It’s Friday, and I sort of played hookey from the serious business of this blog. Sometimes, with this stuff, you’ve got to take a breather.
So, instead of the usual terrible quotes from terrible people here are some cats being cats.
Also, while I have you all here, a giant THANK YOU to everyone who has donated. And if you haven’t, the We Hunted the Mammoth Fourth Quarter Pledge Drive continues!
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And now, without further ado, here are more kitties!
This next story is almost unbelievable: There existed, until earlier this week, a PR firm in Austin called Strange Fruit PR. You know, like the Billie Holiday song. The Billie Holiday song ABOUT LYNCHING. Apparently the founders of the firm (who were, of course, white) thought they could use the phrase t0 mean “someone who stood out in a crowd.”
Detail of an unintentionally revealing A Voice for Men meme
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From time to time I like to check in on the Facebook page for A Voice for Men, to see how that eminent men’s human rights organization’s program to advance the human man rights of human men through badly designed and even more poorly conceived graphic “memes” is going.
Well, I can report that this program is going, and going, and going, a bit like a famous battery-powered bunny.
Looking through them today, I couldn’t help but notice the weird sexual undertones — and overtones — of many of the memes, and realized that, while none of the memes tell us much about the world, they do, in an altogehter accidental way, offer some pretty interesting insights into the ids of those making and “liking” them on Facebook.
You don’t have to be a trained psychoanalyst to see the not-very-well-hidden straight male sexual insecurities that lie behind a large number of AVFM’s memes — both the ones they create themselves and the others that seem to have arrived on the AVFM page after being forwarded via email from someone’s cranky misogynistic uncle. Let’s take a look at some of them.
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Welcome to the first episode of MEME FAIL, a new series of posts in which I look at, well, memes that fail. It’s kind of all there in the name, huh?
Today, we look at a meme aimed at former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Wil Wheaton, who has apparently committed the egregious sin of expressing his opinion about #GamerGate on Twitter.
The MEME. (Click for a larger version.)
How it FAILS: There’s really no way in which this meme doesn’t fail.
Let’s start with the most obvious problem: Calling #GamerGaters stupid pieces of dog poop is not actually racist or sexist. Apparently, #GamerGaters feel that because there are some people in their little movement who aren’t straight cis white dudes, any insult directed at their little movement is therefore racist and sexist (and homophobic and transphobic)?
Then there’s the whole “Eulogy” thing. Wheaton is not actually suggesting that #GamerGate should go die, literally or figuratively. He’s actually quoting from the lyrics of a song by Tool called, well, “Eulogy.”
The song in question, as best as anyone has been able to figure out, is a snarky takedown of a self-righteous, self-appointed martyr who “had a lot of nothing to say.” Tool’s drummer has suggested that it’s aimed at L. Ron Hubbard. But, as Wheaton notes, the song very well could have been written about #GamerGaters, if #GamerGaters had been a thing when it was written.
You sure could yell. You took a stand on every little thing And so loud. Standing above the crowd
So loud. So very very loud.
BONUS IRONY: I ran across this meme being mocked on r/gamerghazi, but did a reverse image search to find a larger and more readable version of it. I found one in a thread on FunnyJunk.com in which one of the commenters refers to “Wil ‘Captain Mangina’ Wheaton” as “the gayest faggot in Fagtopia” and, well, let’s just say that the commenter also suggests that Wheaton enjoys anal sex.
Today marks the beginning of the Fourth Quarter 2014 We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive! Which is another way of saying “several days in which I beg you all for money.”
To repeat my simple pitch from my previous pledge drives: If you enjoy this blog, and can afford it, please click on the “donate” button below and send a few bucks my way. Or, if you’d prefer, a lot of bucks. You don’t need a PayPal account; credit cards are accepted, and there are other options as well. If you’re outside the US, PayPal will automatically convert your weird non-American money into American bucks.
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As always, your donations are all greatly appreciated, whatever size they are. They keep me, the cats, and this blog going. And thanks to all of those who donate between pledge drives as well! Some of you are really going above and beyond, and it means a lot to me.
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This past quarter has been the biggest quarter ever for We Hunted the Mammoth; over the past three months, the site has averaged more than a million page views per month. And the total number of comments left since the blog began is approaching half a million. No, really. Thanks, everyone!
You know how, in The Poseidon Adventure, the giant cruise ship gets flipped over by a huge wave and the passengers have to make their way through the upside-down ship to the bottom of the hull, which is now the top, in order to survive?
Well, the Men’s Rights subreddit is kind of like that. The only way to get upvotes is to look at everything upside-down.
See, e.g., this comment addressing the issue of rape, and why feminists allegedly lie about it:
The Men’s Rights Movement: To silly even for Richard Dawkins?
Richard Dawkins, I think it’s fair to say, is a bit of a dick. Though he’s an expert popularizer of science he seems to be a bit of a blithering idiot on every other topic he tries to address; his broadsides on religion are patronizing and profoundly ignorant, and his forays into gender politics are even more cringey.
He puts his foot in his mouth so often on Twitter that it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between his real account and this absurdist parody.
As most of you no doubt know, the story that a UVA student known as “Jackie” told Rolling Stone of suffering a gang rape at a UVA fraternity is coming unraveled; a number of key details in the story appear to be false.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind, though:
1) After reluctantly speaking to journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Jackie asked to be removed from the story; Erdely and Rolling Stone refused to honor her wishes. Ultimately, Erderly and Rolling Stone are responsible for the story, and the story’s errors, not Jackie.
2) Friends of Jackie report that in the Fall of 2012, after the night in which the assaults allegedly took place, she displayed many of the symptoms of someone who had been sexually assaulted, growing withdrawn and depressed and ultimately returning home before the term was over. I still think it’s very likely she did indeed suffer some sort of sexual assault.
3) A right-wing “journalist” has doxxed Jackie, posting what he says is her real name and other personal details.
Here are some useful pieces on the whole sad mess:
