Dawkins finds a new way to clown things up

[mjwilson]

Kafka's Metamorphosis is called a major work of literature. Why? If it's SF it's bad SF. If, like Animal Farm, it's an allegory, an allegory of what? Scholarly answers range from pretentious Freudian to far-fetched feminist. I don't get it. Where are the Emperor's clothes?

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1401239365678997506

Incredible how incurious he can be. Why would a reasonable person leap straight from "I don't get it" to "there is nothing to get", without even waiting to see if anyone tweets him a helpful reply?

I mean when I was 14 and made to read Sylvia Plath, I didn't get it and made a big song and dance about how it was garbage. But I checked on Wikipedia and it shows that Dawkins is not, in fact, 14 years old, so I would think he's capable of doing better.
 

[touchingcloth]

Metamorphosis is an allegory of Sylvia Plath.

[Mr Eggs]

Nothing about clowns.

[mjwilson]

Metamorphosis is an allegory of Sylvia Plath.

Now I understand it all

[PlanktonSideburns]

What a roaster

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Since the airport honey incident clowning on Dawkins feels like clowning on someone whose brain works differently from most people. I'm not saying he's on any spectrum or anything, just if I knew someone like that in real life (incredibly accomplished in one area but incapable of understanding even simple things outside of a narrow range of interests) I'd hope I'd be patient. Not saying he deserves any sympathy either though.

If he wasn't a famous guy with a handful of reactionary views and a platform to elevate them I think people would respond differently. How many of his twitter fuck ups are basically him not understanding some social situation or being adament that some cultural product is worthless based on his own lack of understanding?

[PlanktonSideburns]

Well thanks vgf, I look a right cunt now don't i

[imitationleather]

Since the airport honey incident clowning on Dawkins feels like clowning on someone who's brain works differently from most people. I'm not saying he's on any spectrum or anything, just if I knew someone like that in real life (incredibly accomplished in one area but incapable of understanding even simple things outside of a narrow range of interests) I'd hope I'd be patient.

If he wasn't a famous guy with a handful of reactionary views and a platform to elevate them I think people would respond differently. How many of his twitter fuck ups are basically him not understanding some social situation or being adament that some cultural product is worthless based on his own lack of understanding?

Stop making me feel guilty about laughing at the old man.

[mjwilson]

How many of his twitter fuck ups are basically him... or being adament that some cultural product is worthless based on his own lack of understanding?

Shouldn't he have spotted some pattern in this now? "Oh, every time I jump to a massive conclusion about something I know nothing about I end up looking like a dick. Perhaps there's something to learn from that."

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Sorry, wasn't meant as a call out I was just thinking aloud through medium of message board post.

Like, isn't Dawkins entire position as an "anti-feminist" in part due to the fact he didn't understand that "do you want to come back to my hotel room for a coffee?" was a suggestive thing to say, that a woman who complained about being asked that in an elevator at night after a conference was genuinely just being offered a coffee and nothing else, and then doubling down when his initial tweet was piled on.

Seems to happen to him all the time.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Sorry, wasn't meant as a call out I was just thinking aloud through medium of message board post.

Like, isn't Dawkins entire position as an "anti-feminist" in part due to the fact he didn't understand that "do you want to come back to my hotel room for a coffee?" was a suggestive thing to say, that a woman who complained about being asked that in an elevator at night after a conference was genuinely just being offered a coffee and nothing else, and then doubling down when his initial tweet was piled on.

Seems to happen to him all the time.

I was only messing. You made a good point that made me have a bit of a word with myself

[touchingcloth]

Sorry, wasn't meant as a call out I was just thinking aloud through medium of message board post.

Like, isn't Dawkins entire position as an "anti-feminist" in part due to the fact he didn't understand that "do you want to come back to my hotel room for a coffee?" was a suggestive thing to say, that a woman who complained about being asked that in an elevator at night after a conference was genuinely just being offered a coffee and nothing else, and then doubling down when his initial tweet was piled on.

Seems to happen to him all the time.

I think it's charitable to say that he "didn't understand" it. My quite cynical view is that he understood the elevator incident full well, and that his "dear Fatima" missive was clear evidence of bad faith.

[JaDanketies]

He probably gets a little thrill by being strident and lots of social-media dopamine hits, and it's a very ingrained behaviour now. Why would he not like Kafka in anything other than a strident way? That's his whole schtick.

His popular science books (the ones predating The God Delusion) were good, back when I read them.  He came across like a thoughtful person who knew the limits of his knowledge.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Would love to know what art he enjoys

Bet he listens to rush

[JaDanketies]

Would love to know what art he enjoys

Bet he listens to rush

I'm led to believe Ante Up by MOP is his favourite song.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

He does bad faith. He's also aware of his rep as being culturally naive and he's more than capable of putting the two together in order to give his most nuclear takes plausible deniability, like when he said that he thought church bells were prettier than the call to prayer. Maybe the same is true for the elevator comment.

