By David Futrelle
So this little blog of mine (and yours!) got a nice writeup in the New York Times today by fellow Illinois writer Peter C. Baker. Check it out! Nice to see the Paper of Record take note of what we’re doing here.
Or old friend Mike Cernovich, quoted in the piece, has decided that you commenters here are a bunch of sock puppets. Which makes about as much sense as the rest of his nonsense, I guess. And dear old Paul Elam, whose idea of helping men consists of charging them $90 an hour to talk to his unqualified ass on Skype, sputters that what we do here is like making fun of cancer patients. Nah. It’s more like making fun of cancer itself.
Big thanks to Jaclyn Friedman for her kind comments in the piece.
And speaking of thanks, this seems like a good opportunity to once again offer my humble thanks to all the (extremely real) commenters on and supporters of WHTM for making this blog possible in the first place!
Long time reader, first time commenting.
1.) Congratulations!
2.) (I) Am not a sock puppet.
3.) I’m sure this is going to increase the number of trolls in the comments.
Other people have already brought this up (so does this make this sock-ish behavior?), but it seems like the author just characterized a community as an echo chamber. Yes, we share similar opinions, but I thought an echo chamber actively shuts out opposing views, which is definitely not the case here since we get plenty of opposition who come share their often poorly written wall o’ text (within limits that apply to everyone: no abuse). So what kind of annoys me is that the writer, who is working with the NYT, is misusing words: “Echo chamber” has a specific meaning, and you are a professional writer, why can’t you use it properly? It grates on my nerves in the same way that Stephanie Meyer misuses words in her books: banking on a word’s connotation rather than its meaning.
I guess the article was okay, but it seemed to suffer a bit from “two-sideism.” It was like they couldn’t say something nice about WHTM without also criticizing it a bit (as seen above).
Also the point about talking with a manospherian: we don’t have to grant an audience to everyone. It reminds me of creationists demanding to be debated. Sometimes ridiculous views *can* just be mocked. We don’t need to have a reasoned conversation with every person with an opposing viewpoint. Plus, we can see what their views are from their writing. Do we have to personally ask them, “Do you really believe what you’ve written?”? What’s wrong with judging people on their words and actions? Sometimes I get the feeling that some people think being judgmental in and of itself is a bad thing.
Anyway if I’m a sock (and really, if the idea that commenters are socks is brought up, as well as the MRAs saying they are making revenue from their sites, it seems fair to mention that David generates income from readers as a counter point to the sock allegation), it seems kind of superfluous to make another sock who is a MarkReads follower (more lurker than commenter). The kind of sock I want to be is part of a pair of cute ones with a picture of a character, like Rilakkuma.