible. I think you all on FTB are doing a great job and I hope you hang in there and never get discouraged.
I went and looked. the first mention of Vacula on this blog is about his doxxing of Surly Amy, followed by half a dozen or so about objections to his appointment to the Pennsylvania SCA. (much of which was based on his record of bad-moutihng women in the movement, including posting about them on a notorious misogynist hate site)
The rest are all documenting his habit of jumping up and down on Twitter and elsewhere talking trash about Ophelia (and other women) and yelling “look at me!!!11!”
Well congratulations Justin. We’re looking. Can’t say I like what I see though…
Ophelia; If this were the sixth grade, I’d swear he had a little crush on you. This is exactly the way immature pre-teens and early teens act when someone “fascinates” them.
You’re dealing with someone who has the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old.
Kevin, that old “If he’s mean to you, he must like you” thing is a peeve of mine. The boys who harass and abuse girls in school are bullies. They are not admirers. This is just one more thing we tell girls so that they’ll accept abuse as a “compliment” . It is usually said along with, “Boys will be boys”. I know you’re only kidding, but please, be aware of how much that sort of thing sets my teeth on edge.
StevoR @93:
I can’t answer for Benson, but I’ve put a bit of thought into this one.
– Talk about the harassment more. It’s tough to sit on the fence when you hear people are being harassed constantly, and dollars-to-donuts telling that story will generate opponents to the Slyme Pit, not more supporters. The more people that speak up about this issue, the tougher it is for them to be shouted down, and if enough people stand up the haters will become ineffectual and give up (see: herd immunity).
– Volunteer and donate. Unfortunately, we tend to criticize more often than we praise. By taking some time out to thank the targets of harassment, you’re pointing out they’re not alone and others are around to help. A few of the bloggers here have pointed this out, so it does work. Donate, help them with tasks or research if they ask for it, anything you can.
Any other ideas?
Speaking of which: DONATED! I’ve also got something big that I’m working on for you, Benson, though I should warn you that it involves jewelry… 😉
@99: Sorry if I offended.
You’re probably right. Justin most likely is just a common variety bully. It still bespeaks an emotional maturity level far below that which most of us consider necessary for integration into the larger society.
As an aside, though, I do think there’s a difference in the pre-teen/early teen world between acting immaturely and being a bully. All bullying is immature behavior, but not all immature behavior is bullying. Especially when it comes to the awkward social dynamics of figuring how the “I’m attracted to that person” thing works.
It’s a phase kids go through, and I’d hate to see real-and-true bullying diluted by being blended into the vast majority of behavior at that age which is merely immaturity. There’s a big difference between the two — and conflating immature awkward social behavior with bullying gives bullying a hiding place. That hiding place is, “Oh it’s not that bad — all kids do that”. No. They don’t. All kids are immature and socially awkward. Not all kids bully.
Kevin, skip the apology if you’re just going to lecture me on diluting the definition of bullying. There is no normal part of childhood in which you torment someone for being attractive. There is however a cultural acceptance of boys harassing, abusing and bullying girls for the crime of being girls. What was done to me was bullying and it starts small and ramps up as the bullies find out that they can get away with it. They don’t dip your hair in ink wells anymore. They threaten you and sexually harass you. They wear you down until you literally want to die. Then with a wink and a nod, the adults in your life laugh make a joke about how they probably just “like” you. That’s bullying and it is misogyny.
Who said “torment”?
Seriously, you’re conflating one thing with the other.
One thing is bullying. One thing isn’t.
You’re giving bullies a hiding place by declaring all immature behavior bullying.
There is bullying, and there is not-bullying. Not all behavior your disagree with is bullying. Even kids’ fights are not necessarily bullying. I got into plenty of fights when I was a kid. A couple were because I was being bullied. The rest weren’t.
You’re tarring every immature action by every kid ever as “bullying”. Which does nothing but muddy the waters and give the bullies cover.
I’m sorry that you were bullied.
Go into any middle school and you’ll see a wide range of behaviors. Some of it sweet, some of it awkward, some of it mildly disgusting. There is normal kid-level stuff that happens every day that isn’t “tormenting”. It’s immaturity. This is normal human development. Kids have to learn how interpersonal relationships work — and they’re not good at it by and large. They have to work things out. And as adults, we kinda have to let them work this out on their own.
And then there are the bullies. It’s a pretty bright line. Kids know when they’re being bullied and when they’re not. Ask a kid who’s just been in a fight if the other kid was bullying him. If he says “yes”, believe him. If he says, “no, he’s just a jerk”, believe him, too. Kids know not only who the bullies are but when they’re being bullied. And this is where the adults need to step in. Because bullies are tough to deal with — they’re extremely difficult to remediate, and it’s almost impossible for kids to deal with bullies within their own circle.
But most of their adversarial interpersonal conflicts are not instances of bullying. Nor are most instances of sexual teasing — it’s just kids trying to figure it out and failing miserably at it.
Not everything is bullying. That was my only point. And by declaring any immature behavior “bullying”, then the real bullies — ie, the ones who tormented you — are more likely to get away with it. Because it can be excused as “normal.”
Bullying shouldn’t be given a place to hide.
That’s exactly what you just did, by “blending” a harassment campaign that’s been going on daily for over a year by a full-grown adult with a comparison to a sixth-grade “little crush”.
Kevin, just to be 100% clear on this – you don’t think what Justin Vacula’s doing is bullying?
And yet, when a girl tells an adult that a boy has been bullying her, what does that adult usually say to her?
“No he’s not, he just likes you.”
And just like that, her opinion is invalidated, her ability to choose her own comfort level is wiped away, and she learns that the desires of a boy are worth more to adults and the rest of society than her safety.
Wait. Junior Varsity (well…if he thinks the mention of his name magically denotes esteem…) goes on Twitter after you front paged my comment about Karla Porter inadvertently screening ElevatorGATE’s rape question tweet to her con’s hashtag during the wrap-up speech?
Karla mentioned him in the quoted material because he was there and the only other who knew what was going on. I mentioned him because he does a radio show with Karla AND appropriated the title of it from ElevatorGATE. You know, to point out that Karla had to know not only the context (con policy argument) behind the tweet but also ElevatorGATE’s stance and his “style.” Karla agreed to co-host a show named “BraveHero” after giving anonymous Mr GATE a pass with “joke” for his tweet while describing unnamed others as “paranoid, sick and dysfunctional” and a “freakish sideshow.” Not a thought did Karla give to the idea that her attendees might determine those terms would apply to GATE with the evidence before their own eyes: “50/60 rapes?” and “fake neck things.”
JV doesn’t care how minor a character he actually is, how roles without speaking parts aren’t much, how he might be described in the credits as smirking man instigating fight; B&W is his IMDb, and he’s a relentless self-promoter.
Yeah Kevin, I’m the one making excuses for bullying and giving them a place to hide. *eyeroll*
You’ve yet to define this mere immature and oh so totes natural action that is definitely not bullying.
Is the way I’m giving “real bullies” cover anything like how when Ophelia documents her harassment the harassers tell her how she’s just whining about mere disagreements and is putting women in more danger from “real bullies”?
And is your first concern when a woman tells you not to use tired sexist tropes that equate harassment with having a little crush on someone (Which seems to be told almost exclusively to girls being bullied by boys) to warn her not to mistake natural immaturity with real bullying? Are you honestly then going to tell me what a horrid disservice I’m doing to victims?
Really?
That’s swell.
To all the trolls: http://forlackofabettercomic.com/?id=37
Hey Ophelia #46
Now I’ll want my Official FTBullies T-shirt autographed. And I mean it.
It turns out AmbosiaX really did get pissed off with me. Look at this:
“Ethnic traitor”? Of what, or whom ethnicity I can only gess. #latinopride? Brazilians don’t claim to be ‘latinos’ in the sense the word is used in the U.S. As a matter of fact nobody I know of claim to be ‘latino’ outside of the U.S. ‘Latino’ is not an ethnic group you know. And I really am affraid to ask what the hell #boricua means.
Yesterday a guy I’ve never heard before, claiming to be friend of AmbrosiaX (from whom he knew about me(!?)), twit me 3 times in a row just to point me out in the end 2 smal typos in the english version of my Twitter Bio (!?). For which I handsomely thank him, as I don’t want to be wrong more than the strictly necessary amount of time.
‘Parasitic relationship’? Curious choice of words. Slip of the tongue?
A little late, but still, KerCHING!
Ophelia, please accept this small token of my admiration for your talent, honesty, intelligence and courage under fire.
eneraldocarneiro
“Boricua” means “person from Puerto Rico”, which when assigned to someone randomly based on a guess about national origin is pretty goddamned racist in a way that “Latino” is not. In America, “Latino” is more like “European” or “Asian” than anything specific. Just lumping you in with Puerto Ricans is a racist’s way of saying “you people are all the same.”
How many times does Vacula mention OB in his podcasts?
It seems to me if OB doesn’t know the answer then maybe she’s a teensy bit less obsessive about this whole thing then Vacula is. Of course, Vacula’s rhetoric consists almost entirely of projection so it’s hard to be surprised.
I’ve said I was affraid to ask….I think i deserve 2 T-shirts after all. Small size please.
eneraldocarneiro
Aww, come on. At least “boricua” isn’t inherently insulting! I’m Puerto Rican… it isn’t good or bad, it just isn’t what you are. You don’t earn 2 T-shirts for not being boricua… do you? Because if so, I’m gonna be pretty pissed off!
The machine as always needs to be fed but the problem is that it appears to be developing
an insatiable appetite and the ground apes can not satisfy it as they once could // But it is a
fact that the apes have never been or are never going to be in control // Oh sure they can do
a botch job to keep things ticking over but as with all botch jobs now it sooner or later starts
to come apart // And the apes try to fix that but it is a neverending task and therefore a rather
pointless one // The problem is that the apes are attacking the symptom not the cause so
that is why the problem will never be sorted and the machine will triumph as it always does
going from strength to strength while the apes run round like headless chickens providing a
constant running dialogue on how to fix the problem without ever getting any where // There
is no need to think out side the box for the solution is there // It just needs a bit of will power
and some consciousnesss raising and may be then the machine will not be so hungry any
more // The ground apes maybe vaguely aware of this but are not bothered too much now to
do anything about it and so it remains // It also never occurs to the apes that they and not the
machine is the cause of the problem even though all problems are the fault of the apes and
not the machine // And this continues ad nauseum till the day when there are no more apes
and the solution has finally been arrived at // But there is no one to celebrate that joyous day
@100. hjhornbeck : Thanks.
@Daniellavine:
Yeah, it’s ridiculous how easily the same comment/claim could be turned back on him. Gee, Justin, how many of your tweets mention OB? Maybe the reason she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you is because of how obsessed with her you seem to be.
