Thunderf00t
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==Ongoing crusade against feminism== | ==Ongoing crusade against feminism== | ||
{{Hatnote|For a point-by-point breakdown of his response to Anita Sarkeesian, see [[Thunderf00t/Criticism of Tropes vs. Women|Criticism of Tropes vs. Women]].}} | {{Hatnote|For a point-by-point breakdown of his response to Anita Sarkeesian, see [[Thunderf00t/Criticism of Tropes vs. Women|Criticism of Tropes vs. Women]].}} | ||
| − | + | I'm sorry, the information that was dislplayed here before was incredibly biased in favour of feminists. I'm not going to say if I'm for or against feminism to prevent further arguments made against me just because of my stance on this situation. Just know that someone who wasn't very happy with criticism altered the information to make Mason seem like an 8-year-old misogynist without any good argument or criticism against feminism, which he undoubtedly has. Now you had to read this bullcrap instead of actual unbiased information because someone wanted to be right and decided to be manipulative with the previous post here. I wonder why people think feminists are manipulative and lie *no sarcasm at all*. I know this seems unfair towards feminists but you don't even wanna know what was written here. Okay I'm going now. I saved you all and didn't make you read some false and manipulative information. For the record, English isn't my native language and I never wrote anything on any wiki because I'm not the kind of guy that writes fancy stuff, so don't even bother correcting my grammar and using that to disprove my intelligence. I didn't write this to be entertaining, but rather to delete what was written here whiile writing something potentially interesting. You're still reading, right? Cool. Someone please replace this shiet I wrote with CORRECT AND FAIR information. This is just a placeholder. Jackie Chan bless you, drive safe. | |
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==Further criticism== | ==Further criticism== | ||
Revision as of 21:07, 11 November 2014
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Thunderf00t (real name Phil Mason[1]) is a YouTube atheist and antitheist vlogger, well-known for his Why Do People Laugh At Creationists?[2] series and his various exchanges with other vloggers. He has also made many purely scientific videos on topics such as potassium exploding in water as well as his biochemistry series called "Some Amazing Facts About Life."
While Mason's channel remains one of the most popular atheist channels on Youtube, he has become an increasingly polarizing figure due to his outspoken attitude towards Islam and Muslims (joining the ranks of those who oppose Park51),[3] his short tenure and public falling out with Freethought Blogs, and his new-found fondness for attacks on feminism and feminists.
On YouTube
"Why Do People Laugh At Creationists?"
Mason's longest running series of 42 videos have, between them, garnered several million views. Each episode usually takes one creationist talking point and refutes it. These videos are released "copyright free for educational purposes."
VenomFangX
A vlogger named VenomFangX, has a long-running feud with Mason. VenomFangX appeared several times in the Why Do People Laugh At Creationists? series. One of his videos proclaims that a global flood could have caused the Grand Canyon to form "in about five minutes"; Mason refuted this, demonstrating that the granite around the area would have to be more soluble than caster (superfine) sugar, and pointed out that the water would have to travel at five times the speed of sound in order to travel the length of the Grand Canyon in five minutes.
Mason has also repeatedly called out VenomFangX regarding his misuse of donations.
The feud had two major peaks after VenomFangX made false DMCA claims against videos by his detractors, causing them to be removed by YouTube. Because the allegations against the videos and their creators were false, the videos were quickly mirrored and replaced, leaving VenomFangX open to prosecution. The first incident happened in October 2008 when VenomFangX was forced to apologise for the false claims made against Mason. In late 2009, similar claims were made against a YouTube user named dprjones, who, given VenomFangX's previous record, would not accept a simple apology. The incident climaxed with dprjones, Mason, and a few others intervening with VenomFangX and his parents to get him psychological help. A line was drawn under the incident in January 2010, and VenomFangX was not heard from again until December 2010, when he announced his return to YouTube. He has since been uploading new videos in rapid succession.
