The rewards
PZ is recruiting new people to join Freethought Blogs.
So if you want to blog here, here’s what you do: send an email to ftbapplications@googlegroups.com, in which you give us this information:
Name
Contact email
Do you want your email public?
Twitter account, if any
Link for donations, if any
Links to your current blog, any biographical material, or best examples of your writing in comments or forums or other media
Why do you want to write for us?
It’s that easy. This is a private communication to the bloggers here; none of this information will be made public without your permission.
Good luck, applicants.
Serious applications will be examined for their suitability. Our requirements are simple: we want godless Social Justice Warriors. If that’s you, why aren’t you writing for us already?
Hmm, good question, why is that? Why aren’t I writing for them already? Oh yes, I remember! It’s because several of the bloggers there united to trash me on their blogs because they decided I wasn’t orthodox enough on one plank of the Social Justice Warrior Platform. That’s why. So actually their requirements aren’t as simple as PZ makes it sound. Good luck, applicants, but be warned: it’s not true that there’s no orthodoxy enforced.
What are the rewards, you ask?
- You get space for a blog of your very own!
- You get to join a group of supportive people!
Ah, no. That’s really not one of the rewards. That shouldn’t be claimed as one of the rewards, because it’s not accurate. It’s not a group of supportive people, at least not currently. It could become that but it’s not that now.
Mind you, the chances are very good that it will improve, because nearly all of the most toxic ones are leaving to create their own super-toxic little network. There are some terrific people at FTB, like Taslima and Maryam and Yemisi and the Nirmukta crew. But don’t go expecting a whole group of supportive people, because that’s just not the reality. I know, I was there.
I’m still really sad you got drummed out of FTB. I still really enjoy a lot of content produced from there, but the ones who pushed you out made a huge mistake. You were one of the most prolific bloggers there. I’m not entirely sure who generated the most traffic but I would bet anything you were in the top 5.
I was in the top 3, by a pretty wide margin. On the other hand the top two were ahead of me by a much wider margin. But yes, I did generate a sizable fraction of the traffic, and they didn’t.
But, you know, as far as they’re concerned that just makes them all the more incorruptible and virtuous. They patted themselves on the back for being the smaller bloggers challenging the bigger ones.
I’m glad to hear there will be new bloggers at FtB. My morning reading with my coffee was cut direly short after the Great Denunciation. I’ve had to resort to reading Jezebel again.
I’d be a bit worried about the commentariat, though. It’s not as tough a crowd as Feministe, but up there.
There will be new bloggers at FTB but that doesn’t mean there will be good bloggers at FTB. The invitation seems a tad desperate.
I heard about this through ‘pitter gossip on Nugent’s blog (when I was recently there arguing about Dawkins’ appreciation of “satire”).
One could idly speculate, were one given to idle speculation, as to whether the fact that those leaving are largely composed of the “united trashers”, and the fact that PZ was the only blogger to defend you, are related facts.
Found the new network’s crowdfunding video.
Interesting that FTB B&W is still up and readable (still on the left-side index, even) and thus perhaps still generating income for that network (do you still get a cut?), while trying to go to old FTB Dispatches pages automatically redirects to Brayton’s new patheos blog.
Yeah, I figured you, Pharyngula and Dispatches were the most popular. You 3 tended to have the largest number of comments and by far the most frequent posts. Also you 3 were in my opinion the best writers but there’s some other pretty good ones on there.
I feel like I’ve been rickrolled, Chris@7. >:|
Chris Clarke, I won’t go so far as to call you History’s Greatest Monster, but MAN do you have a lot to answer for. At least it wasn’t actually a rickroll, right MrFancyPants? :)
Hey, he left off the multiple choice question:
;-)
I hadn’t heard that the human garbage was leaving. Any links?
Ordinarily I wouldn’t comment this late, but … Human garbage? Really, Knight in Sour Armor, @ #13?
ruh ro…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/02/12/whoa-you-like-us/
Not only were some of the worst agitators rewarded with a topic thread to curate, some of them may also be joining the blog network. The lunatics have taken over the asylum.
justinr@15:
Yep. The worst of the vicious anti-intellectual purity police have apparently applied, and they will be duly rewarded with the recognition for which they desperately yearn. One toxic little clique exits, and another enters.
