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!
Great article, although OF COURSE the NYT has a liberal-bashing quota to achieve. Like, gee, Dave, why are you pointing and laughing at the cretinous troglodytes instead of opening a mission to enlighten those who have chosen to make “unenlightened” kinda the core facet of their identity?
Still. NYT. Impressive. Have you practiced mentioning it offhandedly yet? “Me? Oh, I run this little blog. The Times did a piece about it once.” 😀
Oh NOES!! My cover is blown!!
http://takingcareofmonkeybusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Make-this-adorable-sock-puppet-in-just-10-minutes.jpg
Seriously, congrats, Dave! 🙂
Wooo! If I’m a sock puppet I get to pick the prettiest sock to make my puppet body out of.
I often see manospherians claim that David is a sock for everyone here. I’d love to see some proof. A lot of us comment under the same names we use elsewhere online. A lot of us have our own blogs or have our names connected to Facebook and Twitter accounts. I just don’t think there are enough hours in the day for him to construct all these different online identities. There are even past and present commenters who can easily be found under their real names.
It’s not like our names all go to Twitter eggs with no followers or posts. It’s pretty easy to tell when an account is suspicious.
Seriously if commenters on here are sockpuppets why would they spend SO much time actually talking about nice stuff that’s utterly unrelated to the hateful bullshit the site is dedicated to reporting on ?
They’re just jealous that Dave doesn’t have to add fake accounts to get people following his blog. 😉
My main question that I got out of the article was how do you (David) handle reading that stuff all day, every day? How the hell do you maintain your composure and sanity when fsifting through that sludgepile?
Ususally, I just read your responses to the MRA posts and tweets, and skip over the actual tweets themselves, because reading that sufff can be psychologically damaging?
How do you remain undamamged?
Congrats, David.
If I’m a sock, Dave must also be hanging out on MarkReads/MarkWatches. Dunno if he has time for that.
My name (if it were my actual common handle) would lead to a twitter account without very many followers, or posts, and no profile pic… but it’s been there for 10 years.
Sock puppets?! HERE?!
– Original: http://ursulav.deviantart.com/art/The-Lurking-Sock-Puppet-8481142
I look forward to reading what David says I think about this.
And just because I’m now too amused:
http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/itimes/photo/2015/Aug/4/1438655945-sock-puppet-joke-by-ricken-on-deviantart-55c025c3c39af.jpg
http://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/19/67/612892308-law-order-sock-clothing-missing_sock-sock_puppet-dryer-mbcn2534l.jpg
http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/146.jpg
http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/sockpupp.gif
If everyone here is a sock, then David’s writing skills are phenomenal.
The variety of tone and idiom, the differences in grammar and spelling as well as vocabulary and specific knowledge, would be incredibly impressive for a single author to pull off.
In short, I congratulate myself on my prodigious accomplishments as the greatest sock-master of all time.
– Gaebolga (aka David Futrelle)
…and in case it needs to be said: /s
When all the news outlets were surprised by Milo’s appearance and subsequent flame-out, I remember thinking, don’t any of you read We Hunted the Mammoth? The guy’s been doing stuff like this for over two years.
So congrats on the NYT profile.
Congratulations, David!
Eatatree,
Bell that cat yourself if you think it needs doing.
Congratulations, David! Sock it to ’em! 😀
(seriously, do they have any idea how much time, linguistic and technical skill and ingenuity it would take to create an entire commentariat of credible characters, complete with evidence of their online existence, spanning decades? Someone who could do that … would probably attract a lot of attention from people. They haven’t thought this through …)
ETA ninja’d, by … Gaebolga, the greatest sock-meister of all time aka David (in another incarnation) 🙂
I’m definitely a sock puppet. As I said above, while posting as Gaebolga, I’m very proud of the work I do here under all those alternative identities (this one hasn’t written much and it’s mostly been pedantic tangents). And as I noted above, while posting as Alan, I’m curious to see what I (while posting as David) will write all of this.
[Sigh. Some MRA will probably think I’m serious.]
@eatatree I’m not sure there’s as much “liberal bashing” in that article as you seem to be reading into it.
David must be given all the awards for method acting so many wide and varied personalities and quirks.
This reminds me of the I AM SPARTACUS thing.
NO, I AM DAVID FUTRELLE!
We are ALL David on this Blessed Day!
Congratulations!
Not just for the write-up, but in creating the best sock puppets on the whole WWW. Just using me as an example, the time you’ve put in crafting this whole “Tabby Lavalamp” persona with an active Twitter account and comments all over the internet over the course of many years, even leaving a defunct blog or two laying around somewhere? That is master level sockcraftery.
Usually I just jump into discussing the content of THE MRA OPs, so I rarely take the time to say that the main reason I enjoy the posts here is your analysis, David, and your jokes, which somehow lighten the sting of the pure, unbridled hate coming from these guys.
For sock puppets, we are remarkably diverse. That’s some really creative puppeteering on someone’s part!
I must be a sock David just sort of threw together half-assed and used to add a extra post or two to a thread.