Gullibility, thy name is Men’s Rights Subreddit.
So, a day or so ago, a troll graced r/mensrights with a tale of imaginary woe about a bad breakup and its aftermath that seemed was designed to push a whole bunch of Men’s Rights hotbuttons all at once.
Lo and behold, the locals bit, and in the process revealed not only their incredible gullibility but also what you might call a highly blinkered view of modern relationships and social etiquette.
Today the troll fessed up, but not before the r/mensrights crowd, taking his tale for the truth, offered him some truly terrible advice laced with lots of righteous indignation.
Here’s the not-exactly-believable story the troll told them:
A few weeks back I was casually seeing a woman (a FWB, really) and let’s just say she was hirsute. Hirsute to the point where when I was doing her doggystyle and looked at her back it kinda seemed like a guy and it really turned me off. I broke it off, telling her that I simply wasn’t attracted enough to fulfill my end of the bargain, she freaked out and asked if it was because of the hair. I should have lied, but I didn’t.
If this had been real, it would of course have been a textbook example of how not to break up with someone. (Hint: Don’t ever tell anyone you’re breaking up with them because you think they’re too hairy, even if they are the dog-faced boy. Especially if you are literally having sex with them at the time.)
But that was not the part of the story that enraged the r/mensrighters. This was:
Fast forward to today. I was chatting up another woman and asked her if she wanted to go out for dinner some time. Turns out she is a friend of woman #1 and read me the riot act about how I was a pig and a pedophile for wanting a hairless partner. Of course, I never said that I wanted a hairless partner, just that a bunch of body hair doesn’t do it for me. There was no reasoning with her (and I obviously wasn’t going to get the date) so I tried to end the conversation, but she actually yelled after me “Watch out for the pedophile!” …
I really don’t get it. I was upfront with the original woman and she went apeshit, going so far as lying to her friend who then made a whole damn Starbucks look at me like I was a criminal. Now I can’t go back there because it was just too damn embarrassing. It shouldn’t OK for women to accuse men of things like this when they feel they’ve been wronged, especially when the “wronging” came down to a matter of taste.
Cue the angry mob!
Well, not quite yet. The OP also included a helpful summary at the end of his post:
TLDR: Gave a girl the boot over her barbaloot suit, then her friend wouldn’t give me the loot. Shoot!
Ok, NOW cue the angry mob. Some highlights from the thread; click on the yellow comments to see them in their original context.
A few commenters refused to join the mob, and were downvoted for showing signs of sense:
Evidently Dale Carnegie is some sort of mangina.
Advice from ladies was especially unwelcome:
The only dude in the thread who doubted the OP’s unbelievable tale was the MRA and r/mensrights regular who calls himself C0CKPUNCHER – and you can see what that got him.
Guys, if a dude called C0CKPUNCHER is your voice of reason, your “human rights movement” may have a problem.
Any MRAs reading this who want my CONFIDENTIAL REPORT on how to become less gullible, please send $50 to my Paypal account.
I thought these might be more appealing to NWO
I don’t think NWO reads the Bible. And anyway, he’s cheating on us over at Slate’s Double X.
Ah, he found another place to pathologically stalk Amanda. That’s… special.
@Amused, I hope you’re kidding about NWO being on Slate. What could he possibly add to a discussion there?
More importantly: does his presence there actually reduce the quality of the cesspool-like commenting areas? (/is not a fan of unmoderated commenting areas)
I’d say “Whole Lotta Love” qualifies.
Oh dear bob, you’re not kidding. I gotta see this–which thread is he on?
Owly, on the other hand, is so gullible that he believes the things he’s been informed are misrepresentations or outright wrong. Also, cyrillic. QED.
Thank you, clairedammit. I passed that on to her.
She looked smug. 😉
Woah, the thread took a right turn to nasty religion land! There should be a trigger warning for that, you can’t just go plonking that crap in between a bunch of baby-mammal-squee without warning me 🙂 So, does that imply that NWO is some kind of fundie? With his critical thinking skills, I am completely not surprised… Though truth be told I love the Bible, it’s the best argument against the Bible I’ve ever read.
NWO claims to be a Christian, but his Christianity mostly takes the form of throwing screaming fits about Jews anytime anyone asks him about his Christianity and how he reconciles the teachings of Jesus with things like his stated desire to beat people he doesn’t like in the street.
Hank…
The Zephead in me wants to be offended at this, but the rational guy in me just laughs at how true it is… especially the part I bolded.
After all… it was Robert Plant who stood on the outside balcony of a hotel room and shouted “I’m a golden god!” to the whole wide world… 😀
That was…
Erm…
Okay… I can give Burton the Blues. While the Blues is my second-favorite musical genre (after Psychedelic/Progressive/Experimental Rock [think Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson, David Gilmour, Riverside, OSI, etc]), the ingrained misogyny in the style was blatant and obvious… very hard to deny, in fact. And no doubt that the rock and roll of the 60’s and 70’s was a man’s club in a very real sense of the phrase (I have often wondered what an all-woman band inspired by Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree and so on would be like, but sadly, no such such band exists… at least, not that I’ve been able to find… anyone?). At least the Blues as sung by the disenfranchised African Americans had a reason (not an excuse, but a reason)…
(Although Burton conveniently misses the female Blues artists who frequently turned that on its head, such as Aretha Franklin’s wonderful cover of Otis Redding’s decidedly misogynistic song “Respect”. It’s not as if female Blues artists didn’t respond to the entrenched misogyny in the Blues… although no, that doesn’t excuse the misogyny at all.)
