The Spring 2018 WHTM pledge drive will be wrapping up soon — and we’re still a ways short of what I need to get in order to make the site ad free! Please donate what you can! Thanks!
By David Futrelle
Candace Owens — self-proclaimed “Red Pill Black” conservative — is having a bit of a moment, hanging out with new Trump fan Kanye West, posing for selfies with Don Jr., getting an effusive Twitter shout-out from Don Sr,, threatening to sue people who talk about her in what she considers the wrong way.
A lot of people have been left wondering just where exactly Owens came from. Well, there’s a bit of a story there.
Long-time readers of this blog first met Owens back in the days of Gamergate, after Zoe Quinn criticized her ill-conceived plan for an “anti-bullying” site that would have basically doxed a bunch of teenagers. After Quinn spoke out, Gamergaters spouting conspiracy theories quickly abandoned their own critiques of Owens and rallied around her. Owens began spouting conspiracy theories of her own, and, well, let’s just say things got very weird very fast, as they generally seem to do when Owens gets involved in anything.
In several posts, I tried my best to make sense of the whole surreal mess. I’m linking them here because I think they may illuminate a few things about Trump World’s newest heroine.
This post describes what happened immediately after Owens first heard from Quinn. Trust me, the headline (and the snippet from the post below) don’t fully capture the weirdness of the story.
Instead of listening to Quinn, Owens declared war on her, spewing forth dozens of angry and accusatory tweets, charging that Quinn and fellow anti-harassment activist Randi Harper … were somehow the puppetmasters behind a barrage of abusive, threatening, and often blatantly racist anonymous messages that Owens (who is black) started getting not long after news of Owens’ plans hit Reddit and 4chan.
Owens quickly began to sound like every other internet crackpot who sees conspiracies in every Twitter mention.
SocialAutopsy-Turvy: Candace Owens’ Twitter Trainwreck, Part One
(APRIL 24, 2016)
And quite a trainwreck it was. The story continued to get weirder, and at such a pace that I never had a chance to write part two.
In this episode, Owens writes an angry diatribe against an article she imagined that Washington Post writer Caitlin Dewey had written about her. No, really. She accused Dewey and her editor of attempting to libel her in an article that the Post never published and that as far as I know Dewey never even wrote.
Naturally, Gamergaters were thrilled to have such an, er, original thinker on their side.
NOTE TO READERS: Sorry for being MIA the last couple of days; I’ve been dealing with the double whammy of migraines and some really nasty lower back pain. Doing a little better today.
@Fishy Goat:
A bit overdue, and sad that likely the impetus for this was the recent van attack in Toronto.
Canadians may be better than the U.S. on a lot of these issues (and that’s a definite may), but we’re nowhere near immune, have lots of our own rather sordid history, and have mostly let a certain unwillingness to rock the boat sweep a number of such issues under the rug.
@ Katamount:
Amazingly well-put, thanx!
Conservative talking points have a built-in advantage in an age of sound bytes, as their talking points are almost universally one-liners… not comedy, just one-line…ers. As in god created the heavens and the earth in six days. Period. End of argument. Try explaining the Big Bang Theory in such brevity. Conservative talking points never require evidence, because anything can be proven by saying “everybody knows” (which actually means “everybody who is important already believes”).
We need a medium which can inform and motivate…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLc5QJsMgvw
on the album Rattle And Hum, when Bono does a live version of Bob Dylan’s All along the watchtower…, one of the lines he sings on it goes, “All I need is my red guitar, three chords and the truth…”
@Jenora Feuer Agree with you 1000%. Too many people doing the smug ‘Canada is so much better!’ nonsense.
Weird Eddie – Jordan Peterson’s fanboys are an interesting exception to the soundbite rule. I’ve been slinking around the subReddit, and one of their usual responses to requests for clarification on a contentious point is ‘oh, you have to listen to/read the entire thing to understand’. I am not going to listen to a two hour conversation between Peterson and Camille Paglia unless there are cash and prizes at the end. I’m not sure if it’s a conscious act or a carryover from his academic training, but Peterson has a tendency to make allusive statements that require extensive exegesis. One of his twelve rules is ‘rescue your father from the underworld’, which has nothing to do with fathers or the underworld. He’s trying for poetic terseness and lands in gnomic obscurantism.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/monkey.gif
On the subject of that foolish individual’s parody of “This is America”, I loved Seanbaby’s counter-mocking:
https://twitter.com/Seanbabydotcom
@Robert:
Something to do with the classic literary structure of the “Hero’s Journey”?
Don’t people usually rescue (or try to rescue) their spouses from the Underworld?
ChimericMind, Seanbaby will *always* have a place in my heart.
Well, yeah, but Peterson’s audience probably wouldn’t react well to being told they should go through significant hardship to rescue a “female” (because let’s face it, Peterson would never have anything but a wife being rescued from the underworld), even if it’s just a metaphor for some other bland self-help instruction.
yeah if thing were so great and perfect here we won’t have a group like ‘ID-canada’
Good news, fellow Ontarians: the NDP seems have overtaken the Liberals and now is rapidly closing on the Tories, whose poll numbers seem to be showing signs of sagging.
I’ve been following Seanbaby for years! Nice to see a shout out here.