But seriously I don't think the man understands things the same way everyone else does. His 'philosophical' books about the beautiful and the sublime in nature read like something written by a nineteenth century agriculture savant. It's just too much to be completely affected.

[Zetetic]

"Merry Christmas! Oh SORRY, Merry Holidays! Children, hang up Holiday Stockings on Holiday Eve for Father Holidays to fill. Sing Holiday Carols round the Holiday Tree after Holiday Dinner. I'm dreaming of a White Holiday."

[chveik]

But seriously I don't think the man understands things the same way everyone else does.

he's pretty boring for someone that experiences things so differently than the common person

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The internet seems pretty excited by him.

[Hand Solo]

What a roaster

Plath didn't ignite the pilot light.

[popcorn]

I think he's just saying "I read a famous book the other day and I thought it was crap and didn't work allegorically." This seems to me like a reasonable opinion for someone to have about a book. I mean, I don't know anything about Kafka but who gives a shit?

I remember him arguing, back before he had disgraced himself in the court of popular opinion, that The X-Files had a bad moral because it was endless stories about "and so the skeptic was wrong once again, the truth really is out there in a sort of magical way that science is wrong to doubt". This has stayed with me as a fairly reasonable point, or at least not a point to dismiss out of hand. The same thing really bothered me about Lost, for example.

He probably gets a little thrill by being strident and lots of social-media dopamine hits, and it's a very ingrained behaviour now.

I think this is true too. I do find it strange how people react to him but there's something bloodyminded about him that means he likes it, for sure.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

"Merry Christmas! Oh SORRY, Merry Holidays! Children, hang up Holiday Stockings on Holiday Eve for Father Holidays to fill. Sing Holiday Carols round the Holiday Tree after Holiday Dinner. I'm dreaming of a White Holiday."

Do you think he posted in this full awareness of the cultural context of the "war on Christmas" a conspiracy theory by the Christian right? Right after he seemed to realise baby made a boom boom and did a bad faith ponder about the "hidden meaning" of the tweet and I don't think he brought it up again.

Real talk though most raging "anti-PC" people are older, and parsing cultural context gets harder as you age. Dawkins is 80 and an active social media user. If you already had issues with this (Dawkins had a reputation for years, I remember one of his books getting ridiculed around 2000 because of some stuff he said about poetry) the social media is going to spread your brains across hot toast.

Going to stop now because it sounds like I'm doing the classic "reverse devil's advocate" troll manoeuvre.

[Zetetic]

I think he was moved by the inward light to post it; more than that I cannot say.

[touchingcloth]

Do you think he posted in this full awareness of the cultural context of the "war on Christmas" a conspiracy theory by the Christian right? Right after he seemed to realise baby made a boom boom and did a bad faith ponder about the "hidden meaning" of the tweet and I don't think he brought it up again.

Real talk though most raging "anti-PC" people are older, and parsing cultural context gets harder as you age. Dawkins is 80 and an active social media user. If you already had issues with this (Dawkins had a reputation for years, I remember one of his books getting ridiculed around 2000 because of some stuff he said about poetry) the social media is going to spread your brain over hot toast.

Going to stop now because it sounds like I'm doing the classic "reverse devil's advocate" troll manoeuvre.

I don't think social media is the trigger for Dawkins' decline. The God Delusion predates the full force of social media, and it reads like the work of a man fully aware that he is losing his relevance and needs to resort to new tactics to stay heard.

[Pinball]

I think the Nigerian President is right- close down Twitter. What good is it?

[touchingcloth]

Imagine knowing that hundreds of thousands of people see everything you post, and choosing to post "if they take are honey, the Muslims have won". Just imagine it.

I think the Nigerian President is right- close down Twitter. What good is it?

Correct.

[chveik]

i feel like he did his christmas material twice

[AllisonSays]

This guy! He's the incarnation of the fact that being a 'good academic' doesn't mean you're not a total goon, but he is performing it to a global stage instead of in a post conference hotel bar. Awe-inspiring cringe, Gervais-esque.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The God Delusion was in part a product of the early blogosphere where he was worshipped as a mangod of science. He was specifically anti-conservative then. I haven't thought about any of it years but I remember it being significantly better than Hitchens God Is Not Great, which was full of historical inaccuracies and fallacies. Dawkins didn't really get knee-deep in Harris/Hitchens "All Religions are equally bad, but 'All Religions' doesn't include Judaism or Christianity" shit until Atheism+ and all that stuff.

[imitationleather]

I think people in this country have had enough of experts.