That’s the good news. The bad news it’s in an article about rage-blogging, click-baiting, witch-hunting professional victimizers who profit greatly from online hate.
Oh, not us. I know those are accusations frequently leveled against freethoughtblogs, but the irony is that it’s the other side that has been doing a really good job of monetizing obsessive hatred. While we struggle with really ugly ads (we hate them too) just to keep a maintenance level of support for our small community of writers, the gamergate goons and people like Phil Mason have tapped into a much more lucrative income stream: misogyny pays.
Many of these professional victimizers are anti-feminist video bloggers, who combine the income from YouTube video ads with funding through Patreon, a service which allows people who create content to charge subscribers per-release or per-month. One of the highest-profile examples is atheist and anti-feminist video blogger Phil “thunderf00t” Mason, formerly of Freethought Blogs. In addition to his promotion of atheism and debunking of pseudoscience, he focuses on attacking feminism and particular feminist personalities. In particular, he’s focused on video game cultural critic and video blogger Anita Sarkeesian, making multiple videos with names like “‘Feminism’ Vs FACTS (Anita Sarkeesian DESTROYED!)” and “Anita Sarkeesian- BUSTED!”
It’s embarrassing for us to be associated with a freakish fanatic like Thunderf00t, but hey, at least we kicked him out for the same disgraceful, dishonest behavior the article is chastising him (and many others) for.
It’s got to be even more embarrassing for Thunderf00t, that his one association of note that is mentioned is his brief, painful, unpleasant connection to freethoughtblogs. Of course, he’s got all his money from cultivating a cult of anti-feminism, so I guess he can console himself with that.
Reminds me of the long-standing Republican/RWA trend of attributing to your enemies your own greatest weaknesses.
Speaking of being mentioned, I heard you being interviewed on BBC news very early this morning. Unfortunately I went back to sleep and forgot what they were asking you about.
This reminds me of the “doing it for the grants” accusation that gets thrown at climate scientists, while in reality it’s the climate denialists who are rolling in the money from various think thanks and rich conservative donors.
That article was very disturbing. It’s the institutionalization of internet misogynistic hate mobs, meaning that they’ll just get worse and worse over time without legal push-back because the owners/video makers have an incentive to jump on any opportunity for hate-mongering (much like how on the conservative side, the whole giant apparatus of conservative foundations and think tanks uses any potential issue to fear-monger for money). At the very least, Patreon and its ilk need to set stricter policies for anyone encouraging illegal behavior and abuse.
I’m glad to see one more respectable online outlet shine a light on the institutionalization of harassment and misogynist stupidity…instead of turning the other cheek like *cough* some atheist bloggers.
It’s straightforward to grasp how crowdfunding tools pad peoples’ pockets, but it’s a jolt to realize that angry victimizers actually make money from YouTube videos. When I first paid attention to YouTube, this would have been laughable: Big users paid in to host videos there without expecting anything in return, and the site itself was mostly a “video Napster” of copyright-infringing content that no advertiser would touch.
@Andrew T.
That’s what you get when Google buys you out, I guess.
Phil Mason was always a bit twitchy but he really became unhinged after he was booted from FTB.
I wonder if bringing him back will re-hinge him? Like in an old cartoon where if you get head in the head again you stop thinking that you’re Napoleon? (The world would be a lot better if it worked on cartoon logic.)
sounds like a plot to a porno movie.
That interview mentioned by nothere @#2 [Link]
Whilst the dulcet tones of our Squidly Overlord might be attractive, I really recommend the segment a little later (starts around 13:50) on Pakistan.
There’s a symbiotic relationship that enriches everyone involved in teh intarwebs drama as far as I can tell. So it goes…
The GamerGate segment of this always amazes me. They have spent so much time decrying developers that they consider moochers, looking for welfare, but they use Patreon themselves to raise thousands of dollars month. Just look at The Sarkeesian Effect Patreon campaign, they were willing to take thousands of dollars and produce absolutely nothing until they reach a specific monthly goal, yet it was just wonderful.
thunderf00t makes us sick. He’s basicslly found a way to make a living through victimization of feminist thought leaders like Rebecca Watson and now Anita Sarkeesian.
The differences between Pharyngula and thunderf00t’s YouTube channel are striking. One is run by an actual scientist, practicing actual skepticism and producing thought-provoking content, while the other is nothing but click-bait trash run by a two-bit hack trying to tear other people down.
