Marcus Ranum posted an excellent rebuttal of the ‘clickbait’ gambit, so I’m reposting it here.
I automatically despise people who use the “clickbait” “to make money” argument. And here is why: it never seems to come from someone who is enduring economic hardship, and it implies that the person supposedly doing it is so desperate that they need the extra fractions of a cent they might get. If you’re a bestselling author and lecturer with an international stature with an estimated net worth of over $100 million, claiming that your detractors are pushing click bait amounts to asking “why don’t they eat cake?” (“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”) yes in the internet era there is money to be made with click bait, but it requires huge volumes such as that driven by celebrity selfie leaks and sex tapes. From the sound of it, bloggers such as those on FTb and Patheos make vastly less blogging than someone of Dawkins’ stature commands from a single speaking engagement. It’s like a professional football player responding to someone who criticizes their stratospheric salary: “well why don’t you become a professional football player, too?” Ultimately, to me, it reveals one as suffering from a uniquely modern disease: the affluenza of the nouveau riche – I’ve got mine, so you’re contemptible.
The click bait argument is also hypocritical at its core. It amounts to someone blogging or tweeting for attention in order to accuse someone else of blogging or tweeting for attention.
The only possible situational difference is the size of the channel – it would be extra distasteful if someone used their regular column in Vanity Fair to complain that a small-time blogger was click baiting their fan-base of 12,000 followers. In that sense accusing someone of click baiting amounts to yelling “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!?!” Which always says more about the insecurity and venality of the accuser.
Richard Dawkins, in other words, is attempting to dismiss arguments against him by saying that they were financially motivated — when the amount in question would be a rounding error on one of his investment portfolios. That is distasteful.
I will also add that I have voluntarily relinquished all income from FtB for the next few months, so I do not profit at all from any temporary surges in traffic. This was a decision made a month or so ago — my normal income is being donated to the network as a whole to help stabilize revenues to the newbies here. Dawkins did not know that, but still…it makes him even wrongerer.
Excellent!
and
oh snap
PZ, I love that this is true, and I love that I didn’t know this until there was an actual, public issue that gave me reason to know this.
Thanks for being you, you big ol’ tentacular mass of curmudgeonly goodness.
Dawkins is not completely wrong. He’s a 6.99999-recurring on a scale of 7 of wrongness. The degree to which he is not wrong is about the same as the degree to which I believe that fairies live in the bottom of the well.
Well, dang it, PZ. I clicked on this only so as to get you another layer of gold plating on one of your lesser yachts (they are looking less than dazzling). And here it turns out you are doing all you can to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, with some odious attackers, and turning even that to good use – bravo.
Marcus Ranum:
Excellent explanation, thank you, Marcus.
Oh PZ, you don’t need to keep telling us how you wont profit from this. It sounds rather defensive itself. Be on the attack!
Anyway I thought Marcus’s post was great. It deconstructs the ad hominem attack of click bait very well. I’ll start listening again when the players start playing the ball and not the player.
PZ:
Oh, you’re just doing it for the attention, no one could actually care about new bloggers!*
*Brought to you by Shiny Sarcasm, Inc.
My donation is only temporary — we’ve got a new ad service that promises a much better return, so once the pennies start streaming in from that in a few months time, I’ll be lining up at the trough again. But until then, I’ve got a stable and well-paying (well, OK-paying) job, so I can afford to go without for a while, and help keep the less fortunate afloat for now. I can maintain the yacht still, and am just deferring on the gold electroplating for a bit.
Seriously. One has to have an enormous amount of chutzpah, when acclaimed the ‘leader’ of a movement based solely on being ‘the white guy whose angry screeds have sold the most’, and doing so while Scrooge McDucking through your Big Bin O’Money, much of it earned for the angry screeds, to sneer “Well, you’re only doing this to make money!”
As if the idea of someone being paid for their writing is an idiotic and fraudulent idea. Did people actually think this person was a good thinker at some point? Or was it kinda like Jane Rule, “It’s good because that’s pretty much all there is at this point, but when you actually compare it to good lesbian writing, it’s really just…shite”*?
