Milo Yiannopoulous — the Gamergate icon and reactionary Breitbart “journalist” — has some exciting personal news to report. In a Breitbart post today, he proudly announced “I’ve just been appointed the first visiting professor of Men’s Studies at Oberlin College.”
You may be wondering why Oberlin college would hire a far-right hack journalist with no academic credentials to head up its new “Vladimir Putin Global Centre for Masculine Awesomeness”. And that’s because Oberlin didn’t. The post is an obvious, albeit gratingly unfunny, joke from Milo.
Don’t tell that to the folks in the Men’s Rights subreddit, who are convinced his appointment and the Putin Centre are totally legit.
In his post, Milo quickly “clarifies” that he’s not being hired by the real Oberlin Colllege in Ohio, “home of hate crime hoaxes, false allegations of rape, and the shameful treatment of feminist professor Christina Hoff Sommers,” but by a Polish college with a similar name, the “the lesser-known Oberlinksi [sic] College, established, according to legend, by the great educationalist Czesław Benedykt Oberlinski.”
Needless to say, “Oberlinksi College,” the correctly-spelled “Oberlinski College” and Mr. Oberlinski are all wholly imaginary.
Milo’s post couldn’t be a more obvious joke if it had the words “obvious joke” superimposed over the text in 96-point type. I mean, the “Vladimir Putin Global Centre for Masculine Awesomeness?” And his promise that
on the first day of class, the illegitimate and oppressive myth of the “gender pay gap” will be symbolically burned on a campfire, the manliest bonding activity we can think of.
While some of the commenters on Breitbart seem to have gotten the joke, such as it is, the regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit actually think that their beloved reactionary Milo is going to be a real professor.
In two separate topics on the front page, each with dozens of upvotes, some of the more gullible regulars are enthusiastically celebrating his imaginary appointment to an imaginary school:
One hailed the imaginary appointment it as “good news for genuine egalitarianism.”
Oh, Milo has his detractors. Some commenters noted they were none too happy about his pro-circumcision stance; another wondered a little about his lack of qualifications for teaching imaginary classes at an imaginary school.
But no one there — at least as of this writing — seems to have realized that Milo’s “appointment” and his “Vladimir Putin Global Centre for Masculine Awesomeness” aren’t real.
“Only Oberlin college in Poland?” I will have you know, sir, that our country is the home of the very finest of the world’s imaginary educational facilities!
This isn’t entirely surprising – it’s just as real as everything else MRAs whine about.
I really don’t like the “Putin is the epitome of manliness! Look, here’s a Photoshop of him riding a bear!” meme. It completely ignores the reality of him being a violently homophobic Stalinist dictator and murderer because, hey, muscles.
… Which is toxic masculinity in a nutshell, really.
There’s some corollary of Poe’s Law at work here, just can’t quite put it into a tidy little package.
Oh hey, M, you changed your avatar. Win!
Hey, we can sell those guys some excellent investment opportunities in Greece.
@SFHC
I… was not aware that was a thing. WTF?
“…shameful treatment of *feminist* professor Christina Hoff Sommers”
Does this mean I can call myself a horse and no one can challenge me on it then?
Not sure if this is the place to ask this, but have you read this article?
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/gays-against-feminism-because-gay-people-are-not-your-property-feminists/
I can’t help but notice that Dean Esmay not only appears to think that a “Gay Card” is an actual thing that is given out by the Queer community. Do a Google Image search for “GayCard” and check out the first result. But he also seems to believe that ““faggots” and “dykes” and “trannies”” are the proper terminology for Homosexuals, Lesbians and Trans Humans.
And in his own words (again) “Since I’ve stood up for gay rights since back in the early 1980s, I’ll take it. And use it. I’m a moralfag by nature anyway (look it up)” So I looked up the term moralfag and according to Urban Dictionary: “Usually a moralfag opposes animal torture or pics regarding it and will do what they can to voice their opinion on it.” What the fuck is he implying there?
Does Dean Esmay actually believe that he is Pro-Gay, I mean… he’s so far off topic in that article that he’s in an entirely different fucking book than the rest of the Actual Pro-Queer Community.
Not Homophobic? Bullshit, I’m not buying it.
It seems like Milo Yiannopoulous, writing his joke article, got taken in by another joke article.
That is, he links to an article on “free bleeding,” a piece which reads like obvious trolling. Plus it’s written by someone with the pseudonym “Adora Bull.”
Was he in on the joke? Did he write the other one himself? (The styles seem quite different, though.) Or does he just take any wacky rumours about Those Evil Feminists for granted?
I was trying to think of a term for pseudo-journalists like Yiannopoulous who seem to have been summoned into existence by the 24-hour news cycle’s need to fill the space between ad breaks. So far, I have:
Journalisht: They try to imitate the outer appearance of a journalist but lack the important bits, e.g., ethics, reliable sources, etc.
Repoeter: Everything they write is an instance of Poe’s Law in action
I dunno, they lack punch. Anyone got any better ones?
@catmara
I call ’em Fox News.
@EJ
Yep, she is now GayDOS. 8) Supposed to be temporary for Pride Week, but I think I like it too much.
@Catmara:
My grandfather, who was a journalist in his time, referred to it as churnalism: recycling press releases, non-stories and rumours into puff fodder to bulk out the papers as quickly and cheaply as possible, normally without any sort of fact-checking or basic research.
@blanktie
“Does this mean I can call myself a horse and no one can challenge me on it then?”
Neigh.
*slow clap*
What a surprise. The manbabies who don’t understand sarcasm… don’t understand sarcasm.
Morons.
when was the last time CHS could have accurately been called an academic?
Twenty years ago?
She works for the same Koch bro think tank that shitbag CHARLES “I dont understand how IQ tests work” MURRAY works for.
anyway, Calling milo a Porta-potty fire isnt fair to porta-potties
Pretty much. If anyone does challenge you, just say that you’re a traditional horse, and not one of those radical third-wave horses that walks on four legs and eats hay.
http://media.giphy.com/media/fPmM3JYh4BvcA/giphy.gif
This is gonna be good.
I can’t wait for the eventual reveal that Milo made it all up. The backpedaling and the apologia will be hilarious.
Re Putin’s “manliness”-
It’s not even just an jnternet meme, I’ve seen actual politicians and pundits talk about how we’re doomed because Obama isn’t “manlier” than Putin.
this entire tweet chain nails it
https://twitter.com/m_m_myers/status/615692078790512640
Milo is EVERYTHING GG says they hate
I’ve always read it as disparaging satire of him and of toxic masculinity (which is, after all, not incompatible with violence, dictatorship, or homophobia.)
But I haven’t seen it in the wild all that often. Also, I tend towards stupidly optimistic. So maybe the meme communicates admiration as often as not–or oftener than than that–
Milo isn’t fit to teach at Beck University.