We Hunted The Mammoth
By David Futrelle
Over the weekend, the UK’s prestigious Daily Star ran an important work of serious journalism warning of an impending, if underappreciated, threat to humankind. In an article with the sobering headline “Sex robot ARMIES: Fears hackers could create killer cyborgs and turn technology on punters,” the Star informed the poor punters of the word that the sexbots they’ve been longing for might just take up arms against them. Or at least knives. And possibly welding torches.
Horrible news: “Skeptic Feminist” Youtuber Aleksandr Kolpakov has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder after allegedly shooting and killing Heather “Ivy” Anable, his girlfriend and one of his cohosts on his Skeptic Feminist Youtube channel.
If you wondered where I was yesterday, I was writing this piece for New York Magazine’s The Cut on confessed racist murderer James Jackson and the alt-right-ization of the MGTOW movement that takes off from this post of mine earlier this week. Discuss!
You might also want to take a look at Robyn Pennacchia’s Wonkette piece on Jackson.
So today some anonymous someone posted an almost certainly bullshit story on Reddit’s Men Going Their Own Way subreddit claiming that he just learned that his ex-wife (and mother to his children) had been murdered — and that he was feeling pretty happy about it.
The horrendous, deeply saddening Jo Cox murder has stirred up a lot of ugliness, some of which I wrote about yesterday.
On Friday, security guard Alexander Kozak was reportedly fired from his job at the Coral Ridge Mall in Iowa. According to news accounts, Kozak, a self-identified “born free, gun toting, Constitution loving American,” returned home, retrieved a handgun, then returned to the mall, where he shot and killed a young woman named Andrea Farrington, with whom he was reportedly obsessed.
A local radio station reported that Kozak was fired
due to complaints of sexual harassment of store employees. It’s believed he targeted the woman, who reportedly worked at the Iowa Children’s Museum, because her complaint was the last in a series and led to his firing.
Over on the Roosh V forum, an online hangout for “Red Pillers” and fans of the repugnant pickup artist and rape legalization proponent, some of the regulars are “finding it hard to blame” Kozak for the murder.
Last month, police say, University of Mary Washington student and feminist/LGBT activist Grace Mann was murdered — bound and asphyxiated by a male housemate and fellow student.
An antifeminist blogger is blaming her death on feminist jokes about misandry.
Seriously, if you’re feeling depressed, don’t read these.
No misogyny today, just kittens. And some photoshop filtering, to disguise the fact that I’m sort of a crappy photographer.
So there was a bit of ugliness over on the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day. No, scratch that; there was a giant explosion of ugliness.
A couple of days ago, you see, a Redditor with a nine-day-old account posted a story to r/menrights detailing the alleged ill-treatment he’d gotten at the hands of a vengeful ex-wife and an unsympathetic family court system. The story was filled with literally unbelievable details – among other things, he claimed to have been rendered homeless by the demands of the court, forced to pay $1000 a month in spousal support to his ex though she had a $60,000 a year job. Some commenters challenged the veracity of the tale – while the OP gave a case number in his post, no one has been able to find evidence that a case with that number actually exists. (The OP has not responded to the skeptics.)
But most of the respondents assumed the story was true. And why not? It seemed to reinforce every paranoid MRA fantasy of evil women and courts out of control. Despite its fishiness, the post got more than 700 net upvotes.
And that’s where the ugliness began. Not content to merely offer the man sympathy and advice, many commenters started talking murder, and some of the most violent comments got dozens of upvotes.