In an stunning April 1 announcement, PZ Myers, the most prominent blogger at Freethought Blogs, has announced his blog network will go offline citing “great damage to the online atheist/skeptic communities and an unskeptical brand of feminism which hijacked the movements.”
Following the harsh treatment EllenBeth Wachs received on a post concerning Adria Richards of ‘donglegate’ fame, PZ explains that he had a “Damascus moment” and has finally admitted that the loudest voices of modern-day feminism are all ‘vacuous shitbag trolls’ who have transformed what he thought was a well-meaning movement of gender equality into a victim narrative which infantilizes women and demonizes men.
“After finally listening to all episodes of A Voice For Men Radio, I finally realized that I have been defending the indefensible for months. The Mens’ Rights Advocates really have a point and I have just been unwilling to admit that. I have finally taken the red pill,” Myers noted.
PZ further explained that he became tired of trolling proponents of creationism and wanted to move on to troll prominent voices in the atheist/skeptic community. “There’s just been so much useless in-fighting,” PZ said, “in the last two years and I just want to put an end to it. I can finally admit that I was wrong – that Elevatorgate is a made-up story, that Rebecca Watson treated many people in the community horribly, and that feminism is not a force for good in the atheist and skeptic communities. Enough is enough.”
Soon after this announcement, Freethought Blogs’ Ophelia Benson responded to an interview request noting that she also wanted to apologize for nastiness on her behalf. Benson said, “It finally hit me. When Karla Porter authored the satire piece ‘Please be my Agent OB,’ I realized that Justin Vacula and I can work together in a positive way. After all, with almost 30 blog posts about him on my site, it’s the only rational choice for me – to team with him on the Skeptic Ink Network as a co-blogger.”
Vacula, responding to this, noted that he is happy to have Ophelia onboard provided most of her posts are original content and contain at least 500 words.
Greta Christina responded to an interview request noting that she just doesn’t have the time and energy to respond because she spent the morning responding to e-mails, picking up dry cleaning, banking, and booking plane tickets wearing her brand new Fluevogs.
Shepchick’s very own Rebecca Watson, with a sigh of relief, explained that she has been trolling the atheist/skeptic communities since the ‘Elevatorgate’ incident which she described as a “totally made up hoax.” “The plan all along,” Watson explained, “was to see just how skeptical the skeptical community was. To test this, I played a character for some time and made up a story about a guy hitting on me in an elevator. I never expected that so much attention would be drawn to me, but it is what it is.”
Watson further explained, “Of course the elevator story was made up! Prosopagnosia? Hah! That was just something I pulled out of nowhere to save my story when I couldn’t identify the ‘creepy man’ in the photograph. Hundreds of rape and death threats from atheists? I still cannot believe people would take my word for it especially considering I never released them even though I was happy to post random trolling e-mails and comments on my Wall O’ Hate.”
“I am sorry for all of the harm I have caused,” Watson apologetically said, “but the moral of the story is this – be skeptical even of people in the skeptical community and don’t let feminist ideology — or any ideology — overtake the community while skepticism is in the trash.”
The twitter user ‘Elevatorgate,’ hearing about this news, decided to hang up his brave hero cape and retire from Twitter. “I have been Tweeting under the moniker of Elevatorgate because I believed that persons professing to be skeptical just simply were not – they were hoodwinked by radical feminism and did not want to respond to reasonable discussion, so I used satire and ridicule to combat the #ftbullies,” ‘Elevatorgate-guy said.
Lsuoma, the admin of the Slymepit, also announced that his website would be taken offline. He said, “Since the drama will come to a halt, there’s no need for this site anymore. The deep rifts are over and everyone has won.”
The online secular community rejoiced as the news spread via Twitter and Facebook to attendees of American Atheists’ 2013 conference even though the poorly-written conference policy stipulated that cell phones and electronic devices are to be turned off during conference sessions.
David Silverman, President of American Atheists, said that he no longer wants to have conference policies at events because there are no good reasons to believe that the atheist community is a hostile and unwelcoming place for women. “I just caved to the pressure,” Silverman said, “when my blogging friends threatened to not speak or attend conferences. We really depend on them – even though everyone has already heard what they have to say and we can invite academics from local colleges to speak. I had to make sure to protect the women.”
The secular community now lives happily ever after while planning for a 2014 event similar to the Reason Rally where everyone can come together and have fun once again without concern of in-fighting or personal vendettas.