Do you have any actual evidence for this claim? Or is it just your usual snide insinuation that the victims of harassment and abuse are profiting from it, which you are too cowardly to make explicit, and will fail to support.
Nick Gotts
I second those questions.
Nick Gotts @ 12:
Sure, I have a testimonial from someone who is qualified to judge teh drama here, there, and everywhere:
A note to my readers from Pharyngula
As for judging the virtue of said drama, that’s a personal call. But it’s still drama.
David Wilford’s gotta David Wilford.
Wut? Jerry Coyne is an expert in “drama” in all domains how? Why? And that’s not even a testimonial of anything: it’s a set up for a “NO U”.
Typical, tone troll A citing tone troll B’s opinion instead of a nice academic paper with real research. *snicker*
anteprepo @ 15:
It’s atheist drama, mostly, actually. So no, it’s not literally “everywhere”. It just seems like that some days.
Nerd @ 16:
I don’t need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind blows, or to spot teh drama.
Why is Jerry Coyne the designated expert in all atheist drama? What gives him the special insight to be an authority on BOTH SIDES? Please explain.
David Wilford:
PornographyDrama: You Know It When You See It.I think your definition of “drama” would be very interesting to determine. I imagine it would be very telling. It would evoke images of fainting couches, surely.
David Wilford@14,
A “testimonial” is not evidence, and in fact, the “testimonial” says nothing about anyone profiting from drama. I asked for evidence. Evidently, you don’t have any, and your comment was just your usual snide insinuation that the victims of harassment and abuse are profiting from it.
Thank you for confirming your attitude is full of the usual tone trolling you do. All ether, not even gas.
Nick Gotts @ 21:
If you don’t think the vituperative back and forth between FTB and other atheist sites (along with a lot of nut-picking of the day postings) doesn’t result in plenty of additional website hits, well, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. You’ve been around here long enough to know that, so I’m not sure who you’re trying to convince with needless requests for evidence about the subject.
So the thing here is that the harassers really ARE making money, and a fair bit of it too, off of harassing people.
David Wilford thinks that their targets are being similarly compensated, specifically FOR being the targets of harassment.
This is, of course, a ridiculous enough idea that it’s reasonable to assume he’s lying.
Are you lying, Wilford?
I wonder enriches David Wilford while he picks away at the edges of “The Drama”, staring and pecking, always watching? Every time we hear the shriek of “BOTH SIDES”, and every time we are told that somehow we are fighting only to get our bellies full, we look up and we see the David Wilfords circling. Always nearby. You would think that someone who was so disinterested in the fighting would go off to greener pastures. But the perch is never empty. Maybe the David Wilfords are getting something out of this too, somehow.
A non-lying person would a.) know that various FTB posters have critically examined this claim and b.) referenced them to support his claim.
Except for the fact that these posts (which contain the numbers that you would need to back up his claim) don’t support his claim.
So, Wilford, are you lying?
Sorry about the shifting pronouns. I hope my meaning is clear. Posting from work.
SallyStrange @ 24:
It’s not ridiculous to say that the FTB doesn’t profit from traffic on posts relating to those being targeted for ridicule, and there are plenty of them as you yourself surely know. It’s the internet for cryin’ out loud, and drama drives traffic and traffic drives ad hits and ad hits do make money.
OK, so not only do you not have any evidence for your snide insinuation, you can’t even write a coherent sentence in its defence. Your first sentence appears to have one too many negatives; your second has an unresolved anaphora.
I agree: it’s not ridiculous, in the absence of any evidence that FTB does so profit.
David Wilford:
Yet to define drama. (i.e. Issue is that “drama” is very subjective)
Drama isn’t the only thing that drives traffic.
The extent to which drama drives traffic is unverified.
The effect of ad hits and money on what people choose to post is entirely assumed.
Also assumed is that the amount of ad money is large enough to be an incentive at all.
The reliability of getting “hits” from one specific type of “drama” is assumed to be high while I imagine it could easily fluctuate.
Getting hits from “drama” in general does not explain why one would favor one “drama” over the other.
“Drama” has the risk of turning off readers who either don’t like “drama” in general (people like what you allege to be) and people who are on the Opposite Side of the Deep Rift. Note that this would likely reduce traffic i.e. the exact opposite of what you claim as the Common Sense Obvious Troof.
David Wilford, go back to false equivalence, tone trolling, and smarmy faux civility. It’s what you are good at.