HowTheWorldWorks
Mason's spat with a vlogger named HowTheWorldWorks is his second most prominent YouTube-based argument. It was mostly a boring affair, but it did result in Mason calling out HowTheWorldWorks for being deceitful about the identity and number of his subscribers, most of whom appeared to be sock puppets.
Ray Comfort
Mason branched out from bashing creationism to discussing religion, atheism, philosophy and politics. In early 2009, he challenged creationist and evangelist Ray Comfort to a discussion. The invitation was prompted by Comfort's stated desire to challenge prominent atheists, avoiding the question of Mason's "prominence" (though his webpage has more subscribers than Comfort's Way of the Master channel). Mason invited Comfort privately via email asking for a civil discourse on their views; after the e-mail bounced back, he then extended an invitation on Comfort's blog. Comfort declined at first, but eventually accepted, on the condition that Mason pay $100,000 to Richard Dawkins. This condition was eventually dropped, and the fight discussion was on.[4]
Most viewers thought they'd see a debate where Comfort was systematically destroyed, but were disappointed as Mason remained calm and reasoned. He did unsettle Comfort by asking him to defend his argument that morality is rooted in the Bible against the hypothetical possibility that the Bible could have advocated pedophilia.
In July 2011, he came back for seconds. Mason did better in this debate, arguing against Comfort's willingness to leap to eternal moral conclusions. [5]
Richard Dawkins
Towards the end of 2009, Mason managed to get an interview/discussion with Richard Dawkins. Their conversation included a discussion of evolutionary and memetic explanations for the origin of religion. Towards the end of the series, discussed his rationale for criticizing creationism.[6] [7]
Westboro Baptist Church
On July 10, 2011, Mason posted an interview with two members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, "Megan" and "Margie." While Mason tried patiently to talk and reason with the WBC members, they talked over him and often insulted him, calling him "silly," "donkey's ass," "little girl," "little boy," "pervert," and other names. The interview began with a discussion of the Iraq War and the WBC's best-known claim, that God kills American and British soldiers because of the "sinful" policies of both countries.
Of Muslims and South Park
Following the censorship of South Park for depicting the prophet Muhammad, Mason made several videos critical of Islam. His initial video, since widely mirrored, was pulled down by a DMCA claim by Viacom, for its brief use of a South Park image to demonstrate the point.
Dawah's 'Doc-Drop'
Mason made a video (featuring HealthyAddict and PZ Myers) publicly revealing his name and lambasting DawahFilms for making their feud cross over into real life after accusing the latter of 'doc dropping' him[8] No such doc drop was ever proven to have occurred however, only that DawahFilms had called Mason's employers to inform them about Mason's "bigotry and constant harassment" (in fact the Bay Area Skeptics had actually accidentally doc dropped Mason in July, several months before.[9]). Mason himself had claimed earlier of the so-called 'doc drop' that his employers already knew about his videos and that he was in no way under any threat of being reprimanded for his behavior.[10][11]
Eric Hovind OFFICIALLY accepts that atheism is true and accurate
Thunderf00t debated Eric Hovind at the Reason Rally.[12]
Branching off into general skepticism
| This section requires more sources. |
Lately,When? it would seem his attention is focused on debunking nonsense. He started with nuclear energy, specifically items related to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown. Topics covered include background radiation and acceptable risks as well as the thorium powered car. He has also covered the "solar roadways" proposal that went viral in 2014 by claiming the costs in manufacturing would be insane, power consumption would be through the roof and the whole system just wouldn't work.
Libertarians
Even Thunderf00t thinks Stefan Molyneux is comprehensively full of it.[13]
At Freethought Blogs
Mason joined Freethought Blogs as a regular blogger in June 2012, along with several other notable vloggers such as Cristina Rad and AronRa.