If PZ and FtB have any sense, they will reject the application of any current or former Pharyngula commenter, out of hand. Accepting any of those people will not contribute to “diversity”. Anyone willing to bet that this sort of rejection will happen?
Holy shit, the ironies. PZ this morning –
We want diversity!
But, if you deviate from a Secret Party Line on One Designated Sacred Subject, you will be torn to shreds right here on friendly loose supportive diverse independent-minded Freethought Blogs.
We give individual blogs a lot of autonomy!
Except when we don’t.
You get to decide what to write about!
And we get to decide when it’s time to tear you to shreds right here on friendly loose supportive diverse independent-minded Freethought Blogs.
This has never been a problem before!
Oh really?????????????????
Dave W @ 8 – thanks for reminding me. Yes, I do still get a cut, and I just realized it’s a couple of months in arrears.
I like PZ. Except for those times when I don’t. This is a time I don’t.
I’m trying to predict how the fucks will react to #18. I mean, besides predicting that they will casually dismiss your objections because You Were A Special Case! — different from any other case and therefore deserving of the treatment you received — because reasons (see: you have the gall to ask questions and explore more about topics rather than just recite from the assigned doctrine of the moment; see also: you fall outside the currently-acceptable feminist demographic as defined by them), I predict that these asswads will object to your “torn to shreds” phraseology. I can’t estimate the absurdity, but brainstorming…
Using the phrase “torn to shreds” is too violent?
You weren’t literally torn to threads?
It forces vegans to think of carnitas?
That type of language triggers field mice who managed to escaped eagle attacks?
This is tough. It’s difficult to estimate just how absurd these dipshits will get. Just when you think they have passed the human limits of absurdity, they go exponentially more absurd on you.
Meanwhile, PZ is writing like he’s Sammy Jankis in “Memento,” a cuddly, lovable, optimistic character whose brain appears to be completely free of anything that didn’t happen within the last ten minutes. Is it a brain abnormality that makes him forget? or, is he just acting like he doesn’t remember?
Damn you Chris Clarke #7, you wasted TWO HOURS OF MY LIFE!!
What’s the difference between being drummed out and leaving in disgust?
To me it looked like the second one.
Well yes – it was my choice to leave. I left because I didn’t want to be there, not because anyone told me to.
But that’s a distinction without a difference, really. I think the people who wrote those long, tedious, malevolent posts about me knew perfectly well that they would cause me to want to leave. They didn’t tell me to leave but they did go to a lot of trouble to make me want to get the fuck away from them.
Except when they did, of course. I’m thinking comment threads and one M.A. Melby and something along the lines of “GTFO already!”. Granted, she wasn’t one of the FtB bloggers, but something tells me that were she to apply today, she’d be welcomed with open arms.
TonyInBatavia: Yes, I’m being optimistic. Because I have no choice.
The last 6 months on the network have been utterly miserable for me — it’s been a complete mess. It has been such a mess that we’re going through quite a bit of internal upheaval, and one of the big changes is that I’m being forced to take a more active administrative role, and am pushing for a lot of changes. I’ve tried being the stand-back-and-let-it-work-itself-out guy, and that didn’t work, and just got me a lot of backstabbing.
So one of the things I want to differently is a different kind of autonomy: bloggers will have their little garden, and they can tend to it, and they can complain about the broccoli and the weeds in their neighbor’s garden, but I’ll be less tolerant of the old style of autonomy, where bloggers would expect to be able to demand that their neighbors’ gardens be set on fire and plowed over with salt.
And yes, I expect bitter denunciations no matter what I do — that’s been the way of it all this time — so I’ve run all out of fucks to give.
Certainly the result was the same, absolutely.
I turned off my RSS reader for six months after that whole incident and my inner life grew quite a bit less roilsome.
Of course last summer on the network was just a riot of fun for me.
You should be ashamed of yourself, PZ.
Life is too short to give a rat’s patoot about what happens at FTB. I left the children to their tantrums years ago and have never missed them.
The reaction that caused you to leave was the last straw for me as far as reading FTB. It’s a shame because I’d been reading it for years and I’d enjoyed a lot of the content and, as you say, there were a few excellent and clued up writers on there (like you I’d single out Taslima and Maryam). I enjoyed Dana’s geology posts and that led me to her professional colum writing. Plus the British Indian guy who blogged about India while he was working there – can’t remember his name.
