Conservapedia:RobSmith

This Conservapedia-related article is of largely historical interest and is no longer the focus of RationalWiki today. Conservapedia (and religious fundamentalism to an extent) was a major focal point in the early history of RationalWiki, but long ago ceased coming up with new ways to appall and amuse. Our energies are now spent debunking other, fresher examples of pseudoscientific claims, authoritarianism, and deceit. For RationalWiki's less ancient content, try the Best of RationalWiki.

Declassified photo of what may allegedly appear to be Rob Smith.

Trus me Conservapedia

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“” Gay rights, environmentalism, abortion, school prayer (or lack there of) are all commie plots. Don't you see?

—RobS

Robert "Bobby" Smith, (formerly RobS, currently known as Nobs), a native of Snow Texas, is a sysop at Conservapedia, and one of the major contributors, often making more than 1000 edits each month. He has specialized in political and history categories, and relies on crank sources such as The Daily Caller. His first edit was on March 9, 2007, only about 3 months after CP was initiated by Andrew Schlafly. During his time at CP, he served as the self-appointed "Director of Internal Counterintelligence" for the website, due to his incurable state of permanent paranoia playing so well with theirs.

A prominent member of the old Conservapedian "Gang of Four", at one point Rob was absent from his encyclopedian duties for nearly ten months because of his hectic job as the commissioner of repelling avian safety hazards with a largely defensive weapon of gun an airport bird shooter. On September 4, 2008, he threatened to come back, and in the spring of 2009, he carried out said threat, beginning once again to contribute regularly to the project. In 2018, he claimed to work as a client solicitor for an accountant. Related to this, Nobs claimed to have knowledge of economics: caveat emptor.

After disputing with other CP sysops in the summer of 2011, most notably Ken

, he was desysopped by Andrew Schlafly, subsequently blocked for 1 month after violating the 90/10 rule and extended to infinity by Karajou. However, this was later, as of 2015, reversed by Ken

, and RobSmith was given his sysop tools back.

For years, Nobs was frequently found roaming the halls of RationalWiki, randomly inserting non-sequiturs into various discussions — that is, when he wasn't busy adding to his beloved hitpiece against magnum opus on crooked $hillary Clinton.

As of January 2017, nobs has started work on his latest grand slam: The nobsian method: A Study in the Art of Rhetoric. One of its main reference texts appears to be the Bible, and nobs' own projection on the quality of his writing is ballparked around hopefully rivaling that of Plato. You read that right.

In 2021, after several failed assassination attempts over the years by the evil chinese secularist commies, nobs was finally banned for fantasizing about his messiah Trump staging a coup and for long-term trolling by an 18:5 Coop vote.

Arguing with nobs

“”Nobs, the conservative essayist, the Trump apologist, the evangelical Christian, the conspiracy-sniffing anti-Democrat, asks: "Whatever happened to just accepting and respecting people for who they are?"

—FuzzyCatPotato, on the RobS calling the nobs black

Trying to engage in a rational discussion or argument with Nobs is an exercise in futility. Nobs may be the only human ever to fail a Turing test, in that after reading a couple of his replies you will be left believing you are actually arguing with a poorly designed computer program that takes keywords from what you posted and fashions pre-generated responses that have little to nothing to do with what you actually said to him.

It can also be compared to arguing with a magic 8-ball containing a regular icosahedron in which every side mentions communism. For example, if one were to say to Nobs, "The sky is blue and the grass is green," a standard reply might be "what makes you think grass turns the sky blue? Sounds like the typical Communist relativistic thinking that murdered 100 million people."

It is entirely possible that Nobs' brain is wired wrong and just doesn't handle simple logic very well. For example, given the statements:

$(P\to Q)$

…and…

$(Q\to R)$

…Rob, unlike a normal person, will not come to the conclusion that:

$(P\to R)$

…this, despite the chain rule being one of the simplest and most widely understood principles in logic. Rather, nobs will take a shortcut and simply conclude that:

$(P\to X,J,W,\sum _{i=1}^{n}{y_{i}^{2}})+{\text{a turkey baster}}={\text{Obama is a Communist}}$

…and he'll believe every word of it.

The world according to Nobs

On ethnic groups

“”Latin America loves us. Why do you think they all wanna come here?

—nobs

Nobs has implicitly admitted to being racist several times, once by suggesting that anyone who is resentful of Barack Obama (which he clearly is) must be a closet racist, as well as defining "national pride" as "a form of racism" while in the next breath arguing that there's nothing wrong with it.

Likewise, nobs — himself a vehement critic of big government — maintains that "as everyone knows, opposing big government is racist".