When Mason joined FtB, a month-long controversy about sexual harassment, harassment policies, and other feminist issues had been raging in the skepticism/atheism blogosphere.[14] The issue seemed to be dying down... until Mason decided to jump in. His posts, together with the comment threads, have been preserved by the Wayback Machine:
- Who the hell is thunderf00t? (introduction post), 21 June
- MISOGYNIST!!!, 25 June
- FFS PZ Myers, enough with the strawmen!, 26 June
- FFS PZ MYERS, PLEASE – LEARN – TO – READ, 27 June
- Is it ‘Freethoughtblogs’ or ‘Group-think-blogs’?, 29 June
- SkepchickCON and the Harassment LOL-icy, 1 July
After the obligatory introductory post, his first substantial post was a bombastic comment about sexual harassment at atheist and skeptic conferences (the MYSOGYNIST!!! post). Mason's point seemed to be that the problem was overstated, and that harassment policies at conferences prevented "consensual fun". Several commenters pointed out factual errors in the entry, none of which were acknowledged. PZ Myers disagreed with him publicly and at length.[15]
Mason responded to Myers with a video[16] in which he urged the skeptical community to concentrate their efforts into important issues, and to avoid trivialities such as sexual harassment at conferences. He spent the rest of the video and the rest of his FtB career discussing this "trivial" topic; all of his posts on FTB except for his introductory video were focused on the idea that sexual harassment wasn't such a big deal.[17]
After the first exchange of posts, Mason went into CAPSLOCK MODE in order to prove how correct he was. He polled his vlog's subscribers as to whether he was right or not was a good way to do that; perhaps unsurprisingly, they agreed with him. Several other FtB bloggers expressed skepticism at his methodology[18] and his views on sexual harassment policies.[19] This is certainly evidence of the evil "hive mind."
Finally, he decided to actually read a real harassment policy, written by real conference organizers.[20] Coming so late in the day, this was an implicit admission that he didn't know what he was talking about in the earlier posts. Extensive criticism in the comments - including by people who had actually written the policy - indicated that he didn't care about the issues involved.
By this time, his blog had attracted a number of MRA and/or anti-FTB commenters, who had trolled everybody else at FTB. Mason did nothing to address this, presumably extending his YouTube commenting policy to FTB. Although such a commitment to "free speech" is admirable, most people regard YouTube comments as being one of the lower points of human achievement, and not as a template to be reused anywhere else at all. Mason's interaction in his own comments was limited to one reply per post, at maximum, with no further engagement.
Thrown out...
Ed Brayton, curator of FtB, defused the toxic atmosphere by kicking Mason off the network with this explanation: "This is not a matter of a disagreement or difference of opinion, but of behavior that we cannot condone or support."[21] From then on, things began to get increasingly he-said-she-said as the exchanges metastasized across the blogosphere. At his removal from Freethought Blogs, the link to Mason's blog was removed from the front page, but the blog remained accessible (though "frozen") at its previous URL, leading to the accusation that FtB was profiting from Mason's blog traffic. Possibly because of this, some time later the blog was removed and attempts to access it now result in an error message.
PZ Myers released a YouTube video outlining the decision to boot Mason, arguing that Mason appeared to have only joined FTB to troll it.[22] Mason also made a video on the affair in short order[23] and started discussing the issue on his Wordpress blog.[24]
...and burned his bridges
“”Yes, we want to make Thunderf00t/Phil Mason a pariah in the atheist movement, and for good reason: he’s a dishonest scumbag. The nice thing for us is that he’s making it easy.
|
| —PZ Myers, following revelations that Thunderf00t had been abusing Freethought Blog's private email list.[25] |
It eventually came to light that after being removed from the network, Mason had re-subscribed to the backchannel mailing list and released e-mails posted after his firing.[26] Jason Thibeault explained how TF did it,[27] which is either hacking or just exploiting a ridiculous loophole, depending on who you ask.