But I can’t abide the purity policing, the “left wing thought fascism”, the idea that we all have to agree on every single issue. The Pharyngula commentariat were moving from entertainingly vicious disembowelers of the willfully stupid and ignorant into the bullying hive mind they had been accused of being before. It’s actually not surprising they’re having problems finding bloggers. People have been watching and anyone with any sense won’t touch the network with a ten foot barge pole unless they already agree with all the precepts of the dogma and how many people do that?
Many of the comment sections, particularly, had started showing a toxic degree of that purity policing: no discussion allowed! Tread the party line! Don’t dare to disagree! It’s disappointing and disheartening – and it’s not a trend that is exclusive to the leftish social justice movement but a more insidious policing of views that seems to be happening in many areas. It’s just very obvious on FTB.
If they can put their house in order I’ll go back and read again. In the meantime you’re well out of it. I follow your work daily, here, though I don’t have time to comment as often as I’d like. Keep up the good work!
@#14 PatrickG:
I may (definitely do) have an extreme reaction to bullies and thus use strong, dehumanizing language to describe them.
Ophelia @19: glad to be of service!
I’m remembering that bullshit all over again, and it occurs to me that I actually read Team Apoplexy long before I read B&W. In terms of loyalty then, they were the ones to have mine initially… which meant it was wryly funny later on when I was accused of being some sort of Benson flying monkey. Unfortunately, membership to that particular clique requires answering ‘yes’ to the question ‘is a trans man (or woman) biologically male (or female) from birth?’
Well, that’s my objection. I much prefer “how can you be so fucking wrong” to “they’re human garbage, take out the trash”.
I mean, it’s not like there’s a lack of substantive critique here, both of position and of behavior. Guess we should just nuke em from orbit to be sure, eh?
Last was @ Knight in Sour Armour, #31, sorry.
Mind you, this is coming from someone who popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate Scalia’s removal from the Supreme Court. I’m not glad he’s dead. I’m glad he can no longer actively do harm. There’s a distinction there, and I think it’s important.
Please also remember that you did not coin the term “human garbage”. That phrase has an ugly, ugly history, and I would urge you to avoid eliminationist rhetoric.
On the main topic… as someone who currently supports FTB via annual subscription, if FTB start bringing in bloggers drawn from the Burning Bridges contingent, I’ll let my network subscription lapse.
I learned a lot from FTB and its bloggers, and I’ll always be grateful. Heck, I’m still learning there. But the thing that drew me to FTB six years ago (wow, six years?) was the promise of engagement and education*. I could lurk, I could learn, I could ask questions without being anxious or afraid (unless I was truly odious). A network based on “Build Your Own Damn Bridges, Privileged (in some ways) Person” is obviously not for me. I can support the FTB bloggers I read regularly directly, thanks, and I will in this eventuality.
Frankly, I’m disgusted by (some) regular commenters at FTB casting Ophelia Benson as some form of moral evil that must be defeated. Our gracious bloghost and I disagree on a number of things, but I very much agree that gender issues are extremely complicated and warrant discussion, not assertion. Ironically, this is something I would have a few years previous asked about on FTB blogs. I don’t feel at all comfortable doing that now. Too many bridges burned.
For better or worse, for me, the question of Ophelia Benson’s character has become a litmus test. I think she’s a quite fine and decent human being, albeit flawed (unlike the rest of us, of course!). Some raging assholes seem to vehemently disagree. Their motives don’t make them less of assholes, and if I’m missing out on some obvious truth, well, I hope I’ll find it somewhere that doesn’t have so many assholes.
This turned into something of a rambling post. Apologies for the disjointedness. It’s late, and I had that Scalia Champagne. :)
Signed,
An Asshole
* Well, that and finding a place where people actually thought that Sam Harris was a fucking idiot. :) I was no longer alone!
I agree with Patrick G about “human garbage.” I don’t like that epithet or its siblings and would prefer people not use it here. There are plenty of epithets that mean “person I’m totally disgusted with” without being that kind of dehumanizing. That’s somewhat arbitrary, I guess, but I hope it’s comprehensible anyway.
Patrick @ 36 – nope not six years! FTB started in summer 2011; I joined in September. I managed just short of 4 years before being politely nudged into taking my thoughts elsewhere.
Yep, you’re right. I conflated when I started reading scienceblogs and the original b&w with FTB.
In my defense, I’m an old old man with failing memory. Almost 40!