Like rain in the middle of a drought.

Thanks for this.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, August 12th, 2016 12:48pm PDT - promote requested by Januari.

The reality is that sceptics today are targeting esjews for the same reason they have every other group of harmful cultists in the past. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a community of dedicated rationalists would be mystified and angered by the sudden rise of a new anti-rational movement; especially where that movement has been directly damaging to their own, see things like elevatorgate and prominent sceptics getting banned from conventions for wrongthink.

But why should the focus be suddenly so sharply on one group of irrationalists, to the apparent neglect of the others? Because esjudaism is the fresher and more exigent threat. Everyone in the current generation who's capable of correcting their ideas about religion, ghosts, scientology and psychics has basically already done so. Whereas esjews, like their frequent allies and ideological partners the islamists, seem to be gaining ground and converts every day. There's more opportunity and more need to change minds there than elsewhere.

Controversially I'm going to claim that 'youtube sceptics' spend a lot of their time on social media. Some of them make their living through social media. I think it's possible to understand why so many of them object so strongly to the tsunami of censorship that's devastating speech on those platforms in response to social justice hysteria; to suppression of the fictional and fascist concept of 'hate speech', to the false reports and takedowns of youtube videos, to twitter's Ministry of Truth and Safety, to reddit's constant ideological purges.

Now, why are so many of these anti-esjew sceptics white males? Well for one thing because most people in the english-speaking world are white, get over it and stop screeching about diversity. More substantially because most people are idiots. Let me explain. When you have a terrible ideology, obviously you look to stupid people for converts, but when you have an explicitly bigoted ideology, one that demonises certain groups of people while advancing special privileges for others, you narrow your focus even more and direct your propaganda efforts specifically at stupid people in the classes you're pretending to represent. You don't get many jewish friends of national socialism, and you don't get many white male esjews. It's not that these people are sitting on their throne of privilege chuckling down at the poor minorities struggling up to meet them. It's that they're a bunch of retards, but the wrong kind of retards to be esjews.

So opposition to esjudaism comprises: every intelligent and moral person in the world, male and female, black and white, gay and straight; a bunch of stupid straight white men; conservatives and other defectives; actual misogynists, homophobes and racists who imagine we're on their side.

TLDR: Sturgeon's Law.

I'm not sure if this is anti-zionist, anti-semitic, anti-SJW, anti-islam, antiquated, antipodean or just anti-everything.

What's with the esjew and esjudaism stuff? I'd love to know what point you were making by it - was it just something you found darkly funny, or do you think there's a link between SJWs and jews?

Also an Islamist in the traditional sense ('someone who promotes Islamic politics') shouldn't share much of their ideology with an 'SJW'. Depends on what group or particular muslim you're talking about, but an 'Islamist' and SJW should disagree on homosexuality, women's rights and capital punishment to name a few. I'd have thought strictly traditional muslims would be diametrically opposed to SJWs.

As someone who will happily wear the labels of both skeptic and SJW, I think he makes some really good points here.

I always felt that my progressive ideology was a natural result of my atheism and 'skepticism', so it was really weird to find all these angry conservatives online shouting at women, muslims and black people while calling themselves atheists and rational skeptics.

I think the 'problem' with SJWs online is that a lot of concepts that 20 years ago would have been discussed mainly by well-educated academics, such as privilege, appropriation, etc., are now becoming mainstream and are being wielded by teenagers, lunatics, and people who are no smarter than you or I. This is technically a good thing - we need to get those concepts into the open if we are ever going to address the real problems they describe - but it means that there will be some people who fuck up or overreach while trying out these concepts. If somebody badly wants an excuse to dismiss all of feminism, or all of racial equality, there will thus inevitable be some teenager online with a webcam who is all too happy to give them that excuse - but why look for that excuse in the first place?

I felt mine was a result of the 'golden file's (one of the few things I kept from the attempts at indoctrination I suffered as a kid).

Often they slap you in the face, you don't have to seek them out.

I think it would be a good idea to force kids to take a class explaining 'both' sides of equality issues and the history involved so they could at least bring a few facts to a discussion they force on passersby. Sadly, I think required classes are on the way out rather than being added to.

Honestly esjews has nothing to with Jews beyond trying to speak an acronym.

SJW = esjew
NRA = neera
GOP = gope

He's just being teh sillies.

That settles it - anti-everything.

"Whereas esjews, like their frequent allies and ideological partners the islamists, seem to be gaining ground and converts every day.

