Men’s Rights Activists spend a remarkable amount of their time getting worked up about things that aren’t real.
They rail against having to register for a draft that doesn’t exist. They complain about the injustice of “women and children first” even though that’s not now, and has never been, standard procedure for evacuating ships, planes or anything else that needs evacuating.
And then, of course, there are the faked screenshots, featuring feminists (some real, some imaginary) saying things that have never been said by any feminist ever — the phony Anita Sarkeesian Tweets that have inspired real waves of harassment directed at Sarkeesian, the made-up quotes attributed to famous feminists ranging from Gloria Steinem to Jessica Valenti, the phony entire Jezebel article posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit as a supposed “screenshot.”
To this ever-growing pile, let’s add this obviously fake “screenshot” of a Tumblr conversation that never happened, which drew more than 1100 outraged upvotes when it was recently posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit.
What are some of the indications that this is faker than fake?
- The comments all read as if they were written by the same person
- The comments from the “bisexual black woman” fit every straw feminist stereotype
- The language used by the “bisexual black woman” is off; what black bisexual feminist refers to “minorities” rather than, say, “women of color?”
- The screenshot is obviously something put together in ten minutes using MS Paint
- The screenshot is obviously something put together in ten minutes using MS Paint
- The screenshot is obviously something put together in ten minutes using MS Paint
In case you are not convinced, here are some actual Tumblr screenshots, courtesy of TheCaptainObvious on Imgur.
In the Men’s Rights subreddit thread devoted to the completely and utterly fake Tumblr conversation, the gullible MRAs piled irony atop irony as they responded to the fakery with credulous sincerity. Only a handful of commenters suggested the screenshot might be fake; most of them were downvoted to zero.
By contrast, someone called Clockw0rk garnered 100 points with a comment declaring the alleged SJW “Victim Narrative” to be “basically a godless religion.”
Belief is the most important part of any religion, as no religion is comprehensive enough to provide philosophical answers to every situation, so the primary creed of The Victim Narrative is to “Listen and Believe”. Claims made from white men are automatically subject to scrutiny and distrust while claims made from women and people of color are automatically more worthwhile.
To quote someone who doesn’t exist, “please send help, irony is too thick to breathe.”
H/T — r/againstmensrights
@WWTH:
Now you’ve sent me down a Literally Unbelievable spiral too. Nooooo!
@WWTH Of course the sign language learning gorilla would never come out as gay! That’s silly!
A bonobo, however…. 😉
I love how bigots bash people for having “beliefs” and denying facts. They think all THEY believe in is bound to be FACTUAL MAN LOGIC while other people’s perspectives are mere “beliefs” and therefore fake.
They don’t know what belief means and they don’t see that evryone alive has them. Even atheist, since atheism is a fucking belief too. Omfg they are so arrogant i can’t!
dlouwe is right that it has some strangely exacting touches for a fake screenshot, but other aspects are strangely slapdash: the right margin isn’t consistent, making the first two comments look like their authors deliberately inserted line breaks; the nesting lines are clearly the default settings for the MS Paint line tool; and all the comments are inexplicably in italics that look slightly… off, even considering the heavy artifacting. Not to mention, as David says, the phrasing and composition of all the comments are identical and none of them hew toward the two Tumblr styles (perfect capitalization and punctuation or all/no capitalization with no punctuation).
It makes me think that faked tweets are the ideal medium for these forgers, because anything more causes these poor jerks to get bored and flub their own attempt.
Ben
Except they usually forget the character limit.
Hello.
In France, the proverb says that when you want to kill your dog, you accuse it of being rabid (the disease, not just the behavior).
And if you are a MRA, you help that by forging some proofs, because the easier solution is always the best. Like to put some non-toxical foam around the mouth of the dog.
Upvote win !
Have a nice day.
In other news, Charlie Hebdo continues to be racist garbage. Now calling muslim women supporters of terrorism because they forbid the poor author from admitting that the hijab makes him feel uncomfortable. Whining that you can’t criticize islam without being called islamophobic.
And no, it’s not part of an allegedly hilarious cartoon. What’s the difference between CH and, let’s say, The Blaze, again?
@SFHC thanks for the excellent Hitchhiker’s reference 🙂
@ fishy
Bonobos put the ‘pan’ in pansexual.
(Maybe only taxonomists will get that)
@imaginary petal : I don’t like Charlie Hebdo enough to buy it each time someone claim it’s a racist garbage journal, but the last three time I actually did that, it really very apparently wasn’t. What you say here might be anticlericalism or plain racism depending on how it’s done.
Maybe the new director, who isn’t exactly as good as the one killed one year ago, did have a meltdown.
I seriously don’t want to support hijab wearer ever, but that don’t mean putting them under a bus either. I classify them in the same bin as men in full islamic garbs if I see their visage, and as frankly insulting people if we can only see their eyes.
Aw dang, I was hoping we’d find spiders on Mars.