* YMMV.
Eventually, all those clicks will revert back to PZ’s account, and by then he’ll have garnered so much attention, it’ll have totally been worth it to sacrifice a few months of ludicrously lucrative income!
Less sarcastically, PZ had better watch out, or I’m going to start thinking too highly of him. One day, wise master, I hope to meet you in person and, at least, shake your hand. Tentacle. Whatever.
Eventually, all of that click-money will revert to PZ’s account, and by then he’ll have garnered so much attention that it will have totally been worth the sacrifice of a few month’s income, just to have a ludicrously lucrative income at the end of it all. I’m sure that’s the plan, at least!
Less sarcastically, PZ better watch out or I’m going to start thinking too highly of him. One day, wise master, I hope to meet you in person and shake your hand. Tentacle. Whatever.
Nice* attempt at a bait ‘n’ switch, PZ, but Dawkins knows about your Trophy Wife™. And you certainly won’t be able to hide your liberal ivory tower riches from Barbara Drescher, Internet Accountant™.
*Seriously, though: nice.
Again, Dawkins is doing it the religious way, the woo way. Often, the anti-abortion folks will say that the abortion providers are only in it for the money that is earned by performing abortions – while fundraising hand over fist. And the alternative medicine folks will decry Big Pharma and its profits – while selling water at big bucks the gram.
For him, a highly-paid writer and speaker, to be slagging PZ for doing a pale shadow of Dawkins’ professor-to-pontiff career, is silly. And to be doing so in a very public forum, via social media, is past ridiculous.
… a bestselling author and lecturer with an international stature with an estimated net worth of over $100 million…
Marcus R, did you write that hypothetically or does Dawkins actually weigh in at 0.1 Oprahs?
Pierce R. Butler @ 13, Dawkins’s net worth is estimated to be around 135 million.
Awesome insight, Marcus. I make no money from blogging (I’m privileged enough that I don’t need to). I deliberately have no advertising on my blog, so don’t have to give a flying fuck about clicks. I criticize and lampoon Dawkins for one reason that seems not to have occurred to him: because it amuses me to mock hysterical dumbass shitweasels. I also think it’s important work. Unfortunately (for me), he’s become too banally predictable and boring to make good blog fodder. Fortunately (for me!), there’s no shortage of hysterical dumbass shitweasels to mock. :D
In the previous thread, kesara (comment 170) linked to this post of Stephanie Zvan’s:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2012/08/23/oh-that-dawkins/
So he knows this clickbait bullshit is untrue, was informed of it two years ago, acknowledges it’s not true, but he pushes it anyway.
Iyéska @ # 14: … Dawkins’s net worth is estimated to be around 135 million.
Wow – I don’t even have to ask in which currency.
So why is he wasting his time putting down mere clickbaiters when he could be enlightening us all about the folly of class warfare? Look at all the witchhunts and inquisitions faced by the benevolent but helpless 1%!
Marcus’s comment also alludes to the comically absurd levels of projection typical of conservatives. Remember this?
I just want to remind everyone here that critics of Richard Dawkins’ clueless misogyny are too emotional and prone to delusional exaggeration to be, you know, rational. This has been a public service announcement. Carry on, you bullies.
If PZ really wanted to drive up the clicks, he’d start posting pictures of cats.
Too bad DJ Grothe never figured out how to harness the power of drama-blogging to earn money for the JREF.
If it were the case, Brian Dunning wouldn’t have had to pull his cookie/widget fraud.
@Kevin Kehres, 3
6.9999 repeating is, mathematically, identical to 7.
Off topic, I know, but my inner math snob had to speak up.
Matrim
I think that’s the joke.
rq:
Yes. :D
Just out of curiosity, how much does Dawkins charge for speaking at an event these days?
Can we get that information Anthony K at #17 is signal boosting added to the post? If not this one, then the other one? Because that seems really, really fucking important.
Matrim #22,
Maybe Kevin was working in the hyperreals :D
dereksmear #25
Dawkings’ speaking fee in 2009 was “closer” to 20,000$.
