Well, it seems that some of the good folks on the Men’s Rights subreddit have taken issue with my post this morning congratulating them on their massive victory in brigading their preferred definition of “MRA” into the top spot on Urban Dictionary. Apparently they think I was trying to brigade their victory away from them.
Let’s take a look at some of their specific complaints, shall we?
The lovely fellow who calls himself ThePigmen brings up the important issue of me being a “walking shit-stain,” makes an irrelevant pedantic point, and accuses me of running ads I’ve never actually seen on my own site, perhaps because at least some of the ads are tailored to user profiles.
Right now the top ad I see on this site is one tailored to “xfinity customers like you,” and I am in fact an xfinity customer, for better or worse.
Whelponry notes that my last name sounds like a naughty thing in French, sort of.
Touche!
Another commenter isn’t quite sure who I am, and decides to simply presume the worst.
![Lethn 3 points 8 hours ago I don't even know who this guy is? I presume he's another moron who thinks it's okay to harass and attack people that disagree with him? permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]Leinadro 4 points 8 hours ago Yes but to be specific he is a morom that thinks its okay its to harass and attack mras. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]HotSauciness 2 points 6 hours ago he's a very anti-MRA feminist. He's very popular on AgainstMensRights, I think he even posts there sometimes.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/presume.png?resize=502%2C294&ssl=1)
Remember, when you presume you make a pres of u and me!
There is the obligatory wall-of-text-so-big-I-had-to-make-two-screenshots-and-smush-them-together suggesting that no woman would ever touch me and that I am basically like the Ku Klux Klan, if you think about it.
One commenter notes that the central premise of the Men’s Rights post — that I sent my “wolf pack” out to brigade the Urban Dictionary definition of MRA — is not actually true. They get downvoted.
![tiqr -3 points 8 hours ago Nothing in that article encourages people to brigade urban dictionary. It just mocks this subreddit for doing it. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]blueoak9 4 points 8 hours ago Actually Futurelle's groupies hardly have to be told anymore to brigade; he just points out targets and the wolf packs go into action. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]tiqr 1 point 8 hours ago That may happen, but it's unfair to accuse him of brigading when there isn't even subtle encouragement in his article. Especially when this sub pretty blatantly engaged in overt "brigading" (activism?) of the same nature. Not that I disagree with the definition as it stands. The other definitions below it are really childish. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]garglemesh42 1 point 6 hours ago Perhaps you don't know how batshit insane he and his followers are. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]blueoak9 1 point 6 hours ago* but it's unfair to accuse him of brigading when there isn't even subtle encouragement in his article. He trained them in brigading. He no longer has to explicitly deploy them. That's the only difference. He is not innocent here.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/brigade.png?resize=502%2C617&ssl=1)
Wow. Apparently the Battle of Urban Dictionary is much more important to these folks than I even realized.
If you ever wonder why I turn down offers to debate with MRAs, this is why: they would totally win!
Also, quick note to the wolf pack: CODE 4 RED “THEY KNOW” PROTOCOL 2.6 YANKEE HOTEL MARCOTTE
It honestly never occurred to me, despite reading this blog for ~2 years, to go downvote the definition at Urban Dictionary.
Bad training, Futrelle!
Did anyone actually do that?
Maghavan:
Well… if David has us so well trained, maybe we we don’t even realize we’re doing them! Maybe that’s why the lady from the humane society seems to think we’re on a first name basis. Also why my apartment is filled with dozens of cats I have no recollection of ever seeing, much less owning.
@maghavan
Katie & I missed you at the training. Per David’s instructions, we have cast our down votes on Urban Dictionary.
But it’s not too late for you.
Click through on David’s article and make short work of our prey.
By the way, to anybody who can be bothered upvoting/downvoting (read: Not me), downvote that really ableist one too. Being against MRAs is no excuse for flinging around death threats and the r-word.
Along the way the MRAs lost their Victory. They whined a lot about David and this site (which would be pretty good PR for it!). @David: You are doing the right thing – I salute you 🙂
I think he’s referring to the tradition of minstrel shows as performed by black people (rather than by white people in blackface). So in his analogy: men are the black people being oppressed by white supremacy, feminists (or maybe just women in general?) are the white supremacists cruelly exploiting their position of power, and DF is a black minstrel performer selling-out his own oppressed class so as to receive some sort of validation and acceptance from the oppressors. It all makes sense if you accept the premise that contemporary men (all 3.5 billion of us…?) are oppressed by feminism, which is one of the foundational principles for most MRA discourse, it seems.
