I sometimes refer to A Voice for Men, the Men’s Rights hate site that has evolved into something of a hate group, as a cult. Up until now I’ve only done so half-seriously; while there are a lot of things about AVFM that are cultish, from the apocalyptic rhetoric to the constant demands for money to the organized harassment of its critics, it seems to lack some of the central elements of a real cult.
I mean, they’re not holed up in a compound in Idaho; they don’t wear funny uniforms; and they don’t talk, at least not publicly, about their single-minded dedication to serving the group’s leader — one Paul Elam of Houston Texas.
Or at least I thought they didn’t.
One of my readers has pointed out to me an interesting moment in a video posted on Youtube last year by a woman — known by her internet handle SworeByThePrecious — who had been talking to AVFM’s Dean Esmay about getting a press pass for AVFM’s conference last year. The video features the uncut audio from a long and contentious 4 AM phone she and Esmay had to discuss the matter. (Ultimately, she didn’t get the press pass; here’s her account of what happened when she caught up with some of the conferencegoers at a bar afterwards.)
The really interesting bit in the recording — which I somehow missed when I listened to this last year — comes just short of the 23 minute mark, when Esmay pointedly tells Swore that he and other AVFMers are “a group of volunteers dedicated to a cause, and the cause is Paul Elam.” Here’s the audio:
Yep. You heard that correctly. The Number Two dude at AVFM doesn’t say that their cause is Men’s Rights, or fighting the evil “hate group” that is feminism, or any of the other things that Men’s Rights Activists like to say that they’re about. He says, plain as day, that their “cause is Paul Elam.”
If you don’t believe me, you can find the quote in the original video here. (The link should send you directly to that part of the phone call; if not, it’s 22:50 in.)
Now, I’m assuming that this was a Freudian slip on Esmay’s part, but whether it was intentional or not it’s pretty damn revealing, huh?
gil – I meant it!
That’s impressive as hell.
100% introvert, chronic depressive(with lately new shiny manic phases), living on disability, and almost never going outside.
It does have benefits 🙂
Well, they are using a different engine for Fallout 4 (or so I’ve heard) than the Skyrim one that people assumed they would use…so it’s probably safe to say it’ll be more graphically intense than Skyrim
Well this is a good sign… not. I wonder if they’ll ever do something “culty” The outcomes of that, whatever it would be, would be very bad.
@Proxieme
Do you play any Borderlands 1?
@gilshalos – depression and never going outside (and I think you live in Scotland?) next time you go to the GP ask them to run a Vit D blood test. Turns out I had a dangerously low level of Vit D which can lead to depression, exhaustion, weakness, etc.
rubyyogi,
Me too. Now I’m trying to get everyone to go get tested. Low D is no joke.
Lea-Yeah, it sure isn’t. Neither is hypothyroidism. I learned that the hard way as well. Having both hypothyroidism and low D levels is not fun. 🙁
Someone’s been learning from the master, hasn’t she?
Also:
And I’m not pointing out the evil, even–the racist and regressive views of the Manosphere are well known and there’s no need to beat that horse here. In a way I’m paying JB a sincere compliment.
But the emphasis on repetition does bring home the sheer dreariness of propaganda, the same empty words knocking about the head over and over, appealing to the basest of instincts, leaving no room for thought, drowning out the doubts and the fears until you are full of conviction, feeling tall and whole for the first time in your small, cramped life. The things adults have to do to function as such, skills like facing unpleasant truths about one’s self and dealing with reality, become unimportant. Propaganda is a reprieve from growing up and taking responsibility, which explains why authoritarians of all stripes behave like particularly badly-brought-up five-year-olds having a horrid day. See, e.g.:
If these people can’t redeem a depraved age, who could?
There are ethical reasons not to eat horse, which are connected to cultural ones but not merely cultural. Horses are companion animals, bred to be intelligent and responsive to human needs. This means two things. First, there is no way to humanely slaughter horses on industrial scales. They aren’t stupid like cows. Cows are bred to be dumb, and if the abattoir is constructed correctly, cows will walk serenely to their doom and literally never know what hit them. Horses will figure out that something ain’t right and will freak, no matter how carefully you try to hide what’s coming.
(This is also a reason why pork is more ethically problematic than beef – despite all efforts to the contrary, domestic pigs are still pretty smart.)