Deliberately trying to get blog traffic isn’t as easy as some people think. All my joking attempts at shameless hit mongering, like mentioning Harry Potter when the last book came out, failed. Conversely I get hits from posts on topics I wouldn’t have thought be of much interest, like the demise of the Malted Milk chocolate bar.
Haha, flawless.
Marcus Ranum,
Thanks. Excellent writing.
Dawkins views just seem more and more culturally unevolved.
Saad
Actually, I think it’s a riff on Dawkins himself – if I recall, once, when asked, he wasn’t “100% atheist, but on a scale of 7, he’s at 6.99999…” (just in case evidence ‘for’ ever turns up). I may be remembering wrong, though.
Marcus, you’re awesome. :)
And I’ll just second Crip Dyke at 2:
Marcus R, did you write that hypothetically or does Dawkins actually weigh in at 0.1 Oprahs?
Let’s just say that Dawkins can afford a better publicist than whoever he’s got writing those tweets for him. He can afford a dozen, if he wants them, and limos to drive them around in.
The most sympathy I can muster for Dawkins here is that he perhaps fails to see a distinction between people criticizing him (and Harris) online, now, for the asinine things they’ve said about feminism and women, among others, and the deluge of “The ______ Delusion” books that were released following TGD, to presumably respond to Dawkins while making a quick buck by riding the coattails of his bestseller. There are obvious problems with this–we’re responding to ignorant things said on Twitter and in interviews, not NYT bestsellers, there’s a lot less money to be made from blogging than from writing books, and perhaps most importantly, as Stephanie Zvan pointed out years ago, the controversial posts aren’t the ones that bring in hits.
Nevermind that half of Dawkins’ ignorant, controversial tweets end up preceding articles he writes on those subjects or responding to the Twitter tempests on sites like The Guardian or New Statesman or whatever. Maybe the issue is that these assholes think every thought that drops half-formed from their mouths or fingertips is worthy of being a NYT bestseller.
All I know is that I own several books by Dawkins (and two by Harris) that I haven’t gotten around to reading, and they keep moving further and further down in my reading pile. Got a distinct feeling that they’re soon going to join my old Shermer and Blackford and Pigliucci titles at Half-Price Books.
This is relevant:
http://www.nmplive.co.uk/professor-richard-dawkins
Also:
Clickbait, indeed.
I do not know how the Richard Dawkins Foundation is structured, financially, but it’s worth mentioning here that most “foundations” (Including one I started in 1998, which I ceded control of to my ex-wife as part of a settlement) are “tax shelters” They’re a dodge for transferring wealth across generations while reducing tax consequences, or for reducing the tax consequences on an individual who has a single significant financial event (such as exercising a couple million bucks worth of stock options, or some such) The way such foundations work is that the foundation may pay a “management fee” to those responsible for managing the foundation’s money – which usually means re-investing it and making it larger. This is why a douchebag like Rick Warren or a sleazy politician like Hillary Clinton is lying when they say “they give all their speaking fees to charity” or their book proceeds to charity (i.e.: their foundation). Suppose you have a bunch of stock options in a company that goes public – if you exercise them and sell them, you’ll net $5m. And since that’s short-term (not capital gains) you would treat the $5m as income and pay about $2m in taxes on it. Instead, your financial advisor suggests you create a foundation, buy the options, then give the shares to the foundation. The foundation then sells the shares and now has $5m — but if the foundation is a charity (technically called: a charitable remainder trust) it doesn’t pay any taxes at all. Now the foundation has $5m in its bank account and pays you a 5-15% per year “management fee” for managing its money: you get to pay yourself a steady (taxable) income of $500,000 per year, while the $5m ‘nest egg’ keeps generating more money in the endowment. If you aren’t greedy and don’t pay a large management fee, and allow the foundation’s endowment to grow, suppose 7%/year well-invested, it might be paying you 10% of $10 in 10 years when you’re ready to retire with a millonaire-level cash flow. Remember when Chelsea Clinton quit her cushy journalist job to “take a position at the Clinton Foundation” – yeah, that means she clamped her teeth on that teat and will never have to click-bait again.
