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.
I wouldn’t bet anyone’s going to get paid. Where’s Tom “owes £30 000 in court costs” Martin going to get cash? Those wages will be deferred permanently. His video’s not exactly blockbuster material … assuming it ever gets made.
As for where he got the idea, where does he get any of his bizarre notions? Each one’s more ridiculous than the last.
Felinazis: the soldiers of the Furrinati
see also Caninazis, Bunnazis*, Rodenazis etc
(*I was going to do Rabbinazis but then realized that it was the words Rabbi and Nazi put together and decided against that)
Do Bunnazis shout Bunnzai! when they attack?
@Kittehs
I would assume so, although no one has yet survived a Bunnazi attack. The cute, it kills.
Tom’s comment called improv both “much harder” and “effortless.” And his own participation in the study means this is not pure improv, as he has time to prepare material.
Has Tom commented anywhere on *how* it is possible to “measure joke making”?
Since this is highly rigorous and scientific, when Tom is graded on his improv skills, if he does poorly, he’ll cancel the project or turn it over to someone else better equipped to handle it.
…Right?
Coastal NSW is gorgeous. I am still financially recovering from my trip to the Galapagos (though it is almost all paid off!), but for my next trip I want to go to Australia and New Zealand.
Tom Martin is more boring than I remembered.
[redundant stuff removed –DF]
Opium for the masses, don’t worry about the humour-measurement method – that is already tried and tested by other researchers in gender and humour.
There are lots of humour level tests, different every time, which you can’t prepare for, and which I’ll be too busy to obsess over anyway prior to doing them.
You’ll see the random nature of it. Witty banter tests. Word association. Missing caption tests against the clock.
Quick-witted people do go to their vault of self-generated witticisms to adapt seemingly entirely off the cuff remarks, so its not something I’d be able to drastically improve in a month (or is it?)
A gold-digger holding back though (because god said a man should keep a woman and a woman should keep her mouth shut as long as the money keeps coming) – she might be able to suddenly improve.
Well since he is supposed to talk about this lead balloon of a project and not his pet peeves, his default is boring.
@cloudiah, I think David has warned him to talk just about his docco and leave the more florid stuff out of it. The recitation of his plans is boring without it being spiced up with penguins sitting on hard chairs. I wonder how many people have signed up for realz and how many are just clambering aboard the impending train wreck for a birds eye view?
another picture to tempt manboobzers to Oz
Someone should let my husband know that apparently I’ve been keeping quiet all these years so that he continues to support me.
Except a) I haven’t and b) he doesn’t
And ninja’d by Bostonian on the dullness of Tommy’s project.
I went to Cannon Beach, Oregon today for father’s day and saw a oystercatcher sitting on its nest! Right on Haystack rock, too. It was really cool. (Google Haystack Rock or Cannon Beach for photos–the Oregon coast is really quite beautiful.)
Okay, so honest question:
Even if gold-digging women (…I’m not sure if this is better that “wh*res, but whatever) are less funny, why does that matter?
hey, wordsp1nner, that is gorgeous..and it reminds me of round here ( so I am biased).
::waves at wordsp1nner across the pacific::
Some women, out of financial desperation, are afraid to speak freely. Some men, out of financial desperation, are afraid to speak freely.
Clearly, the problem here lies with those individual men and women, and we shouldn’t do anything to make them secure enough to speak freely (and with humor).
Good night, I say, off to dream of Australia.
Because the only reason a woman might be reluctant to speak up is because she wants presents. It could never have anything to do with cultural pressure or threats of violence. No, that would never happen.
@wordpsinner
I think he is somehow trying to give gold-diggers incentive to give up their whoring ways, because being funny is just so fab.
“I think the reason people are being so negative online about this project, is that media reports make it sounds like I’m accentuating the negative, ignoring the fact that I will be accentuating the positive too, and trying to induce more positive outcomes for women’s humour levels.”
actually, i rather think the reason people are reacting so negatively to your project is because you are attempting to use one misogynistic belief (that women are gold diggers) to prove another misogynistic belief (that women are not funny).
even a good number of MRAs want to distance themselves from that, and it’s hard to get MRAs to not endorse misogyny so that’s really saying something.
But I’ll leave you with one shot of the CA part of the Pacific coast:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/claudiah/6387726027/in/set-72157628107741799/lightbox/
Okay, maybe one more:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/claudiah/6387804777/in/set-72157628107741799/lightbox/
(That was a great hike.)
cloudiah, we don’t have permission to view…or I don’t at least.
QFT
Oh if I wasn’t sleepy I would move the photos to imgur. I just lost 20 minutes looking at pictures of my dad on flickr.
So just take my word for it that California is f-ing gorgeous. Like Australia.
I have friends in California, in Los Angeles. Maybe one day…
The idea that women are all gold diggers can easily be disproven by the fact that my wife (who has far higher earning potential than I do) married me in the first place.
Not to mention the prior string of relationships I had, which each ended for a variety of reasons — none of which were because I never bought the women involved stuff. Because… I never really have bought any of them stuff.
Because I was poor. And cheap.
Mostly cheap.
Tom’s project is basically the equivalent of going up to women and saying, “hey unfunny ladies, maybe you could be funny if you weren’t such whores!”