Birtherism

Nobs equivocated on the Obama citizenship denial (birtherism), which is inherently a racist movement. While Nobs has removed some of other people's overt birtherism from Conservapedia after it was no longer much of an issue (late in Obama's second term, circa September 2016). In contrast, Nobs also paraphrased conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi and referred to the Obama birth certificate as an "alleged forgery", stating that "The document bares^[sic] a watermark; watermarks were not available in 1961. An original has never been produced." FactCheck.org has debunked Corsi (and therefore Nobs) regarding this claim.

Nobs used the crank publication American Thinker to falsely claim "The birther movement was started by Obama himself." The image under which that statement appears came from Breitbart.com, as it has the Breitbart watermark on it. That image came from a 1991 promotional booklet written by Obama's literary agency, which stated that he was born in Kenya. Neither Andrew Breitbart, nor Breitbart.com were birthers, and the literary agent who wrote the information stated that it was an error and did not come from information provided by Obama.

Nobs cited a false report published by McClatchy that birtherism was spread by Hillary Clinton operatives. The McClatchy report was debunked by PolitiFact.

On George Soros

Nobs engaged in antisemitic dog whistling against George Soros by implying that he is/was a Nazi collaborator. Nobs referred to Soros as a "psychopath's psychopath" without a citation, but the citation was Sam Gerrans on RT.

Nobs has engaged in a form of Holocaust denialism by blaming the victim, Soros.

1. Nobs falsely stated that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator on RationalWiki, "That Soros was a Nazi collaborator is indisputable." and on Conservapedia he said about Soros, "He is a naturalized American citizen, born in Hungary where he worked for the Nazis as a teenager, fingering and looting his compatriot Jews."
2. Soros was in fact a victim of the Nazis because he was a minor (ages 13 to 14) in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Hungary.
3. Nobs was therefore casting blame on the victim.
4. Blaming the victim is in fact a form of Holocaust denial, according to three different experts on genocide.[1][2]

On atheists in the US Army

“”Atheists have the same PR problem as anarachists,[sic] that they're unprincipled, lawless, rable-rousers[sic] spitting in the eye of history, society, and everything that's good and decent.

—Rob Smith, public relations guru

Nobs has constructed a peculiar version of the Stab-in-the-back myth (naturally, centered around Atheist deceit) commenting on the fact that the US Army even permits Atheists to serve by exclaiming, "no wonder we haven't won a war since 1945". According to Nobs, the practical result of continued atheist tomfoolery in the army is that "God has slowly given the US up to its enemies."

In defense of the utility of keeping atheist military personnel on hand, however — regarding the topic of piloting military drones — Nobs explains that "Shit, you'd have to be an atheist with no conscience to do that."

Further, since — according to nobs — no atheist serviceman would ever perform his duties by risking his life for his squad, all atheist soldiers are to be considered turncoat "mercenaries". Indeed:

“”I'm saying it's rational to believe an atheist has no motivation other than self interest and a sadistic desire to kill.

—nobs

Nobs even believes that in order to physically be able to sacrifice your own life for someone else's, you have to first be vested with the power of performing an "irrational, supernatural act", because — according to Nobs — believing in irrational and supernatural things means you gain the power to perform such feats yourself.

No, really — nobs identifies as a (no-bullshit) fideist (though, "with qualifications").

But whatever you do, don't despair — General Nobs has a secret strategy on offer, one that could turn the tide of fortune in American warfare. It involves two simple criticisms of the status quo:

1. The US Army is "relying on too many soldiers without God's blessing", suggesting that the Army get with the times by implementing more superstitious bronze-age rituals.
2. Strategic command keeps ignoring the fact that "victory in the name of Satan ain't worth a shit" when planning battle operations.

As a method for ridding the army of the atheist infestation, Nobs champions forcing people to confess to the crime of "disclose" being atheist, stating that:

“”It's just disclosure. Taxpayers need to know they are entrusting their security to a bunch of devil worshippers and paying their lifetime addiction to oxycodone when they leave active duty.

Conspiracy theorist

9 out of 10 witnesses successfully identified RobS from a police lineup after being shown the above image. You draw your own conclusions.

“”Are you seriously implying that a bunch of seriously random events are all somehow corralled into an entire nonsensical conspiracy theory? Are you gonna rope the Illuminati into this, too?

—Zexcoiler Kingbolt, about to get a mouthful from nobs

Castro's death

Upon hearing the Cuban government officially announce the demise of El Presidente, Conservapedia's own little dictator Andy Schlafly cunningly applied his Schlafly Impenetrable Logic™ to devise a rational explanation for why "Castro's July 2006 death" was just finally made official in November of 2016.