It’s like a stalker perking up every time the object of their attention tells someone “I’m being followed by this creepy stalker.”
@118 Improbable Joe
I’m sorry but I think I do. Not for the boricua, but…take a look at my timeline @eneraldo to see who shows up to lecture me about anonimity. You’ll do not believe it. Just look, don’t engage, please. Then come back and tell me what you think.
*open mouth*
*close mouth*
*open mouth*
*close mouth*
They . . . took a photo in which you were expressing support for the atheist bloggers in Bangladesh, the atheist bloggers who are currently in jail and face the prospect of many years in prison for standing up to an oppressive Islamic regime, and they photoshopped it to make it about fucking Vacula? For real? That’s . . . I don’t even . . .
I’m appalled and I don’t even know what to say. They looked at that photo and, rather than thinking about how those bloggers are real brave heroes who need our support, sat there and wondered how they could use it to take a shot at you?
They should be embarrassed and deeply ashamed.
So sad that the slymieheros have nothing else to do with their time.
Yes. Yes they did.
I’ve been in conversation with one threatened atheist in a majority-Muslim country in the past couple of days – helping him with contacts and expressing solidarity and frienship and so on. This stuff is no joke.
Yet again, Ophelia Benson is committing a terrible action. No wonder clear thinking people like Vacula and EG are constantly “satirizing” her and telling her to “go home”.
What the fuck is wrong with those self proclaimed heroes?
Oh, so Vacula uploaded the photo of you but didn’t tag you. That surely makes all the difference. Paden then did that courtesy for him. A tag team, so to speak, made in heaven.
What sniveling, third-rate, adolescent wastes of humans. Dudes really need to grow the fuck up already.
But … cha-ching! Thank you, Vacula and Paden, for contributing once again to the “You Hate — You Petty, Spineless Asswads — Ophelia Profits!” fund. Your contemptible existences accomplish absolutely nothing except to put cash-money into Ophelia’s pockets. That’s a hell of a legacy you guys got going there.
How is that ‘funny’? You want Vacula to leave you alone in person. You don’t want him (or his cronies, whoever) to tag you in photos. It’s completely consistent and does not rule out you actually saying ‘leave me alone’ to him.
Vacula is terrible at arguing/speaking/writing/making any kind of sense.
Could you maybe put that into the post? What the original photo was about? Maybe with the original photo? For people who don’t know. It’s not like they took just any photo that maybe said something like Yay4WIS2. They took one that was about unjustly imprisoned bloggers who have lost their freedom and risked their lives to fight against oppression by radical Islamists, and they decided that the important thing was taking the opportunity to make this about them.
I am disgusted. Disgusted. Fuck this. I was so touched and pleased that the plight of those men became something important that WIS2. I’m so used to us, the white, upper-middle class atheists, forgetting that there are people who are in truly dire straights because of their atheism, and this time was an exception. I am not okay with this being made about some atheist in the USA being peeved that you don’t want to talk to him. It’s not fucking acceptable.
Lindsay is the fucking CEO of CFI, and CFI is working to free those bloggers; I hope he’s pleased with the company he’s keeping.
Fuck.
Ditto to Eristae at 123. No act of caring or decency is so small or so large that the slymiezeros can’t subvert it.
Such fine thinkers and leaders they are (/utter contemp)
And such a lot of work to express a feeling for vacula. Why I can express mine with one finger of one hand.
I really starting to believe that vacula is actually incapable of any sort of empathy.
Funny how the slymiehero is singling out OB. How many of the other attendees and speakers were interested in speaking to Justin Vacuous. Why would someone like Melody Hensley be at all interested in a discussion after the months of abuse she received in the run up to the conference.
Self centered little children.
I just coughed up my whisky. Funniest thing I’ve seen for weeks.
The Twitter inbreeding happening between the likes of Mayhew, Hale, Blackford and any of the harasser bullies who are too insignificant and obviously sociopathic to be named here is quite astonishing and appalling. So is Dawkins’ retweeting and Mtweeting of any of the above, behaving like the crazy racist and undifferentiated uncle who we don’t like to talk about too much because he gets all funny when he has had too much to drink….
FFS.
It astonishes me that there is any debate at all as to whether Justin’s behavior rises to the level of bullying or harassment. This is classic bullying behavior–constantly trying to attract the victim’s attention despite having been told repeatedly to stop. It’s an exercise in power over the victim, “see, I can constantly be in your face and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
Immature? Yes.
Harassment? Without question.
Eristae, yes, I’ll add that. I’ve been talking to Imad, and finding out that he’s out of cash, so my first priority will be to get a fundraiser going, via Maryam.
I’m sure it’s obvious to everyone with a working brain, but the non sequitur there is pretty breathtaking.
What he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in relentless self-promotion.
Remember how Vacula used to be all “I’ve had hate directed at me because of my atheist activism, so you can’t criticise my actions”? Yeah, I’d like to see him trot that defence out right now…
He evidences no concern that the original picture contained signs in solidarity for endangered atheist bloggers. In his desire to characterize Ophelia harshly, he doesn’t consider that his opening with “Go home, pineapple” adds a second example of thoughtlessness about a group of atheists who were outcast.
What other atheist group can know Vacula won’t twist a message in support of them if he gets an opportunity to use it to snipe? If Ophelia posts a picture of something she’s doing in support of American Atheists, will Justin at least wait until after he’s had David Silverman on his radio show to link to one of his buddies’ photoshopping of it?
That’s some very stalkery logic, that is.
Will you be taking that picture of my twitter timeline down now that I’ve had it private since May 15th because of real life harassment from real life people? My mother threatened to come to my place of residence and tried to follow me on twitter. I’m actually facing a real person with bipolard disorder who owns a gun. Will you take the picture down, Ophelia?
Will you take down all the lying shit you’ve said about me over the past many months, Katie?
Also, you phrased that incorrectly. The right way would be first to present the facts and then to make your request. The way you did it it looks as if I know all about your mother and her gun and the rest of it. Of course I don’t know about any of that. Good god. Anyone would think I owed you something.
No, of course you haven’t taken down all the lying shit you’ve said about me over the past many months. I see some of it on your blog from just 3 days ago. My god you have a nerve.
http://westcoastatheist.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/ophelia-benson-is-documenting-harassment/
Katie Graham’s post about me May 22
Ophelia Benson is Documenting “Harassment”
May 22, 2013 in Internet | Tags: “The Rift”, Freethought Blogs, harassment, Ophelia Benson, Rebecca Watson, Richard Dawkins, Sara Mayhew, twitter
Ophelia Benson has a post up where she mentions a tweet I sent to a conversation I saw in my timeline a few weeks ago. The title of the post is More documenting the harassment.” Funny, though, none of the tweets she mentions are harassment. They are debates and conversations. They aren’t bullying, mean-spirited and a lot of them don’t even use Ophelia’s twitter handle, just her name to critique her actions. This is harassment? Really?
My tweet was in response to her confronting Sara Mayhew about the use of “old” as an insult. I said, “Old, as in “old cisgendered white guys like Richard Dawkins?” because that sort of thing has been used by Ophelia’s friends as an insult. To counter this in her blog, she posts a link to a comment from two years ago as if I was supposed to be aware that she mentions that using old as an insult was “crude” of Rebecca Watson. I’m misrepresenting Ophelia or something because I wasn’t aware of this comment from July 2011.
*sigh*
Most of these examples are not directed at her. AmbrosiaX is the only account that is talking to her directly. Ophelia admits in the blogpost that she had to go to Sara Mayhew’s twitter feed in order to find what Sara had said! This is harassment? Someone call Oxford because now talking about someone is harassment. Is it any wonder we use the term “victim narrative” to describe what Ophelia does?
May 23, 2013 at 4:13 am
vjack
From what I can tell, she seems to operate with a very unusual definition of harassment. It is almost as if anything that displeases her is labeled as harassment. This makes it difficult to take her seriously, and I think that is unfortunate because I suspect she does receive some actual harassment on occasion.
Reply
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May 23, 2013 at 2:54 pm
tkmlac
It certainly does water down the meaning.
Reply
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May 25, 2013 at 5:44 pm
Skepsheik (@skepsheik)
Ophelia seems to have latched on to this term ‘harrassment’. She has justified it by analogy of workplace behavior. If someone is sitting opposite you in an office and frequently criticizes you by name, this can constitute workplace harrassment. Ophelia is a blogger. Her office is the entire internet. Therefore someone criticising her on the internet is similar to the guy sitting opposite in the office.
It kind of makes sense for about a nanosecond or two before breaking down in a fit of WTF!s.
But for Ophelia it still makes sense. Everyone who criticizes her are ‘my harrassers’ – and who tries to debate harrassers.
First, I have no idea how you read that as me assuming you knew about my crazy mom. I never implied such a thing. Why would I need to explain her bipolar disorder and her harassment of me if I thought you already knew about?
I haven’t lied at all about you. Show me where I’ve lied. Am I incorrect in the assertion that you describe tweets ABOUT you, but not TO you, as harassment? Am I incorrect that you compared the rift in the skeptical movement to the disgusting behavior in the Bolshoi Ballet? Tell me you didn’t mean those things and I’ll post a retraction of both, I promise.
Also, Ophelia, all of your blogs are public. My tweets are NOT. What with you high-and-mighty position about harassment on the internet, you would still refuse to honor my request that take down my PRIVATE tweets?
Katie Graham @139:
If you are facing a hostile relative, why did you just publicly post under an (apparently) non-anonymous name with a photo attached? A private email would have been more in line with Slyme Pit ideals, too. Talk this over behind the scenes first, don’t dial up the drama unnecessarily.
If all you people fell off the Earth today: The Earth would be a lighter, happier, cleaner and more bullshit free planet.
Katie Graham,
One, what you said @ 139 was not a request.
Two, yes, the way you phrased it did imply that I knew all about your mother, guns, threats, etc, and that I was deliberately putting you in danger.
Three, yes, you are incorrect when you assert that I’m not being harassed. Tweets “ABOUT” are not magically not harassment simply because they’re not tweets “AT”. Floods of tweets “about” every day – yes that is harassment. Yes. People spending hours talking public shit about someone is harassment, unless that someone has real power to do real harm – popes, bankers, CEOs, heads of state, that kind of power. Yes, nonstop monitoring and shit-talking “ABOUT” a mere blogger who has zero real power – that’s harassment. If I were doing it to you it would be harassment. Yes.
Four, your tweet wasn’t private when you tweeted it. It was public and it was about me.
Five, you haven’t even bothered to say why I should remove it. It doesn’t even include your name, for fuck’s sake. I don’t see what it has to do with anything. If you’re going to make a big public fuss about it you could at least explain why it makes any difference to anything.
