Say it ain’t so, Paul! A Voice for Men’s second “International Conference on Men’s Issues” has been … cancelled!
No one could have seen that coming, huh?
Anyway, in a “Bulletin” on AVFM yesterday, AVFM “CEO” Paul Elam tried his best to explain away this little embarrassment:
At the outset it would appear that this is a piece of bad news, and of course it is, but it is news that we are taking in context here at AVFM.
The “context?” The conference was a failure waiting to happen from the moment it was first announced. And not because of opposition from the international feminist conspiracy. Nope. Even Men’s Rights Activists, normally a fairly gullible group, were underwhelmed by the conference lineup (consisting mostly of completely undistinguished AVFMers) and a bit stunned by the high ticket price.
Elam will now be issuing refunds to anyone silly enough to have actually bought a ticket. Which shouldn’t take long. I can’t imagine there were more than three of them.
His explanation for this bit of bad news that isn’t really bad news, if you think about it: Apparently, organizing a conference is really hard — especially, I assume, when apparently no one wants to go to it and you’re left struggling to explain to your supporters why it’s not a total ripoff, honest!
Since last June we have been consumed with planning the [the now-cancelled conference]. We have the resources to do it well enough. However, we had to pull resources that we would normally use to take on direct activism, such as cases like Vladek Filler, and run the most prominent publication on men’s issues available.
So the conference was getting in the way of your ability to harass women on the internet do important “direct activism?”
We simply have not grown to the point to do everything simultaneously. … We found out by nearly burning out every member of our staff.
Poor babies. Announcing things is easy. Doing them is hard. Which is perhaps why AVFM is so much better at announcing than doing. Remember AVFM’s March on Washington to “Sink Misandry” by protesting the evacuation protocols of The Titanic? Oh, probably not; like a lot of things announced on AVFM, it never happened.
It was clear that the most reasonable one was to forego conferencing plans and return to what we do best until such a time that we have the ability to do more. We need some rest followed by a return to our roots which is precisely what we are going to do.
Rest as long as you have to, Paul. And then rest some more.
I realize fully that some of our opponents will view this as some sort of defeat for us or victory for them.
Huh. Why would anyone see this giant defeat for AVFM as a defeat for AVFM? It’s baffling!
Whatevs. We never let them define us to begin with.
Well, that’s certainly true, if by “them” you mean “people still connected to reality.” In the comments to Elam’s “bulletin,” the site’s supporters are … declaring victory. No, really.
To “Pinetree,” the cancellation is evidence of AVFM’s “huge growth” in its non-conference-canceling activities.
Partridge was if anything even more excited by this massive failure great victory.
To the strange and excitable fellow who calls himself Isaac T. Quill, the true extent of AVFM’s glorious victory could be seen in the fact that
after 15+ hours even Mr Desperate for Click Bait Futrelopath has not managed to rush anything into print! He’s still fixated on the launch of a trailer for “The Sarkesian Effect” …
It seems the poor lambs are all nonplussed and are unable to cope! So that’s FTSU++++ RESULT!
Huh. I will admit that I didn’t spend my Saturday night obsessively refreshing AVFM for updates. And that after making the little video masterpiece in my last post I kind of slept late today. So I only recently heard about your little bit of misfortune.
Sorry, your HUMONGOUS VICTORY. RESULT!!1!
@Policy of Madness
Oh ye of little faith. These are men’s rights activists we’re talking about, the noblest of God’s creatures. They don’t just write articles about Vladek Filler. They also make interminably long videos about him.
Seriously, how can it take 18+ minutes for Karen Straughn to say “his ex-wife is a lying slut” over and over? I just ate, so I will refrain from watching for now and finding out for myself.
Shit….a handful of early fans had better luck organizing the first Star Trek Convention in 1972. Those grew, year by year however.
From Elam’s last post about Filler:
If you were wondering whether Elam had ever tried to raise money for Filler’s legal costs or referred his howler monkeys to Filler’s donation website: No, of course he hasn’t. The justice system doesn’t tolerate Paul Elam pretending to help other people. The entire fabric of space/time might collapse.
Wanna bet they’ll announce a conference next year that costs twice as much money and only has two speakers: Paul Elam and his never seen before twin Luap Male.
I think the problem was that they couldn’t enlist enough women to manage the conference and make it work.
Give JB time. She no doubt will be on Twitter calling all and sundry whores and sluts.
@GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina
Sounds about right.
AVfMenners are definitely some of the most delusional people on planet Earth. I wonder when they plan on doing any real activism. It’s not that hard. Nothing is holding them back.