Mars does have a dolphin petroglyph with a Masonic builder’s mark nearby (according to some overheated conspiracy buffs with really good magnifying glasses):
http://thecydoniainstitute.com/The-Dolphin-and-the-Mark.php
The editorial is in English and available on their website. Decide for yourself.
https://charliehebdo.fr/en/edito/how-did-we-end-up-here/
@Ohlmann
First of all, that’s not what a hijab is. You’re thinking of a niqab or a burqa.
Secondly, if you view the hijab as an expression of oppression, surely you wouldn’t blame the woman for being oppressed.
Thirdly, even if you did blame a woman for being oppressed, how the fuck does that equate to supporting terrorism.
Yeah, it’s racist trash.
… As Muslims? No, seriously, I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.
The story about how Chicken McNuggets are made of whole ground-up chickens treated with ammonia that comes out of the grinder pink isn’t an invention – it’s a real story that’s been run through a game of Telephone until the details are garbled.
The real story is about “lean finely-textured beef” otherwise known as “pink slime.” There really is meat that is so laden with bacteria that they have to send it through a bath of ammonia vapor that still sometimes enters the human food supply. It just isn’t chicken, and McDonald’s was one of the first retailers to drop it as soon as the story came out about it. Whether this was ethics in
game journalismfood sourcing, or just haste to avoid being associated with something that makes people go ewwwww as soon as the story becomes public, I don’t know, but I know that I’ll eat McDonald’s hamburgers before I’ll eat ones from Wal-Mart.Yeah, that’d be a niqab.
And I’ve known some really cool people who cover, even some who cover and self-identify as feminists.
People act within their bounds of their experience and culture. What’s right for you isn’t necessarily what’s right for them – and I’m not talking from a standpoint of pure cultural subjectivism, either. I mean that people use their discernment to actively decide which actions are the most useful and effective for them and that understanding their choices can be difficult without having the benefit of their life experiences and milieus.
You’ll miss out on a good number of worthwhile interactions if you make snap judgements.
@ mockingbird
When I was at school (back when dinosaurs ruled the earth) I was friends with a gang of Italian girls. Now they were real ‘rock chicks’. When we were out at weekends it was all denim and leather (and the smell of patchouli; do people still do that?). They were about as liberated as 16 year olds get.
But when we had Mass (catholic school) they’d all don black lace headscarves. They weren’t even religious; it was purely a cultural thing, a way of expressing their Italian heritage.
(They’re still into metal, just a bitless headbanging these days)
🙂 🙂 🙂
FWIW re Muslim women & veiling: aside from my ‘hijabi’ friends who are definitely not women to be trifled with, in one of my gender studies courses we have a unit on feminism and multiculturalism, and one of the first things students do is read accounts by actual Muslim women. Some of these are deeply religious, some veil for more cultural reasons, some don’t veil – but their perspectives are incredibly diverse. I’m not ignoring the fact that it’s not a choice for some Muslim women, but the starting point has to be listening to what *they* actually think about it, surely. It’s always an eye-opener.
This particular course has a great emphasis on ditching the whole white-western-enlightened type outlook. Arguments like that in the Charlie Hebdo editorial linked to earlier seem to make the lazy assumption that ditching the western = superior viewpoint is the same thing as losing any critical perspective whatsoever, and I find that really insulting. Also this:
“The first task of the guilty is to blame the innocent. It’s an almost perfect inversion of culpability. From the bakery that forbids you to eat what you like, to the woman who forbids you to admit that you are troubled by her veil…”
Forbids, huh? Do these people actually think that they are being oppressed and controlled? Does this logic sound familiar? (not attacking C. Hebdo in particular, just this piece)
Apologies for the long, long comment, everyone 🙂
@Imaginary Petal:
(From reading the editorial linked to by Policy of Madness) Don’t forget how Muslim bakers also support terrorism by not putting ham or bacon in their sandwiches!
EDIT: partially ninja’d by Mish!
@Mish & Kreator
Yup, it’s the same form of argument we always hear from conservatives, in which they confuse “allowing people do to X if they want” with “OMG they’re forcing everybody to do X”. Insert same sex marriage, abortion, not celebrating christmas, etc etc etc.
Depending how bad things get on Earth those dolphins may want to go from Mars to Sirius to join their whale brothers and sisters.
Bravo.
***
Koko the sign language learning gorilla was once asked if she’d like to have a roommate, another female (not male for practical reasons).
She answered, “Yes please…but no Homo”.
I’ve Tumblr-ed for close to half a decade, and that post stood out as totally fake just by the content. I’ve seen all manner of shitposts and trainwrecks, and none of them were so… generic. It’s bland as Wonderbread with mayonnaise. I mean, no one added any quips or gifs, even.
And one doesn’t even need to make Tumblr posts in MS Paint–a clever person would sign up for Tumblr and make several blogs (it’s very easy to make a side-blog) to fake a post. I’ve done it myself (it was a Drarry thing–don’t judge me).
I love the niqab, it’s classy as heck and a great look, outside of its religious function. Sure there are issues with being *required* to wear it or a burqa or the like, of course, but forbidding it is a terrible, terrible answer, just as oppressive as requiring it.
Nothing surprising in that for anyone here though I think! I just like them and wanted to say so :3