I don’t think it does. I think you’re just staging this as yet another way to trigger yet more torrents of shit aimed at me. Right?
“Will you be taking that picture of my twitter timeline down now that I’ve had it private”
Is a request in query form. Do or don’t, Ophelia, but don’t pretend you have a moral high ground on this. Keep them up. Can I request that you not include anymore of my private tweets on your page?
“Two, yes, the way you phrased it did imply that I knew all about your mother, guns, threats, etc, and that I was deliberately putting you in danger.”
That was not my intention. I apologize for the confusion.
“you are incorrect when you assert that I’m not being harassed” I didn’t say you weren’t harassed. I’ve seen some of the things people say to you, and that’s harassment. However, your assertion that “Floods of tweets “about” every day – yes that is harassment,” is absolutely nonsensical. I can talk “about” whoever I want. I’m not violating any laws or your personal space. It’s YOU who is perusing feeds for any little thing someone says about you. Also, as a semi-public figure in a popular blog platform, guess what? You do have more power than some nobody on twitter criticizing your tactics.
That being said, I openly and freely denounce the stuff that IS harassment or IS deplorable, such as some of the photoshops on the Slymepit. I denounce calling you names like “The Prune,” etc. But you’re not talking about that, you’re talking about people criticizing you on twitter. I’m skeptical that you don’t know the difference.
“Four, your tweet wasn’t private when you tweeted it. It was public and it was about me.” They are now. That is my right.
“Five, you haven’t even bothered to say why I should remove it. ” Because it’s mine. I made my twitter private so I control who can have access to what’s on it. If this kind of thing is allowed to happen, I have no control.
“I don’t think it does. I think you’re just staging this as yet another way to trigger yet more torrents of shit aimed at me. Right?”
You’re going to think the worst of me anyway, so why should I even bother to argue against this ignorant assumption? Do what you want, Ophelia, but at least admit that the rules are different for you.
Go home, pineapple!
Ophelia, your act to pretend to be offended just so your gullible followers can send you donations is beyond laughable. A “nice little earner” as some might say!
Anyway, your latest pipsqueal of a post does not at all justify your claims of harassment. In fact, it just makes you look like an embittered loser. The atheism/secularism movement doesn’t like you, doesn’t need you, and won’t miss you.
Why don’t you and your rabble of bickering cry-shites act on what some of your number are suggesting, ie, fuck off and set up your own conferences. But wait. We know why that won’t happen – because they’d fucking fail.
You’re a fucking joke.
Ok, that’s progress.
Just as unsolicited advice, or for the record, or whatever – in general if you really do want to make a request then you’re much more likely to get a good response if you phrase it more like a real request as opposed to a demand or accusation. If you had done that I probably would have said sure. (I hear a volley of sneers and vomit-noises from the pit. Well, sorry, but it’s true. It is pathetically easy to mollify me.)
Yes of course it’s your right to make your Twitter account private. I don’t think that right extends to making it mandatory for everyone else to remove screencaps of tweets that were not private when the screencaps were made (especially when the tweets are about the person making them.) One can ask, of course, but I don’t think anyone is obliged to comply.
But now you have asked, and given a reason, so ok, I’ll take it down.
It’s gone.
Good morning, loopofhenle. I don’t think we’ve met.
Katie, just so you know, putting your Twitter account in protected mode does not protect any of your previous tweets. All the tweets you made while your account was in public mode are still public even when you switch to protected mode. Please see this article: https://support.twitter.com/articles/66884-my-tweets-are-protected-but-still-show-in-search
I quote,
:\
Hilarious how so many of Ophelia’s harassers don’t understand how the internet works and have to come crying to her, their harassment target, when their ignorance ends up biting them in the ass.
Oh, is that what this was about? Katie thought it would all be private, not just the new stuff?
That clarifies a little more, along with what she said.
I guess that’s why people who get too much harassment delete their accounts, right? Because that’s the only way to hide [get rid of] everything?
It’s almost too easy.
I, being one of the gullible followers, have just contributed cash-monies to the “You Hate, Ophelia Profits!” fund on behalf of the lovely loopofhenle .
Talk about a fucking joke. This nimrod calls Ophelia an embittered loser while Ophelia scrapes money on loopofhenle’s behalf. It has to hurt that little, bitty pea-brain to know that she just earned money because of the hate. The poor baby hasn’t figured out how to circumvent the feedback loop that causes Ophelia to be less of a loser every single time the likes of fucktards like loopofhenle treat her like shit.
Personally, I don’t care if Ophelia is acting like she’s offended. I love contributing to her knowing fuckwits like loopofhenle are directly benefiting her and they are clueless about how to stop it. (Hint for the extraordinarily obtuse: I stop donating when the asswipes leave her alone and stop obsessing about her. It really is that easy.)
I haven’t posted here in awhile.
Thank you, Ophelia.
And Aratina, I realize the problems with making tweets disappear on the internets because of caching, etc. but the tweeta don’t show up when you go to my profile. I’m trying to make it as difficult for my mom as possible, knowing I can’t make it impossible.
Yes, I think so, but even doing that doesn’t remove your past tweets from search engines for months and months. You could always take a play out of the book the slimepitters wrote and make a new Twitter account with a temporary @-name (like @aratina_temp), then change your original account name (like @aratina) to something else (like @aratina_old), then change the account name at the new account to the name you used on the original account (@aratina).
That will give you a fresh new account with the original @-name, and the old public tweets will all automatically switch over to the new name (@aratina_old) for your old account. Then you can close that old account down for good without losing your original Twitter name. This is all perfectly legitimate according to Twitter policies, which allow you to create multiple accounts and to change your @-name on each account to whatever you want if it is available.
The above in short step-by-step form:
Have account @aratina.
Download archive of @aratina.
Make new account @aratina_temp.
Change name @aratina to @aratina_old.
Change name @aratina_temp to @aratina.
Delete account @aratina_old.
However, anyone can legitimately take your original name from you while you are swapping it over to the new account (the minute you change your account name, the old name you used on that account is up for grabs by anyone). Still, if you really want a new account, that might be the best way to start over while retaining the old @-name.
@ 155 – thanks, Tony. And it’s hilarious – they have, laboriously, figured that out – but they still can’t act on it.
The stats today showed a big surge from the pit, so I took a quick look at the page with the highest numbers – rage about everything – rage about Vacula, rage about the post about Damion Reinhardt’s bullshit, rage about the post I made private (which by the way, pitters, had NOTHING to do with any of your nonsense or any of you, so no, that is not why I made it private), rage about my failure to comply instantly with Katie’s demand. Rage rage rage. Pruney is crazy, Feefee is psychotic, blar de blar blar.
But somewhere in that tangle one bright spark said (paraphrasing), “Ya know, I am REALLY TEMPTED to just say nothing about her at all because then people would stop donating.”
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.
Hilarious, ain’t it? Yes: exactly: if you stopped talking shit about me, then people would stop the shit-related donating. That was the whole point! I said that at the beginning! And it would be totally worth it. So by all means, do go right ahead: stop talking shit about me and watch the donations cease.
However one person did manage to say something actually funny. Not without calling me Pruney, but still funny. Something about how absurd it is for me to consider (endless) tweets a kind of harassment – soon I’ll be going around like Lady Bracknell, saying “A hashtag? A hashtag?”
That made me laugh. I think I’ll probably do it.
loopofhenle @149:
Long attention spans, short memories.
loopofhenle, she IS home. This is HER blog, dumb shit.
Actually, we just had one, and by all accounts it was quite a success. Despite the lack of support from the boss-man.
But reality never interferes with the hoggling enjoyed by the likes of loopofhenle. Fap angrily and proudly, little Slymer. Whatever makes you feel like a Brave Hero.
loopofhenle
Oh dear. It seems my ballot papers must have been lost in mail.
Oh? There wasn’t a referendum? Then how can loopy make such a statement?
Loopofhenle’s style reminds me of “CommanderTuvok”. By “style”, I mean the way in which he tries to be vicious and demeaning, but actually comes off like an angry toddler shrieking “stop laughing at me”.
I just … I’m so fucking baffled.
If Ophelia “plays victim so she can victimise people” (I’m being very generous in granting that for the sake of argument), I would assume it would be in everyone’s interest to stop incessantly fucking tweeting insulting things about/misquoting/misrepresenting/harassing/impersonating Ophelia. That would be removing Ophelia’s alleged “vicitimisation fuel”, would it not? But no, on they go, constantly on the attack against someone who barely mentions them at all, yet every tiny mention of them is “playing the victim”. In other words, these junior-high cliquey little fuckwits think they can starve a fire by throwing fucking kerosene on it. It’s like a reverse Streisand Effect.
I’m also baffled by the #braveheroes and #ftbullies tags, in general. The irony and utter lack of self-awareness is palpable (and close to being sniffable).
Can someone without their head up their arse please direct me to Ophelia’s alleged crime/s? I’d really appreciate knowing whatever the fuck it is that brought all these nematodes out of the mulch.
I haven’t looked upthread to see the context of this damning banishment but, because it makes the most sense to do so, I am going to assume it applies to the harassment-plussers, slyme-wallowers, MRAs, AVfM’ers and assorted Reinhardts, T-00s and Vaculas of the world.
A hashtag?
Hankstar @165
Ophelia’s crimes are quite simple. She’s a woman who doesn’t shut up and who refuses to accept she’s anything other than human with all the rights and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
Hankstar @ 165
I really would like to have it too. So far all I’ve got is gossyp like. Lots of adjectives, zero substance. Oh yeah, lots of whining: “she blocked me!”. The irony of protesting vehemently over have been blocked by someone they’d accuse of victimhood seems to scape them altogether.
Ophelia @ 141
This seems to be all too common. Many of these people talk as if you owed them something personally. To all and each one.
Donated! Spend the money on anything you want Ophelia!
Private tweet is an oxymoron.
Unless you direct message someone, then you are shouting whatever you say to the world.
Because you tag someone or use a hashtag (something twitter never even was designed for, users “invented” them) to make your tweet easier for your intended audience to find does not change the fact that when you tweet you are shouting a statement out to the world with your signature on it.
Pff, I recently wrote a term paper using twitter. Asking about whether I had to anonymize that shit, the answer was NO
Jafafa @ 171
If you turn your twitter account into private (protected in Twitter terms), only those who follow you will see your twits. Your twits will be private in this sense. And anyone who want to follow you will need your approval.
Go and check for tkmlac in Twitter, you can’t see her side of the conversations.
Benson @159
Let’s have a quick review of what the Slyme Pit has accomplished:
– They have helped every secular conference to adopt a Code of Conduct, and are helping to enforce them (eg. Vacula’s complaints at AA’s 50th)
– They have brought the topic of harassment to the fore, most notably by spamming conference hashtags (eg. #wiscfi)
– They have encouraged the secular community to talk more about sexism and social justice
– They are currently lining the wallets of those who point out their harassment (also: DONATED!)
