It’s not exactly news, at this point, that more and more online media outlets have given up on their comment sections, shutting them down because they don’t have the time or money or patience to deal with the cesspools of vitriol and hate they’ve become.
Popular Science kicked off the wave of comment section closing back in 2013. Since then, comments have been removed from the sites of media giants like CNN, Reuters and Bloomberg; from major newspapers like The Chicago Sun-Times and the Toronto Star; and from a wide assortment of online outlets including re/code, Mic, The Verge and Vice’s Motherboard. Most sites regard the decision to close comments as one that is both sad and necessary.
But one site is touting what seems to be the impending end of online comments — at least on sites unwilling or unable to moderate the hell out of them — as a huge victory.
In a recent fundraising appeal on his site A Voice for Men, Men’s Rights elder Paul Elam happily takes credit for making the comments sections of other sites so poisonous for so many people that those who run the sites are increasingly crying “uncle” and shutting them down.
Elam doesn’t phrase it quite so bluntly, of course. He sees the closing of comment sections as proof that feminists (and presumably everyone else disgusted by AVFM) just can’t handle the TRUTH.
“The free pass for feminists has been revoked,” he declares.
Many Major websites that continue to run misandric bullshit now often have two words in common at the end of their hateful posts.
Comments Closed. That is now a common reaction of the feminist media in the wake of average people clobbering them with dissent and ridicule.
Apparently calling women the c-word is a form of “dissent.”
Elam goes on to suggest that AVFM has led the way in making virtually everyone so disgusted by Men’s Rights activists and other, er, “dissenters” that they’ve given up on the possibility of civil discourse online.
Again, Elam doesn’t put it quite this way. He claims to be “changing the cultural narrative,” dontcha know?
I can say with certainty and pride that it was AVFM that kicked the door in on all of it. We took the daggers thrown at us by mainstream media across the western world and pushed back defiantly.
Don’t flatter yourself, dude. While AVFM and its flying monkey squad of comment-section-poisoners has definitely played a role in making the comment sections of a number of media sites even bigger cesspools than they already were, AVFM hasn’t singlehandedly ruined online comments forever.
Many other terrible people have played their part — white supremacists, GamerGaters, white-supremacist GamerGaters, the list goes on and on.
Here at We Hunted the Mammoth, of course, we know that you don’t have to shut down your comment sections to prevent them from being overrun by malignant jerkfaces. Instead, you can simply close your comments to malignant jerkfaces like Elam and his crew, inviting some of them in only as a source of amusement and banning them quickly when and if they start flinging poo.
Discuss. (Not you, MRA jerkfaces.)
Every once in a while I leave a comment on a news site, and then regret it for the next 24-48 hours because men have to tell me how I’m wrong. Often while agreeing with me! I should just give up and make a gender neutral avatar for that kind of thing, I know, but that just rubs me the wrong way.
So, I’m kinda new to this whole feminism, mra, and mgtow thing.
But, I’m really starting to get worried about us guys, our rights movement doesn’t seem to be all that active, outside of the internet.
I predicted this would happen back in 2011.
Basically, this is what happens when the mob is allowed to have their way.
AVFM has just admitted that they’re no different then the Town Hall nutters who used to go to meetings and scream at politicians until they had no choice but to leave, thus depriving other citizens of the right to engage with their elected representatives because of a handful of stupid ignorant, selfish, fanatical morons.
What he doesn’t get (or doesn’t care to get) is that thanks to people like him and his squad of fucktards, the individual has just lost the ability to express themselves in a significant way.
So ironically ,the very group he claims to represent, men, will no longer get their voices heard.
A Voice For Men is now officially A Voice That Silences Men.
Good job asshats (Paul Elam et al). I told you this would come to pass when you first tried to court me and get me to your side. You didn’t listen and said it wouldn’t.
Now it has, and you’re trying to play of the loss of one of the greatest things the people can have; a free, open, accessible forum, as if that’s a good thing.
Good job doing the work of the State, Fascism and Corporate interests for them and giving them what they want.
What? No crying FREEZE PEACH?
No, they are crying victory. Oh well…
I have always found it laughable the way men like Paul Elam take credit for things that have nothing to do with them, or for something that they did not do alone. I also find laughable that they think being a total douche is a good thing.
Good on you David in taking such good care of this comment section and also allowing us to make mince meat of the few trolls that have the stupidity to post here. Mmmmm….. Trolls…… Delicious!! XD l
Also, this. So. Very. True.
Men’s rights activism consists entirely of commenting on the internet though. If comments section either become more moderated or just shut down, that means that men’s rights activism is over. Right? So why are they celebrating?
Luzbelitx- they only cry Freez Peach when someone they don’t like (read as anyone who isn’t them) dares to have an opinion. They wish to silence such people (again, read as anyone who isn’t them) and with comment sections being closed down, the people they wish to silence have now been silenced. The fact that MRAs and their ilk have been silenced too is only a minor loss, since their main aim is to silence everyone who disagrees with them.