JB has already had her little say about “The Failures and Disappointments of ICMI-14.” Apparently she is mucho pissed that journalists did nopt recognize the major contributions of the FeMRAs.
She is showing some progress — she manages to rise to her usual level of ragespeak without a single “b-tch”, “wh-re”, or “c-nt”.
Lea-Lol! Lets hope not. XD
http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/img/2007/ep27/black01.jpg
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/154209/black-sheep-o.gif
I loved that movie, by the way. HILARIOUS! But yeah, the AVfMs do take the whole “if you get in an embarrassing situation, play it off like it never happened, because that’s alpha behavior” thing way to literally.
Didn’t Paul specifically say that AVFM wasn’t there to do activism of any kind, but to give men a place to talk without being criticized? He said they had no plans to build shelters or introduce legislation or anything like that, so what kind of activism is he spending money on?
@GOSJM
I thought that’s what it was supposed to be anyway? Well, in any case, if they had “a few more Jeff Sharlets” showing up then their attendance numbers would have tripled, so this could only be considered a good thing for them.
If they’re such a success but they don’t have the bandwidth to do it themselves, why don’t they employ full-time conference organisers?
I mean apart from the fact that this is a transparent lie.
I’ve put together several conferences on a shoe string and in less time than from now until the end of October when they were supposed to have the conference. All it takes is a bit of hard work, some good will, willingness to share credit, and an offer that’s good for conference goers and sponsors alike.
Ah….I see where they went wrong.
😀
Elam: “We’re not going to have a conference on hating women, because it would require us to pull resources away from hating women.”
Hmmm. Maybe he’s onto something. Maybe we can persuade him that publishing badly-shopped facebook propaganda is also getting in the way of hating women?
Hilarious. Like who didn’t think this year’s farce of a conference wasn’t going to be cancelled as soon as it was announced? Duh. It’s not like they had a successful one last year to inspire any confidence in them. Plus, it should be getting pretty darn obvious to even AVfMers that all Paulie wants is their money without having to deliver much.
Speaking of whom, don’t kid yourself about how little he cares about what his enemies think or say. I think he does care. A lot. He always seems to have the same exact comment about how feminists are going to take his pathetic excuses about something-or-another and then reject it. How convincing.
I know several men that would fit in fairly well with AVfM’s way of thinking and even they think the group is for losers. HINT: When you’re not impressing your fan base, you’re doing something WRONG.
Rereading the original post, does it strike anyone else that the reference to David Futrelle is kind of odd? It’s as though they think he’s the solipsist and nothing they do actually exists unless it gets his attention.
So very alpha.
Yes, it is odd. I don’t think they have any idea how much people already knew this conference would be cancelled. It was a non-issue, but that’s pretty much what denial will get you.
Well, all I can say to that is good riddance!
Wow, I was unaware that AVFM owned a time machine. That explains why all their beliefs seem to have come straight from 1850.
But seriously, we could technically consider them cancelling their conference to be their first foray into real-world activism, because now there won’t be any repeat of last year’s sexual assaults. Thankyou for lowering the rate of sexual violence against women, AVFM!
*hides behind a blast shelter just in case any MRA trolls are lurking* =P
“We don’t do any activism, and nor should you expect us to, because we’ve never been about changing things, but now our conference is cancelled, we can focus on all the activism we’re not doing”
Seems legit.
Wonder if Paulie really will refund tickets, or if Paypal will have some kind of technical malfunction… or the ticket price will be considered a non-refundable donation to AVFM… or if he’ll have to deduct half of it for handling fees… or any of the other scams even the laziest of con-men could pull on these gullible rubes.
I’ll be honest, I would have a bit more respect for these people if they weren’t actually just a bunch of spineless cowards lurking behind computer screens.
I seriously doubt they’d be willing to go through what feminist protesters have gone through throughout the decades. You almost never see them protest IRL and probably for good reason. Their ideas are (rightfully) marginalized in society outside of the internet. They’re internet tough guys and keyboard warriors, merely paper tigers like all the other reactionaries.
Just total losers.
So I actually skimmed through the comments on the comments on the announcement and came across a few other gems from Isaac.
Translation: “We should all go camping together, but we’re totes not gay. Only manly men go camping.”
It was also accompanied by this image (which I hope embeds properly):
http://a.disquscdn.com/get?url=http%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2FRkuUXzg.png&key=z_EQtDbj4a1m8JqX-KFbhg&w=800&h=772
Just a hint guys: If you want women to come to your meetup, maybe don’t use an image from the scene in a film where a woman is murdered.