I know nothing about Dawkins’ arrangements but no matter how you slice it, him accusing a blogger who lives on the salary of a tenured professor of “click-baiting” is disgustingly nouveau riche.
Please tell me you were thinking of Sarah Palin when you wrote that.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/sarah-palin-and-clan-at-centre-of-drunken-brawl/story-fnb64oi6-1227058681423?nk=2db25d9da1537279d9c532f50dc87660
Oh come on, I’m sure that’s an exaggeration. After all, trained chimps must be awfully expensive. And of course those old-timey typewriters are probably collectibles for a lot of folks, so that can’t be cheap either….
nope, you recall correctly.
I am not very surprised by Richard Dawkins. He is British after all is the inheritor of a country estate that has been in the family for almost 300 years. he is a graduate of elite universities and has been a dean in them. he is socially reactionary is not a big shock.
PZ is an educated working class intellectual and scientist not a surprise that his values are some what different, his experience is different. We in the U.S. do not always recognize the same significance of these kinds of class distinctions coming from a seemingly some what more egalitarian society.
Britain is not that way. The more we can get the reactionary elements of the leadership class and their sycophants to speak out the more anti-democratic they appear, the more hostile to the people and their prosperity and freedom they are shown to be.
Revolutionary change is painful, the dissolution of cherished illusions is not without difficulty and discomfort. Some people are not able to accept the inevitable change that must occur if we are going to continue forward and not slide backward into barbarism and feudalism.
uncle frogy
Please tell me you were thinking of Sarah Palin when you wrote that.
I was.
This “clickbait” or “she collected money to work on a project” meme seems to be the hot new trend in ad hominem-arguments, but it seems to be some kind of weird relastive of the “you are not polite enough” argument. Similarly to being angry, apparently getting money for something makes it invalid. That is quite a curious thing, I wonder if people making that argument also refuse getting paid for their job so not to endanger their integrity?
I’d like to know what exactly Dawkins thinks he is doing on twitter. He’s currently got 1,021,394 followers. Those are all his best buds, is that it? And these 19,146 tweets … that’s really quite a corpus, of which I’m sure he is proud. He delivers lots of fascinating and useful information on there, I take it, not just lots of little bits of overblown dribble to attract attention? Right? I’m not a twit, so somebody please give me a fucking clue here.
Me, I wonder what he would think of someone printing up a Storify of some of his most stink-rotten tweets and presenting it to his mother (hypothetically, don’t know whether the woman is alive or not). Would he be happy to have his mum look at the stuff he’s written the last few days?
If not, why not?
:)
ah, Princess Dumbass of the North Woods… where would the world be without her?
I hear Putin managed to video the fracas from his front porch.
@Marcus Ranum
Dawkins has a net worth of $135 Million.
http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celeb/authors/richard-dawkins-net-worth/
Damn clitbaiters
I wonder if Dawkins has registered as a Tory supporter yet?
O.o
that’s a new one.
$135 million. I had no idea.
Perspective, though: that site says Stephenie Meyer is worth $165 million.
Damn clitbaiters
That would be all those men-feminists doing it for the sex, yes?
…I’m not even sure I want to parse what it means. :P
@Joerg #42:
It’s not new. The “they’re just doing it for the clicks/ad revenue/pageviews” has a long and storied history among the antifeminist/anti-FTB, and previously accommodationist/anti-Gnu atheist crowd*, with prominent resurgences in the Cracker Incident, Boobquake, Elevatorgate, Greta Christina’s cancer fund, every TAM, and pretty much any time anyone criticizes one of the big atheist/skeptic names.
*I consistently find the amount of overlap between those groups amusing–so many of the same people who derided the use of foul language now defend people who fling slurs with wanton abandon. The people who once argued that we needed to be nicer and hide atheists in the closet so we could attract more religious skeptics now balk at any suggestion that we might need to make changes to make the movement more friendly to women and minorities who are already part of it, let alone reaching out. I’d wonder why the groups have so many individuals in common if the clear connecting thread weren’t authoritarianism.
Next thing Dawkins will pronounce that his Twit followers number is directly proportional to his ginormous IQ.