Ongoing crusade against feminism
I'm sorry, the information that was dislplayed here before was incredibly biased in favour of feminists. I'm not going to say if I'm for or against feminism to prevent further arguments made against me just because of my stance on this situation. Just know that someone who wasn't very happy with criticism altered the information to make Mason seem like an 8-year-old misogynist without any good argument or criticism against feminism, which he undoubtedly has. Now you had to read this bullcrap instead of actual unbiased information because someone wanted to be right and decided to be manipulative with the previous post here. I wonder why people think feminists are manipulative and lie *no sarcasm at all*. I know this seems unfair towards feminists but you don't even wanna know what was written here. Okay I'm going now. I saved you all and didn't make you read some false and manipulative information. For the record, English isn't my native language and I never wrote anything on any wiki because I'm not the kind of guy that writes fancy stuff, so don't even bother correcting my grammar and using that to disprove my intelligence. I didn't write this to be entertaining, but rather to delete what was written here whiile writing something potentially interesting. You're still reading, right? Cool. Someone please replace this shiet I wrote with CORRECT AND FAIR information. This is just a placeholder. Jackie Chan bless you, drive safe.
Further criticism
Mason is often criticised for overstepping boundaries. Some comments below his videos suggest he should stay out of politics – he ventured into a lot of Sarah Palin bashing during the 2008 US election – and stick with criticizing creationism. Sometimes the Thunderf00t channel gets a bit... "preachy"... with respect to the beauty and wonder of the universe and how technology is fan-fucking-tastic-at-everything. Although there's nothing wrong with this exactly, it can get a bit much.
His videos in May 2010 that criticized Islam alluded to a "sleeping giant"—clearly a reference to Isoroku Yamamoto.[citation needed] Some have interpreted this as condoning genocide of Muslims, particularly Dawahfilms, who was responsible for making an alleged "death threat" against Mason, as claimed by the latter. Dawahfilms insisted that no death threat was ever made and that it was a statement of self-defense.[28] However, Mason saw fit to characterize his statement as an "attack on free speech".[29] Dawahfilms later apologized for letting his temper get the better of him after being pressured by the YouTube community,[30] and also asked that Mason make a clarification video condemning genocide, later challenging Mason to another debate.[31] Mason responded to it by saying Dawahfilms needs therapy and continued to use DawahFilms words out of context for the sake of his anti-Islam campaign.
Mason did a six-hour stint on BlogTV answering critics following the Dawah episode, with what was claimed to be 1000 people in attendance – including "shredderisalive" and "Coughlan616," both critics of Mason's. The attacks on Coughlan616 that followed this reached levels of hot-headed, tl;dw drama that even Encyclopaedia Dramatica might have had trouble keeping up with.[32]
After Mason mouthed off about the so-called "Ground Zero mosque", a number of critics called him out on his Islamophobia.[33][34][35][36]
Suspension from Twitter
Sometime during the week of September 7th 2014, the @thunderf00t Twitter account was suspended. Wild mass guessing leads Mason to believe it was due to fraudulent complaints from Anita Sarkeesian[37], while others suggest it was related to the barrage of tweets against her.
PEARL
PEARL is Mason's personal re-branding of atheism. Not impressed with how "atheist" concentrates on the negative aspects, "PEARL" stands for Physical Evidence And Reasoned Logic, which are positive aspects of his personal belief. Essentially, PEARL is synonymous with strong empiricism, indicating that a PEARList doesn't believe in things that can't be observed and tested. It hasn't really caught on outside of a few Thunderf00t fan-circles and his own videos,[38] although it does frequently get brought up on websites and forums discussing atheism or rationalism.