They are slowly polarizing the secular movement, forcing people to accept or oppose feminism and social justice, and not many people will side with a hate group. This would be very easy to stop: just tone it down. Spam twitter less, police the ‘Pit and remove the most extreme photos and posts, chill out on the blogs, and their complaints would be taken far more seriously.
But some of them can’t. They just want that hit of
heroinpleasure from aggravating a “powerful figure.” And those few lower the discourse at the ‘Pit and elsewhere, act as mouthpieces to spread gossip, and encourage others to follow their example.Until the ‘Pit starts policing itself, Benson’s wallet will get fatter, and the secular community will become more outspoken about harassment, and as a whole will approve of feminism and social justice more.
Have you considered taking the miscreants off your Christmas card list?
Maybe that would do it…
I just imagined a world where Ophelia decided to make her twitter account private and requested that everyone delete and remove any past public tweets of hers.
Which one of these two results seems more likely:
1) The wierdos at Vacula’s blog network and the slymepit and all the obsessive personal blogs immediately comply with the request, combing through their archives for thoroughness.
or
2) The request is completely ignored, and instead we find 10,000 word essays about Stalin and Hitler trying to make information disappear and the slippery-slope-chilling-effect this all has on free expression and blah blah…
I would bet the needle swings closer to 2, but maybe I’m just cynical.
@175: Would that even work? (ie. your suggestions to rehab the Pit) I have the impression that some sizable chunk of them are committed to the anti-feminism of AVFM. I know there’s this idea floating around that there’s the “reasonable ones” and the “assholes”, but I have no idea how “reasonable” the former really are. Not that I’ve ever gone to look, because….oh god, all sorts of reasons (selfishly including the fact that sorting out this sort of shit on the internet is up there with major dental work on my list of favorite pastimes). And seriously, if I have to go argue with AVFM talking points, it starts to look like a bottomless pit of crap. I’d rather knock heads with creationists.
What kind of “reasonable” person allies with people who do along with AVfM. (Though Mykeru and Vacula both deny not being members But Mykeru admits agreeing with much of what they stand for and will not distance himself from them. Many of the slymies are very open about their hostility to feminism. If any “reasonable’ people can stomach that or just set it aside, they lose that label of “reasonableness”. What they stand for is not hidden.
Sheer self-interest on Vacula’s part. He’s appeared on their radio show, had one of them on his radio show, and been talked about in their blogs. Now their managing editor is helping fund his trip to the Dublin conference.
The evidence clearly shows he is deeply involved with them. If he’s not a “member” it’s merely so he can have semi-plausible deniability, because he knows the site has a terrible reputation. Looks like his desire for self-promotion trumps his convictions, making him a hypocrite as well as a misogynist.
Mykeru had at least one of his videos featured at AVfM. And many of the members commented about what a quality production it was. And Vacula was interviewed by AVfM while at WIS (Also, he tweeted that Karla Porter raised her hand while one speaker asked who there considered themselves a feminist.)
They are kindreds, Paul Elam, Johntheother, Mykeru and Vacula. And anyone who willingly associates with them know exactly who they are and what they stand for. And they are not “reasonable”.
Eamon Knight @178:
It’s the only real solution I can see. There is no magic wand that will poof away the Slyme Pit; it has a critical mass of outright haters, who draw support from a larger group of libertarians and people who bear a grudge. Anyone shutting it down from the outside would just cause the lot to scatter and re-form elsewhere. Change has to come from the inside, from the moderates becoming uneasy with the obsessives and asking Lsuoma and the other mods to clean things up. They already do some level of moderation, from individuals blocking people they don’t like to having the mods edit, delete, and ban where necessary.
They just need to do it a bit more.
Well. Shit.
I can understand a reporter getting chummy with a detestable group, in order to get the inside scoop. But…. this seems to cross a line.
saramayhew:
Every few days, she blurts out something like this, without any apparent cause. Does anyone else get the impression that she’s very insecure, and is looking for that ersatz sense of accomplishment that comes from knocking down others?
“Proper academics”? lol. From a cartoonist.
(not that there’s anything wrong with that)
I dunno. My impression is simpler, as befits my simple mind – that like most if not all the harassers, she’s just full of malice, and a few of us are the targets of her obsessive malice. Why me? I really have no idea…Well, wait, yes I do. It’s that I’m already a target, so it’s easy and fun for her to pile on.
Soooo many questions.
What exactly makes an academic proper and who are these proper academics who refuse to speak at what conferences? Why would they refuse? Why would anyone care? Are these unnamed academics highly sought after speakers? Where and how did Sara come by this information and why can’t these proper academics speak for themselves? Can she provide any evidence for her claim?
This sounds like another lie from the creepshow. Jeez, just when you think they can’t get any creepier…..
On the topic of harassment… feminist Cathy Brennan gets fake accounts impersonating her.
I thought I was reasonably well clued-in, but I don’t get it.
@Ophelia Benson – May 28, 2013 at 8:26 am (UTC -7)
Occham’s Razor and all that.
Malicious and LAZY.
hjhornbeck@183:
The mental image I got was of an eight year-old in the back seat of a car, except that instead of “I’m not touching you…!” it was “I’m not threatening you…!”
Sure, maybe he really doesn’t want to, but if he really doesn’t want to, then why the hell did he bother bringing up the fact that he could? Really, anybody who already has reasons to distrust him is going to have trouble not seeing that line as a threat, because he hasn’t exactly demonstrated himself as a trustworthy person. Rather, as someone who will twist words to get away with whatever he thinks he can convince people of. (See Stacy@180 and Vacula’s comments about not being a member of AVfM despite the interactions he’s had with them.)
@191: On the most charitable interpretation I can think of, it bespeaks a considerable tone-deafness. “I talk to these controversial and unpleasant people because I’m a journalist, but dear FSM I wouldn’t inflict them on my worst enemy!” would seem to be a more appropriate way to express it. It’s the same as his tepid not-quite-repudiation of the rapey-shoppy crowd.
I believe he wants…
ONE MILLION DOLLA—sorry. ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!
Oh, that’s amusing, Sara Mayhew typed academics when she meant assholes. Darn that auto-correct!
My Dad could beat up your Dad? Really? Is that real?
1) He believes that he can wield the WBC?
2) He believes that this is admirable impressive?
I don’t believe for a moment that WBC are waiting to help anyone outside of the organisation, but if absolute shitheads with a remarkable commitment to propagating hatred and fear are willing to do you a favour, then what does that say about you?
Dave @ 189 – argh! Nothing to get. New tool, which sometimes plays tricks on me. I previewed & previewed but still managed to post it with the trick played. It’s fixed now.
I’m wondering what qualifies Sara as an expert on what “proper” academics (fallacy of equivocation?) want in the way of speaking arrangements, such that she can declare things at Mr Nugent. TAM, TED and a bunch of manga?
It’s not that TAM or TED don’t have anything interesting on, but they aren’t exactly serious academic gigs either. Both have presented more than a couple of poorly referenced, and flaky talks. (I can’t and don’t comment on Sara’s talks – honestly, I’m just asking).
Maybe if I killed a few brain-cells with The Big Bang Theory, and joined a geek cult, this would all make more sense to me? Anyone got any Kool-Aid?
Ophelia @196: I figured as much, and was trying to be humorously obtuse while alerting you.
Seriously. Cyberstalking is a federal crime.
Time to report it.
“Proper academics” probably amount to just Russell Blackford, the only one I know have said something like that. Oh, but it was in Twitter, and as he believes that what happens in Twitter should stay in Twitter I’m not sure if he’ll live by his word on this.
Maybe the lesson here is that there’s a more significant division between decent people and nasty people than there is between atheists and theists.
Well, that’s a true observation, at least.
@201: Having spent time on both sides of the latter divide, I was never under any other impression.
“proper academics tend to turn down speaking in lineups w/ @OpheliaBenson @pzmyers @rebeccawatson as guests.” I’ve never encountered this. Just this past weekend, I was in a lineup with Richard Wiseman (academic psychologist) and several European academics.
As usual, the slymepit party is making shit up.
Ah, PZ, don’t go throwing data and facts and reality into the mix. Such an approach will only serve to undermine and destroy the alternate universe they are trying to promote.
Fuckwits. Every last one of them.
Yeah no I’ve never encountered it either. Rebecca Goldstein is a “proper” academic, to put it mildly. There were a lot of academics at Eschaton. Lots at QED. Also non-academics at all of them.
It’s just something Mayhew made up, because whoknowswhy.
“non-academics at all of them”…yes. And no one gave a second thought to their lack of academic credentials or academic appointments. It always seems to be those lacking them who attach such inappropriate importance to them.
We see that in creationists, too — there’s much fussing over who has what degree, and the worst cases are clueless nitwits who go about collecting miscellaneous degrees as if they mean something.
Hey Ophelia:
You’re a great writer and pretty terrific human being. Your blog is the reason I come to FTB (although I like Miri and PZ, too) That’s all. Take care.
-Andrew
Ophelia wrote:
Because, like nearly everything else she’s said regarding the atheist community, she didn’t bother actually thinking it through. There are times when I think the sole purpose she’s kept around is to make the other worthless assholes feel smarter.
Aw, thanks, Andrew.
Funny. The man who recently told me I’m not in A Voice for Men. I listen and agree with much of it and I won’t try to distance myself either is talking about being a “decent human being”.
If he was decent, he would distance himself from them. Like some of the slymies are now doing.
Though it is funny to see EG turn his wit on Damion for that.
Decent? “Mykeru”?
I don’t understand Sara Mayhew’s obsession with “proper academics”. Since when must one hold a PhD to be a skeptic, or to have valid insights? I would think that being a published author, columnist, and activist would more than qualify you for invitations to skeptics’ conferences, Ophelia. Moreover, Sara called PZ’s academic work to be “mediocre”, but by her own thinking, she can’t be qualified to express that opinion unless she holds a doctorate in biology, right? It’s just bizarre.
Mykeru’s forgetting the pit’s ethics on doxxing:
1) it’s not really doxxing if the person is only semi anonymous; and
2) it’s okay if you really don’t like the person.
Also, this is the guy who threatened oolon with an icepick (he was joking of course, of course). Which makes his ragey threat:
all the more disturbing.
Well, yes, that is in fact a threat. I don’t think he means it, and I don’t think he’s going to travel across the country to carry it out, but it is a threat, and threats can get you arrested.
Mr FP, I think Mayhew would probably say that I shouldn’t be published and I shouldn’t be a columnist, because I’m not an academic (proper or otherwise).
Did the tweets have her personal info in them? I’m sort of confused why removing them would make a difference.
Which tweets?