@PZMyers
Dawkins produces more fiction than Meyer these days.
Ha ha, I’m such a Freethought bully.
man, I keep getting reminded of that old Michael Edmonson vid for “Expelled”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaGgpGLxLQw
…and now thinking it was more prescient than it seemed at the time.
you mean Stephen Meyer?
yeah, that’s actually becoming a fair comparison, at least wrt to public comments.
@27
Then 6.999 repeating isn’t well defined, since this is arbitrarily close to any infinitesimal. Basically adding infinitesimals destroy intuition acquired through calculus (ironic considering the original naïve formulation relied on them.)
Well, you know they work for their money, they give something in return, while the others are just e-begging and ripping people who willingly and happily pay for what they like (we, the sheeple, for the sheeple and by the sheeple).
Totally different things!
They also believe in the magical hand of the free market, I think they’re beating the Queen in Alice in Wonderland with ease…
@Tom 52: oh yes, for sure. It probably has gotten traction in correlation to social campaigning and payment sites becoming popular. It must really rub the abusers the wrong way that activists can be less controlled by the usual tools of capitalism, like that only people who work are respectable.
Rebecca PWNed him pretty hard.
Damn, irisv, that is one truly righteous PWNing.
“It’s completely different, of course,” he said, predictably. “In that case, I was highlighting the hypocrisy of her position, whereas I’m a very clever Oxford don, and thus by definition never a hypocrite in any way, res ipso loquitur, you know. Also, that was someone pretending to be me. Also, I apologised. Also, she’s only doing this for hits. Also, I have a cadre of flying monkeys who will now assail her very presence on the web until she cries ‘uncle’. I love it when they do that. Call me uncle. Mmmm. Wait, is this microphone still-” click-bzzzzt
– interview with Richard Dawson, tomorrow
Accusing someone of clickbait is a bit weird: is he accusing PZ of putting out things that are dishonest, things he does not believe, so to fool people into giving him more money via their clicks? If so, Dawkins should state that outright, and not play twitter games. If not, than what’s the charge? That one should only publish negative opinion pieces (or *anything* that might be popular) if they forgo all benefits from them? Because that’s ridiculous: God forbid people passionately believe in things and publish them, and also derive joy from seeing their work widely read (and get paid for it, because, last I checked, this isn’t a money free utopia).
So I don’t care if you make 100 million for every sentence…
that wasn’t just pwnage, that was near perfect, symmetrical, revenge!
that one went into my bookmarks.
Marcus:
Excellent post.
It made me reflect on the fact that I’m broker than broke and if I set up ads on my blog to collect *some* kind of revenue, while doing what I like doing-blogging about issues that are important to me (and the occasional stuff I really enjoy)-there’s nothing wrong with that.
It also made me realize how much of a tremendous fucking asshole Dawkins is. My contempt for him grows. I half want to meet the man so I can NOT shake his hand and NOT say anything, and simply turn and walk away.
****
PZ:
I will also add that I have voluntarily relinquished all income from FtB for the next few months, so I do not profit at all from any temporary surges in traffic. This was a decision made a month or so ago — my normal income is being donated to the network as a whole to help stabilize revenues to the newbies here. Dawkins did not know that, but still…it makes him even wrongerer.
While my respect for Dawkins (not that it was high to begin with) diminishes, my respect for YOU grows. Good show sir.
also, in the comments to rebecca’s revenge, was this little gem:
I remember how stern Richard Dawkins was in chastising Tim Minchin for writing an inflammatory song expressing his professed outrage over the Pope. The strictly principled Dawkins wanted nothing to do with promoting Minchin’s videos.
Or is my memory failing me? Help me out here, New Yorker Magazine:
Oh. Well. Hm. But then there was the time that Dawkins refused to share the stage at the Reason Rally with Minchin.
Aw, crap. Minchin did appear at the Reason Rally, didn’t he? Dawkins only blacklisted Rebecca Watson.
P.S. Nothing in this comment should be taken as a criticism of Tim Minchin. I think he’s great. My point is just that Dawkins seems to be totally cool with people expressing outrage and making money off the resulting controvery, except when it involves criticizing him or one of his buddies.
