Is AVFM, the hate site we all love to hate, melting down before our eyes? Consider.
1) Men Going Their Own Way are Going Their Own Way, Far Away, From Paul Elam
AVFM’s head cheese Paul Elam has long fantasized about becoming King of the MGTOWs, which would help him build up his Flying Monkey army and turn Men Going Their Own Way into Money Going Into Paul Elam’s Pockets. In doing so, he seems to have alienated virtually all of those who consider themselves MGTOWs.
That hasn’t stopped him from trying to annex MGTOWland, or reveling in the setbacks of MGTOWers who haven’t pledged their love to Paul. The AVFM/MGTOW war has even had its own “Mission Accomplished” moment: a 2013 post by Elam’s partner-in-MGTOW Peter Wright declaring that “AVfM is indisputably MGTOW-central.”
The current round in the ongoing AVFM/MGTOW slapfight started with the publication of an e-book on MGTOW by Elam and Wright that was not exactlly well-received by MGTOWers. It didn’t help that the misogynistic and astoundingly un-self-aware Elam made a video labeling his MGTOW enemies misogynistic “PigTOWs.” I mean, they are misogynistic PigTOWs, but insulting those you hope to turn into supporters isn’t exactly a great PR move.
MGTOWers are also angry that Elam has promoted a stay-at-home mother, the woman who calls herself “Janet Bloomfield” and “Judgy Bitch,” into AVFM’s main PR person. Former AVFMers John “The Other” Hembling and Diana Davison are now enthusiastically supporting the anti-Elam MGTOW army, and the online sniping between AVFM and its enemies has reached a new low, with AVFMers apparently passing around nude pictures of Davison and Elam describing Hembling, his former number two at AVFM, as
the one guy at AVFM who was one blowjob away from turning mangina when the Queen of Auschwitz showed up to swallow.
Yeah, I’m not sure why Elam is calling Davison “the Queen of Auschwitz” either — because she’s skinny? — but I don’t think it’s meant as a compliment.
Apparently, the things MGTOWers and AVFMers are saying about each other in private are even worse, though I can scarcely imagine how. As AVFM ally Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan said in a YouTube comment of her own,
There are things going on in private chats and other places outside the public eye that would make you puke.
Yikes.
2) AVFM is alienating former supporters — and may even be driving off one of the biggest celebrities of the Men’s Rights movement, the aforementioned Karen “GirlWritesWhat.”
The latest Men’s Rightser to desert AVFM? YouTuber Natasha Douglas (a.k.a. Nurdy Dee, a.k.a. Nurdy Dancing), who says she’s gotten tired of the giant “clusterfuck” that AVFM has become. While she’s not exactly a major figure in the Men’s Rights Movement, AVFM has quietly moved a rather appalling video of hers, in which she argues that calling a man a misogynist is the equivalent of calling someone the n-word, off of its featured spot on AVFM’s front page, where it had been perched for what seemed like forever.
More significantly, Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan, AVFM’s star “Honey Badger,” has been offering some rather blunt critiques of Elam et al, and suggesting that she could easily walk away from the site. GWW, a popular YouTube blabber with more than 91,000 subscribers, noted in one Youtube comment (to the video here) that she’s become “sick to death of the poo-flinging going on between AVFM and MGTOW.”
While still publicly a supporter of AVFM, she’s talking a lot like someone with one foot out the door:
I’m still on the masthead, as far as I know, but I don’t do a whole lot for AVFM, and never have. I’m not even a member of their forums. I have no editorial control. I get no money from it. I haven’t contributed an article in ages, and anything of mine on the site is essentially grabbed from my YT channel or my blog. My opinions are my own. I’m willing to bet that I could cut them loose without suffering any real loss.
Why don’t I? Because my name can help them. …
[P]lease don’t think I answer to AVFM, that I care about what AVFM thinks of me, or that AVFM tells me what to do. They don’t. They could all drop dead tomorrow and I’d keep doing what I’m doing.
3) Money troubles: AVFM’s donors seem ever more reluctant to keep sending money to a site that seems incapable of accomplish much of anything beyond providing a platform for a bunch of misogynistic malcontents to shout into the wind.
This may be the real killer. AVFM appears to be having more and more trouble raising the exorbitant amounts of money that Elam claims the site needs to operate, and his fundraising appeals are growing ever more desperate.
At the moment they’re halfway through a two-week long (!!) fund drive, and their little fundraising thermometer is indicating some pretty chilly air:
The fact that they are even running a fund drive with such an, er, ambitious goal is a sign that AVFM’s “new approach” to financing its existence is failing miserably.