FWIW, the final Peterson rule is ‘pet any cat you meet on the street’. Assuming that is not code for something abtruse, it’s contrary to experience; every cat I’ve met on the street has been uninterested in pets from random humans. That’s actually one of the things I find appealing about them.
Quote me? I never even mentioned Hinduism.
It doesn’t matter and it’s none of anyone’s business but I’m Blasian from a primarily Hindu religious background but practice a blend of Hinduism and Buddhism personally.
I’ve met loads of cats that wanted scritches from anyone passing by, personally.
@Dalillama:
Me, too, but also lots who are shy around strangers.
Re cats
I’m at a rural Airbnb atm and the bf has befriended many of the cats. Hes not even a cat person. But apparently he gives the most amazing scritches. I love kitties but my allergies dont. So I “befriend” the wild chickens instead. Haha
And good grief, that nicole arbors “this is america” parody video is so fucking tonedeaf. Uuuugh White Feminists. It took me about 3 seconds to start cringing. It was embarrassing to watch.
There used to be a cat locally who like stranger-scritches so much that s/he sat in the middle of the footpath, the better to get their attention. And another who usually sat on a wall beside the footpath, and administered headbonks to friendly strangers.
Don’t conservatives want people to “just say no” to sex outside marriage? Wouldn’t they mourn the sexual libertinism of “our boys in blue” having sex with anyone they’re not married to?
So Milo and Alex Jones have been busy.
Me, worried because my cat hasn’t pooped in almost two days: “Are you feeling okay, buddy?”
My cat, answering the question like only a cat can: “*farts healthily*”
So that’ll be a “Yes,” then.
Gijoel:
Ahahahah! Firstly, I don’t think you can really “storm” an office with only two people. Secondly, check out the Milo fans in the comments being offended by the tone of the article. (Apparently he does still have fans, though I’d guess that’s a dwindling group).
… and the beat goes on….
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/16/racist-viral-video-lawyer-aaron-schlossbergs-law-firm-yelp-bombed.html
Do you mean that you never mentioned Hinduism in this thread? Because that would be correct. But I can access the archives, you know. I remember this thread.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2018/05/02/mgtow-creepos-wonder-does-feminism-promote-bestiality/comment-page-1/#comment-2095794
I also remember the weird necro post you made which was deleted by David for being needlessly inflammatory about Hinduism, though since it was a necro post, I cannot easily find the thread yet.
Or are you and Idli Sambar Revolution not the same person?
You are correct that your background is no one’s business, though, and I was wrong to bring it up.
@Robert Walker-Smith
That’s how it goes with most pseudo-intellectuals: bury people in jargon and “isms”, but with just enough bread crumbs to reach a trite truism. It’s the Deepak Chopra SOP. I’d ask the Petersonite troll to sum it up for me, see if he actually understood it (read: no way in hell).
Sometimes I’m torn about so much digital attention being devoted to this jackass, but Peterson really does completely represent the faux-intellectual at its basest form and his bullshit needs to be ripped to shreds everywhere his ugly mug goes, or his douchebro followers are just going to multiply.
Saw this Sam Seder clip this morning and he nailed something that I’ve been seeing in corners of YouTube and the internet essentially since Elevatorgate:
This is the stance of a lot of the YouTube atheist crowd as well. Here’s how it goes: “Religion is made up and stupid. The religious are just sheep following a herd. Therefore being a freethinking individualist is the ultimate virtue. But wait, suddenly a bunch of loud activist groups have confronted me with uncomfortable truths? Worse yet, I’m being called to action because of my race/gender/sexual orientation? Why you picking on me? I’m a freethinking individualist, not a cog in the white patriarchy! Clearly you people are sheeple following a herd and are out to make me feel guilty, but your herd is ‘identity politics’ instead of Jesus or Muhammad! Donald Trump is a loud buffoon as well, so clearly his followers are also playing identity politics. And with both sides screaming at the same volume, clearly the only rational answer lies between them, where I, the freethinking individualist sit and can smugly ! QED.”
This is EXACTLY what people like ArmouredSkeptic, ShoeOnHead, Carl of Benjamin and all the rebranded former GamerGaters believe too. They will be the first to tell you:
They actually extend it to any ideology at all. If you organize your principles under any banner or label, that makes you a sheeple according to these privileged dillholes.
@Surplus
Hardly surprising, as it seems the idea of “Premier Doug Ford” becomes more real to people with every passing day. I’m glad to see the NDP seizing the moment as best it can, but I’m left with a dilemma that perhaps you folks can help me with.
I live in Kathleen Wynne’s riding. Her primary opposition appears to be some whitebread solar energy lobbyist running on the PC ticket who will no doubt abandon all principles in the face of Doug Ford’s brow-beating, but with the polls against Wynne and no way in hell the NDP can win a riding equal parts yuppie and McMansion, I’m left in the classic strategic voters’ quandary. I have but one vote I have ever regretted and that was for Joe Pantalone in the 2010 Toronto mayoral race, the race elected Rob Ford and forever thrust his family of assholes into the spotlight. I had seen George Smitherman’s weaselly behaviour in the past and couldn’t bring myself to vote for him and though Pantalone’s split votes couldn’t have overcome Ford’s had they been Smitherman’s, I still feel like I contributed to Ford’s win by voting stupid.
I vowed never to do that again. So I will likely have to vote Wynne to keep Blandy McPushover out of government. What do you guys think?