Since, you know — Andy actually thinks that Castro secretly died in July of 2006, and that the people have simply been kept distracted from this fact with bread and circuses, until the truth finally dawned that fateful November's eve.

Thus, Andy commented on the 26^th of November, 2016:

“”Rather than wait until Donald Trump was in power, Cuba timed its announcement of Castro's death for the slowest moment of the year. late [sic] Friday night after Thanksgiving Day.

—(And he wrote it in bold text and italics, so it must be true!)

Nobs' reaction to this unembarassed and far-fetched shoehorning was profound — inferring that Andy's updated hypothesis was clearly "plausible", Nobs decided to shift the burden of proof by asking if the methods of carbon dating could be applied on Castro's ashes to conclusively prove that he didn't die in 2006.

In the minds of Rob and Andy, the foul play was thus exposed and the mystery solved. Or something to that effect.

Pizzagate

“”If Hillary had just used a State Department server, the Dems never held fund raisers at the pizza parlor, and Bill didn't ride Epstein's plane to fantasy island, none of this ever would have happened.

—nobs

Nobs appears to put some stock into the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, implying that the FBI is basically in on it as well.

QAnon

See the main article on this topic: QAnon

Nobs seems to hedge his bets as to whether QAnon is a conspiracy theory or not. Others claim he is the Sine QAnon to make the whole thing work. Rather bizarrely though, Nobs uncritically cites Michael Salla's exopolitics conspiracy website, and only mentions Democrats as being QAnon followers despite QAnon followers being made famous from being shown as supporters of Trump at his rallies.

Deep state

Nobs is a believer in the deep state conspiracy theory and has written almost the entirety of the "Deep state coup" page on CP.

Nobs is as of January 2019 the sole editor of the "Muellergate" conspiracy theory on CP, which like QAnon claims that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the real criminals and that Donald Trump is totally innocent. Nobs' non-refutational edits of the CP Qanon page indicate that he may also be a believer in that conspiracy theory.

Off the deep end: Clinton body count

One of Nobs' magnum opuses character assassinations is called "Clinton body count" and was written almost entirely by himself.

Nobs used the following as sources:

• Nobs stated that Victor Thorn actually did research when he actually just made shit up. Thorn was a Nazi/Nazi apologist, Holocaust denier, antisemite and conspiracy theorist. Nobs further engaged in the conspiracy that Thorn did not die from suicide by using scare quotes around the word suicide, and implying that he knew something and therefore was murdered.
• James Corbett, conspiracy theorist
• WND, conspiracy site
• Zero Hedge, conspiracy site
• Daily Mail, a conspiracy and fake news site
• "True Pundit", a fake news site run by ex-journalist Michael D. Moore
• Lots of YouTube videos from sketchy sources

Nobs is also proud to be cited by other conspiracy theorists(Sorcha Faal) as an "expert" regarding the "Clinton body count".

Support for authoritarianism

See the main article on this topic: authoritarianism

Russia Today is not the mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin according to Nobs, and contrary to what you might think RT's stance is actually "mildly leftist and Democratic Socialist.

Bill Browder was largely responsible for instigating the Magnitsky Act, which punished Vladimir Putin's cabal of corrupt gangsters with economic sanctions. According to Nobs, Bill Browder is a commie despite being a billionaire. It's because Browder's grandfather, Earl was head of Communist Party USA from 1930-1945. Like grandfather, like grandson ad infinitum, I guess (Exodus 20:5, Numbers 14:18). Oh and Obama signed the law, so it must be a bad law, right, Nobs? Also the Hillary Clinton Uranium One conspiracy theory while we're at it.

On theology and Satan

“”Not to sound like a Bible thumper, but…

—Nobs, just before proceeding to sound like a Bible thumper

While the Gospel of RobS™ claims to have failed to find a "satisfactory" definition of the word "worship", Nobs advises us to simply define "worship" as "whatever thought, word or action a person dedicates themselves to". Obviously, this definition is in wild disagreement with the meaning of the term "worship" as understood by everyone in the world except Robby.

In the real world, "worship" — in this context — is generally defined as "the devotion accorded to a deity or to a sacred object [or] the religious ceremonies that express this devotion." Why this definition won't do for Robby remains to be investigated.

Seriously contending a literalist reading of the Bible, Nobs explains that:

The first instance in "recorded history" (at least in biblical terms) of self-sacrifice occurs in Genesis 43:9 where Judah says, "I will be a surety for him, of mine hand shalt thou require". This ground breaking incident, where Judah guarantees the life and safety of his brother at the cost of his own life, is the first instance of a man willing to die for his brother. Prior to that, going back to Cain, humans were self-seeking, self-dealing cut throats who deemed it insanity to die for someone else, which is how the "natural mind" thinks. And Judah's bloodline became "heirs of the promise", overstepping the law of primogeniture and the priestly bloodline.

