We have moderators! To better protect this blog from terrible comments by terrible people, I’ve invited several longtime Mammotheers to be mods, and they have graciously accepted. You may know them as Kittehserf and emilygoddess, but from now on they will be known as, well, the same names but with “MOD” at the end, and they will help to enforce the comment policy and keep discussions running smoothly.
Those of you who aren’t mods, feel free to contact me or any of the other mods when you see a troubling comment or a commenter who deserves the boot. You can email whichever of us is on duty at [email protected] or you can put a request for a ban (or moderation, or for an over-the-line comment to be deleted) in the comments themselves.
To make it easier for all of us mods to find these requests in the comments, please accompany your request with the words “MOD REQUEST” in all caps. Put that in the subject line of any emails you send as well.
Hopefully with more mods on board and a tougher stance on trolls we’ll be able to keep the comments a safer place for everyone. (Except asshole trolls, but they don’t count.)
I’m also bringing back Troll Challenges for some annoying commenters who might not deserve a full ban, just to see if they’re willing to follow some basic rules. Feel free to suggest Troll Challenges to me and the other mods.
You all got the memo about #EndFathersDay fiasco, right – the phony “feminist” hashtag, seeded and spread by 4chan trolls, that aroused so much consternation on Twitter the other day, and that took in so many who’re already given to thinking the worst about feminism?
It would be nice if we could just dismiss this whole thing as trolls being trolls – no harm, no foul. But there’s a bit more to it than that.
For one thing, the troll campaign worked. At least on some people: While feminist writers quickly rushed in to point out that the whole thing was an antifeminist hoax, more than a few in the right-wing media were taken in utterly.
This pic has nothing to do with the post today, but it does feature a giant chicken, from a film called “The Hoboken Chicken Emergency.”
Today, something a bit lighter than usual. Someone recently posted the a link in the comments here to a hilarious blog called Swedish Girl Seeking, which displays the results of a simple but wicked dating site experiment being carried out by a couple of funny Swedes.
The two – a female comic book artist and a male comedian – set up a phony dating profile featuring a “blonde, happy-go-lucky, kind of over-sexual cliché of a Swedish woman.” (The female half of the couple posed in a cheap blond wig for the pics.)
When a legion of hopeful, horny men besieged the imaginary girl’s inbox with come-ons ranging from awkward to crude, the Swedes responded with surreal silliness. And then posted the most ridiculous conversations online.
While there are a few genuinely creepy messages amongst the dozens posted on the site – it looks like the Swedish duo kept the worst messages to themselves – the most amazing ones reflect a certain willful obliviousness on the part of the hopeful male admirers. Nothing she says is too bizarre to faze them.
So, I’ve written about the terrible “game” blogger LaidNYC several times already because the fellow is such a reliable purveyor of terrible what-the-fuckery — what with his weird fixation on the alleged value of his sperm, his creepy obsession with underage girls, and his overall awfulness as a human being. I have wondered, from time to time, if the fellow isn’t simply a troll, but I’ve kept on writing about him largely because his readers — and other manosphere bloggers — seem to take him utterly seriously.
Today, though, I just noticed a post from Matt Forney — a Manosphere blogger who is himself a deeply terrible person with a history of trollery and sockpuppeting — who seems to be dropping big hints that LaidNYC may not be who he seems. In a post reviewing an”ebook” by LaidNYC — insofar as a 13 page collection of platitudes obviously banged out in a few hours can be considered a book of any kind — Forney writes:
There are bloggers who take weeks, months, years to get into a groove, honing their talents to the point where their posts become must-reads. And then there are guys like LaidNYC who come exploding out of the gate, writing stuff so good you swear they’ve done this before. LaidNYC is on my top tier of bloggers because his writing is not only brutal and honest, brimming with verisimilitude, but his prose style is hilarious as well.
The fact that he so effortlessly sends feminists into shrieking hysterics is proof that he’s doing things right.
Emphasis mine.
He ends the “review” urging his readers to send LaidNYC some real money for his ridiculous “book.”
In any case, I’m not sure if it matters much if LaidNYC is a genuine “game” blogger with deeply misogynistic views who writes horrendous shit because he believes every word of it, or a troll with deeply misogynistic views who writes horrendous shit because he wants to piss off women and feminists and maybe con a few gullible followers into sending him money while he’s at it.