I can also give Burton many of the songs sung and written by the rock artists. Granted, I was never the world’s biggest fan of the Stones, but they do have some great songs… at least, from their early years (their start to about 1973 or so). They had a lot of songs that were pretty nasty to women, however (especially, as noted in the essay, “Under My Thumb”). But we have to remember that the Stones deliberately cultivated an anti-Beatles image. They were set up as “everything the Beatles weren’t”. There were the “Teen Idols” (such as the Beatles), and the “Bad Boys” (the Stones).
Where I have to call Burton out is on two points: he cites “Whole Lotta Love” as the example for the entrenched misogyny in Led Zeppelin. He fails to note that WLL is not a Zeppelin original; it was stolen, to be frank, from Howlin’ Wolf. It was Wolf’s entrenched misogyny in that case.
Dazed and Confused might have been a better example, although it should be noted that D&C is also not an original, but a cover; it was originally written by Jake Holmes about a girlfriend he had who basically played him for a fool (the song was thought to be about an acid trip, but it’s not). So the original was about an actual, real life relationship (at least, from the point of view of Jake… there’s always two sides to every story). And yes, the lyrics are rather different. The chord structure is pretty much exactly the same, except Jake’s original is done with acoustic and electric guitar… and that’s it.
However, even with that mistake, I can give him the songs.
What I can’t give him is how he ties the image and singing/playing style into it all. That implication has to be an after-the-fact observation. I very much doubt that anyone who cultivated that image did it for any other reason than they thought it was cool. Let’s try to remember that the vast majority of these guys were drug users. Robert Plant probably saw Mick Jagger live while he was blazed out of his mind on pot (or tripping on acid, or whatever) and thought hey! I like his look! I’mma steal his look!. And I’m quite sure Jagger got it in the same way… and Roger Daltrey, and Jim Morrison, and so on.
As for the high voice, again, it was a stylistic croon they came up with likely while high and doing one of those stupid “see how high I can sing” contests (which is actually why Plant started singing that way… because he won one of those “contests”… while stoned).
I’ll give Burton everything else. But the image/style I simply can’t. All the rest is easy to implicate. Style/image is very strongly subjective and utterly devoid from this. It worked. It became a thing because the larger culture (both men and women) loved it. They embraced it. they thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. So the rock stars did it because it worked.
As for the whole “guitar is a phallus” thing… that may have been true for Eddie Van Halen, Yngwei Malmsteen, and those (horrible) guitarists, but it simply is not the case for guitar players in general. It is the result of 80’s “metal” bands taking the image of the Stones and Led Zeppelin way too far. Not all guitarists are Prince, thank you very fucking much.
“Cock Rock” didn’t start with the Stones. Cock Rock was an 80’s thing. Yes, the Stones and Zeppelin inspired it (which is unfortunate), but they didn’t start it.
After all… I don’t see anyone blaming the Beatles, the Mamas & the Papas, Peter Paul and Mary, and the Beach Boys for the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC (even though it was that tight-harmonic style that inspired the entire 90’s bubblegum pop scene).
Oh boy, I guess I should known given NWOslave’s name. Anti-Semitism breeds wherever Christianity and global conspiracy theories meet. But thanks for the tip! I’m going to refer to Jesus as “Jesus the Jew” any time he’s around, see if I can’t get him to rupture a vesicle or two. Or maybe “Jesus the Jew who turned water into wine”. Hehehe.
Try calling him Joshua ben Joseph or something similar, that might produce a real meltdown … 😛
Is it too late for kitty videos? I just saw this one and thought of this thread.
http://youtu.be/FK_CKtYCRIc
(crosses fingers regarding embedding)
Oh, Rusty: That’s funny, Hellkell, except it’s in fact not. You, as is typical for Boobzland, are nothing but a vile fucking misandrist, a disgusting accomodationist for misandry and hatred, and one who will excuse even manslaughter for your own vile disgusting agenda.
Being a shit who encourages someone else to commit suicide isn’t manslaughter.
Words have meanings.
You, on the other hand, supports someone who thinks raping children is bad… when men are punished for it, and the vile whores aren’t treated as criminals.
Re manslaughter/suicide: It might be possible for a zealous prosecutor, in some jurisdictions, to try such a case on the principle that encouraging someone to commit suicide could be seen as having a likely outcome of that person dying.
But that’s a huge reach, even if you have a state which allows, “reckless disregard” of the other person’s life/safety to be grounds for a manslaughter charge; esp. when the internet is the medium of encouragement. Some active intervention (say providing them with a gun, or drugs, etc., would probably be needed to show that the actions of the charged person was a proximate cause of the death.
In short. Varpole is (as per Norm†) wrong.
† thanks, Norm.
Hi Nathan – thanks, that was for take home quiet reading tho. (smile – can’t do emoticons either).
A smile is : with ) but no space. A laugh is a : and a D, also no space. A wink is ; and ), no space. 🙂
howardbann1ster:
You’re way too good at that fundy-cherrypick-logic thing. Have you ever been experienced?
It’s never too late for kitten videos!
Even if it does take me far too long to catch up with ’em. 😉
@teiresias – yes.
I’ve talked about it on some of these threads before… I basically grew up deeply indoctrinated in a super-fundy mindset. A place so far to the right that I can’t really be surprised by any MRA mindset… I grew up believing that crap.