In January, after what seems to have been the site’s most difficult fundraiser yet, Elam told his readers that “we need a way to finance our move ahead without coming to you every three months and putting it all on your shoulders,” promising his long-suffering donors “a drastic decrease quarterly in fundraising goals.”
His latest quarterly fundraising goal? Exactly the same as his last one.
Apparently Elam’s other projected “revenue streams” — advertising, his “publishing house,” “e-stores,” and even web hosting services — have not even amounted to a little trickle.
I am shocked — shocked! — that AVFM’s little “publishing house” has not managed to make millions off of two collections of century-old public domain writings by anti-suffrage socialist E. Belfort Bax and a book about MGTOW that virtually everyone in that little community hates.
In his current fundraising appeal, Elam explains that he’s trying to turn AVFM into a for-profit LLC, claiming that
the expense of pulling this together was considerable, given the rates of attorneys and CPAs. And that is not even close to all of the expenses.
For our upcoming publishing house, Zeta Press, we have had to engage attorneys to develop editor’s and author’s contracts and invest in the web development and ecommerce necessary to make that a reality.
How much does it cost to prepare an author contract for a terrible e-book that will sell 8 copies?
In his January post, Elam also suggested that the site’s upcoming conference could make some sweet, sweet cash. Today, he’s singing a rather different tune, declaring that planning for the conference has been
so financially consuming that the LLC’s needs preclude me from AVFM personal income for the foreseeable future. That means I have to work at something else for personal income.
To accomplish this I will be offering online coaching services to men only for a limited amount of hours a week in order to keep food on the table.
Yes, really. I suggest that we start calling him “Coach.”
I will be including one hour per week of pro bono work for those who cannot pay.
What a generous soul! And I will match his offer: Give me $20,000 a quarter and I’ll talk to someone for an hour for free.
In any case, the future of AVFM isn’t looking too bright at the moment. Change “countdown” to “meltdown,” and “Venus” to “Uranus” in the following song and you have the perfect theme song for AVFM today.
I’m not sure why this video is labeled “the worst cover ever” of “The Final Countdown,” as it is clearly the BEST.
Buzzfeed…why? Why did you allow this to happen?
In all seriousness, though…women can control their emotions, even when they’re PMSing or on their periods. I do it all the time. I’m not saying that it doesn’t affect my mood–it does, although it makes me sad rather than irritable or angry, and it affects every woman a little bit differently–but that doesn’t mean that I can’t control myself. Maybe JB is promoting the myth of the uncontrollable PMSing woman so that she can use it as an excuse the next time that she says something reprehensible?
Also, I just noticed something. JB wrote in her buzz feed article that women are, on average, as smart as men. That’ll probably spell the beginning of the end for her run on AVFM.
alaisvex-“I just noticed something. JB wrote in her buzz feed article that women are, on average, as smart as men. That’ll probably spell the beginning of the end for her run on AVFM.”
We can only hope.
@alaisvex: I’d say women are expected to control their emotions at that time of the month. If you go off on someone, it just makes women look bad (because the moment you do, suddenly all women are bitches on their cycles because anything one woman does is representative of every woman everywhere apparently).
And I would think some women avoid it to get the “Aw, are you on your period?” patronizing from people around them.
Does anybody else always read “Redpillian” as “Reptilian”?
Paradoxical Intention,
Very true. Unfortunately, I think that being on their periods actually keeps women from bringing up real issues because they assume that all of the feelings that they have during that time of the month are irrational and hormonal.
Wow it turns out women are manipulative emotional children who like to be bossed around by men. Thanks for the info, JB! She said it and she’s a woman so I guess it must be true. /s
It’s a user submitted article rather than an actual BuzzFeed piece.
I can’t find it on the “featured” page. So… about as much of an achievement as my posting this post here. Hi mom!
I’d say it’s more like calling a sheet-wearing KKKer a sheet-wearing KKKer, tbh.
@M.
I thought I was the only one!
@ParadoxicalIntention @alaivex
Not surprisingly, misogynist asshats use this “you have a vagina so your feelings don’t count!” thing for realz. When I expressed anger at some dude over his willful strawmanning of my arguments, he told me to change my tampon and wash out my vagina with Gardasil. I told him how gross and inappropriate that was and blocked him, at which point he used a different ID to tell me I was “projecting.” Yeah, he doesn’t know what projection means, either.
This is hilarious, sure, but it’s also so, so sad to think that there’re probably at least some men out there who’d think it would be a good idea to pay Elam for advice.