This, he argues, proves that atheists are not capable of doing good.

Concerning The Devil, Nobs makes a polytheistic gesture by claiming that there are in fact two disctinct devils:

1. First, you have "the master devil, i.e. Satan"
2. Second, you have your old man

No, really — Nobs explains that in addition to the super devil, "each person has a devil (as in Rom 6:6, called 'our old man')". Father's day is thus to be considered a time to spend with your loved ones, worshipping Satan.

Research projects

“”I concur with Benaresh re nobs playing an elaborate prank on us, because no truly rational person could come out with half the shit you do, nobs. I mean truly.

—Levi Ackerman

Kara Duhe (no relation to Karajou) is a twenty-year-old scientist *ahem* "adult film actress". According to her website, Ms. Duhe is "funny, quirky, cute, silly, horny, that's me… everywhere… all the time…"

Ms. Duhe inadvertently became the object of very localized and silly widespread wiki-speculation about Rob's Internet habits when on January 23, 2010, Rob, in the aftermath of the delirium resulting from an epic wanking session courageously researching the grave question of pornography and violence against women, Nobs accidentally posted a commie atrocity picture to Conservapedia — with a file name which suspiciously matched that of one of her naughty pictures.

No stranger to political damage control, Rob blamed a mystery "cholo" who he claims sold him a flash drive without deleting his ungodly porn files on it first. This is completely believable, and put an end to the matter because, hey, things like this happen all the time.

In theory, if not for her advanced use of various liberal murder drugs contraceptives, it's possible that Ms. Duhe would instead be a single mother (of multiple children, with multiple fathers) at this point. Asking Nobs for his view on which of these two scenarios is the least offensive to God may greatly aggravate his hernia, and as such, we advise against it. We do, however, look forward to the publishing of his research findings on women's issues.

The Brilliance of RobS

In his original essay, titled The Brilliance of RobS, Flippin reflects:

When a recent sock that I took was banned, RobS took it upon himself to revert EVERYTHING this sock ever did. It was hysterical. No, Rob, these vandals won't make you waste your time. Enjoy!

• Check this AWESOME revert by RobS, while purging all memory of Flippin. BTW, Rob, I had reverted vandalism in that instance.
• Fucking crackerjack work, Robby
• Yep, too liberal for Rob
• See Rob revert facts--after all, CP doesn't smear
• WAY too fucking liberal, I suppose
• Stick it to those lib-ruls Rob!
• Reverting Votes
• Paranoia at its finest
• 23:50, 8 June 2007 Aschlafly (Talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:RobS from sysop to (none) from here

What troubles me most about nobs is that he doesn't seem to make very logical connections. This could be because he is uneducated, or possibly his lack of fidelity to intellectual honesty. Either way, crossing him can have a variety of outcomes. As Flippion, I argued with him for this edit conflict where he claimed Eminem was a form of torture commonly used against prisoners. If you read the entire entry, it becomes clear, he completely misunderstood the article he cited.

Conservapedian antics

Captain Planet

In July 2011 nobs began saving unblocking the planet, thus "making the world safe for dementia".

Going toe-to-toe with Ken

In July 2011, a truly remarkable event occurred on Conservapedia. Rob created the "Community Portal" declaring it to be "the place to discuss issues of interest to the Conservapedia community."

This resulted in many complaints being levelled against sysop Conservapedia:Conservative, most of them initially dealing with his locking and redirecting of talk-pages, and his habit of constantly deleting and recreating pages. Ken responded with his usual sarcastic non-sequiturs and eventually Rob took it upon himself to tackle Ken directly.

Initially this had some effect, as Ken did unlock the talk-pages. However, before long, he refused to speak to Rob, claiming in his usual "I'm getting my butt whipped" style that he would spend no longer than 5 minutes a month dealing with Rob, so precious was his time. At the same time, Ken began to openly attack Rob, calling him a pawn and a "useful idiot" of an atheist website, and a whispering campaign behind the scenes to have Rob stripped of his rights. This resulted in vague claims that "up to four sysops" supported Ken in his efforts to have Rob stripped of his rights. Needless to say, not one of these sysops, except for maybe Karajou have come forward to add their name to Ken's claims, so it's likely these are as real as Operation Flying Fortress.

