By David Futrelle
Last week, we celebrated Stefan Molyneux’s YouTube ban. Now the wannabe philosopher racist has managed to get himself banned from Twitter as well, reportedly not for anything he said but rather for “platform manipulation,” specifically fake sockpuppet accounts.
I don’t have much to say beyond “good riddance,” but others have been posting their responses to his banning on Twitter. So today I’m going to go all Twitchy and show you some of my favorites.
Let’s start with the eggs — referring back to Stefan’s weird and creepy obsession with young women’s eggs, particularly those belonging to Taylor Swift.
There were some who took a moment to remind us of some of Stefan’s Greatest Hits.
But it’s this tweet that may be Stefan’s real masterpiece:
I have so many questions. Why is the shoe so small? Why don’t the shoe and the egg cast shadows? And most importantly, WHY ISN’T HE WEARING A SHIRT.
For more of Stefan’s Greatest Hits, on Twitter and elsewhere, see the links here.
Good night, sweet prince. Go work your grift on Telegram.
H/T — @RationalGenius, from whom I borrowed the “cult leader banned” meme,
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Re: cancel culture, here’s a piece on its many facets in terms of teen culture when applied to people who are not necessarily celebrities:
Tales From the Teenage Cancel Culture
(I know, I know, it’s from the New York Times, which is centrist to a fault, but I still think it’s worth a read.)
Format Cell > Number is how I usually do it, though Microsoft also has these other suggestions:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/stop-automatically-changing-numbers-to-dates-452bd2db-cc96-47d1-81e4-72cec11c4ed8
Cancel culture absolutely exists. The discourse around it gets really hairy because of 1) how it gets disproportionately weaponized against certain people and political tendencies (read: liberals and leftists alike) and 2) the connotation of the term is pretty overwhelmingly negative, so even people who support it will deny it’s existence as a shorthand for rejecting the idea that it’s a problem and 3) the reality is that a lot of people mean on the internet because oftentimes it isn’t really structured to encourage productive discourse. How much of that can we really attribute to some sort of inherent moral failing of people today?
Its most base form is when a group of people publicly shun/exile someone who differs from their views/code of conduct, rather than tolerating/engaging with the dissent. I mean this definition in the most objective way possible, because I don’t think people are under any inherent obligation to tolerate all opinions or behaviors. Every political tendency and social group has certain boundaries they don’t want crossed, despite some very persistent “free speech warrior” posturing from some
But the realities of cancel culture can span from very powerful asshole getting a lot of criticism and none of it sticking, to person getting fired and harassed off of the internet for a genuinely ignorant offhand comment. I don’t think it serves anyone to ignore either of those.
Personally I feel like whether or not you should embrace “cancel culture” really depends on what you want to achieve and where. For example, if you’re on twitter and a popular artist says some homophobic shit when all you wanted to do was have a comfortable space for queer people, then it makes sense to (attempt) to cancel them. Conversely, political organizing in general can’t really be about safe spaces because your goal is to recruit/convert as many people as possible. If you choose to engage in political advocacy, I think you should try your best to engage with bad ideas, or at least encourage your allies to do so if you don’t feel equipped. It’s also always better to take an educational approach than a punitive one.
That being said, I definitely support the deplatforming of very popular thought leaders on the right. Rather than banking on Stefan Molyneux changing his ways, it’s strategically more important that his followers and would-be followers are now cut off. Large groups of regular people are who matter in the long run.
Ariblester – Thanks, I’ll try that.
OT, but interesting: https://newrepublic.com/article/154879/misogyny-climate-deniers
@Perry
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I do think people can learn and change and stop being ignorant or bigoted, and I do think it is possible to educate people. On the other hand, many refuse to learn and if corrected will just keep doubling down, and when they have a very powerful platform that can be very harmful.