I first blundered into AVFM a long time ago, shortly after I discovered that feminism was A Thing, and a reasonable one, at that. “Wait, you mean that feminists DON’T hate men? They are cool with stay-at-home moms? They don’t want to try and *be* men? WHOA.” (It’s almost like hearing someone’s beliefs straight from them is way more beneficial than getting all your information from their critics.)
I was blown away by how succinctly feminism was putting language to all sorts of microaggressions that I had never fully understood—like, why does chivalrous behavior bother me so much? Why do I get so freaked out when a random dude on the street mentions my looks? Why do I feel so shy about acting funny and/or smart around guys? etc. So to my then-young eyes, the world had just flung open, with my life as a woman suddenly making SO MUCH SENSE. I began reading everything I could get ahold of, and Googling around to find out what else I had been missing.
I wondered, “Huh, I wonder if there’s stuff like this about guys? Surely men get the short end of the stick sometimes, too! I wonder if there’s such a thing as Men’s Rights?” Aaaaaand ended up on AVFM.
It was… not quite the experience I was anticipating.
I lasted all of about five minutes before bailing out, horrified, feeling a bit like I needed a shower.
Do those asking for free “coaching” from him have to prove they need financial aid becasue they went broke paying child-support *ahem* ransom to the evil wimmenz?
@ Sadie G
I think they have to produce a receipt from a restaurant showing the woman didn’t chip in and a notarised statement proving she didn’t even give him sex afterwards.
@Paradoxical Intention:
I know this is an entirely different thread but apparently I missed a lot of exciting troll manouvers* a few days ago. Just wanted to say well done on that really awesome comment with all the links and the proof, nice work.
*I can never spell this.
If anyone’s still looking for German vocabulary fitting the situation, I’d suggest Hohngelächter. It goes along well with Schadenfreude.
Best Final Countdown, they could play it themselves wherever they go!
I am so saddened to learn that yelling at women on the internet is not a viable long-term career choice. Luckily, teaching other men to yell at women on the internet appears to be a good fall back.
‘Vindictive Whims’ would be a great name for a rock band.
Why the hell did Buzzfeed give Judgy Bozo a platform? I believe that’s a clear violation of their “No Haters” policy…
I have yet to see a MGTOW that doesn’t despise the guy at this point and many men’s rights activists can’t stand him either.
“teaching other men to yell at women on the internet appears to be a good fall back”
@Viscria Yeah there are some douchy guys that are into that but honestly feminists have absolutely no high ground on this matter considering how they behave in public. Screaming over other people to silence them is no way to make a point. A casual glance at Twitter and Tumblr also has a lot of feminists that would rather insult and emotionally abuse people than make reasoned and convincing arguments.
It is no wonder some men have chosen to go MGTOW and many don’t want anything to do with feminists or women anymore. That is the message we have been sent LOUDLY. “We don’t need or want you men. We hate you and you are despicable for the crime of the sin of being born male.” is what has been expressed openly and often and so we have taken our ball and gone home.
I have to admit though, watching the Trad-cons like JudgyBitch and the morons on FoxNews going mental over this is rather entertaining and watching the MRAs thrash about impotently is just pathetic.
PS: Just got back from the Buzzfeed piece. Scrolled past the wall-o-text (can you believe she had a collaborator to help with that?) and voted it FAIL, TRASHY and EW. Suggest you all do the same. A little antifreep, as it were.
xkcd said it best. As usual.
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/7/75/how_it_works.png
Same. Made a complaint through the “Editorial Feedback” about the article. It’s really just a text wall of Red Pill rhetorics on what manipulating and nasty b*tches those females are. The “shit test” part is particulary screwed up, because in practice it is merely justification for men acting dismissive and dominating towards women.
Basically, the whole article tells you that you should never listen to anything the woman in your life says. Men are already pretty good and this and really don’t need any “help”.
Like the PMS/period stuff is really just a way to dismiss anything a woman says that you don’t want to hear: “It’s your hormones talking, not your brain.” I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to be repeatedly treated this way.
Kootiepatra:
Unfortunately, for some reason, sites and groups that try to be about taking feminist principles and using them to help men who are screwed over by the Patriarchy invariably wind up being resentful about how feminists at large are still focused on women’s issues. They aren’t as horrible as AVfM by a long shot, but I usually end up bailing because rather than just being focused on, say, cosmetic male infant circumcision or imprisonment culture or toxic masculinity, there’s usually a slew of posts about how women need to be helping them more with these issues. (The reaction to Emma Watson’s UN speech over at Heteronormative Patriarchy for Men was pretty typical.)
Honestly, I think we should be grateful that Elam appears to be such a shameless grifter: a true believer might actually enact some of their awful ideas.