MrFancyPants* wrote:
She’s been drinking Blackford-flavoured Kool-Aid.
The initial source of his bitterness was that, despite being (apparently) the super-duper-smartest guy in the atheist movement with a whole stack of degrees both undergraduate and postgraduate, he’s far less well-known, popular, influential or likely to be invited to speak at a conference than someone like Rebecca Watson, who has neither a penis, two PhDs, or a penis.
After something he interpreted as a slur from PZ he spotted an opportunity to justify moving from regular villainy to cartoonish supervillainy, and has been an apologist for the Slymepit ever since. It’s even caused him to start sucking up to Jeremy Stangroom (and vice versa) despite both of them saying far nastier things about each other than any of the FTB/Skepchick people have said about either.
*Great ‘nym, by the way.
The ones Katie G. wanted deleted, sorry. I’m just confused about why it would have mattered.
I think its James Randi who has frequently said that academic qualifications don’t an effective skeptic make. In fact in the 1970s when Uri Geller and ESP etc research was all the rage plenty of highly credentialed academics were completely fooled and it took “a magician in the lab” (the title of Randi’s forthcoming autobio I believe) to spot the simple parlour tricks Geller and others were using.
So while obviously academic expertise is clearly to be valued the whole point of skepticism as an organised thing is that “ordinary people” can practice it. At least, that’s one of the things I’ve always liked about it.
Which is tangential to the point that SM is just talking shit again since Rebecca and PZ seem to be appearing with ‘proper academics” all over the shop.
Yes, James Randi didn’t even finish high school (according to Wikipedia). So… what was that Sara was saying again?
@ hjhornbeck #183
It’s really telling that these people think that bringing in the WBC is some kind of effective intimidation tactic. As more and more people get wise to the WBC, they just end up a mildly annoying (or amusing) side show. Pathetic, really, which is what Vacula &co show themselves to be when they threaten with the “big bad” WBC. Even more pathetic is someone who claims atheist credentials turning to a “religious” organization for support. Makes you wonder how sincere his atheism is, or if it’s just “look at me, I’m a rebel” posing.
As long as you don’t give the WBC grounds to sue, they’re harmless. They don’t dare do anything but shout and wave signs or risk jeopardizing their gravy train.
The response of some high school students in my neck of the woods, to a visit from the WBC.
Wowbagger @218 wrote:
Thanks! It’s the first thing that came to mind when I decided that I’d lurked enough and wanted to comment, and caught sight of my lamentable fashion choices that day in the mirror. Also, thanks for the info. I’ve been avoiding the Slymepit ever since they erupted with zombie-esque irrationality over Elevatorgate; I should get caught up.
edithkeeler @220 wrote:
You’re right, I had completely forgotten about that. And it’s a fact that makes RW much more qualified to speak on matters of skepticism than Sara, then, because iirc RW was introduced to it all via her own experiences with magic.
Goodbye Enemy Janine @211:
Yep, he was the one defending Paul “I’ll acquit any rapist” Elam in my post from yesterday. It’s bizarre how he can say things like this:
And yet at the same time ponder whether or not they were helping the ‘Pit drive Greg Laden to suicide, and… well…
His comments crystallized my opposition to the Slyme Pit. Any decent human being would distance themselves from him, and yet he’s been a fixture on the ‘Pit since October of last year. Tells you a lot, I think.
Mykeru is saying he’s “not in A Voice for Men?”
Really….
I guess I imagined this then…AVfM welcome new contributor Mykeru…
And we know how AVfM feels about doxxing people…http://manboobz.com/2012/12/12/man-boobz-readers-would-like-to-offer-support-for-a-voice-for-mens-doxxing-victims-in-toronto/
Mykeru lied to me? But the slymies are the epitome of skeptical truthiness!
#182 hjhornbeck
Oh, hjhornbeck, surely you are mistaken. The Slymepit supports “freeze peach”! Their biggest complaint about FtB and especially PZ and OB, is that they get censored and banned by them. Even JV can’t speak out against posters who express viewpoints that he personally disagrees with (such as misogynist hatred), because every poster to the Slymepit has a right to express their opinions.
It’s like the world just turned up-side-down. I don’t know if I will ever recover from my disillusionment.
@Jackie
No proper academic puts sugar on their porridge.
KerCHING! Well done Mykeru.
Enjoy your cookies Ophelia.
Mykeru is a sad sack, one trick pony who trolls people with violent threats and this somehow makes him an internet legend in his own eyes. Cannot see that going badly for him! As HJ Hornbeck says how they treat him is one of many instances of hypocrisy in the Slymepit. Greg Laden using violent language is him trying to trigger PTSD in veterans, Pharyngula’s violent language is appalling (Even tho they stopped) but when one of their own uses it as his one and only technique for “debate” then its fine. Same with doxxing, they do it and its ok, the other side does it and its the worst thing ever.
Always worth linking to how Michael Cortese / Mykeru gets his jollies… Death threats to people who annoy him. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104×4666288
All fine as long you are on the right side.
BTW donation that I hope you add up with the others and spend on something totally frivolous!
Thanks all!
I took a look at the slime pit yesterday, via another and even huger (than the one the day before) surge in hits from there. Lots of rage, photoshops, diagnosis of my insanity, bitterness, etc etc etc. All instigated by “Skep tickle” – who told them I had named the atheist group that she’s on the board of which. Only later, only after the torrent of abuse was set off, did she correct herself and say that was in an email to her. She never said a word about “er, jeez, tone it down.” She doesn’t say the worst kind of thing herself – but she does incite it; she does not make any attempt to modulate it once she has incited it; and she comes here to tell me to deal with it.
And this is the person Michael Nugent allows to be a “moderator” of his “dialogue.” Under her pseudonym, which shields her from any consequences of doing shit like this.
Oh. There’s even more. It just grows and grows.
A comment telling a pack of lies about me revealing people’s identities and risking their lives, posted on Nugent’s blog yesterday. Anonymously, of course. It’s all just blatant, flaming lies – but there it sits and there it will stay, because free speech.
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2013/04/16/an-update-on-the-atheist-skeptic-dialogue-process/#comment-248045
Wow, impressive comment from the Slymepit. So many “inaccuracies”…
1. Sharing email addresses in the “dialogue” is blamed when “Skep Tickle” herself said people both sides of the “rift” know her IRL identity. Is that not a rather simpler explanation when Ophelia is not involved in the “dialogue”!
2. Ophelia is “gleefully doxxing”, nope, no docs dropped although I’d personally say there is a damn good case for “Skep tickle” to not be anonymous and I know of no good reason for her to be anonymous apart from being able to continue harassing consequence free. Really for her to explain why when her given reason is clearly bullshit.
3. Ophelia refused to take down a woman’s “private post”. Errr no they were public tweets and would remain public despite Ophelia taking them down from this blog.
4. “…exposing her private information to her mentally ill and armed ex-husband”, supposedly endangering her life. Given the tweets had no information beyond Katie’s name and her opinions on Ophelia its not at all clear how this could possibly endanger her life! (Wasn’t it her “bi-polar mother” she was worried about? Where did the gun-toting husband appear from?)
5. Katie… ” … begged her to remove it”, no she pretty much ordered Ophelia to and pre-whined about her expected refusal thus giving away the reason for the whiney order in the first place.
6. Ophelia supposedly refused as “revenge” for talking shit about her. No she made it clear that even though there was no reason to think the info was in anyway dangerous to Katie if she asked rather than ordered it would be taken down.
7. “Fortunately Ophelia was shamed into removing it the next day” … No Katie asked and OB complied immediately.
“Did you set up the whole thing to obtain private information for the doxxers?” … To Michael Nugent 😀
Hehe nice bit of paranoia to add to the pack of lies. Then a little more to add about PZ…
8. “I’m including Myers since he’s been talking about his plans to out a gay man with kids for having the temerity to warn Jen McCreight that she was posting information that identified her location” .. yeah right you don’t “warn” someone by calling them dim in a video and opining on what an expert in anonymity you are. Any reasonable person would warn them personally, either directly or through a proxy. The bit about him being a marginalised gay man and having kids is interesting, he is quite open about his sexuality on his personal myspace page ** under his own name. Seems he is somewhat embarrassed to have his real name attached to his “Justicar” nym for some reason…
** Recently deleted and pretty easy to find given “Justicar” is not the expert in anonymity he pretends to be. Would be good if he was open about who he is given all he has to be worried about is the things he has said and done himself as “Justicar”.
Is that some sort of record for the Slymepit? Impressive lie/word count there.
I pointed it out to Nugent. So far he has neither responded nor done anything about it. Well he’s busy, naturally, but that’s a problem with this whole ridiculous “dialogue” – he can’t (but also apparently won’t) moderate it or sort lies from truth or disallow smears or disallow anonymous smears – etc etc etc.
Well I said he can delete the response to the comment from me, assuming he does get around to cleaning it up. Its pretty awful and clearly originating from the Slymepit given no one else would be gossiping about this rubbish! Seems they are desperate to demonstrate some “real” harassment to clobber you with. Everyone knows that having a coterie of stalkers dissecting your every move online is just a compliment!
Good work Oolon; it’s gone now…
From Nugent’s clean up comment, it looks like whoever posted what got deleted was a sockpuppet. Oh, what a surprise.
um. pretty sure that was a given, considering the handle used for that post. it’s fairly standard to use a “can’t say this under my regular name, so here’s an obviously false one for this one post” handle for very private, sensitive, or whistleblower-ish comments; the commenter either actually thought they were the latter, or they were playing one for the audience.
@Jadehawk
It could have come from a pit stain that hadn’t posted on Nugent’s blog before or who had more skill in faking it, I suppose. (Actually, I’m not sure about the former since I don’t pay enough attention to know how many of the fuckheads have slimed their way over there.)
Your problem Ophelia is that you do not talk to the WBC and do not invite them to atheist meetings. If you were best palls with them you wouldn’t be “stale” you would be edgy like Karla Porter up there.
(Is sarcasm tag needed?)
I’m amazed the conference haven’t been cancelled yet, when the speakers are so universally loathed. I mean, there can’t have been any tickets sold at all, can there?
I’m sure it’s just a coïncidence the hotel is sold out completely, too. Dublin in June is very popular.
Sheesh. It really isn’t thinking that’s weighing these people down, is it?
Once again, the envy is dripping off these people. And of course they are engaging in ageism. It is clear that they can’t argue about ideas or opinions and must not have any ideas of their own. All they can do is attack the person.
When Ophelia and her mob of losers bully and harass people, it is OK.
When people satirize and mock Ophelia (quite rightly – she is so pompous and arrogant she needs to taken down a few pegs), it is suddenly harassment.
I have enjoyed looking through your “page o hate”, since it contains no hate, but just excellent examples of proud members of the atheist/secularist community calling out Benson’s hypocrisy and stoopid statements.
