This won’t be news to a lot of you — I’m a little late getting to it — but our old pal Tom Martin, the repulsive British MRA celebrity, is actually going ahead with the somewhat baffling video “women and comedy” project he was babbling about in the comments here many months ago, when he was still allowed to comment here. Well, “actually going ahead with it” this August if he can get anyone else to agree to work for him for free minimum wage.
The documentary project is called “Laughing with Women” and, Martin explains, it will “investigat[e] if gold-digging impairs women’s joke-making ability, and if, when women reject gold-digging in all its forms, they can become instantly funnier.”
In case that didn’t make sense to you — don’t worry, that’s a completely natural reaction — Tom explains his, er, “logic” a bit further in a jobs listing he’s posted in hopes of finding a crew, which has already gotten a good deal of ridicule over at PZ Myers’ and on at least one comedy website.
Why are women, on average, slightly less funny than men? Does gold-digging in particular impede women’s joke-making ability? When women publicly reject gold-digging, do they become as funny, or even funnier than men?
In his numerous visits to Man Boobz, Martin expounded at length on the topic of gold-digging women, generally referring to them by his preferred term, the shorter and blunter “whores.” Martin has previously estimated that roughly 97% of women fit this description, and has suggested that female penguins are also whores. Frankly, once he gets going on the topic, it’s hard to shut him up, which is partly why he’s no longer welcome in the comments here.
In any case, this odd hypothesis will be tested, Martin says, with a “radical, and revealing street-based social experiment.”
Still puzzled? Mike Booth, the British video comedian behind SomeGreyBloke and Dan Cardamon, has managed to tease out a few more details from Martin (posting here as sexismBusters):
Martin is confident that his proposed video will blow the lid off this whole “women and gold-digging and comedy, no really, they’re connected” thing:
If the radical, and revealing street-based social experiment at the centre of our documentary proves gold-digging does make women less funny (as pre-production research suggests) then our findings will make headlines around the world, our film’s two minute teaser trailer attached to all those news and blog articles (Update: this advert alone has already been blogged and tweeted about by outraged PC types).
The full documentary will be shot to a broadcast-quality standard and format, giving mainstream television companies worldwide the opportunity to purchase broadcasting rights (if they’re feeling brave enough) whilst we maintain a virtually guaranteed revenue stream from our already established hardcore of supporters and fans within the non PC gender equality field around the world, who, along with everyone else, will be able to enjoy Laughing with Women on newly launched pay-per-view channel, Vimeo on Demand (VoD) – where VoD itself takes a very modest 10% cut. The documentary has the potential to be translated into several languages – gold-digging a familiar if hidden story in every country, until now.
In other words, it sounds like some sort of video gold mine.
So I’d recommend that all gold-digging women out there try to get in on the ground floor of this Tom Martin dude.
Oh, and speaking of Dan Cardamon, here’s the faux MRA’s take on the project:
CORRECTION: This post originally stated that Martin wouldnt’ be paying his crew, but he says he will be paying them minimum wage, so I’ve corrected the relevant passage above.
EDITED TO ADD: Tom has shown up in the comments, and I’m letting his comments through (for now at least), so if you have any questions for him, feel free to head to the comments to address him directly.
Thanks, Kittehserf. 🙂
Ridiculous! Completely ridiculous! There’s no way I’d prioritize money over humor!
Actually, I had another title, but I’ll need a deposit of £25 to a PayPal account first.
Hey now, I can safely say that only about a third of us are female whore penguins, and I have data! (so very much data *collapses on the floor*)
Haha some of these suggestions are great. And they’re even funnier when you think of this guy’s sad, stunted concepts about women and humor and his inability to think up titles more clever than “Women and Funny” or whatever was in his generic somnambulist haiku. This poor, fatwitted dude.
His inability to understand how he comes off makes him one of the more hilarious of the internet sadsacks. I really should have put all those YouTube comments in quotes so people didn’t scan past them. A fine unintentional comedian huffing and puffing and spluttering to irrelevance and beyond.
“To irrelevance and beyond!”
What a great line to describe the MRM. 😀
HM, you take the survey? The smart ass questions about chairs and penguins are because of idiocy he’s spewed (in mean, come on, how do you resist something like “all female penguins are whores”?)
There you go Tom — “are you a penguin?”
But if we do it for the money, won’t we be whores?
IT’S A TRAP!
But I’ll bite anyway: what’s wrong with “Are Women Funny?” Short, descriptive, bound to attract people’s attention because they’re already answering the question in their minds. And it’s only five syllables.
(Nice commalipsis, by the way…)
You guys must all have renounced prostitution in all its forms, because I’m LMAO. I hope this will be up on A4FaK soon.
My only contribution is The Importance of Being Whore-nest, but I did find a movie Tom would like.
A Time to Whore
The Princess Whore
Horton Hears a Whore
Whorelander
The Whoring
“Close Softly the Whores”?
I love the cartoon, augochlorella.
Update:
The documentary’s ambition is to make women funnier, but there seems to be a lot of research out there showing that shaming language doesn’t work, and that the best way to get someone to improve their behavior is to simply not mention the bad behavior and instead focus on how awesome they’re going to be in future. This article gets to it for instance:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/middlemarch-and-what-we-mean-when-we-say-shame-works/
So, the experiment in the documentary will trial a range of endings, to see which one has the greatest improvement in women’s joke-making ability:
1) Confronting women with their actual gold-digging score, and giving them the option to renounce it in favour of independence
2) Asking women to estimate their own gold-digging score, giving them the option to renounce it in favour of independence.