Take JK Rowling as an example. She has 14.3 million Twitter followers and is a billionaire. Many people have tried to explain to her the error of her way, but she refuses to listen and keeps doubling down in her transphobia (with occasional other bigotries). Therefore, it seems advantageous to do what we can to deplatform her and reduce her power to limit the spread of her ideas. I do not mean that people should harass her or her fans online, but what I mean is that people should point out to others that she is a bigot so others can make an informed choice about buying her books or following her. In other words, if one can not educate the person in question, they can educate others to make an informed choice about whether to buy/support/follow.
My main objection to the term “cancel culture” isn’t the idea itself, it’s that I find it hypocritical when the right wing complains about it when they “cancel” people all the time for minor slights yet acts like the left is doing something horrible when they decide not to support someone or to deplatform somehow who is hateful.
Margaret Atwood spoke up for trans people and the TERFs are unironically calling her a handmaiden on twitter. We really are in the dumbest timeline.
@Varalys the dark
The other day I also saw that one linked her the Cliffnotes for the Handmaid’s Tale. It reminds me of that time MRAs tried to ‘splain it to her.
The weird part about calling cis women who support trans* rights “handmaidens” is that a) the handmaids are the ones who rebel against society, it’s the aunts that are the villains (and which seem very reminiscent of TERFs) and b) the book calls the women “handmaids,” so I’m curious whether TERFs have ever read it or where they got the “-en” from
I expect that TERFs have about the same amount of understanding of The Handmaid’s Tale as MGTOWs have of The Matrix. They just want to co-opt the bare aesthetics of the work (‘women being oppressed and endangered’ and ‘the world is not as the masses see it and only a few look beyond the surface’ respectively) for their own agenda without engaging with the actual themes or the intent of the creator(s).
Re: the Harper’s letter:
I noticed that it was worded in such a way that it would look like a vague, unobjectionable endorsement of free speech and open discussion, which probably explains why they somehow got people like Noam Chomsky and Gloria Steinem to sign it. At least a few others have since distanced themselves from the letter after realizing their mistake, so we have that.
@Naglfar
I pretty much agree with you. When I say “you should try to engage as a general rule”, I recognize that it can only go so far. JK Rowling won’t change, so there isn’t much to be gained from appealing to her directly. But I do think it’s necessary for people to make articles, videos, etc. dissecting her transphobia, which leaves a door open for her fans to learn. And yeah, tell people who may not know that she’s a transphobe.
I also agree that the term cancel culture is very nebulous, which lends it to being used in slanted, dishonest ways. That so many things fall under one umbrella is pretty frustrating for me,) as someone who thinks some aspects of it are very important to address, and others not so much.
@Varalys the dark
Reactionaries can’t even pretend to keep their “free and open debate” masks on for more than a day. I don’t see how this is any better than what Rowling was complaining about was happening to her. I wonder if some of the more reasonable people who signed that letter are questioning their bedfellows at the moment.
@Lukas Xavier, Naglfar, Snowberry, etc.:
Slacktivist just did a post entitled ‘Canceled’ = ‘disgraced’ where he describes ‘cancel culture’ as pretty much ‘that thing that the people in power complain about when they’re actually being held accountable for their behaviour’, using R. Kelly as an example:
@Catalpa
That’s a good comparison. In the cases of both The Matrix and The Handmaid’s Tale, the authors have condemned the bigot interpretations yet bigots refuse to listen and try to ‘splain their own work to them (see: that time some MRAs tried to mansplain The Matrix to Lilly Wachowski).
I’d guess more MRAs have watched The Matrix than TERFs have read The Handmaid’s Tale, mainly because it’s easier to watch a 2 hour film than to read a 300 page novel. Still, the point stands that they totally missed the point.
@Anonymous
Yes, this is a common tactic of bigots of all sorts to word manifestos vaguely with all kinds of dogwhistles. This has 2 effects:
1. It means people can sign it without knowing what it actually means and so they get more signatures.
2. It means most observers won’t notice the dogwhistles and as a result those who call it out look like they’re seeing what isn’t there and can be dismissed.
