Sunday 15 July 2012

Radon reviews "Freethoughtblogs and PC Lyers"

The original blog is here: https://thunderf00tdotorg.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/freethoughtblogs-and-pc-lyers/

Original text is in black, and my opinion and corrections are in italic and red.


So PZ Myers is the man who gave me his personal assurances; that Freethougthblogs really didn’t have any interest in controlling the content.
Okay, great, do you have any evidence of this? You have also claimed that you haven't banned people on YouTube, which is blatantly untrue. I know for a fact that you have. Before all of this happened. 


This was evidently a verbal assurance made in bad faith.
Really? How so? Are you suggesting that PZ was interested in banning you right from the get-go? Or that PZ had seen all possible scenarios you could write about? Would you feel the same way if a person wrote about the best way to obtain illegal files and porn? 


The rough time-line is one week before I was banned, PZ sent this to some mailing list Freethoughtblogs has:
This is beyond incomprehensible. Just "some" mailing list? Are you inferring that the list was/is random? (I think you are looking for "a mailing list")




Well that's basically what I did, and what's more I even told them on their mailing list.
Do you have any evidence of this? And you cannot use them when you refer to a mailing list. 



Then ~1 week later, PZ kicks me.  Maybe he wasn’t joking about that ‘Except me. I’m perfect, don’t you dare say otherwise‘ bit, or maybe this was one of those ‘many a true word spoken in jest’ type things. 
The correct phrase would be "many a true word is spoken in jest". 




Indeed how quickly opinions can change when it’s him who is getting ‘ripped into’
Pot. Kettle. Black. 

There was no open consultation in this group about what anyone else thought of my ideas prior to my expulsion, giving this a very totalitarian ‘execution by fiat’ type feel.
How the fuck do you know? No, seriously how the fuck do you know? Can you read minds? 

Everyone else on the groups was told of my ‘expulsion’ AFTER it happened, I mean hell, they wouldn’t have wanted an actual discussion or to give anyone the possibility to dissent about what is permissible ‘freethought’ on ‘freethoughtblogs’ now would they!
Even thou it is a rhetorical question, you really should use a question mark. 
And how do you know this?

Now I really didn’t care about offending these people at this point as on their mailing list I had already been accused of being a ‘rape culture apologist’ (FFS, I don’t think I’ve even touched on the subject), guilty of ablism, devaluing addicts, an not being careful between challenging islam and outright racism.
So wait, they never talked about it, but they called you a "rape culture apologist"? How is that even possible? Because when you refer to 'had already..' this implies it was previous to your blogs. And it is spelled ableism. 


 All of this based on NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER (well that’s unless you are happy to count rumors as evidence).
Well, you have been more than willing to count rumors as evidence. Remember that video you made about Coughlan? Was it based on anything but rumors? 
And what did you say to Dawahfilms, again? "go home to your own country". How is that not racism? You had no other reason to claim that Dawahfilms should go home to his own country. Perhaps a strong xenophobia. 

To be honest, I was hoping that there would be a higher standard of conduct than that, but the chatter made it clear that FTB really was somewhere between a bitching slimepit, and StrawmanCentral.
I don't see the need for the Oxford comma here, but isn't it funny how you suspect this of others, but does not have a standard of conduct yourself?

It was also plain to me from just watching the chatter on this mailing list that there was a significant amount of bullying of weaker members/ opposing viewpoint.
So you read the mails? And still you claim that there was "no open consultation". How can it be both, TF?

If this was an academic environment I would have called bullshit on them in an instant, however by this time it was clear the standard of people that I was dealing and that as a group they were essentially a lost cause.
Thunderf00t, for the love of the moon, please proofread your fucking blogs. And I have no alternative but to use this:

I was happy to write a blog there, but I certainly wasn’t going to waste my time ingratiating myself with such people.
So what was your purpos.. Oh I guess I asked too soon, you will answer this in the next sentence, right?

Incidentally FTB claims that it can deliver ~150 k ad impressions per day, which could mean as little as ~15k hits per day (~10 ads per page).
I was pulling in ~ 10-15k hits per day on my blog until I was blocked.
FTB never paid me a penny **EDIT Ed Brayton contests this point, see comment below** (again something that PZ said they would), but to be honest I have little interest in such things.
So it was all about the money? Don't you make enough in donations, any longer? 


Integrity is MUCH more important than money on such issues.
Then why did you bother to even bring it up? Besides trying to white knight it? Why did you mention the exact amount, if it wasn't that important?

So I blogged about something which, I thought they were way off base on, namely the disproportionate amount of time they gave sexism compared to other subjects, and the way they attacked, strawmanned and demonized people who bought up sensible concerns.
And you did so poorly. 

I had expected that PZ Myers (an university lecturer) would at least keep his word on the academic integrity thing, but to be honest, after about the 3rd day after posting my second article, it was clear that wasn’t worth spit.
How exactly did he not keep his word? You got peer-reviewed. 

When a man is willing to jettison the value of his word so readily, I was under no illusions ‘ If you see something you don’t like, rip into it. ‘ in reality meant that you should only rip into it as long as PZ thought it was okay.
I still think it constitutes okay to rip into. Problem is that you did so extremely headless. 