FWIW, the activity on the post about scientists needing to educate themselves about science is nice to see, but sadly it still isn’t getting the attention the Pope is. That’s not surprising, since drama draws more flies, er, hits than philosophy does.
Comments =/= Hits
anteprepo @ 32:
Nope, but it’s a reasonable proxy.
Indeed, the blog post at WEIT that Wilford linked to is chock-full of people saying they have stopped visiting Pharyngula because of the drama. So if it is evidence of anything, it’s evidence against Wilford’s claim.
Another point: Unless they sell a product, websites do not make money.
Hosting costs money. Bandwidth costs money. Hits drive up bandwidth. Unless other factors are at play, more hits mean that the website administrator is losing money, not making it.
(WARNING: ROUNDING)
Posts About….
Scientific Method: 80 comments
Pope and Free Speech: 100 comments
MRA Rageblogging (i.e. This One): 30 comments
Satanist book banned: 80 comments
Fox News and Duck Dynasty Guy: 45 comments
Antifeminist hate mail: 60 comments
Creationist and flat earth frauds: 15 comments
Rightwing false equivalence: 80 comments
Vote on Climate Change: 100 comments
Using Hebdo Shooting to Censor Piss Christ: 25 comments
Thoughts about death: 50 comments
Right Wing Idiots in control of science positions: 50 comments
Police report for the Newspapers PZ was accused of doing stuff to: 50 comments
Mocking “God wants me to be president” with a little image: 65 comments
Hovind fan talking about beheading Obama: 45 comments
This is what happens when you don’t define “drama”, I guess. Or if more than just “drama” drives comments….
David Wilford
No, it isn’t. But I suppose you don’t have a passing familiarity with “reasonable” so I guess we will just have to be understanding of your error in that regard.
Andrew T. @ 36:
Recently Jerry Coyne turned down an offer to be a blogger on Patheos, and he mentioned that they’d offered him money, and while he didn’t mention an exact number he did say it was “several” thousand dollars. So not a fortune but not chump change either. So Patheos is getting money from somewhere, obviously.
anteprepo @ 37:
Posts with Thunderf00t as the subject: hundreds and hundreds of comments. That’s lots o’ drama.
That’s great, David Wilford. Cherry picking a small number of posts from a few years ago to try to support your idiotic point. So basically you are just gonna keep saying “it is common sense” and cherry pick a few examples until the heat death of the universe? Is that about accurate?
Also: what the fuck are you on about by bringing up Patheos? Is Patheos known for “drama”? It’s really hard to tell, since you love watching us try to nail jello to the wall, but I would think that Patheos is the kind of blogging network that you would support. It has Teh Friendly Atheist and Civility Master Dan Fincke over there, after all. It’s faux civility central.
I’m pretty sure we had 700 to over a 1000 comments once on a post about Ancient Astronaut Theorists. And god knows some of the longest arguments on Pharyngula have been with creationists. But since David Wilford has yet to specify what the fuck they are on about, I don’t know if those qualify as “drama” or not.
This mundane little post spawned a metric shit-tonne of Teh Clix…
Why do I get the feeling that the drama on this thread is coming from David Wilford?
Christ, this again?
I’ve been blogging for over 10 years, and I know a little bit about this. “Drama” drives short-lived spikes of traffic. Regular blogging, reliable point of view, interesting topics drive sustained growth. No one is going to get big by just argle-bargle.
Real “drama” actually cuts into our profits. Both Taslima and Maryam have hurt our revenues a few times — we’ve had advertising cut off a few times because they really bring up the painful and hard-hitting stuff. And that’s something we’ve encouraged despite the financial risks.
If you’re going to claim that I’m trolling for “hits”, you’re also going to have to account for this datum: I’ve plowed all of my income from Pharyngula back into the network for the last 4 or 5 months. That is, unlike Thunderf00t, I’ve been making no money off this site for a while (I might start getting some payments restarted soon…it’s not like I’m rich and can do this indefinitely).
As for that post by Jerry Coyne, it certainly proved MY point. For someone who claims to be such a staunch supporter of civility, he’s happy to allow his commenters to snipe and snarl at me for 387 comments. And that’s always been the way of it over there — he washes his hands of any guilt, then turns it over to the commenters to do his dirty work, in a passive-aggressive way, and then the commenters simultaneously insult and sneer while patting themselves on the back about how much more civilized and polite they are than anyone else.