I pointed a friend to Ophelia’s “examples” of harassment, and he had a laughing fit, then said she was dumber than a cloud of dust!!!
We’re still laughing at you, Ophelia.
PS – When are you and the other Baboons going to fuck off and set up your own conferences? We know why you won’t – YOU’D FUCKING FAIL. Anyway, just in case the community hadn’t spoken enough, let me repeat the majority sentiment. FUCK OFF OUT OF OUR MOVEMENT. WE DON’T WANT YOU, WE DON’T NEED YOU, WE DON’T LIKE YOU.
PPS – We are currently working on Operation Expose PZ, and Operation Expose Watson.
PPPS – We know you doxxed. We have you screencapped. We have you bang to rights.
lol, what the hell is “psychopathically dismissive”
“ManCaveThrust”? Hahaha! Gotta be a spoof.
I can’t help but notice that #244’s “Operation Expose PZ” has initials “OPE”. Does that make him the commander at Burpelson Air Force base, or just a flunky along the lines of Colonel “Bat” Guano? He’s certainly no Doktor Merkwürdigeliebe!
.” We are currently working on Operation Expose PZ, and Operation Expose Watson.”
Oh, you guys. Your delusions of relevance are hilarious.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Cash-monies have just been donated to the “You Hate, Ophelia Profits” fund on behalf of the scum-sucking ManCaveThrust, the most worthless piece of shit on the Internet today (well, except for the part where he just put cash-monies in Ophelia’s pockets). I’d contribute money directly to MCT as a down payment to get a clue, but the asswipe wouldn’t know where to begin looking.
errr
This *is* our conference. And I think it should be painfully obvious that we are not in *your* movement.
Also, just a suggestion, you might want to try sounding a little less like David Mabus in future. It really isn’t doing you any favours.
Ah. I knew I shouldn’t have used the MB word from Montreal.
Sorry. I just didn’t think an indirect reference would get picked up by the shining intellect demonstrated by the capitals.
MB? The hell?
*DM, of course.
Some pissant wrote:
Translation: if you were a man, this wouldn’t have been a problem.
Make that two cash money donations now, tonyinbatavia. Impotent fury -> ‘pitters comment -> donations to the Ophelia Profits fund go up. This could be a fun game!
Oh look, it’s another liar.
If you actually had read the Page O’Hate, you would have noticed that it’s on Skepchick, and all the featured “proud members of the atheist/secularist community” are calling out Rebecca Watson there, not Ophelia Benson, since Skepchick is where Rebecca writes, not Ophelia.
Liar.
See, I don’t doubt that champ here believes that. But the thing is, Atheism+ was your divorce papers. That was us telling you we wanted nothing to do with you too.
But you remoras couldn’t deal with that. All of a sudden, you decided atheism had to be ‘pure’, in your weird republican thinking, and you couldn’t get past the idea that there were atheists who didn’t want to associate with you.
Justin invited himself to a conference where he wasn’t wanted. Not the other way around.
We don’t want to have anything to do with you fuckers either, and that’s been made explicitly clear.
The divorce papers are on your desk. All you fuckers have to do is sign them, and move the fuck on with your shallow little lives.
I mean, Vacula and his friends are the ones who keep asking to wipe the slate clean and work together. Lee Moore is not one of us. We’re not interested in working it out.
Your protestations ring hollow, fuckface.
@244:
Yeah, nobody is going to SkepChickCon.
::rolleyes
Oh, no! How’d I wind up in moderation?!
Anthony @ 255:
That really is the crux of the issue, isn’t it? How many FtB commenters are assuming sock puppets and invading the slymepit to scream invective at them? How many are in all-caps rage on hate websites about them? How many ho-ho-ho photoshops of Justin have been posted by Ophelia lately?
For people who scream so loudly that they want nothing to do with the bloggers at FtB, they sure do spend a lot of time here, at Pharyngula, and Skepchick.
Well, if the presence of Ophelia, PZ and Rebecca is going to make the con suck so bad, then why does Vacula want to go? Seriously, I don’t go to conferences I think will be boring.
BTW: We watched the Dan and Justin Show tonight. First time I’ve seen JV close up and at length. It was….educational.
@247:
“I can no longer sit back and allow… Feminist infiltration… Feminist indoctrination… Feminist subversion… And the international Feminist conspiracy to sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids!!”
Or something like that.
Mancavethrust,
No.
It isn’t your movement.
Now, shoo.
LeftSidePositive @ 260:
Ha! That’s basically their Purity of Essence message, isn’t it? Glad you caught my reference 🙂
How many lights?
I’m still waiting for slymers to do anything at all useful or productive for atheism or skepticism. Setting up your own conference would be a great first step! I’d pay money to see that.
@262, yeah I was reminded of it because I came across this the other day:
http://emojicharades.com/2013/03/13/movie-7/
I especially appreciate that they did the *whole* title!
@244:
Aaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Now that you’ve given me a chuckle with your Mabus-esque paranoid ridiculousness: fuck off, you irrelevant little twerp.
Anthony K @ Divorce Papers comment,
That was great! A fine point indeed.
Ophelia, just donated a bit to your sanity fund in honour of Fuckface’s comment at #244. Best of luck with enduring the hate of the 5%.
To: Benson
From: HJ Hornbeck
Amount: Cash monies.
Memo: In the hope that your harassers get the
I can’t remember who/where, but I ran across a great quote/minispeech from someone about purity (I want to say it’s Salman Rushdie, but no clue…(though, there was a similar bit(slightly watered down) in Yukito Kishiro’s gunnm/battle angel alita for the fellow anime/manga nerds)) stating that strength comes from impure mixes, and evil tends to come from quests for ‘purity’ (re: ethnic/racial cleansing, etc.).
Maybe I’ll try to look it up when I’m less drunk, but even so, I think the concept is pretty awesome and spot-on.
Plus: fuck these trollish douchebags
Eamon – yes I watched the Dan and Justin show too, or most of it – had to leave after an hour. Philosophy can be so helpful.
Wait, is that too pompous and arrogant?
Jackie @261:
Maybe Mancavethrust is a ‘nym for Jamy Ian Swiss…
[/snark]
@270: For those who didn’t: Dan batted Justin around and chewed on him for a bit. Great to watch.
Also: When are you and the other Baboons going to fuck off and set up your own conferences?
Seems to me WIS is pretty much that. Too bad about Lindsey and all, but….
@274
I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, so when I first read your quote of “you and the other Baboons”, I didn’t twig that it WAS a quote, and I started composing a post in my head saying “Don’t call them Baboons, we don’t want to sink to that level.”
Umm… sorry for misunderstanding. Still wanted to share the sentiment.
Eamon,
Watching it now with my teen. Her summery of the debate thus far is this:
Finke: You don’t really believe that do you?
Vacula: Nachos.
Hey now, don’t disparage nachos by placing them in the same sentence as Justin Vacula. 😉
(I want my epitaph to be ‘veni, vidi, edi nachos.’)
forgot to write this yesterday:
“When are you and the other Baboons going to fuck off and set up your own conferences? ”
like, i don’t even get it? i’m trying to see what position is being held here even?
like, the people organizing the conferences are obviously ok with their line up of speakers, how is this not “our own” conference? do the people organizing a conference have to be the only ones who do the speaking? otherwise the speakers are not at “their” conference and this is wrong somehow? ??
back to the twitter posts:
“karla_porter @AmbrosiaX @justinvacula I’m dumbfounded that AI thinks its a good idea to pay for nonspurts myers benson and watson to talk”
well, maybe because it’s not “your” conference, it’s theirs? and they have different ideas of what their conference should be than you do? i think maybe?
how is this confusing to these people?? it’s kinda comedy gold, but still, gawwed.
@Jackie, Ms. Paper if ya nasty
That’s hilarious. Reminds me of an exchange in the movie Strangers with Candy:
Principal Blackman: What’s your IQ?
Jerri Blank: Pisces.
brian – well that’s a longstanding trope, grievance, topos, complaint. Why do these horrible people get invited to speak at conferences? Why do they get invited when we all hate them so much? Why do they get invited instead of the much better people who hate them so much? Why do they get invited instead of the angry people who spend so much time tweeting about them every day and have so much to offer? Why do they get invited when they are stale moldy bread and we are fresh fragrant brioche?
It’s especially ridiculous in my case, frankly, because until the last couple of years I wasn’t. I don’t belong in the same category as PZ and Rebecca, who really have been popular much-invited speakers for a long time.
So let’s look at that. PZ and Rebecca get invited to speak a lot. Why’s that, do you suppose? My educated guess is that it’s because they are popular and effective.
The angry tweeters and slime pitters are pissed off about this. Why aren’t they just as popular?
Well gee. Would you want to go to a conference to hear “AmbrosiaX” or Karla Porter talk? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even if they hadn’t been harassing me for months. Energetic tweeting isn’t enough to make someone interesting. You need more than that.
And then, there are things that pull in the other direction, too – reasons not to as well as lack of reasons to. I suspect that people whose only public communication is in the field of harassment are not appealing to the people who organize conferences. How would you introduce them? “AmbrosiaX has composed thousands of tweets mocking and slandering fellow secularist activists. She is here to talk about her hatred of six bloggers.”
Yeah, I don’t see that happening.
Ophelia @ 280
THIS is why I love to read your writing. Well, OK, one of many reasons. Keep telling it like it is!
(Oh, and I left you comments at the end of the “lies” and “meet ST” threads…wanted to be sure you saw them. Because…I wanted a turn to say “whaddabout MEEEEE?!” for once? Well, that and I connected a whole bunch of dots yesterday, and the resulting picture was really unpleasant. Slimy, you might say…)
FunnyDiva
Funny Diva –
And it’s why others hate to read my writing! (But do it anyway, so that they can complain about how much they hate it.)
I saw the comments. Good dot-connecting.
Heh. If they hate to read your writing so much, they can, yanno, just stop reading any ol’ time. (I promise not to tape their eyeballs open, hijack their computers and clamp their heads in place so they have no choice.
But, no, it’s really _all_ about “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP HOW DARE YOU WRITE (at all) YOU [gendered insult, gendered insult, gendered insult]. SHUT UP OR I’LL/WE’LL [ugly threat, ugly threat, ugly threat].” –As any honest person who’s at all informed about this campaign of harassment already knows. Partly because it’s been explained and demonstrated in _every f*cking thread_ here at least once!)
I think I figured something out today…
The slymies appear to be confusing “doxxing” with what I shall now call “DOTTsing”: connecting the dots by following the PUBLICLY AVAILABLE breadcrumbs (many of which have been strewn by those protesting most strenuously that they/their idols are being “doxxed”.)