And whether or not LaidNYC’s noxious “advice” is meant seriously, manosphere dudes are lapping it up regardless.
Matt Forney and LaidNYC — who may or may not be the same person — have learned that you can get attention by saying terrible things. Congratulations. What an amazing accomplishment.
EDITED TO ADD: Well, on Twitter, for what it’s worth, Forney denies it all.
I did manage to find an audio interview with LaidNYC here. You can compare it to Forney’s voice on his podcast here. At first I was thinking that while the voices are similar, it wasn’t a match: LaidNYC was a faster talker with a higher voice, etc. (It’s hard to tell, in part because LaidNYC’s voice in the interview is poor quality, over the phone.) But then I skipped ahead to about ten minutes into Forney’s podcast and now I’m not sure. The voices are awfully similar (and frankly, not terribly alpha-sounding). Any thoughts?
Inspired by the recent very tiny MRA rally in Toronto, this new Tumblr blog posts pictures of groups of people — and horses, and bees, and other things — that are larger than the group of people that the MRAs managed to attract to their little shindig.
Mike Booth, friend of Man Boobz and the guy behind mostly immobile internet cartoon sensation SomeGreyBloke and faux-MRA Dan Cardamon, presents an effective takedown of a recent video by infamous atheist asshole Thunderf00t.
Ok, this isn’t directly relevant to Man Boobzers, but this Wretched Refuse post on Sex Toy recycling is pretty hilarious.
And finally, I think I have found where Julian, the creepy PUA coach from Real Social Dynamics we looked at yesterday, got most of his ideas about women:
The fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit are getting worked up over imaginary feminists again!
Yesterday, in a discussion of paternity fraud, a brand-new Redditor who had never posted a comment before posted a completely unsourced screenshot of what quite a few of the regulars took to be some sort of official feminist statement on paternity fraud.
Hello, and welcome to The Man Boobz Fiction Workshop! Today we will learn my foolproof two-step method for writing believable fiction. It’s as easy as pie — well, easier, since pie can take a bit of finesse — and it is absolutely GUARANTEED to work.
Here it is.
STEP ONE: Write believable fiction.
STEP TWO: If step one fails, write a story that makes a woman look evil and foolish, and post it to the Men’s Rights Subreddit as a true story.
If you don’t believe me, check out this little story from a fella calling himself the-final-word — a Redditor for less than two weeks, with only one previous comment to his name — in which a highly successful gentleman happily humiliates an ex-girlfriend trying to steal his money with the old “baby” ploy.
Take a look at the thread itself to see how eagerly the Men’s Righsers eat up his tale of victory over evil womanhood!
That is the beauty of my two-step method. If people don’t believe your bullshit, find a more gullible audience. And there are few audiences in this world more gullible than Men’s Rightsers.
I should note that I had nothing to do with the-final-word’s story, nor did I sneak into the Men’s Rights subreddit to give his story 47 upvotes and a bunch of positive comments.
Thanks to hackattack92 in the AgainstMensRights Subreddit for pointing out this wonderful example of shitthatneverhappened.txt
Tom Martin would be right at home in Second Life, apparently.
I realize that I may be the only one who’s really all that interested in sectarian infighting amongst the MRAs, but an old friend of ours has weighed in on the recent battles over the A Voice for Men satellite group MRA London, and I’ve learned some interesting things as a result.
This just in: Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most gullible nincompoops in the history of ever.
The latest evidence of this? The regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit were fooled by an obviously fake “screenshot” of an article from Jezebel that had been altered to make it look like a Jezebel staff writer thinks that paternity fraud is justifiable as a way to fight patriarchy.
Hey, hostile visitors! Do you have an opinion about, for example, Mary Koss’ rape research? Do you want to discuss it even though the topic has not actually come up by itself in any of the threads and none of my recent posts really have much to do with the specifics of anyone’s rape research? Well, from now on you can discuss it here with anyone who wishes to follow you to this thread.
Added bonus: If you continue to try to discuss it in other threads you’ll be banned!
This also applies to future derailers riding hobbyhorses of their own having nothing to do with Koss.
Happy discussing!
Note: If you wish to discuss the topics at hand, you know, topics directly related to my posts and/or to what other people are discussing and that aren’t, you know, personal hobbyhorses of yours that involve long screeds and various things that you’ve probably already cut and pasted into the comments sections of various other websites until you were banned from them for endless derailing and general asswipery, feel free to remain in the original threads.
