First of all, this one won't make much sense if you haven't read part 2, so go read part 2.
This is the third in a series on what I have started referring to as “2nd Wave Internet Skepticism”. 2nd wave internet skepticism seems to fold tribalism in under the guise of critical thinking. It includes a lot of rhetoric that I first saw in the “Men’s Rights Activism” movement. The same rhetoric can be seen in the modern neo-nazi movement known as the “alt right”. These guys (and I do mean guys, mostly white guys) seem to think that because they’ve figured out that 9/11 truth and chemtrails are bullshit that anything they dislike, ranging from feminism to trans rights and beyond, is also bullshit. I imagine many skeptics will disagree with the ideas I am presenting here, and that’s fine. I have found that the cult of 2nd wave internet skepticism generally hates criticism even though many of those in the movement suggest that “safe spaces” are ruining everything. Hypocrisy and perceptions of one’s own victimhood are on full display in this, the war of really bad ideas.
Exodus: Badgers, Flirting and Dick Pics
Keeping it classy.
Before being kicked out of the Badger groups for suggesting that one of their admins wasn’t popular with the ladies, I started to find out a little bit more of what was going on. There was harassment of women, including the very admin I went after sending unsolicited nudes to a woman (see part 2 of this series for the funny collage she made with his dick-pics). When the admin in question sent me a video message, seeing as he’s not a good looking man and I didn’t wanna see him nude, I blocked him from sending me messages before even viewing it. Believe me, I did not wanna see dude naked for any reason, he’s a bit greasy and creepy. I was accused of blocking him in the Tinfoil Hat Gallery, but I quickly proved that I didn’t, and proceeded to talk shit, saying I didn’t wanna see him naked because he’s not very good looking. And of course I mentioned again that he hadn’t been laid in 1825 days, which seemed more and more likely by the day.
The admins of the Tinfoil Hat Gallery had a group chat going on for flirting. In that group chat there was a young man on the autism spectrum who was flirting with a girl in the chat. This is not really something I care about actually, single people in the internet age do in fact flirt in chat. But what happened to this young man was pretty shitty. A woman in group chat sent him a sexy, but non-nude photograph of herself. He responded that he would “Save it for later”, likely alluding to the fact that the photo might go into his “spank bank”. This doesn’t seem like out of the ordinary behavior for a group chat that was set up to exchange sexy pictures and what not. But the Badgers started saying he was sexually harassing her.
They were dropping comments in unrelated threads on his personal facebook page. I was skeptical of the claims knowing the group of people in question. So I asked for some evidence that this was true, as one might do, like maybe screenshots, seeing as the harassment allegedly happened in a group chat. Others asked basically the same question. So the Badgers decided to be very dishonest in their rhetoric, suggesting to those skeptical of the claim, those asking for the screen shots, that we were encouraging this kind of behavior by not just believing the claims of harassment. It was profoundly dishonest and it was playing on the idea of rape-culture to try and twist those skeptical of the claim up in a knot. When they presented a screen shot of him saying he would save the picture for later, most people said something like “is that all you got? Ppshhhh”. Because really, if someone sends you a sexually suggestive picture of their own free will, suggesting that you might “use it later” isn’t harassment at all.
But what came next was worse. Far worse. The young man in question had deactivated his facebook profile at this point due to harassment. The Badgers took a video he made of himself getting ready to go out, dancing a little, and put it on YouTube calling it “The Sex Offender Shuffle”. They legit tried to ruin this dude’s life for flirting with a woman in a chat they had set up specifically for flirting. This ain’t really trolling, this is something else. But this is what happens when you decide that your tribalism is actually a result of superior critical thinking skills, isn't it?
Some of the nonsense associated with this tried to spill over into the best fucking chemtrails group on the internet, but the 33, the admins of said group, were having none of it. That group is kind of unshakable in that way. Peace, Love Unity, Radicue.
Many of those who were removed from the gallery or left of their own free will have joined up to continue in our merry prankster ways. But trolls are trolls, anything could happen.
The next article in this series will be about Sam Harris and Michael Shermer. They've truly lost the thread. They used to be science communicators but now both spend a good deal of time throwing a fit about the so called "social justice warriors". Let's hope Harris and Shermer aren't on the winning side in the war of bad ideas.