The other thing of significance is that there is something squicky about domesticating an animal to be a companion to humans, and then eating it. Cultures tend not to do this. It’s not unknown, and you can find cultures that keep a particular animal as a companion and also routinely eat it, but this is not typical. People tend to think it’s unethical to eat companion animals, whatever those animals might be in that culture.
PPT:
http://scontent.fsjc1-3.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/149348_10152505093031275_4804427533349387982_n.jpg?oh=c3db3ad17372fbfded4d0227034301d8&oe=55EB6CC4
Rats, I was afraid it wouldn’t embed.
— every MGTOW manifesto ever
Yeah, I’d say AVfM definitely gives off a cult vibe. Like any cult, they’re rigidly intolerant of dissent and work hard at shutting out outside ideas and influences not approved of by the leader. Most of AVfM’s followers could be described as semiotically incompetent. They’re literal-minded, bad at understanding social nuance, unable to read cues indicating that they’re being deceived or manipulated, anxious and susceptible to glib explanations about how the world “really” works. In other words, perfect cult fodder. Elam’s their hero, living the dream for them. They’re willing to hand over lots and lots of money to him in order to sustain the belief that one day they, too, can have women of their own to abuse and mooch off of, plus an army of vicious revenge pranksters at their disposal.
Instead of a religious cult, it’s a cult of arrested adolescence.
@rugbyyogi, Lea – I am however a redhead. Science says we are a lot better at producing VitD than other people, (Because we can’t take much sunlight)
I got diagnosed with a borderline Vitamin D deficiency last fall, after some bouts of unexplained dizziness. According to my doctor, for people who grow up in northern climates, Vitamin D deficiency is very prevalent, and cumulative over several decades. Each summer, you don’t quite make enough to see you through the winter, so by the time you reach adulthood, you’re running a deficit.
Also, the older we get, the less able we are to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight, so it’s imperative to start supplementing your diet. The current RDA of 600 IU a day is very low (basically, enough to prevent rickets). When I started taking 2000 IU a day, my dizziness went away, and I’ve also stopped getting every single frigging cold virus that sets foot in my sons’ daycare. Vitamin D plays a big role in regulating the immune system, apparently.
I hear you can get supplements cheap in Mexico.
I’m due to have some blood work done. I’m going to ask my doctor to order a vitamin D test while I’m doing that. Can’t hurt, and I’m starting to wonder if it might be important for me.
People have been speculating that Fallout 4 is on a modified Skyrim engine, so what I’m hoping for is that it’s around the same specs as Skyrim since my computer can play that easy peasy.
It also means that, maybe, they’ve spent more time on making the world, maybe, really engaging, maybe, if they didn’t try to make it SUPER AWESOME AMAZING BEAUTIFUL.
I mean, it does, but you know what I mean.
I also quite like that it has color. Fallout 3 was really green washed. And hopefully the world is more vibrant than in Fallout 3.
Oh, to add about the engine, they did use the same engine for Oblivion as they did for Fallout 3 and New Vegas (which were 3 and 4 years younger than Oblivion, respectively). So, hopefully, Fallout 4, which may possibly be 4-5 years younger than Skyrim, will be using the same engine.
I should probably get off my ass and update my RAM though.
@misseb47 – yes, I am hypo plus Vit D def. Basically lost a whole season of rugby last year. I love being strong, out in all weathers, etc – and I just got sicker and weaker and tireder and achier. Hopefully getting things under control now, but man it sucks.
@policyofmadness – you’re right it can’t hurt to ask, it’s a cheap test to run and cheap to fix if it turns out it is an issue for you with big improvements pretty quick- and no biggy if it turns out you’re not and you’re having bloods done anyway.
@gilshalos – redhead you may be, but if you’re not going outside much at all…light through windows doesn’t help. Y’know just ask. Depression can have many causes. I’m a ‘natural depressive’ (I made that up, but you probably know what I mean) but the hypo and Vit D def. just bring me closer to the edge I have to walk all the time. And it’s such an easy fix if you know it’s an issue.
I will not play XCOM in front of my children.
I will not play XCOM in front of my children.
I will not play XCOM in front of my children.
@gilshalos:
I’m thinking any specs you might find are guesswork at best.