However, I was not going to be bullied into submission by a bunch of second raters, and so despite a series of threats, and Ed Brayton making it clear that if I felt PZ hadn’t kept his word I was free to leave ‘and not let the door hit your ass on the way out’, and that ‘no one would miss me’.
Again with the Oxford comma. And wait, weren't these threats just trolling? 

That’s right, the fact that PZ was lying to people faces to get people into the blog really didn’t phase anyone at freethoughtblogs at all!
People faces? I mean, if he was lying to dog faces.. And what did he lie about? 

Nor did such explicit threats on the mailing list seem to phase anyone else (no one stepped forward to question such action), which I think shows that bullying is just so widespread on FTB that it is just the socially accepted norm (that’s unless like me, any of the competent people there simply regarded FTB as a lost cause, or at least a cause not worth fighting for, and just got on with their own thing).
Action should be plural, if there were more than one threat. And how is that bullying? No seriously. You were free to leave whenever you wanted. 


Y’see this is the slippery slope of becoming intolerant to criticism, eventually it will consume you to the point where you cannot take any criticism….
To borrow a quote from Yathzee here "You are projecting so hard, you could point yourself at a wall and show off Powerpoint presentations." 

where you become intellectually soft and are happy to strawman people en mass for simplicity, then ban them when they call you on your bulk strawmanning!
How many fucking strawmen do you build? This is just beyond pathetic. 

Anyways, it turns out the ‘cover story‘ for PC Myers banning me was that I made an argument that existed nowhere outside of his head.
Use punctuation. Do you have any evidence for this? (I feel like I am repeating myself a bit.)

Then why didn't you do that? 'The difference between the experience of sexism on FTB and YT - a comparative study' would have been a great post, I reckon.

To me it was obvious that the community I was aware of at conferences, and on youtube was widely different from FTB on the issue of feminism.
Both conferences and YouTube are a bit bigger than FTB. 

People like Rebecca ‘Rape Threat’ Watson were widely regarded at conferences as a toxic asset (no matter if she had been an asset previously) who left a bad taste in the mouths of most people.
Citation needed.

This is certainly true on youtube, where ZOMGitscriss can put up a video with her in, and her ratings go from something along the lines of 95 % positive to something along the lines of Venomfangx.
YouTube is not conferences. Just because it is true for A, doesn't make it true for B.

Unremarkable claims require unremarkable evidence, and so I did what was sensible, I simply put up a spoken word version of my blog, and PZs reply (who views really are seen as vanilla on freethoughtblogs) and asked people who watched to the end who they thought was nearer the mark, my views or the views that could pass as the plurality on freethoughtblogs.
It was not like you cherrypicked or anything here. 

Sure there will be some bias in the data, but not enough to nullify the point that FTB are widely seen as off base on this point.
What the fuck are you babbling about? No seriously, if you don't think there is enough bias in the data, then please hand in the scientist card. And remember those videos Coughlan made about you? The ratings were in his favour. So you are off base?

I mean it could be easily examined.
PZ could read both my post, and his reply on his YT channel and see what the voting would be like, I would guess that he might make 60:40 in his favor (not far off his post-hoc justification for banning me video).
Oh that sounds fair. It is not like you have 100k mindless followers. Oh weren't you just complaining about "no open consultation" ?

But of course, PZ was mostly interested in challenging the methods, rather than the conclusion.
Yes. That is called science. Perhaps you have heard of it? Or maybe we should conclude that the body loses 21 gram when dying, and this is it soul. 
Or perhaps the conclusion creationists come to? Yes, fuck their method, let's just discuss conclusions, that is what it is all about.

Personally I think this is an unremarkable claim, and as such requires unremarkable data, which it has is scads!
We could test this easily. You could make a video of you doing nothing but fartnoises, and then ask people how high they would rate it. Then make a video with complete bogus claims. And see that. And then you could see if it differs greatly from your initial point. And you only accepted the first 500 posts. That means people who subscribe to you, thunderf00t. I think we all can agree that you got those views within an hour

Anyways, that’s pretty much my experience of the slimepit of ‘Freethoughblogs’ the PC Lyars.
Always differ from your title, that is good. 

It’s not the whole story yet though.
Dunn dunn duunnnnn

It turns out that freethoughtblogs are not only happy to ban people as a typical creationist would (for something that they never actually said), but are perfectly happy to actively support the abuse of copyright specifically used to stifle active debate.
Not like you ban people, is it? Oh wait, you do. Not like you wanted to kick people off YouTube, for being "a little bit outside the envelope"? Oh wait..


More on that later.
Oh great. 



Truth be told, this is beyond pathetic. If this was his writing style on FTB, this should be sufficient reason to kick him. Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, flawed data, erroneous conclusions based on flawed data, references to hear-say and use of personal experience as a factor makes this post seem very biased, as well as unreliable. The constant appeal to being strawmanned is just pathetic. If I changed a few things, I bet I could post this as a picture perfect generic creationist post. 
So the final score of this is D-.