You may vaguely remember Sargon of Akkad’s petition to “UNIVERSITIES” to shut down all “social justice” courses. It’s been three months since Mr. Of Akkad — actually a dude named Carl, who lives in Swindon — launched the thing, and up until two days ago the only real effect it’s had in the real world was garnering Carl a supportive shoutout from the racist street thugs of the English Defence League.
But Carl of Swindon’s dopey petition has finally accomplished something he can be proud of. Well, kinda. It’s inspired a somewhat belated yet still quite hilarious response video from Youtube’s esteemed Hbomberguy — you know, the guy that did that classic “measured response” to the Sarkeesian Effect. The FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS one. So enjoy!
And if you can’t bear to hear another word about the petition, you can always skip ahead to the part of the video (about nine minutes in) in which Hbomberguy discusses Carl’s less-than-glorious performance in an online debate with one Kristi Winters, a feminist who embarrassed poor Carl by exposing just how little he actually knows about feminism.
If you watch Carl’s videos, it really shows that he doesn’t know how to read studies or analyze data. His videos are more like high school level opinion essays.
It’s pretty much undeniable that many people still think in terms of the archaic common law definition of rape, for example. For instance, up until 2013 it was legal in the state of Washington for a husband to rape (or take “indecent liberties” with) his wife unless he incapacitated her or used force or threat to physically harm her. I’d assume there are many people who rape their wives and “only” use psychological abuse or threats against property rights.
My favorite parts of the video are where he breaks down laughing in the midst of seriously reading something out. This was great.
Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
@WWTH
What a hot mess.
@WWTH + kupo
Obey the law or get in trouble! But also don’t act to avoid that trouble or you’ll get in trouble!
Who’s fault is that!? Why even have laws then!? What the shit!?
:DDD
God I love this guy’s videos. They’re hilarious and still make the points that need to be made.
I just noticed the comments part has a bunch of different people reading them. One of them is definitely Dan Olson, though I’ve heard most of them before. Those little collaborations between channels are nice.
Edit: mixed up words
I saw Hbomberguy’s video yesterday and then watched the Kristi Winter’s debate. It was clear that Carl does not understand how debates work. He clearly prepared all of his statements and rebuttals in advance and just read them out. He barely responded to anything she said and his sources were awful. He listed a bunch of hashtags, as if that was supposed to convince someone that feminism is awful.
At one point he quoted a Scientific American article. The quote started with “[Authors] stated…” and went on to summarize their findings. Rather than going and reading the actual paper himself, he figured the summary was good enough. Kristi even addressed this later. The way scientific information is disseminated to the public is awful and often misrepresents scientific studies to try to get the most impact. (John Oliver did a great piece on this.) I will admit that Carl had a point about the 1 in 5 statistic. It is often misused because of the way the study has been reported by mainstream media, but if he wants to complain about that, he can’t use mainstream media sources to support his other arguments. It’s hypocritical (not that I’m surprised).
Hbomberguy and Garrett have both made videos addressing Carl’s critique of the 1 in 5 statistic…in which he cites the wrong study as the source of the statistic.
Srsly this youtuber is too good for this world <3
That traffic sign that Alan posted reminds of a story I once heard. Now, apparently there was the a young lady from Devizes, and, if you can credit this, she had eyes of two differing sizes. My informant also told me that one of them (the eyes) was so small that it was nothing at all, while the other won several prizes. Make of it what you will, but so I’ve heard. 😛
Monzach – ruining humorous limericks since 1990!
Alan
did you take that design from one of my actual nightmares?
& I bet you all drive it on *the wrong side* too
I lost it so many times watching the video. Hbomberguy is so good at this.
Also, I’ve got a feeling that one of Charlie Stross’s Laundry stories claimed that the magic roundabout has occult significance. Or maybe I imagined that. Anyway, it’s the sort of thing he would do.
I don’t think much of that Swindon lot.
Obama and Biden, if I recall, used careful wording with the “1 in 5” figure because the specific study I believe supported a 1 in 7 figure. It’s an example of the problems with sound bites and poor explanations of scientific findings. It’s more accurate to say that we have good reasons to infer from the data that a significant number of women are sexually assaulted on campuses. We can estimate the percentage mathematically from the data (which makes it an estimate, not a statistic) but that’s only a simplified mathematical model of what’s going on and not the “true” percentage. But mathematical models aren’t useless just because Carl decides he thinks they are.
well what is he, a creationist? He is trying to imply that we are exaggerating an underreported crime, which is ridiculous, but if it were 1 in 100, thats still too much fucking rape.
Estimates show that around 4-8% of college men engage in various non-consensual sexual activities with women and have low remorse and empathy. In the military these estimates are higher. These people have been serial offenders since adolescence, so they won’t stop unless something happens like they go to prison. So we should expect to see a high victimization rate.
There are guys who make a mistake once and sexually assault someone based on poor communication or a series of bad choices. But that’s a very small portion of assaults. It’s more likely someone was a serial offender who knew he could use alcohol as an excuse for his behavior.
“Carl doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, and he wants to know and care less.”
Alan, that traffic lane plan will haunt my nightmares. Regular roundabouts are scary enough, but this? Plus you’re all driving on the wrong side of the road.
Swindon does have one thing going in its favor: it produced these guys.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Did you notice how all the signatories to Carl’s laughable petition were barely literate? Misspellings, bad grammar, the whole works. It’s no wonder that they want to abolish anything like a real education at the college/uni level; it’s clear that they’ve barely had a primary/secondary level one themselves! I don’t wonder why they’re always on about “freedom of speech”; they don’t even know what they’re saying, but they sure do want the right to say it unchallenged. Or unlaughed at.
You can’t have a thread that discusses roundabouts without “Roundabout.”
@ David Futrelle
XTC actually wrote a song about the roundabout. It’s imaginatively entitled “English Roundabout”
@ kale
The beauty of that roundabout is, there is no ‘wrong’ side as such. It’s very non-judgmental as traffic features go.
That roundabout. It’s as if an eldritch creature had sex with a fork in the road. It’s possibly the best/worst thing that I’ve ever seen. Please tell me they play “Entry of the Gladiators” 24/7 there.
I cannot watch the video right now (at work), but I will later. Based on the comments, it should be good. I’m excited now!
#wheresanitasbees
So disappointed I won’t be able to watch this for another month since youtube doesn’t work out here. Can someone describe it to me please? Is it glorious?
“I’m tired of herring”.
http://i.imgur.com/yOx7Q53.jpg