I think that was more concisely expressed by Minchin himself as “Fuck the Motherfucker“
Sorry, one more rant about this:
You could literally accuse anyone of the equivalent of clickbaiting. You can go to me (who occasionally posts poetry on online forums), and say “Did you post that because you meant it, or are you just trying to get attention?”. How should I respond?? Yes! I enjoy sharing things with people, being a part of the resulting community. I enjoy when people positively review my work, and when it gets more views. So what? If I’m serious about what I post, and if I am, along with being happy with the positive, also interested in critical feedback to improve my writing, what’s the problem? Should we all be vulcans like Richard and share only when logic requires it?
[Rant over…]
uh, if anything, Richard has clearly managed to divorce himself from anything that resembles a fictional Vulcan.
He’s gone full Romulan!
never go full Romulan.
Given his rampant misogyny, ob$e$$ion with $, and his complete failure to be funny in the role of comic relief, I’d say that Dawkins has gone full Ferengi.
Ichthyic @ 56:
:laughs: Er, Stephanie Meyer, mormon author of the glitter vampires…um, twilight.
considering the amount of fiction Stephen Meyer publishes, you can imagine my confusion.
especially given the direct comparison to Dawkins.
you ARE aware of Stephen Meyer, right? One of the main founders of the Discotute and its primary and bestselling (icky but true) author?
I guess it just goes to show… glitter sells whether it be sprinkled on a vampire, or on a religion.
Ichthyic:
Yes.
gakxz1 @68:
I rather liked the rant and hoped it would continue.
****
Can’t believe I fucked up the blockquote in my comment @64. Been a while since I did that. Sheesh.
Shame on me @ # 14 for using outdated numbers: Dawkins’s purse (using figures given above) adds up to about 0.04 Oprahs.
I too have relinquished the FTB income for this interim period. So there, Richard!
Correction to my post @35: Stephanie Zvan pointed out that Dawkins tried this tactic two years and a couple of weeks ago. Jason Thibeault is the one who crunched the numbers and found no correlation between controversy and hit counts.
Ophelia @76:
I applaud that.
@Tom:
your link is busted, though I do remember what you are referring to.
is this it?
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2012/01/15/hits-vs-comments-controversialism-and-a-reception-metric/
That’s the one. Not sure entirely how I futzed the link.
To be more positive, while those guys are busy patting themselves and each other on the backs over how gosh darned clever they are to have figured out there is no god(s), I’m much happier hanging out over here with all of you. You’re good peeps, as nobody would likely say.
Marfus, that was a righteous post. When you quoted “Do you know who I am!!??” I thouht of the Juggernaut, not Sarah Palin.
UnknownEric @82:
I use the phrase ‘good peeps’ from time to time as well (in fact, I suggested it a while back in the Lounge as a substitute from ‘folks’ or ‘guys’).
I guess we’re both nobody.
Can 2 people be nobody?
Will that screw with the space-time continuum?
“Do you know who I am?” reminds me of that joke about two Australian soldiers drunk and lost in a town somewhere in the Middle East, and they can’t find their way back to camp. Randomly wandering for hours, they finally come across one of the English officers (yes, this is back in those days) and approach him to ask for directions. Instead, he looks down his nose at them, and asks mockingly in that hoity-toity upper-class accent of his, “Do you know who I am?”
The first Australian soldier, shocked, turns to the second and says, “We thought we had it bad – we don’t know where we are, but this bloke doesn’t even know who he is!”
(Australian colloquialisms have been lost over time in the deepest recesses of my mem’ry, but that’s the basic gist.)
[/OT]
Ophelia, that’s great – thanks for that. You all set good roles to follow.
@85, rq:
Huh. I was expecting the old “How dare you treat me like this? Do you know who I am?” “Do you know who I am?” “No.” “Good.” (*Hangs up phone.*)
We have (had?) a great TV ad her in South Africa about “Do you know who I am?” that you all simply must see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=006RNS-jtSQ
I thought of the expression on her face at the end when I read Rebecca’s post.
The Doctor can probably fix it.