I think you can see where i was coming from with this stuff though. I was being polite, but I'm not stupid and I can read between the lines - he's insulting 'lefties' for pandering to Muslims and giving them special treatment, more or less allowing them to behave as they wish, for fear of offending their religion. I know this argument, i've heard it before.

It's not racist; it's not hate talking. It's fear of the stereotype that the mainstream media love to peddle. Fear the muslims, hate the socialists who protect them! Divisive politics that allows a practically fascist political establishment to maintain the war industry, because if the peons are scared of Muhammad they won't start to ask why we can't have better hospitals and schools, or why between 1 - 5% of people are getting richer whilst everyone else has to have austerity. Why are pension funds in trouble, why will our children be worse off than us, when we are working to depression and exhaustion? Never mind that - fear the immigrants, don't vote for their allies and ideological partners! Vote for Christmas you turkeys!

fantastic video. i've been noticing this trend for a while and it's really gross.

The "fun" thing, as well: These people are able to monetize their targeting of individuals through YouTube ad share/crowdfunding and have incredibly vitriolic fan base that will wage war against their favorite YouTuber's targets in a myriad of ways... so you get what is, essentially, the "professional victimizer".

http://boingboing.net/2015/01/14/how-crowdfunding-helps-haters.html

Why look for that excuse? I think the word you are looking for is 'validation'. I think it's really human nature that compels us to search out those who we see as being like us and helps to reaffirm our beliefs. Fox News became a media empire based almost entirely on this principle and ever since then many other media outlets have followed suit.

@Imagoamin
I read that article a little while back, but I'm not sure taking away Patreon or ad money would silence those people. I'm pretty sure many like thunderf00t would just keep on doing what they're doing anyhow. I've watched some of thunderf00t's videos and while they may not use the most genteel language or may come off as snarky but it never sounded like harassment to me.

YouTube, and the internet in general are a soapbox which people like Anita Sarkeesian can use to criticize popular media and can also be used by others to criticize Sarkeesian in turn, this is perfectly fair in my opinion.

You would think, wouldn't you, that they would be diametrically opposed.

Well it turns out that esjews and islamists both, for example, despise sex and sexuality, differing only in whose sexuality they denigrate the most. They do both believe that women's bodies in particular are disgusting and ought to be covered at all times - certainly this is the impression you receive from esjew film and videogame critiques. They both believe that women are inferior to men and need to be protected from normal social experience - for the islamist this takes the form of, you know, chaining them in a cupboard and shouting verses from the Qur'an at them; for the esjew the creation of safe spaces and online bubbles where they can be protected from white patriarchal oppression, consequences, and new ideas.

They're equally fond of the lie that any opposition to their fanaticism is evidence of bigotry.

And of course they both believe that any dissent from their worthless ideologies should be forcibly silenced.

Turns out regressive belief systems have a lot in common.


I say this all, by the way, as the leftest of lefties. Liberals don't censor. Liberals don't attack men for being men, or white people for being white, or cis het whatever for whatever, and they don't team up with fascists just because they're brown-skinned fascists.

Esjews aren't lefties; they're a shit the left took on the carpet and haven't cleaned up yet.

I dunno, videos like this are a bit boring to me, because there's a super-simple TL;DR: "most people don't know how to argue logically". They think they do, but they're wrong. It's really sad, and why rational discourse is so rare.

Then you haven't encountered any of his fans on twitter.

And he is pretty much the largest and most 1:1 example the above video is referencing: He uses specious arguments, focuses on minor details or extreme examples to paint with a massive brush, and generally is more vitriol than skepticism.

And the difference between Sarkeesian making videos critiquing and thunderf00t is myriad: Sarkeesian focuses on depictions and media, thunderf00t focuses on indviduals and a very amorphous idea of "feminism" with videos like "Why feminism is poisoning atheism", "Why 'feminism' poisons EVERYTHING", all pretty much completely obsessed with Sarkeesian and Rebecca Watson.

That's not skepticism.. that's a creepy personal vendetta.

The other major difference are their fans. I don't recall Sarkeesian ever taking out a personal vendetta against a random person and suggesting her fans bombard their business on Yelp with bad reviews and then people on the doxxing boards of 8chan joined in the online attacks.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/25/1439148/-Phil-Mason-is-Working-With-Baphomet-to-Ruin-DC-Business

I mean, it's not quite as simple as "one person makes videos critiquing, another makes videos critiquing". But I feel like you probably already knew that.

