Sulman wrote:Mykeru wrote:
I'm confused. According to Turd of Dedhead, Shermer is a "proven rapist".
Must be some of that new wave skepticism that I don't quite have the hang of yet
Something's not right here. I'm very intrigued what the outcome of all this will be. It appears that some of the people involved have completely failed to understand the seriousness of what they have done.
Yah think?
It comes down to how much they are either willing to dehumanize perceived opponents or are just clueless about it. No matter what I do on the intertubes, I am aware that I am dealing with human beings, admittedly one's I don't like at times. However, in a move that seemed to have pissed off Paul Elam and A Voice for Men (and I think the origin of their "feminists got to me" jibe) I backed away from doing "CreepyBittergrrl" as she was being confused with Sasha Wiley Shaw. Shaw is a piece of work in her own right, but when I saw the fuzzing of the line between her, and my parody of her, I thought it was a bit unfair.
That being said, people like P.Z. Myers, Ophelia Benson, Rebecca Watson long since used up whatever coupons they had for being treated with a modicum of respect. That said, it's not as if I'm going to accuse Myers of, say baby raping as a straight-faced tactic to discredit him. It's not a "win at all costs", especially when I don't have to make shit up. When I recently accused Carrie Poppy of sacrificing babies on the blood alter, with the caveat "I have the details, which I can't disclose", it's obviously a dig not to be taken seriously, just to prove a little something about how easy it is to do the McCarthy "briefcase full of commie infiltrators" routine.
The difference with FTB and the like is that they really have a "win at all costs" attitude which is based on a perverse Euthyphro definition of good. That is, they are good, so therefore anything they do, such as lie and slander, is justifiable for the "greater good" which, of course, translates into "good for them".
What's more, they aren't dealing in arguments or evidence. They don't care about that. What they care about is not that people who don't follow in lockstep with their perversion of truth and justice have bad arguments. What they want, what they need, the only thing that gives them social cohesion and keeping the cognitive dissonance from eating them alive is that ANYONE WHO DISAGREES IS, BY DEFINITION A BAD PERSON. Once you are a "bad person" in their eyes, you are declared outlaw and divorced from any moral consideration. That may not mean they will make up any old shit about a critic, perhaps just the boilerplate "harasser/stalker" stuff, but it certainly does mean they will believe any old made-up crap about someone declared outside their moral consideration.
So with Shermer, he was already suspect. He was a male, and males, without proper chastising and education, are inherently BAD PEOPLE. He is accomplished and well known and so being above them on any old hierarchy you could care to imagine also makes him a BAD PERSON. He was accused by what is claimed to be a woman and, as we know, women, especially one's cloaked in the mantle of victim hood are inherently GOOD PEOPLE. What's more this good woman, who might be a 12 year old boy writing emails between bouts of jerking off to Hentai porn, like PZ in his youth or, really, last week, was known to one of the inherently GOOD PEOPLE, Carrie Poppy which makes s/h/it a GOOD PERSON VICTIM BEYOND REPROACH. To claim otherwise, or to even show the smallest bit of doubt or lack of revolutionary fervor would automatically make one a BAD PERSON and so the acceptance of all this horseshit is not only feel-good and ideologically sanctioned moral outrage, but also sheer pissing terror. The lesson to be learned from BAD PEOPLE is how to avoid becoming one yourself.
That they don't realize the seriousness of what they have done (and will do some more) is not just that BAD PEOPLE are due no moral consideration, and that they are terrified of being noticed not throwing stones hard enough, but they are a bunch of socially awkward, half-bright losers. Seriously, you have to keep in mind that they may be divested from what they are doing because, after all, all they are doing is typing. This is like some big-assed multi-player role playing game to them. This is what they do, this is what they are used to an, for the most part, this is either how they relate to other people or how they can hide behind a keyboard to play Grand Theft Social Justice whern out in the real world not only don't they drive like that, they don't even have a car.
One other motivation strikes me, which may have attracted them to the a/s community oin the first place: A membership card to act like they are smarter than everyone else. I was listening to a debate online involving Alex Gabriel and he comes across like a total tone-deaf little turdlet:
http://t.co/uNGlNqAihl The impression I get is this little bastard is strutting around like he's the smartest guy in the room when it's obvious to everyone, including the dumbest guy in the room, that he has done none of the homework to make good on that conceit.
You know, I could have saved a lot of typing and ripped off Hoggle: They are just mean, dumb, fucked-up little losers.