This all culminated in a post to Andy's talk-page on July 31^st, in which Rob vocalised what everybody had been saying — outside of the CP sysops, that is — for years:

The difference between RW & CP is, RW has a community, and CP sysops are hell bent on destroying any sort of collaborative cooperation. RW started from nothing but foul-mouthed trolls to an open, thriving, talented and successful wiki project, while anti-social elements such as yourself have recklessly abused willing volunteers who wanted to help. You've destroyed your own reputation, and the reputation of the Conservapedia project along with it. RW is a community, despite nasty differences between users, they can function. As long as mean-spirited dysfunctional outcasts such as yourself continue to wield sysop & oversight tools on this site, I pity any poor fool who comes across it and tries to get involved. They'd have a better chance — with no talent — surviving at Wikipedia.

Predictably, this was met with spluttering outrage from Karajou, who saw red at the mention of RW on CP, and launched into a frothing-at-the-mouth rant, (complete with Gandalf impersonation) seemingly signifying the end of Rob's involvement with CP. After this, Karajou attempted to block Rob several times, obviously to no success.

Needless to say, any attempt to make Conservapedia a more friendly and welcoming place is the best way to incur the wrath of CP's few remaining sysops. As a result, Rob has been gradually losing his rights ever since he started on his quixotic quest and was finally desysopped in August 2011 and then blocked 1 month by Andrew Schlafly for asking why on his talk page (With a reason of 90/10).

As of the winter of 2016, Ken has dropped fellow God warrior Nobs from his Conservapedia Christmas card list. While it seemingly took over a month for nobs himself to even notice his relegation to Ken's naughty list, Nobs delivered the news of his findings with the following comment:

“”I'm butthurt.

—nobs

You sure are, buddy. You sure are.

Bravely channeling the child within, Nobs later related that he had in fact "been sulking over it for a month, trying figure how I offended the guy and why he'd wish a bunch of godless atheists sockpuppets Merry Christmas and leave me in lurch". Still, if he'd just agree to help pipe bomb an abortion clinic already with a sprinkle of good fortune, he just might make Ken's "nice" list after all, come Christmas 2018.

Defrocked

Frustrated by years of mismanagement and the internal inertia of CP and its private discussion groups (which he had so far supported with only token dissent), Rob took to Conservapedia talk:WIGO to propose reforms, knowing full well that is all Karajou & Ken

pay attention and respond to. 

Rob was subsequently fired from his position as director of counter-intelligence at Conservapedia on the 12^th of August 2011, after a protracted period of internecine strife with CP's other two remaining active sysops.

The thing that wouldn't leave for more than a decade

“”RobSmith — ex-Conservapedia cultist who hangs around RW because we are literally the last people on the Internet who will talk to him at all any more

—David Gerard

Despite wasting countless hours editing Conservapedia, the cesspool of bigotry, Nobs decided he had still more time to waste by trolling hapless Rationalwikians on talk pages and the SaloonBar, starting in 2007 as RobS then subsequently as User:RobSmith. Nobs hasn't made anything but pissant contributions to RW mainspace articles, but he still felt qualified to run for both board of trusees and RW Moderator in 2018. Apparently, he thought that being a tout for some accountant qualified him to "fix" our finances.

nobs spent much of his time on Rationalwiki, complaining to all and sundry about his treatment on Conservapedia while trying to convince everyone he is merely moments away from having his rights restored and receiving a personal apology from Andrew Schlafly. This has caused laughter among some but also earned derision, particularly from Mikalos209, as he won't shut the hell up about it and injects it into nearly every conversation.

nobs was finally ejected from RationalWiki in January 2021 because of offenses to rational thought his recent habit of using offensive signatures (racist, sexist, and finally insurrectionist): RationalWiki:Chicken coop/Archive118. His first contribution to RationalWiki was in November 2009.

nobs for mod!

During his campaign for the 2018 RationalWiki board of trustees, Nobs bore false witness. When asked,

“”Do you support all of RationalWiki's purposes, specifically: Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement; Documenting the full range of crank ideas; Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism; Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

Nobs replied, "Yes I do."

Awards

This is to certify that RobS received the "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, JESUS PRAYS TO YOU!" AWARD FOR DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR From RationalWiki, on November 21, 2008

This is to certify that Rob Smith received the JOSEPH McCARTHY "I HAVE A LIST" AWARD FOR PARANOIA From RationalWiki, on November 21, 2009

See also

• Fun:Clinton and the Gay Bomb: A play in two acts
• His old RationalWiki account
• His current RationalWiki account (some commie bastard stole his password)
• Red-baiting

External links

• Rob's Nobsword blog — untouched since 2005
• Rob's Nobsnews blog — also untouched since 2005
• Rob's Nobsopus blog — apparently comatose since 2010