Oh, Reddit, not again. So about a week ago, a woman posted what seemed to be a heartfelt and sorrowful confession to r/confession with the self-explanatory title “I cheated on my sweetheart of a husband for 3 years with my violent, abusive ex. This is the one secret I am taking to my grave.”
Now, r/confession purports to be a subreddit devoted to helping out those who confess their wrongdoings, and the sidebar warns potential commenters not to be abusive: “No personal attacks, we are not here to make people feel bad.”
But Reddit being Reddit – that is, a hotbed of resentful “nice guys” always looking for an excuse to vilify women in general or a woman in particular – many of the commenters attacked the OP as an evil “scumbag,” or worse. While the worst comments were deleted by the mods, many attacks on the OP remain, some with literally hundreds of upvotes. Those who expressed any degree of empathy for the OP found their comments roundly downvoted.
After a few days, the discussion died down.
But then, after several days of silence, a new wave of abusive comments started to appear. Like this one:
And this:
Oh, but there’s more:
I’ve saved the worst for last. (I’ve also included the response from the confessor herself.) TRIGGER WARNING for violence.
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.
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So how did a dead thread like this come to life again, and so unpleasantly? Well, you guessed it: it got linked to in r/mensrights and later in r/redpill, a smaller and even more extreme “men’s rights” subreddit. And indeed, if you look at the comment histories of the people I’ve just quoted, you’ll see that most of them also posted in either r/mensrights or r/redpill around the time they made these comments.
It’s a fair guess that many of the upvotes that these terrible comments got also came from visiting r/menrights-ers.
Back in r/mensrights, one commenter, disgusted by all this, chronicled some of the bad behavior of his MRA comrades:
A lot more people besides IBM2431 are going to have to stand up and speak out if they want to clean up r/mensrights’ well-deserved reputation as a net exporter of hate.
Not that r/confession is absolved of blame here. While commenters there piled on this woman, who seemed sincerely sorry for what she said she had done, the r/confession regulars found nothing wrong with the behavior of another commenter — a dude, of course — who confessed he’d “fapped” a number of times to cam footage he found of a friend of his sister’s masturbating — which was evidently recorded and put online without her knowledge or consent.
NOTE: By the time this post goes up, it’s possible and even likely that the mods of r/confession will have deleted the worst of the comments from the r/mensrights and r/redpill invaders. But they should still be visible in the comment histories of those who posted them.
RE: Shiraz
Add the ‘damaged goods’ remark to the whole bizarre idea that all autistic folks have specific food issues, and I am not a fan of DL Colvin.
No, dude, I am NOT ‘damaged goods,’ okay thanks. I’m not ‘mad just to be mad,’ I’m mad because you equated someone who was raped with damaged goods, then backpedaled by claiming that it just meant people like me needed to be “handled carefully to help me to heal.”
I’m not fucking GLASS. I’m mad because you act like I’m a car that got crashed and wasn’t properly repaired, and has thus lost market value. Fuck you and your high horse of “oh, you’re just getting mad to be mad.”
I don’t get mad often, but that condescending attitude is sure getting me there.
RE: Pecunium
My da was a marine biologist and he always used octopi, so that’s what I was raised on. But that’s not right?
I remember Howard looking that up. But ABNOY didn’t say anything about the Philippines. He just said that the age of consent where he is is lower than it is in the US (which is probably based on his thinking all the US is Calif. where the age is 18).
I don’t recall when he mentioned Croatia, but I filed it as a point of reference.
Same as I file most such locational comments. It comes in handy later, when looking for context (I suspect that’s, partly, a function of both journalism and interrogation).
BTW. No, that won’t be broadcast, so far as I know. It may be recorded.
Pecunium — -us second, third or fourth? They’re -ī, -a and -ūs (m) / -ua (n) respectively (I have Wheelock’s in my lap, I don’t know my declensions that well!)
“Aw, the troll tried so hard to suck up to Shiraz only to be spurned.”
Yeah, Cassandra. I mean, I called him boring at least three times. But, errrr, I dunno.