But I suppose they’d argue they’re still in TEH RIGHT because that’s all they’re doing…
To that, I’d say there’s a bit of a difference between
publicizing one’s conclusions in great detail and with malicious intent
and
merely pointing out that one has connected the dots and the resulting picture is very ugly.
@276/277: Just to make things weird: we ate dinner while watching the “debate”* — veggie nachos and beer.
* Seriously, anything that one-sided scarcely deserves the term.
Hahahahaha! Seriously, what else has she got to talk about? You would be excused for thinking, “nothing”.
And this thing about us starting our own conferences? This is a blogging network, not a speaking bureau. Even so, there are numerous conferences I can think of where people from FTB and Skepchick already go to speak at. Even good old TAM used to be such a place, but now we have WiSCFI, EWTS, Skepticon, etc. Set up our own conferences? Get real, slimepitters!
Ophelia @ 280
Another reason for envy is what many of these people call your “audience”. It’s all to common to hear them whinning something in the line of ‘how unfair is to have to criticize a public person with a huge audience of “..fans who will automatically agree with and support the much more noted public person..” ‘
And this is a problem not only for the pitters. I’ve seem some prominent figures complain about been criticized by someone with a large audience as PZ. How unfair!
BTW in Brazil there is a saying that can be literary translated as “Old pot is what makes good food”
Also, in the US “old breed” is laudatory isn’t it? Bread breed..maybe the kids are just confused after all. 😉
Funny Diva:
I disagree. There’s a point where following a trail of publicly available information becomes doxxing. For example, if someone posts their name and occupation on their blog, then repeating that is fine. If, however, they only post an email address, which you follow to a ten year old usenet posting under an old alias, which you follow to an eBay account containing a picture of their house, which you find using Google Streetview, which leads to a neighbourhood watch newsletter containing their name and occupation, then that’s doxxing.
When it came to Eliza / SkepTickle, the essential point is that the latter name was her poison-pen sockpuppet. Connecting such a sockpuppet to its master is a completely reasonable act. The fact that the master happened to be out is irrelevant.
(I should add that the above example is hypothetical.)
@AmbrosiaX, @Zaminuszen, @karla_porter well done. That’s more cookies for Ophelia.
KerCHING!
Yeah, Ophelia’s so old and stale that people happily pay to hear her. Not you.
I think I prefer old and stale to half-baked.
What does it mean that PZ, et al. are “spurts”?
I assume it’s an oh-so-clever play on “experts,” with a dose of sexual innuendo thrown in for shits and giggles.
lymie @291:
Yeah, what screechymonkey said. The latest complaint that the ‘pitters are going on about is that Ophelia and Rebecca and PZ aren’t “academic experts” on feminism, hence they shouldn’t be invited to conferences. So since they’re not experts, they’re “non-spurts”, ho ho ho, so clever.
Well what happened to the Slymepit conference? I’m not joking either as they were talking about an environmentally friendly conference online with talks by ERV and even John Welch who was going to talk about Skepticism in IT….
Why didn’t they do it!? Could keep them busy doing something useful rather than spending all day hating a bunch of “irrelevant” bloggers and feminists… Oh wait, that’s why.
Dan Fincke vs. Justin Vacula: Dan was measured, reasonable, reasoned, and mostly patient. Justin was civil, but his whole argument seemed to be:
“I, Justin Vacula, have reasonable opinions. People that I don’t like (mostly women) don’t. Because.”
…and now xe’s moved into wishing people dead and making threats.
Meanwhile xe’s also telling Paul Elam of AVfM and other brave heroes that they “rock”.
Yuck. What a seriously hateful person.
Ophelia, that “Christian Chandl” person is now threatening you directly on twitter:
“@opheliabenson be careful at your feminist circlejerk con… “something” might happen… just sayin #equalrightsequallefts”
No followers, first tweet from 30 minutes ago. This account was set up only to threaten you.
Disgusting.
The slymepitters having a conference? What would they be talking about?
Given their preoccupations, some very horrible things come to mind.
Cha-ching!
Christian Chandler has now started making threats:
https://twitter.com/ChristianChandl/status/343804764099866624
You might want to call the police.
He has been suspended by the block bot… While it usually only blocks I added that one as #level1 and #spam so all the blockbot users reported him for spam at once! Does generally kill new accounts who are attacking. So you might need to wait to see if he un-suspends his account. Was interesting to see he likes Mayhew, Vacula and Elam, a great triumvirate of the “skeptical” elite there!
KerCHING!
@Christian Chandl, well done. I’ve just made a donation to Ophelia in your honour. Twice the usual amount, because you were so vicious.
And kerCHING! for Sara Mayhew as well.
So that’s three times the usual amount.
Ophelia, enjoy! Spend it on Guinness or Aran sweaters or toy boys, just as you like.
oolon @ 301:
Freeze peach ranting sure to follow…
Actually take that back – I saw it go down when the bot started blocking… Looks more like the account is deleted now.
@MrFancyPants… Well actually I added the #spam feature as part of the code to handle stalkers like Renee Hendricks obsessed theist follower. She was not at all worried about her stalker being suspended by the bot and it managed to take a few of her sock accounts out pretty fast. So we have Slyme-approval for it 😉
Oh, and as to “Why does Ophelia still get invited to speak?” well you’ve helped to make her an expert in online harassment, haven’t you?
Usually, I try to ignore all this so as not to irreparably color my view of humanity for the worse, but these were impossible to ignore on Twitter. Where do these people come from?
At some point it will be ragingly apparent to Mick Nugent that your active haters are truly obnoxious, nasty people. I can’t see any reasonable person enjoying receiving their tweets. (And if they are @-ing him, I think he will see them.)
I was Christian Chandler.
And I’m sorry, just… fucking ashamed and sorry. I’m sorry I tweeted those nasty threatening things. I just… ugh, sometimes this… well, “darkness” takes over me. And I think and sometimes say terrible terrible things. Looking back I don’t even know why I did it. My mind’s just… been especially fucked up with this “darkness” and shit lately.
I’m sorry I added to your grief, Ophelia. I’m really really really sorry. I’m not expecting you to forgive… I think I really am a piece of shit… I don’t fucking know. My thoughts just get messed up by… well, “darkness” is what I call it…
I’m sincerely sorry, I don’t know what else to say… I really don’t know what to do about myself sometimes…
Also, in clarification, I am not out for forgiveness… just out to apologize for what I did. Even though I dont know anymore why in the world I wanted to say those things… the fact remains something inside ME wanted me to, and so the responsibility is mine and solely mine.
This is the last I will bother you with, Ophelia.
Thanks Sheila, and all.
I was out having fun with Cooper and looking at a couple of open houses. I’m glad I missed the threats.
If that really is the person doing the tweeting, there @ 309 and 310 – well this is what I’ve been saying all along. This stuff is dangerous. It’s not a joke. People working themselves and each other into frothing rages of hatred at 3 or 4 or 6 people every day is not a joke, it’s dangerous. It pulls in people like that one, and gives them a place to direct their “darkness.” It can escalate. It is not harmless.
O_O
If this is true…you need to find someone to talk to.
Yeah, seek therapy.
I do wonder how many retweets & favorites Christian’s tweets received before the account got deleted.
Ophelia, my ‘bizarro-meter’ just topped out for the week
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I learn from you and read you daily. Your work is important, and you are inspiring.
That’s all 🙂
s.
The `pitters in Nugent’s comments are already dismissing this as not a “real ‘threat because no one recognizes the name “Christian Chandler.” See, only real threats count as harassment and threats are only real if they come with enough evidence of actual physical danger for the police to arrest the person making the threat…
Isn’t it nice to know that you aren’t really being harassed at all? /sarcasm
nope. I am not over this yet. thought I was……
Fire depts (oh hell, those analogies again) have to respond to Every Damned Threat about fire or bombs because the cost of NOT responding to a real call is unacceptable.
Every person WHO GETS THREATS – and where are we that I am typing this – Has to treat them as potentially ‘real’ threats. Because the cost of NOT considering them is too high if they guess wrong.
SWEET MOTHER OF HADES – WHO thinks it’s ‘funny’ to acid-threat someone???!!!
OR, who has so much darkness – if that was a sincere apology and the real story – that they need to threaten violence against someone whom they’ve never even met!!! Never likely had a personal beef with – just thought it was fun to call names and intimidate someone?? BECAUSE OTHER KNOWN ATHEISTS do it TOO?
I looked at the ‘pit today. Nothing furthering any cause except divisiveness and misogyny. I’d say that their greatest punishment is to be left there to each other – no worse curse than being who and what they already are.
But ‘doxxing’ Eliza Sutton is an egregious, if not yet recognised by the authorities, crime.
I find it disappointing and sad that such an obsessively vicious harasser and abuser like Mayhew is getting a TAM slot. Then again, maybe DJ doesn’t follow her twitter feed. Then yet again, maybe he does and thinks it’s harmless.
This is something I wish people would keep in mind when making threats. Even if they don’t mean to do physical harm (and only mean to cause psychological harm, which is bad enough) that doesn’t mean that someone else won’t. Making threats ramps up the level of hostility and helps people who are willing to do real harm legitimize their actions in their own head.
and
As someone with a mental illness, I’m going to back what everyone else said about seeking help about this. If you’re having periods of time where you are losing control of your actions (and yes, speaking/typing counts as an action), then something serious is going on and you need to get it under control both so that it doesn’t go farther and so that you can get your current actions under control. And please (and I once again speak as someone with a mental illness) don’t wait because you think its “not that bad.” Even if it isn’t–and a) one isn’t always in the best position to judge such things, b) if you’ve lost control of your actions, it is that bad–once one does realize that it has gotten “that bad,” it’s almost certainly gotten to a point that fixing it will be incredibly difficult. So, seek help now, not later.
Having a mental illness makes it more important that you hold yourself in check, not less. Everyone has a certain number of filters, checkpoints, whatever you want to call it, that stop them from doing something Really Bad. We who have mental illnesses have fewer checkpoints. That’s part of what it means to be mentally ill. So we need to be incredibly vigilant in enforcing the checkpoints that we have. If we can’t enforce them, we need to make sure that someone else will. That is our responsibility.
It will never be, cannot permitted to be, bad enough to make it anything but your own fault. That’s abusive thinking.
BTW, there hasn’t been any activity in the “Atheist Skeptic Dialogue” since April. Someone ought to ask Michael Nugent about that. Its last post in An update on the dialogue so far | Atheist Skeptic Dialogue. It stated that the two sides are working on a joint statement on areas of agreement, but nothing has come of it so far.
I find it interesting that this debate has become stalled just before it could become interesting: areas of disagreement. I want to see if the slymepit side is willing to try to defend “freeze peach” absolutism.