The quotes in that article really drive home the apotheosis of the word 'cuck'. It's a word whose meaning has died and transcended into some generic status that is completely beyond me - everything and everyone is cucked or cucking or a cuckhole. I gotta stop reading this shit and get a cucking pizza while playing No Man's Cuck...

Sounds like the grass is dying out on this side of the internet. Meanwhile, trolls skulk under bridges awaiting both SJW and skeptic to cross the bridge for their evening meals.

Where be the fattest of the goats?

I don't really care what his fans said on Twitter or anywhere else for that matter. Unless he explicitly instructed them to go out and harass somebody you can't realistically hold him responsible for the actions of others.

1:1 example? Were we even reading the same article? The bulk of the article describes how the Baphomet board on 8chan used publicly available information, possibly gleaned from thunderf00t's video, or perhaps not, to target Jennifer Keller and her business. The folks over at Baphomet were really just doing this for their own amusement, here's a quote from the article.

" I'll save the trouble that I'm a bit of a thunderfag and while I understand he's a cucked shithole obsessed with Anita Scamkeesian, the fact they will get him fired merely on the base of their hurt feelings kind of ticked me off. "

I should also take a moment to point out that Jennifer Keller aka 'Laughing Witch' on YouTube along with others engaged in a letter writing campaign to try and get Phil Mason 'thunderf00t' fired from his job. Now I don't know about you, but I would call that harassment. I find that kind of behavior unacceptable no matter which side you are on. But there she was, down in the trenches slinging shit right along side the other trolls and misanthropes.

As for specious arguments, the focus on minor details and painting whole groups of people with a broad brush, Sarkeesian and company do all of these things. Sarkeesian criticizes an industry and thunderf00t attacks her criticisms and questions her rationale. But supporters will try to draw attention away from his arguments by calling it an attack on her.

You want to hold thunderf00t responsible for the actions of trolls and MRA wack-jobs, but are you willing to hold Sarkeesian responsible for the actions of feminism's lunatic fringe?

So the way I see it, youtube needs to have visible labels. Some videos labelled as entertainment, and some labeled as purely factual, without bias.

He did. He posted the yelp page and told them to leave messages.

And the "1:1" example was referencing the above video.. the one you're commenting under. The one titled "The New Wave of YouTube 'Skeptics", not the article. Which is why I said as such.

And I don't think one person calling up Mason's work is a good thing nor should it be condoned, but I also don't consider it on par with doxxing someone and sending your 400,000 followers after them. Which, doxxing someone isn't just "amusement". If you actually cared about harassment, like you want to claim with calling this woman's actions harassment, maybe you wouldn't equivocate on that.

And the reason I'm willing to draw a link to trolls and MRA-wackjobs and Mason is because: Those are his fans. Those are the people he pointed at this woman's yelp page. Those are the people that followed his target de-jour and doxxed them.

The reason I'm not willing to do that for Sarkeesian is because: I don't really care about Sarkeesian, she didn't post where Mason worked/his works contact info/told people to comment directly to him. AFAIK, there is basically no connection between Sarkeesian and this woman other than "well I guess they're both left-ish on the political spectrum".

But hey, I think it's pretty obvious which side your bread is buttered on and this isn't so much a dispute about the original topic (Poor examples of youtube "skeptics") any more, so my interest is waning.

She didn't call, she sent letters to his employer, the local police and the media. In that letter she referred to him as a Nazi so many times it could be required reading for anyone studying Godwin's Law.

Keller decided to act like a petty vindictive asshole simply because someone had to gall to disagree with her on the internet. The fact that someone else managed to turn her life upside down does not change what she did or somehow make it more excusable.

That being said, I did find the video where thunderf00t doxxed Keller and I also thought he acted like a petty vindictive asshole. And I'm fine with calling them both out on it, rather than trying to draw attention away from one person's wrongdoings by pointing to someone who they believe to be worse.

Sure, the MRA trolls will love some of what thunderf00t has to say about Sarkeesian and other feminists. Liking or agreeing with something someone says however does not mean you buy into their ideology in it's entirety. Donald Trump could tell me the sky is blue, and I might agree, but agreeing to that does not also mean I think we should build a big wall to keep out Mexicans.

As far as what some of his "fans" and or Baphomet did I suspect you'll ignore their individual or group responsibilities in favor of simply blaming it on thunderf00t simply because you want to. Buttered my bread? Based on what I've read so far I can imagine you would know something about bias.