Also, I checked the Urban Dictionary link – the first positive entry for MRA is currently sitting at #7.
So they do an en masse vote to get their ‘preferred’ definition to the top rank. Then, it gets downvoted back to 5th or 6th place, with hostile definitions being upvoted past it.
This, for some reason, is considered cheating, when the original upspamming was not.
I’m having Hugo Award flashbacks, here. Even if you accept that the response was somehow ‘cheating’, the same concept should apply to the original action.
@Kat
Mam Yes Mam! Opening new tab and engaging the enemy Mam!
…….
Encountering Heavy Resistance. Appear to be elements of the 38th NotAllMen!!
…..
Sustaining heavy casualties. My centre is giving way. My right is retreating. Situation excellent. I attack. Witness Me!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe they shouldn’t have boasted about their victory so quickly. I’m sure a lot of people hate that sub and went to down vote after reading about that.
Not to victim blame though 😀
Alpha Wolf Cereal: because women age like milk.
(Does anyone else remember Fruit Brute cereal? The mascot was a wolf. Well, a werewolf, but close enough.)
http://www.cookiemadness.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/frute-brute.jpg
I remember fruit brute, but never ate it. I was more of a Count Chocula girl.
(shaking her fist in the air) Why did I have to get parents that made me eat oatmeal or some other such healthy nonsense for breakfast?! I bet that’s why I never grew tall (ok the real reason is genetics but I feel kind of mean telling the ‘rents it’s all their fault that I’m only 5’1″)!
First the ferrets, now wolves. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a herd of alpacas or maybe goats if they’re the fainting kind. Cats are a given, but since they’re pretty busy doing the ‘evil overlords’ thing, interrupting them isn’t advisable.
Msexceptiontotherule:
I ate oatmeal porridge and grew to 6’3″. Then again, perhaps it works differently in the Southern Hemisphere.
I would be totally behind the existence of feminist alpaca cereal. Hey, Paradoxy, while you’re making merchandise…
@Msexception
Take it from somebody who keeps cracking their head open on car doors, being tall isn’t as great as it sounds. =P
“Whiny pedantic morons” — sounds about right.
I love one of the alternative definitions, too: “Mra: The sound a cat makes”. Or something like that.
This is serious business alright.
In other news, I just heard that 4Chan hacked itself, 8Chan and Reddit (again). Prepare to be blamed for it (again).
Whelp, I’ll make a mock-up of that alongside the others, and we’ll see.
I think I’ll put the designs up for vote or something and we’ll see what happens.
I work with ads, it’s called personalized retargeting when the website plants a cookie in your browser and shows you product recommendations from sites you visited. If he sees gambling stuff, he probably visited that gambling site before. I even see some of my own banners here (but you guys wouldn’t, because they are country-specific and personalized). Anyway, the ad space here is likely purchased automatically by ad systems and are completely unrelated to the site – otherwise my company’s ads wouldn’t run here too.
Which makes his pearl-clutching even funnier.
Tell them, “Va tu faire Futrelle!”
@Ej
You couldn’t just let me go on being mad at the universe over the height thing and for giving me parents that made me eat healthy stuff, could you?! 😉
@Scented
Yeah, but I bet you’d be pretty difficult to stuff in the trunk of a car, so we all have our burdens I suppose. 😉
I find it amusing that they think they know about David’s sex life.
I don’t have much to say about this, so I’m just going to comment on something that stood out to me in the wall of text beyond whatever points they think they’re making.
He might not have noticed that despite some early setbacks, people who oppose the union movement are winning. Somehow their propaganda that lower paying jobs with fewer regulations and protections are good for everyone is winning. The oligarchy is winning.
As for the civil rights movement, there are people actively working to set it back and they are winning elections. They might not be as blatant as the racists of the 50s and 60s, but they are still out there and managed to get parts of the Voting Rights act struck down and how voter ID laws are popping up all over the place.
Clearly they have no French in reality. Futrelle is nothing like enculé, except they both use letters from the same alphabet. They just pour out words and phrases but not in fully coherent groupings with syntax.