Is anyone else reminded of the very first thing that happened after the murder of George Tiller? As soon as Roeder was identified the airwaves and the pulpits were full of people crying, “But he wasn’t a fully paid up, card carrying member of our set of nutcases so it’s not fair to blame us! So there!”
Sorry, kiddiwinks. That’s not how the human brain works or how it malfunctions. That’s not how hate campaigns build and operate – we have plenty of documented analyses and if people are triggering that type of response in the already disturbed then they need to stop claiming that their intentions were innocent two years ago and start taking responsibility for the results of their actions now.
We don’t know exactly who this “Christian” person is but suppose s/he had been in Dublin. Suppose that particular fuse had blown a little later this month.
@”Christian Chandler” … If still around I think you owe Ophelia more of an explanation.. “darkness” doesn’t cover it as you did not hear about “acid attacks” and “#FTBullies” from the “darkness”… Where exactly did you pick up this seething hatred and decide to express it on Twitter?
I’m curious about this error being “solely mine” .. are you Conlon come back for a second go? Or is it not quite all you?
@310 – Yes, i said I wouldn’t bother you anymore, so I guess you can add “lying” to the list of shit I did to you – i guess I can’t prove it, but yes it was me. I deleted the account out of both shame and regret for saying those reprehensible things to you… if I could un-say it, I would.
@323 – Obviously, the “darkness” (I call it that because I can’t really describe what it is. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s just something that makes me think and sometimes, like this time, say terrible things. And of course afterwards I feel like a total sack of shit – deservedly so at least in this case.) only made me SAY it. I heard about those things from… well, look above you, Ophelia has catalogued plenty of examples. I guess from reading the awful bullying and harassment it made me, even though I felt sorry for her, it made me “join in”… maybe that’s how my fucked up brain works…
No, I’m not Conlon – i don’t know who that is. Yes, it was all me, not anyone else.
@319 – I’ve known for a while I wasn’t all “right”. I suppose I just never wanted to think of myself as “mentally ill”… I have gone to teraphy a couple times in the past, a year ago – before this, I did think about going back… now, with your comment, I really do think I should.
Again, Ophelia, I am sorry. I know I can’t un-do what I said… apologizing is the only thing I can do to try to amend it.
The blatant ageism in those Karla Porter tweets is just pathetic.
Something tells me if someone started talking about Dawkins needing to stop writing or speaking at conferences because he’s old, Porter and chums would dash to his defence.
Christian,
I can only assume in good faith that you are who you say you are. Assuming that, I want to add to the voices suggesting you don’t try to handle this “darkness” alone. While the things you tweeted were horrible and they did harm to others who had done nothing to you, you are still a person saying you need help and I want you to find that help. Your quality of life is important too. It sounds like before you do anything else, you need to call a hotline, make an appointment with a doctor and maybe sit down with a friend and tell them what is going on. Beginning with an apology was a good step. You acknowledged you need a hand. That’s a good second step. Now treating the underlying issues are the next ones to take.
When you have found that help I would appreciate it if you would come back here and answer oolon’s question in #323. Something triggered this lashing out and something (mis)informed it. I think you should explain what that was.
@ 325 and 327 – just to explain (for instance why I don’t rush to embrace “Christian” or accept the apology or give advice or anything along those lines) – I have no reason at all to assume “Christian” is who he or she claims to be, or is telling the truth. I have plenty of reason not to. The people who harass me try to fuck with my head. Sure, “Christian” could be telling the truth, or “Christian” could be a sadistic shit adding a new twist to the sadistic shittery. “Christian” could be in Dublin and making plans, for all I know, or in Seattle doing the same. I have no way of knowing, do I.
Hankstar @319:
I think it’s pretty clear, given that Blackford’s on the roster as well (and Shermer and Swiss, but those are mainstays), that DJ has chosen sides. I don’t think it’s because he sides with the pit or supports harassment necessarily; I think it has more to do with seeing the Skepchicks as whiners/shit-stirrers and not wanting to deal with them. I suspect he took the criticism and drama from the last year personally, and so he’s sticking with the people who won’t pull out last minute and make him look bad.
TAM desperately wants you only to be criticizing the woo-woos they put on stage for the MDC, not each other, going all the way back to Bidlack’s “let’s not talk religion” speech, Plait’s “Don’t be a dick,” and so forth. Bringing in controversial topics like religion or politics or gender or maybe there ought to be a posted harassment policy rocks the boat unnecessarily. Putting people on the speaker roster who might have disagreements with other speakers is just asking for trouble.
Jackie, whether or not anyone decides to take anything about “Christian” in good faith, it’s completely obvious where five of those six tweets came from. We could post them side by side with their originals or with examples of the expression for those that are more common. The only one I haven’t seen from people who don’t blame what they do on mental illness is the “52 pick up” tweet. Otherwise, they’ve all come from people who thought that what they were doing was perfectly reasonable. No “confession” necessary.
According to this comment on Nugent’s blog, the name “Chris Chandler” has a history with 4chan:
I can’t speak to the veracity of this comment, but I saw it and thought it would be worth sharing. I’m curious if anyone else knows more about it.
Tom Foss @329:
I know it’s been said before, but this continues to baffle me. After all the time and effort – not to mention money! – Surly Amy spent to get multiple people to TAM, why wouldn’t DJ want to listen to her and take her concerns seriously? She was obviously committed to TAM/JREF before last year’s shitstorm, and they’ve thrown that goodwill away.
[from Sartre’s “Portrait of the Antisemite” (highly imperfect but worth reading), with references to the specific subject removed/changed]
sisu@332:
I’m not endorsing the following line of thinking, but I think it’s a good guess as to the rationale:
Chances are that the JREF figured that last year’s TAM was going to be the last one that Skepchick helped promote anyway. Rebecca had already pulled out, and it was a reasonable inference that they were only sending their scholarship recipients to TAM because they’d already committed to doing it. The JREF also clearly regarded Amy’s presence as a liability risk, either because people would harass her, and/or the JREF would be forced to eject somebody, and/or Amy would invent a story of harassment because, you know, that’s so common and she’s part of that plot against them. Hence the constant surveillance. So, weigh the slight possibility of bringing Amy and Skepchick back into the fold against the perceived risks, plus the loud cheers of many JREF donors and TAM speakers, and DJ’s presumed personal feelings on the matter, and — again, accepting these dubious premises — it becomes an easy decision to say good riddance.
@Sally Strange, yeah I’ve heard of him as an archetypal 4chan trolling victim – went on for years and aimed at attacking him as an autistic kid to this day. So our “Christian Chandler”, while putting his own name in quotes is obviously very dubious. His antics remind me of the disgraced pittizen, SurelyYouGuest, who explained on my blog about how the pit engages in trolling campaigns to “expose the hypocrisy of FTBs”… He was a fan of 4chan, as are many there I’d guess. He may be kosher but the tell of stressing the blame is “solely” his while denying all knowledge of Slymepit memes seems disingenuous at best. Slymeclub rule one is plausible deniability, if you intend to go “too far” then don’t link the pit. That reeked of this mindset to me…
So trolling theory would be you get to attack Ophelia then come on her blog with a “mental illness” explanation immediately she blogs about it and get shouted at by the evilz FTBullies. Who are therefore proven to be uncaring when it comes to neurodiverse people and the real bad guys here. Obviously missing the point that “darkness” or “mental illness” being used as an excuse for bad behaviour is not credible. There are plenty of abusive assholes that do exactly what “Christian” did and invoking mental illness is insulting to the mentally ill.
Ophelia and Stephanie,
I understand that and I agree that this is definitely super fishy. But just in case, because I have no way of really knowing, I want to encourage this person to get help. That doesn’t mean you should believe “Christian”.
Hankstar @319:
And Tom Foss @329
That may be the case, but from my perspective as someone who has been only tangentially aware of any of this up until I had a recent, interesting interaction with Mayhew on Twitter, I think it’s entirely depressing that the JREF, which is supposedly dedicated to exposing hucksters and grifters is now inviting a prime example of the species to speak at TAM. I don’t know what Sarah Mayhew is, if she isn’t a grifter. Her only talent appears to be shameless self-promotion of her, at best, mediocre art. Which, as far as I can tell, is the only reason she does the same marginally interesting talk over and over again.
All I’m getting for the most recent section is a ‘There was a problem connecting to Twitter’.
I’m assuming its this one -> https://twitter.com/lasttangoinhull
It’s there now. Good grief.
Ya, sorry, I assume he blocked me (though I can still see his feed) so posting the tweets didn’t work, so I did screen caps.
Dang–I was reading over all of your great posts the last few days, and today, earlier (I read while eating lunch in between grading for my summer class), I was thinking, wow, maybe the harassers have gotten bored or are out getting suntanned or something..and then WHAM. It returns.
I’m so sorry.
But the posts were excellent to read–thank you!
Well it was just so weird and random and over the top and uncaused, I had to document it. But I much prefer doing the other stuff.
Sarah Mayhew seems to be getting smaller and smaller.
Judging by the tweet that preceded this, it appears he had an abusive father, has an emotional response to Father’s Day,* and feels free to take his pain and anger out on you. Since you’re already a target and all.
*I hate Father’s Day for the opposite reason (and assorted others).
I got the distinct impression that that @LastTangoInHull person was being a snarly drunk. Those tweets were completely out of nowhere and devolved into screaming waaay too fast.
Drunk or sober, one theme I love in ‘Pitter comments and tweets is the tactic of flinging names and insults and the usual dumb jabs, then saying how much better the movement would be if we all stopped the infighting and played nice with each other. Pick one or the other; you don’t get to do both, dipshits.
KerCHING! Another donation to Ophelia. Thank you for the inspiration, Daniel.
Every tweet Mayhew (and Vacula) make should just read “EVERYBODY LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEE! PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEE!” That would, y’know, be more honest.
That first tweet, besides all it’s other charms, is also stupid. Ophelia is egocentric for posting about others, and Rebecca and Greta are narcissists for withdrawing support from CFI Painfully dim.
KerCHING! Nice one Sara.
Wait, the CFI equals skepticism?
Way to go, Miss America
New one: At Hemant Mehta’s thread about a post about AJ Johnson’s suit against American Atheists, someone brings you up out of the blue to accuse you of posting one-sided conspiracy theories. From one post: “Yeah, it’s Ophelia’s little conspiracy theory that everyone on the internet is out to get her by making pissy little rude comments on Twitter that she has to heroically suffer and that certain people are in on the conspiracy and they won’t leave her alone.”
Oy……………….
Hey Slymers, guess what??
Ker-CHING!
@SC, you can link to a specific comment if you click on the “a day ago” or time bit… Although disqus is often flakey in actually jumping to the comment in my experience.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/17/american-atheists-sued-by-former-employee-2/#comment-934622667
Not that I mind as it was fun to see Matt and Martin rip into the fools on that thread 🙂