So I was idly perusing Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield’s Twitter yesterday, and I came across an alarming tweet. It seemed as though Bloomfield had somehow penetrated the 47 levels of security protecting the Feminist HIgh Council to discover incontrovertible evidence of Operation Wicked Succubus. You know, the feminist plan to eliminate all men (except for me).
https://twitter.com/BloomfieldJanet/status/523458962704699393
Her followers were aghast:
And naturally one of them brought up #GamerGate.
There were a few others, but you get the idea.
It never occurred to any of them to, you know, try to find out just who the bald man advocating killing all men was. Or who exactly he was talking to.
So I decided to do some serious investigative journalism to see what I could uncover. I typed out “‘eliminate men as a gender’ security” into a little known internet “search engine” called Google, and boldly clicked on the first result.
This led me to a Tweet with a URL in it. Bravely, I clicked on that URL and found myself looking at a video of a presentation at something called Monitorama PDX 2014 — clearly the code name for one of the Feminist Conspiracy’s conventions.
I looked it up in Google and discovered a web page for the event, which had been held in May. It was described as an “An Open Source Monitoring Conference & Hackathon.”
Ah, clearly a clever Feminist code name.
And then I decided to look up the name of the speaker: James Mickens. Turns out the guy works at Microsoft, one of the companies at the center of the Misandrist Conspiracy. Mickens is also the author of a number of papers, with titles like “Pivot: Fast, Synchronous Mashup Isolation Using Generator Chains” and “Mugshot: Deterministic Capture and Replay for JavaScript Applications.”
Obviously, some high level feminist theorizing.
Then I decided to watch the video. And I was shocked!
Because it wasn’t a speech about killing all men after all. It wasn’t even a feminist speech. No, it seemed instead to be a highly technical talk about internet security issues, illustrated with a lot of silly slides. Like this:
And this:
I must confess that I didn’t get the overwhelming majority of his jokes. But he audience seemed to find these slides, and much of what he said, hilarious. So if you ever need to hire a comedian who can joke about Synchronous Mashup Isolation Using Generator Chains, Mickens is your guy.
So where does the whole “kill all men” thing come from?
Well, I skipped ahead a bit in the video until I found a section in which Mickens talked about the dumb things people do that can undermine even the most sophisticated security setup.
His example: gullible, horny men who are tricked into “friending” hackers on Facebook posing as hot babes — even when there are pretty obvious indications that the hot babes aren’t really hot babes at all.
Things like: saying they graduated from Central University, even though there is no school by that name in the US, or spelling the name of their profession wrong.
These are all good clues, he said, that the hot babe you just friended on facebook was really this guy:
Given that men are regularly duped with simple tricks that play on their horniness and gullibility, Mickens joked, maybe the real goal for people trying to design secure systems should be the elimination of all men.
So that’s where the slide comes from.
And by the way, that whole bit of his killed — not as in “killed all men” but as in “got giant laughs from the mostly male audience.” Expecially the part about killing all men.
If you want to see the whole bit, starting with Mary and ending with “eliminate men as a gender,” it starts at around 20:40 in the video.
Men’s Rights Activists: more gullible than guys who friend Mary from Central University on Facebook.
NOTE TO EXTREMELY LITERAL-MINDED MRAS: That bit about the feminist plot to kill all men (except me) at the start of this post was a joke. Feminists don’t really intend to kill all men (except me).
Or do they?
2
On the other hand, it’s hard to see when there is no humor. Especially when Poe’s law makes it difficult to spot the exaggeration.
You are very boring and should go bore some other unfortunate group of people instead of us. Look, finally something everyone can agree on!
Even though this has been an interesting discussion I’m afraid I have to leave the Internet for a few hours. Thanks to anyone who answered me, and a good night to everyone.
Nope
Not for us it hasn’t, which was, I suspect, the point to the exercise.
3
Number Ninja is really the only appropriate response to a GamerGater.
“It’s not my fault if you reason in Manichean terms.”
it’s not my fault you like to use big words because you think it makes your weaksauce look more legitimate.
“When something is deliberately exaggerated for humorous reasons, it’s easy to see it’s satire.”
cavanaugh wants to have it both ways; he both claims that the article is satire and spurious when it suits him, yet he defends what the article says in the comments when that suits him, too.
we’ve seen this before with paul elam: “it’s satire! but also it might be true! but it’s also satire!” it’s a tedious way of racking up controversy whilst retaining plausible deniability.
Now, cassandrakitty, when a gnat bites you it’s just a minor annoyance to you, but to the gnat it is an extremely fulfilling encounter.
Why can’t they show up when one of us is trying to get to sleep? They might at least make themselves useful.
Funny you bring that up, because the actual fallacy just so happens to be what you used in your hypothetical about david and the SCUM manifesto. Also funny because David, is showing that the author of the death threat was probably part of the same ideology as a number of folks (which included Thunderf00t), did not in fact invoke the fallacy.
He’s gone? Ah well. Time to make a late dinner!
4
also important; chockanga never sets out his beliefs or ideas regarding “ethics in journalism”, except in what he is, allegedly, not. this makes it rather easy to move the goalposts since we don’t actually know what his goals are when he means “ethics in journalism.”
by gum, he’s just an honest anonymous nobody with no agenda, a shining beacon pointing out moral flaws come what may.
I apologize for not leaving after I said I was leaving, but:
“Funny you bring that up, because the actual fallacy just so happens to be what you used in your hypothetical about david and the SCUM manifesto. Also funny because David, is showing that the author of the death threat was probably part of the same ideology as a number of folks (which included Thunderf00t), did not in fact invoke the fallacy.”
The thought experiment was bulit to be unethical and sleazy. I do not actually think that Futrelle could create an environment that inspires anyone to attempt on someone else’s life.
But neither did Thunderfoot.
Lies like a cheap rug.
Even if you apologize, you still incur the standard -2 deduction.
5 (number ninja, not flounce score)
“also important; chockanga never sets out his beliefs or ideas regarding “ethics in journalism”, except in what he is, allegedly, not. this makes it rather easy to move the goalposts since we don’t actually know what his goals are when he means “ethics in journalism.””
My personal beliefs don’t matter. What matters is whether or not it is wrong to associate someone to criminals on a very flimsy basis.
Just because you asked, though, I’ll tell what I believe in: equality of rights and responsibilities for everyone.
Lies like this cat.
http://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/154798-bigthumbnail.jpg
Points of objection – cat is cute, and cat does not make me want to take a nap.
That cat is much better at it that the troll.
6!
Cute living kitty rug
Fair points.
Failure to stick the flounce gets major deductions.
Also, “meow” is a more convincing argument than anything the troll was able to come up with, and more succinct too.