Well I guess I should have used a little more restraint in posting this YouTube clip. As it turns out, this "little girl" is a fake Christianist and the joke is on anyone who took her seriously:The woman, with the username TamTamPamela, uploaded a video in the days after last week's massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami, claiming the disaster was "God literally waking people up and saying "You are going to hell" However, she was met with such a hostile response - including threats of death and rape (and even had her phone number and address published in some forums) - that she has gone into hiding. Other, less hard-line, wits decided to wage a war of food on her - getting non-stop pizzas delivered to her home. And well-known atheist Richard Dawkins even posted the original video on his website, but did so without providing a comment. A follow-up video in which tamtampamela admits she is a maker of troll videos did nothing to stem the flow of invective directed at her - one blogger encouraged people to "send her a turd" in the mail.
Here is her confession:
Now I must make a confession myself, I fell for this hook, line, and sinker. Why? Not because I am hopelessly gullible (although I can be) but because I actually have a family member I can easily imagine going off on this very same kind of crazy, hateful Christianist tirade. I have seen him do it on a number of occasions and I was just as offended and horrified then as I was yesterday when I watched this young lady's "God is so good" for causing Japan's earthquake and tsunami rant on YouTube.
The fact that so many people were so easily duped into believing this young lady's original YouTube video was real should be a frightening wake-up call to real Christians everywhere. As JMG points out, this is a classic example of Poe's Law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.
3 comments:
I confess that it also frightens me that the reaction was to threaten to RAPE and KILL her!
What she did was in incredibly poor taste, but no one should ever be threatened with rape and murder--even for vile opinions.
And it happens all too often. Almost every female blogger I know who takes on difficult subjects--especially rape and misogyny--has been threatened with rape. (Oh, the irony! You write about how terrible rape is, and people (men) threaten to rape you to shut you up!)
I agree with you that the fundies should learn something from this---but the rest of us need to learn something as well. We could stamp out religious fundamentalism tomorrow and misogyny would still be endemic unless we address it head-on.
And to bring my diatriabe back to the cause of your seething....homophobia is simply misogyny turned inward.
Pax,
Doxy
You are so right Doxy. Threatening any kind of violence is frightening. As horrible as this girl's words were (even if it was all a hoax), she absolutely did not deserve to be threatened with rape or murder.
Thanks for pointing out yet another important albeit ugly angle to this sordid story.
I agree that it is really scary that so many people are so anxious to retaliate with violence to differing opinions. It says a lot about our society in general that rape threats are the first thing to pop up, and it makes it really clear that the Christian right isn't the only scary position in the US.
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