His royal überness

Myers’ Law – In its simplest form Myers’ Law states a baboon has no capacity to either receive or transmit information without corrupting that information. In practical terms this equates to there being no realistic relation between what you communicate to a baboon and what that baboon actually hears. This communication loses even more of its original meaning in the event that baboon then communicates a response back to you. Further, when information enters the baboon echo chamber it loses all relation to reality altogether in a very short time via baboon to baboon retransmission. See cunt kick.

Any non-baboon that has ever attempted to participate in the 24×7 dung fights that constitute what passes for “discussion” on the baboon board knows intimately the feeling that they have walked into some kind of Twilight Zone where ordinary reality has ceased to carry any weight whatsoever. This sense of surreality is followed sequentially by amazement, then by a sense of denial that “this isn’t really happening”, then exasperation and finally overwhelming resignation and despair.

This is all nothing out of the ordinary – in fact it is entirely “normal” as far as freefromthoughtblogs goes, and is in fact inevitable. Through deliberate cultivation, the FFTB environment is one where reciprocal and coherent discourse has been rendered utterly impossible by the mechanism of Myers’ Law. By reducing communication to strategy, where all information is manipulated to conform to a predetermined outcome, the actual meaning within the communication must be sacrificed. All communication therefore is reduced to deception. Communication itself, by all common definitions, ceases. The strategic outcomes are limited to a dualism of good and evil – a state of exaltation praising the sheer genius of all that call FFTB home, or a state of absolute catastrophism at the wickedness that lies outside beyond the safety of the Iron Curtain of the Crisis Factory, or the evil that is also found within by the repetitious internecine squabbling as various baboons attack each other for higher perches on the tree. If FFTB were personified, it would be diagnosed with extreme bipolar disorder.

Of course there are a few pockets of sanity at FFTB (they’re hard to find), but for the most part, wherever you look you will see Myers’ Law playing itself out. There have been some outstanding examples – the Michele Bachmann frankfurter incident pushed the outer limits of WTF? Another Academy Award winning display has been watching the Talking Prune take the cunt kick comment and mutating it into her own personal martyr’s calvary1.

But the full scale of the Myers’ Law derangement has been encapsulated in new, even more gobsmacking ways just this week. It is hard to work out precisely what is going on, but the core of the freakshow involves toy bunnies used for cartoon illustration and the misogyny and rape culture inspired use of pink dialogue balloons. Uhuh. For real. Read all the glory for yourself. I’ll just confine it to some snippets of data input/output as mutated my Myers’ Law –

Yes! The religion and science conflict, only cuter!

November 24, 2011 at 7:29 am PZ Myers

Here is a perfect illustration of the debate. Bottom line: never trust anyone who speaks in pink word balloons.

Carlie says:

Crys T – given the color coding of the word boxes, I’m inclined to believe that you’re correct. And it does, indeed, suck. Unintended subconscious sexism adding a teensy knife in the back of an otherwise fantastic comic ftw.

Ibis3, denizen of a spiteful ghetto says:

Violette:

I’m certain no intentional sexism was intended.

While I’m certain it was intended. The person who made that cartoon made a conscious choice to have a girl & boy bunny, made a deliberate choice to have the girl bunny be the wilfully dumb, gullible one who doesn’t want to think, and emphasising the choice by using pink and blue balloons.

Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe says:

Not every thing you see must be a piece of gender-stereotype-breaking activism.

why not? it’s not like it would have taken any effort at all to not make this cartoon stereotypical

Caine, Fleur du Mal says:

PaulG

Get back in the dungeon, fuckwit.

MizzMazz says:

Snap, we’ve just been told. Us women just need to get over it, and we’re cranky fembots, not people. Thanks, guy.

‘Tis Himself, OM says:

24 November 2011 at 1:18 pm

Gallstones #298

I used to enjoy Pharyngula. If this is what it has become, I’m just……disappointed. Rationality has lost another element.

Good bye. Have a nice rest of your life. Nobody will miss you. Don’t forget to pick up your porcupine on your way out, it fits up your asshole.

And so it flows in an ever deeper downward spiral. No coherence whatsoever. What is said and what is heard have little in common. Every statement is corrupted by responses that seek to deform for strategic point scoring, attacking the person and not the topic. “Freethinkers”.

Welcome to the baboon board. Business as usual. Have a nice day.

Footnote: There’s always more –

The lunacy continues here, where even the Naked One begins to question exactly what kind of deranged loons he has cultivated –

Sometimes a bunny is just a bunny

November 24, 2011 at 2:35 pm PZ Myers

I just despair.

There is sexism everywhere, and there are battles to be fought. I agree completely that there are strong strains of odious stereotypy running through our culture, and that we have to be vocal in opposing them. Much of it is unconscious and not intended maliciously, but it still perpetuates a problem. It’s good to oppose it.

But this morning a raging flame war exploded in a thread about a cute bunny cartoon. The bunny who is the voice of religion is wearing a dress; the practical bunny playing the role of science wears pants. Some people said it’s sexist; some people said it wasn’t. And then the war was launched.

This is the WRONG BATTLE.

Are you really fighting for the right for the cute bunny in the dress in a cartoon to not be the religious one? I have never seen feminism reduced to such appalling depths of triviality as I have in that thread. I am literally embarrassed to see a 300+-comment thread erupt over this inanity, and to see it begin in only the second comment to the thread…it’s ridiculous.

Of course the baboons turn on him, in shades of the Bachmann episode. But it’s kinda late to express surprise dontcha think? It’s like Charles Manson expressing surprise at the Tate-La Bianca murders.

You bred these morons Chumpy. So eat your own cooking and stop making out like your innocent and whining like a girl that this is all so unexpected.

1 – Calvary: 3. (lowercase) an experience or occasion of extreme suffering, especially mental suffering.