I recommend that David Wilford move on to WEIT and stay there. It’s clearly more his kind of place than this is.
David Wilford #40:
Thunderf00t is indeed a great creator of ‘drama.’ So much so that you’d think any click-hungry blogging network would love to host him, wouldn’tcha think?
Remind me. Which network was it that he got booted off?
David @17:
The “drama” that you’re referring to is an multi-year ongoing campaign of harassment by a group of asshole atheists who have no problem swimming in misogyny and sexism. Calling it “drama” minimizes the extent of the problem.
That you characterize the sexism and misogyny that’s become more visible in the atheist movement in the last few years as “drama” speaks to how little you appear to understand the problem.
A problem that is everywhere, not just in the atheist movement.
Can you take your “both sides” bullshit (i.e. symbiotic relationship) and your accommodationist attitude elsewhere please? It’s grown quite tiresome.
David @32:
Are you one of those whiny fools who complain that PZ does too many social justice posts, and not enough science related posts?
@40:
Again you reduce discussions of sexism and misogyny down to “drama”. Fuck off.
Good point. They can’t simultaneously complain that you’re writing “for the hits” and also complain that you’re banning them and preventing their free speech. There are a lot more comments and attention when the comment section is a slugfest, so it’s the blogs with complete lack of moderation that are doing it “for the hits”.
Evidence?
Or is this only in the way that it’s to prescribe austerity when a country is in financial trouble?
There haven’t been any of those over here for years.
There’s also the obvious fact that there’s no equivalency here, where Wilford wants there to be one: Thunderfoot and his ilk make money by telling misogynists and harassers, “Hey, I’m going to attack this person, give me money so I can make a video about how awful this person is.” Whereas the proposed mechanism by which the targets profit of these attacks is no different from the mechanism by which they profit off of any other blog post. Wilford is basing his assertion entirely on a un-evidenced assumption that people are going to be more interested in bloggers talking about how shitty it is to be Thunderfoot’s target than they are going to be in biology, religion, or other topics.
Do go on, Wilford. Watching you disappear below grade as your hole gets ever deeper is quite fascinating.
SallyStrange @51:
The lack of equivalency makes sense to my mind given David Wilford’s “both sides” bullshit. He’s not looking at the specific words and actions of people on either side of the Great Rifts.
What is tiring about tone trolls and their “golden mean”, is that they pretend to take the high moral road while showing no moral spine to make a decision. Life is full of choices, and one has to make choices and live with the consequences, whether it is marry someone, buy a certain house or car, or even the way one will drive to work that day.
The tone trolls with their “golden mean” pretend that everybody arrived at their position via rational thinking. Often, that is not the case, particularly with the misogynists. One cannot persuade them with evidence from a position they arrived at by intuition, paranoia, and/or cultural training.
The misogynists have a long history here of jumping into a thread by saying something blatantly sexist, and when asked to defend said statement with evidence, or explain their statement, all that is returned is emotional invective, illogical thinking, and a huge amount of attitude. We simply must agree with them, or they will intimidate us until we do. One cannot hold a dialog with somebody who will not listen. The misogynists don’t listen, any more than any creationist/godbots. But the “golden mean” tone trolls can’t see the problem. We, and never the misogynists, just aren’t listening hard enough, or paying enough attention. By this decision they have made their moral choice, whether they know it or not, and have sided with the misogynists, since they must think they are right, and have something we must hear and act on.
I believe it was Woozy who spent some time trying to get through to the ‘Pitters. After a few months, Woozy acknowledged they weren’t being rational in their discussions, and they simply weren’t listening to anything that didn’t agree with their position. And this is the group we must try to rationalize with and convince with evidence? “I don’t think so Tim.” Ignoring them is much, much easier. Except they can’t stand being ignored either….
From what I’ve seen of his posts here, you can safely ignore Wilford.
I can’t see anything in this thread that isn’t just an assertion based on ignorance from him.
…might be different if he just admitted he doesn’t know how blogging works, and actually asked questions, but that might make him feel uncomfortable.
obviously as someone who was entirely ignorant of how his most prolific commenter there spent weeks raging on that blog about PZ, simply because some of US dissed a ridiculous comment he made…
yeah, Coyne is entirely oblivious at times. qualified to judge? like Scalia you mean.
You want to see drama, go over to WEIT and post that you think Professor Ceiling Cat has too many posts about boots and food on his blog.
That’ll get you drama.