What a jaw-dropping bit of projection that is. He seriously thinks he speaks for “average people”? Who knew that the “average person” is a boorish, ugly man who hates women, minorities, queer folks of all stripes, and above all, other men who actually get along nicely with all of the above?
No, Paulie, you’re not “average” and you’re not the voice of what’s average, either. You’re sub-par as a human being and well above average where shittiness is concerned. Congratulations on your “victory” of being silenced!
I just had to google “freeze peach”. I think I’m scarred for life.
This makes me sad. If WHM and Jezebel can moderate commenters and get rid of trolls, these other sites can too. They just need to invest the time and energy to dismiss and ban the bullies.
There are very few sites where I will even bother to look at the comments anymore.
The prevalence of bottom-feeders haunting comment threads even on progressive sites made me start to despise humanity and root for a Killer Asteroid. Life is much nicer and more positive now that I just ignore them.
That’s called a “pyrrhic victory.” Also known as an “own goal.”
Because they’re stupid.
This is literally the only place I will read the comments, because rarely do the comment sections add anything to the discussion elsewhere. No Paul, you did not invent being an asshole on the Internet, nor do you represent a majority of assholes on the Internet. Even if you did, why would “companies can’t afford to hire enough staff to deal with the volume of odious bullshit and abuse we produce” be a selling point?
It comes down to a matter of priorities, and many sites just don’t find it worthwhile to expend the personpower needed to keep things civil.
A lot of sites are also squishy about where to draw the line. It’s the old and discredited freeze peach argument that every comment is equally important and that every commenter deserves to be heard — or else no one gets to be heard, which is what more and more sites are opting for.
I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that Elam brags about making the internet a worse place, the fact the internet probably didn’t need his help anyway, or the fact that it’s not even CLOSE to the worst thing he has ever said or done. It would be like if David Duke came out and said that he never tips at restaurants.
I’m going to miss those warm spots at the end of the articles I want to read, though I suppose I can do without the rashes that follow…
Except in Paul Elam’s case, it’s intentional.
Because they haven’t accomplished anything other than this. This is from Elam’s fundraising appeal. It’s literally the only thing he can claim that AVFM did this year that had an effect on anything. They canceled their conference, their site traffic is down, various people have left or have been kicked out of AVFM.
The only other “accomplishment” he cites is Cassie Jaye’s movie. But that’s her project, not his, and it was Milo, not AVFM, who raised most of the money she needed to complete it (and then some).
At this point I think the impending release of her film is pretty much the only thing holding AVFM together.
WWTH-I guess it would be ‘mission accomplished’ to them. Since the purpose of such ‘activism’ is to stop the less privilaged from having any say. They don’t like it when other people have Freeze Peach, so they make sure that no one does.
This seems a little repetitive. I’m pretty sure just plain “GamerGaters” would have worked.
If you’re talking about feminism being active outside of the internet, considering feminism is around a century old and has brought about women’s right to vote, get birth control without husband/father’s permission, and getting women to be lawyers and doctors (in the United States at least), you really are very new to feminism.
No worries. Just google the history of feminism and you should be a-okay.
You beat me to it, PandaPool. It’s like the people who still list MRAs and Gators as separate groups and stick to their pretty little fiction that there are Gators who aren’t MRAs. Then again they’re the same people who claim feMRAs are somehow not the same as MRAs.
That said, bragging about silencing discussion? Interesting coming from groups of people who have no clue what the legal definition of “censorship” is and often claim that news sites (i.e. not the government or a governmentally sanctioned monopoly, like Comcast or CenturyLink) are “censoring” them by doing things like…covering Anita Sarkeesian without calling her various slurs…or using the right pronouns for trans people. You’d almost think that the MRAGator set is basically invested in making the word “censorship” meaningless through misuse and dilution…because I guess when it’s white men howling people down into fear and retreat, then it’s cool, but women critiquing video games? NOOOOOOO MUH FREEZE PEACH.
So the anti-censorship bunch (allegedly, lol) is patting itself on the back for harassing people into silence. The irony is rich and thick like my tomato sauce.
Wait, CNN shut down its comments section because of MRA’s? I thought it was because of the near-constant stream of racial slurs directed at Obama. Well, Paul, if you want to take credit for that, good for you.
“Us guys”
Malachi definitely seems to be referring to the men’s rights movement; as in, he thinks one would be useful, but has correctly parsed that the existing one is almost entirely limited to internet whining.
Malachi, the commenters here would likely point out to you that feminism itself supports many men’s issues– both on principle and as a side effect of supporting equality in general– but if you want to be part of a group that advocates for men’s rights specifically, you’re gonna have to be smart about it. There are real men’s issues and real people working on them, but most of the self-identified “men’s movement” is a bunch of toxic garbage. Stay far away.
Paulie, Paulie, you really need to think about your life.
It’s really not just about making as many people around you as unhappy as they possibly can be. There’d be a bonus if you stopped it. You’d be happier too.