I’d really like official specs for No Man’s Sky, as well as a release date. It’s kind of driving me up the wall.
My mom played Silent Hill 1 and 2 and Parasite Eve 1 and 2 in front of me and I turned out fine.
Fiiiiiiiiiiine.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/mmhm.gif
But, in all honesty, your children will likely 1) not understand the gravitas of the situation, 2) will be more interested in the action and neat pictures and 3) if it’s scary for them, they will likely express this so you can help them or they’ll go away because it’s too scary for them on their own.
Children are rather resilient to scary images. Hell, when I was a toddler, I’d sneak out of my room and watch the scary movies my mom was watching while I was “napping”; I didn’t have any nightmares or anything like that.
While you might want to shield your children from the horribleness, the best thing to do is trust your kids to know their limits on their own. Also, I wouldn’t call them “brave” for watching this crap without being scared because then they’ll want to be brave all the time and thus won’t actually remove themselves from any situation they find scary to continue being “brave”, if that’s understandable.
Well, they’re two years old and my girl is frightened of the dust buster.
I’ll play XCOM in front of them eventually. Violence aside, there’s also concerns about teaching them to be scared of The Other.
POM,
You are so wrong about cows. A cow is far more intelligent than a human toddler. We don’t eat those. Cows have personalities. Cows do not want to die. They do fear and mourn and feel pain. I agree with the social contract with domestic animals being different because of their part in building human civilization, but that’s a purely subjective and it in no way makes the torment we put the animals we eat through any more moral. Puppies and kitties are meat. The only reason we see cruelty to them as wrong and then go eat chicken that is tortured all it’s short life and then slaughtered without compunction is that we mentally compartmentalize our cruelty. We meat eaters tie ourselves in mental knots trying not to see how arbitrary our tastes are when it comes to causing suffering and death among other living beings. Our attitudes toward animals are not entirely different than our attitudes toward people. We put them in classes “OK to kill” and “Not OK to kill” without really having a rational reason for those distinctions.
People can also be lead to slaughter without too much fuss if done “right”. That doesn’t make us stupid. It makes our instincts manipulable, just like cows.
I’m of the opinion that whether we choose to forgo eating flesh or not, we shouldn’t kid ourselves about what we do. We like to think of ourselves in terms of black and white, good and bad. That just isn’t so. We do low down rotten shit all the time. We also do the most amazing and selfless shit all the time. Pride and shame are both part of being human. We’re just evolved enough to know what we do is often wrong and yet deeply desire doing it anyway. I can live with my hypocrisy. It helps keep me humble.
@Falconer
That’s very easily solved by teaching your kids there isn’t an “other”. And as long as you aren’t watching media that shows the “other” as a horrible menace all the time, the whole “other” shit shouldn’t absorb, if you will.
And the games I watched my mom play were violent also, but she didn’t just play violent games, she played a large variety of games in front of me. I was also taught that violence isn’t always the answer.
Admittedly, she me Vice CIty and San Andreas when I was 12. I wouldn’t say it was the best choice, but because she also played a large variety of games, I also played a large variety of games, thus didn’t always play violent video games.
One of the biggest parts of raising a gaming kid is to make sure you aren’t just buying violent video games. Parents who are ignorant of gaming are the ones who only buy the video games their kids want, which often are the big, violent AAA titles.
You are a gamer yourself. You will be able to make much more informed decisions on what you’ll allow your children to play.
You should trust your parenting and kids more. Kids won’t be corrupted by watching you play a violent video game every once in a while or even playing the games themselves. Just make sure they watch/play a large variety of games…and also not just play games, of course. While games are slowly getting better with the whole diverse characters and stories things, other media are still 100000000x better at dealing with some issues.
^Hah, my parents did NOT approve when I brought home Vice City to play at around that age. They drew the line at “no violence against innocent people”, which was pretty fair.
I then traded Vice City for Metal Gear Solid. I hadn’t played a game with fleshed-out characters and was so use to the whole “shoot the bad guy” so when I defeated Sniper Wolf and learned of her backstory… I felt guilty… I had never considered that maybe the baddies feel that what they’re doing is the right thing and might not be so bad after all. And when her pet wolves come over, sniff her dead body, then howl into the night, I just broke down in tears. It was so moving to me.