Scientist
Phil Mason studied at the University of Birmingham, where he gained both his BSc (Upper 2nd Class Honours) and PhD in Chemistry [39]. Between 1998 and 1999 he worked as a research associate at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Sheffield (Sheffield, represent![40]) before transferring to work at the University of Bristol's Department of Physics[41]. He has had his name attached to some 34 papers, 20 of which he is lead author[citation needed]. Previously, he had worked for Cornell University and now is currently working for a school in the Czech Republic[42] and published a paper there on molecular dynamics.[43]
See also
External links
- Thunderf00t's YouTube channel
- Thunderf00t on Twitter
- thunderf00t.com - was a scam (and a rather cheeky one) and not associated with Thunderf00t at all. Thunderf00t originally took the site with good humour as a fansite, but after at least three attempts at the site begging for donations, he threatened the site's owner (who was stupid enough to send an email with all his relevant contact details) with action and the site disappeared quickly.[44]
- Thunderf00t page on wikipedia
Footnotes
- ↑ The video where he reveals his identity
- ↑ ...Only Creationists Don't Know Why
- ↑ 'Tolerance' and the 'Ground Zero Mosque'
- ↑ Invitation to Ray Comfort
- ↑ Thunderf00t - Ray Comfort Discussion, Round 2! (1 of 2)
- ↑ The Richard Dawkins/Thunderf00t discussion (part 1)
- ↑ Richard Dawkins and Thunderf00t (improved audio)
- ↑ My Real Name is...
- ↑ "You are invited to Skeptics in the Pub where you will have the opportunity to chat with Phil Mason, aka Thunderf00t" — Bay Area Skepticsimg. July 2011.
- ↑ - Death Threat Dawahfilms Goes Doc Hunting
- ↑ making the accusation of 'doc dropping' even more absurd. - Doc Dropping DawahFilms
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9BfsHsVGNg
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-67C2htgI4
- ↑ There is a handy, but incomplete, timeline.
- ↑ PZ Myers, "Misogynists can think women are tasty, while not recognizing that they are human beings", Pharyngula, June 25 2012.
- ↑ MISOGYNIST!!!, YOUTUBE!!!
- ↑ Some Perspective on Thunderf00t versus Freethoughtblogs, idebunkforme
- ↑ Gotta disagree with you here, thunderf00t, Zinnia Jones
- ↑ Greta Christina's series: So Much Wrong: thunderf00t and Sexual Harassment, parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
- ↑ Unfortunately, he picked a conference that was part of a bigger conference; the example was therefore unrepresentative of sexual harassment policies in general.
- ↑ Major Changes at Freethought Blogs, Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- ↑ http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/07/10/episode-cccxlvii-the-saga-of-thunderf00t/
- ↑ PZ Myers and the Art of Shameless Dishonesty, Thunderf00t
- ↑ Thunderf00t.wordpress - FTB and the conspiracy to defraud/ Drawing a line under this pointless crap
- ↑ PZ Myers - Thunderf00t/Phil Mason, treacherous hack
- ↑ http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/08/10/thunderfoots-unethical-obsession/
- ↑ http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2012/08/10/what-thunderf00t-did-and-how
- ↑ - Death Threats and the Oh So Scary Muslim
- ↑ - Death Threats From a Moderate Muslim
- ↑ - A Letter to YouTube and Thunderf00t
- ↑ Dawahfilms - I'm Calling You Out, Thunderf00t (Debate)
- ↑ Coughlan616 and other critics
- ↑ "Why I Am Unsubscribing": Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3.
- ↑ Tolerance and the Ground Zero Mosque: A Reply to Thunderf00t, D. Landon Cole
- ↑ Thunderf00t and Criticizing Islam, Anekantevad
- ↑ Islam vs. Science - A Response to Thunderf00t, Skeptical Engineer
- ↑ Video here. Ironically, he proves that the suspension is justified.
- ↑ Thunderf00t - The Problem With Religion
- ↑ http://www.uochb.cz/web/structure/268.html?do[loadData]=1&itemKey=en_32
- ↑ https://www.evernote.com/shard/s222/sh/b4b9d438-dca4-4dfc-afe8-a667b42e8729/f1bbc0df9b70f88d4e15e585355093db
- ↑ http://www.uochb.cz/web/structure/268.html?do[loadData]=1&itemKey=en_32
- ↑ http://www.uochb.cz/web/structure/268.html?lang=en
- ↑ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00268976.2013.875231
- ↑ Thunderf00t.com IS A SCAM (IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD, EVERYONE.)