LBT — *puts on kid gloves, looks at LBT, takes off kid gloves and hands them to Gigi* have fun with those! (Sorry, it was my first thought, that kid gloves should be things kids play with!)
Pecunium — I’d like to watch it if possible, but no big deal if not. And interesting on ABNOY, because he did imply Philippines on that thread (towards the top of the page) — I figured you remembered correctly, but damn, so he is completely full of it then?
octpopi is the second form in the OED. Octopodes is listed third. It’s correct if one is greek. It’s not wrong if one is an native english speaker. Octopi is the least correct of the three accepted forms (though at present there are those who object, because of the way it was falsely back-formed. This strikes me as pointlessly prescriptivist).
And I’m tired. octopes is what a latin singular would be. Octopedes would be the plural.
LBT, was your last post for me? You used my handle, but I don’t think you meant me. I don’t believe I called anyone “damaged goods.” Also, I’m not a dude. Did you mean to address someone else?
“Shiraz is a model of kindness, thoughtfulness, and refined human decency. PS if you cheat you’re inhuman garbage who deserves literally zero sympathy.”
I’m sure we will all be paying close attention to the moral lessons of jonatma420 The Wise.
I’m being a boring OED troll, I know, but…
RE: Argenti
Heh. And Gigi appreciates it; she unfortunately had a rough weekend and is still reeling out of it.
RE: Pecunium
Ah, the fun of English. Thanks!
RE: Shiraz
I’m sorry, I was responding to your response to DL Colvin, and adding how I felt about that particular carbuncle. Sorry, I was unclear; I’m not pissy at you!
ABNOY’s veracity is always doubtful. His timing was/is consistent with Croatia. It’s possible he decided to accept the mislocation as misdirection. It’s possible he’s not a native Croatian.
It’s possible I misread a lead he gave us, and Howard got it right. I find his “all things Japanese” schtick a little more believable if he’s a middle/upper middle class Central/Eastern European than I do if he is Philipino.
LBT — in that case, she can borrow my perplexus, though I’d prefer she not launch it across the room in frustration!
Pecunium — those endings seem like an irregular third declension verb, in which case, fuck it, I hate those! As for ABNOY, yeah, he’s questionable at the best of times, and I do find it a bit odd that he’d be such a japanophile if Southeast Asian.
In any case, he found it funny to have us accusing him of paying a young teenager for sex, true or not, that’s well beyond the pale.
Perplexus — http://perplexus.net/
I can’t even hand an olive branch to any of you people, can I. I’ts sad it truly is. This is why there is so much hostility toward feminist these days. You guy’s are now officially the doucebags. Goodbye losers.
@LBT: OK, cool. 🙂
Not being friendly enough to little jonnie means that feminists are inhuman! Could some kind person hand him a hankie on his way out?
That is the best flounce I have ever seen. Wow. Just wow.
Pecunium
I’ve never seen him make a mistake with articles, though, which would make him the first person from the Balkans I’ve ever “met” (for lack of a better word) to do so, including a number of people who make no other mistakes. Then again, he could just not be a native Croat like you said, or he spent a lot of time in an English-speaking country from a young age, or any number of things.
tata jonny.
As to hostility… I’m not seeing it, by and large. The misogynist douchebags, and NiceGuys™ of the world, as well as the abuse apologists (often overlapping the two sets mentioned) may not like me much.
You cannot imagine my dismay at this. The nights I sob into my lovers’ arms about the pain and anguish that people like you despise me for thinking women are people.
It’s terrible.
Goodbye, jon — thanks for insulting feminists on your way out. You didn’t learn anything? *Sigh* The name calling was nice. What the fuck, dude?
dumbassapostrophe: There are a couple of native speakers of Slavic languages here, whom you would be unable to tell from a native speaker.
I also know a number of (in person) native speakers of Slavic Languages who have no such problem (one of whom did not learn English until in his latter teens).
So I don’t take the issue of articles to be dispositive.
I also don’t think ABNOY is all that young.
To steal a TV trope in order to mock MRAs: the MRM has white knights but Pecunium, you’d more like a snark knight.
Pecunium, if he’s to be believed he’s at least 25, at bare minimum, and probably older than me by at least a couple of years.