3) Asking them to choose a statement they agree with from a list, but with differing lists, including including a range of statements which either all do, or all don’t mention gold-digging.
So, when they then go on to (unwittingly) do another comedy test, we’ll see the short-term effect of the different strategies on improving their sense of humour, whilst the long-term effects, will have to be measured with some other experiment, not yet figured out.
Tommy: Have you yourself renounced prostitution in all forms? Please be specific in listing your efforts, because your humour indicates a problem under your theory (mine too, but it’s no secret I wanna golddig)
A whore called Wanda.
The last Whore.
Whore of the cock-rings:The Fellowship of the whore;The two whores;The whoring of the King.
Kingdom of Whores.
Whorepolis.
Planet of the Whores.
Whore Games.
Cannibal Whores.
The Whore Centipede
The 120 days of Whores
Apocalypse Whores.
Tom, I really am legitimately interested in hearing how this gold-diggerometer works. What scale and units does it use? How is it measured? How is it calibrated? Do share.
Ok, wait, seriously?! You want to prove a causative affect right? That is, gold digging CAUSES women to be less funny? Not just is correlated with being less funny, but causes it, right?
So you’re going to attempt in engage in humor, do one of the above things, and try more humor? And at least on of e above things has multiple options?
Do realize how big a sample size you need?!?
Tom, what’s your undergrad degree in? Because you seem to have missed a few statistical methods classes.
Can’t he technically make statistical inferences (with a large standard error) with a sample size of 30+? Not defending his technique, it seems to me that the major issues here are:
-operationalizing both variables (gold diggerism and sense of humour)
-getting a random sample
Clearly Argenti is way better versed in this than I am though, I’m just a newbie at stats.
What if the women get on camera and refuse to renounce gold digging? That would be funny. But gold digging is inversely proportional to humor. So how is this possible? It’s a paradox!
*furiously scribbles mathematical equations in a notebook*
He could find evidence of correlation, but he’s trying to find causation.
Maude — yeah, that’s about the right range, but he needs that many in each condition. As in…
1) 30+ people
2) 30+ people
3) “Asking them to choose a statement they agree with from a list, but with differing lists, including including a range of statements which either all do, or all don’t mention gold-digging.”
30+ for each list
Hell, even if he does just 1 & 2 he could get something resembling data from 30+ (I’d shoot for 50, but we’re still in the realm of what he can maybe manage). But if he does multiple lists and gives each to <5 people…
Asking everyone here their favorite ice cream would be better (hell, if I'd put it on the survey it'd be at least 100 times better…dear gods so much data!)
I’m guessing that if he ever gets off his ass and does this it will turn into “Students Arguing With Tom Martin About His Poor Experimental Design”.
(You know he’s going to approach the hottest, youngest women he can find.)
@ Argenti-
Yeah, that sounds like an amazing ‘documentary’… :-/
He still hasn’t responded to my application from 2 weeks ago though, I’m getting worried about my future fame and success.
“Can’t he technically make statistical inferences (with a large standard error) with a sample size of 30+”
depends on the expected difference. Larger difference , smaller sample size.
“He could find evidence of correlation, but he’s trying to find causation.”
Bu a larger sample won’t help. Another design i needed, maybe a cohort study or something.
Cassandra, my undergraduate degree is in film-making and autodidacticism (a word I looked up all by myself) – so everything should be absolutely fine, but if there is a wannabe researcher/co-presenter who can actually crunch stats, and spare me from reading the Psychology A Level book I’ve got on my shelf, send them this way.
I will be proving causation, because the joke-making will be measured in neutral non-gold-digging mode, where the emphasis will be on being as funny as possible, then later, in a (hidden to them) potentially gold-digging frame of mind, where the emphasis will still be to be as funny as possible, but for the entertainment of the apparent game-show’s viewers, but unaware we’re measuring it – If the bigger gold-diggers’ scores go down the most, then it supports my hypothesis.
Then they’re confronted to varying degrees about their gold-digging versus independence levels, allowing them to state their preferred operandi…
And then further joke-making measurements in their final improvised message, where they’re asked to be as funny as possible, for the sake of the game show (but again, unaware they’re being scored on it)
I did run the experiment past a professor in the field, by email, and he gave it the thumbs up – but further tinkering is going on, so all you skeptics with degrees in social science can get on board now, to insure we nail the science bit – and help make it as entertaining as possible without leaving anyone permanently psychologically scarred.
It is an audacious ruse, on the street, where things will probably go wrong quite a lot, before we eventually get it right.
It involves asking women to pick a random question, then forcing a particular question on them without them realizing – I’ve been along to the magic shop, for advice about how best to do this.
It involves finding out their relationship status without them realizing we’ve found this out.
It involves putting them through the wringer, then getting them to sign a release form at the other end.
It involves filming the debriefing session, and continuing to measure their joke-making as they come to terms with the true nature of the experiment.
They will be offered a free copy of the DVD or something, so that should do it.
Talacaris — point about correlation is it’s pretty much meaningless anyways. And even with a huge expected difference, he’s gonna need more than the dozen people he can get to sign a goddamned release.
Tom — I am not remotely kidding when I say that you’ll be on the receiving end of lawsuits if you make money off people’s appearance in your “documentary” without a release from them. As in, no signature, no footage. Period.