@Perry
Definitely. A silver lining to JK’s rapid descent has been that she has aired all the transphobic dogwhistles and many people have published threads and articles breaking them down. She showed her hand, and now far more people can see through her bluffing. She’s also lost over 300,000 followers since May, which suggests most people don’t agree with her. As well, a lot of people and groups that had been silent about trans* rights before have spoken up against her, so that’s something.
Bit O/T; but the RCA have a webinar coming up that may be of interest to some folks here.
https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/buckets-balls-amanda-kirby/
Could I not choose the shoe and then hit him with it in order to get the egg?
I’m still really disappointed about jk . I know harry potter has problematic shit in it. But harry potter started coming out before I was born. I grew up with it. There has never been a time in my life, where there hasn’t been harry potter. And harry potter helped me escape from a very lonely childhood so it will probably always hold a special place in my heart because of that. Same as will the X-Men and dear America book series. It’s one of those stories that started to shape me as a child, and I can’t express the disappointment that the person who created something that releived a lot of my pain, could actively inflict pain onto other people.
@Lainy
I especially find it sad because a lot of the people I know who loved Harry Potter are LGBT. I can understand why so many LGBT people liked it: it’s a book series about a boy who lives in a literal closet but his life gets better when he comes out as who he truly is and finds friends like him. For JK to be able to write that and then be the hateful person she is saddens me.
I really liked these bits of fan art about that aspect:
https://twitter.com/MelodyDickens/status/1278275247800795137
This sentence made me feel a certain type of way
@Naglfar
Yeah, for me, I was different then the other kids in my tiny town. I was bi and I didn’t know yet because I didn’t know what bi was. I was also just kind of a weird kid and I didn’t understand social ques all that well. I grew up on a farm in the middle no where with no neighbors or kids around, I didn’t have many friends, and my parents left me alone a lot when they had to work. So the idea of getting sent a letter and going to a school with people who were different and like you, and being surrounded by other people, sharing bedrooms with them, having a castle full of people. That was so comforting to me. Same with the X-Men, kids who didn’t fit in going to a big machine to learn about themselves and be surrounded by people who care about them. Those were very comforting stories. Ones I don’t need as an adult now, but they live in a special place.
@WWTH
Lol, the first book came out in 1997, I was born in 1998. Then the first movie came out in 2001 When I was like 3. I remember seeing the first half of deathly hallows when I was 11 years old in threaters, and that was the first of the movies I was able to see in the theater.
@Lainy
I can totally relate to this. Although I grew up in a city, I was also a social outcast, as I was very nerdy and socially awkward. I liked reading fantasy and science fiction novels because they helped me dissociate from reality.
@Alan Robertshaw:
RCA … aren’t they an old manufacturer of VCRs and TVs whose heyday was back in the 1980s or so?
@Surplus
In the UK it stands for the Royal College of Arts.
Whereas the VCR manufacturer RCA stood for Radio Corporation of America.
Amusingly, due to RCA buying the old Victor Talking Machine Company for their phonograph department, they acquired the American rights to their famous mascot as well… the mascot being the little dog Nipper looking into a phonograph horn, in a picture originally called ‘His Master’s Voice’… which also lent its name to the English and Canadian chain of record stores called HMV. (Which recently got bought out by the Canadian chain Sunrise Records after going bankrupt again.)
I’m sure somebody could do a long dissertation on the complexity and shuttling about of trademarks in the music industry without even touching the bands…
Whenever I see a smooth-coated terrier in a post-surgical cone, I think it looks like the RCA Victor dog got stuck in the phonograph.
I recall that ‘JVC’ stood for Japanese Victor Company. Is that related?
@ jenora
There was quite a lot of fallout when Apple brought out iTunes. The Beatles had trademarked ‘Apple’ in relation to music related categories. That’s why you couldn’t get any Beatles stuff on iTunes for a while. Even though the Beatles back catalogue was owned by Michael Jackson. It all got a bit messy.