The woo-tastic r/AlternativeHealth has vanished from reddit. Did anyone for r/skeptic see why?
I know some people from r/skeptic used to keep an eye on things in there, but the whole thing has vanished. Along with it has gone celticson, the mod, and zoey_01, the primary poster (also a frequent r/conspiracy poster). The reddit has been deleted, and these people seem to have deleted their accounts.
Does anyone know what happened? Were they getting trolled or did they just pack up and leave? Did anyone who keeps an eye on that reddit see anything?
Posted Jul 23, 2010, 10:37 PM UTC
57147
Yeah. I killed it.
I killed it dead.
It was like this - I have r/skeptic and r/alternativehealth subbed - one because I'm always down to diffuse a little establishment dogma presented as unassailable truth and the other...
Well, here it gets complicated.
As I've made plain, my wife is a naturopathic doctor and a midwife. She also graduated magna cum laude with a degree in mathematics and worked as a database administrator and actuary for a multinational health insurance corporation. My mother has a Ph. D. in microbiology; her father has a Ph. D. in organic chemistry. We're both firmly in the "science = good" camp, however, we're also in the "modern medicine isn't the only medicine" camp.
So while I was really hoping r/alternativehealth would, oh, I dunno, maybe have useful links associated with natural health, it was pretty clearly primarily a Hive Of Woo. Hives Of Woo tend to make science-friendly natural practitioners look really, really bad... so I ended up downvoting a lot more than upvoting over there, which was too bad.
...but I also noticed that really, my votes were some of the very, very few votes the place ever got... kind of odd for a subreddit with over a thousand subscribers.
Anyway - celticson decided one day to issue a "manifesto" as to what "natural health" was and it was pretty much total and absolute bullshit - dangerous bullshit at that, because he said things like "nobody knows your disease and its treatment better than you" and "stay away from hospitals at all costs." So I wrote him a lengthy and polite rebuttal, basically saying "dude, you can't just say shit like that - god help you if somebody listened!" to which point he got even more in my face about how he didn't want any disagreement in his subreddit. I responded - basically saying that "disagreement" is the only path to discovery and that frankly, with the crap I put up with in here (r/skeptic) I could arrange for a whole lot more "disagreement" than he was currently suffering.
Celticson took this as a threat, threatened to ban me, and came over here rustling feathers, at which point y'all disavowed me (and rightly so). Celticson then banned me from r/alternativehealth and wrote me a number of nastygrams.
I then decided to make something of the fact that 70% of the content in r/alternativehealth was from "visitbulgaria.info" and opined in r/reportthespammers that these two accounts were basically linkdumping in r/alternativehealth for a thousand or so sockpuppet accounts in order to increase google ranking. Which I'm pretty sure was Marina Dimova's primary goal; the serious woo bent was kind of a beard for the spamming operation.
At least, that was my theory and my presentation.
Three days later, celticson, zoey_01, and r/alternativehealth were gone.
And that's about all I have to say about that.
TL;DR: next time you fucks feel like threatening my wife's life just for practicing medicine, carefully consider whether you're actually doing a "good deed" like you think you are, you vindictive pricks.
Edit: possible alt
wait, who threatened your wife? am just reading the story wrong? i see nothing there about that. Also, what exactly does you wife do as a naturopath?
Also, props to her for the midwife bit, people need more valid sensible options for lots of medical procedures, and that's a big one.
In July of 2009, I mentioned, in one of the numerous tirades in r/skeptic against anything and everything even vaguely "alternative," that my wife was a naturopathic doctor, that she had taken her medical boards, that she was licensed to practice medicine in two states, and that she was licensed to prescribe drugs (up to Schedule 1) and practice minor surgeries (anything requiring no more than topical anesthetic). Not only was I heavily downvoted, but the most upvoted response was "someone should put your whore wife out of her misery" (or words to that effect - my memory of that particular event isn't as lucid as it usually is). They were then upvoted. I responded with something along the lines of "you realize my wife is a lovely person who delivers babies to happy mothers and treats chronic conditions like allergies, right? Why, precisely, would you want to 'put her out of her misery?'" Which was, of course, downvoted. The response, which was even more upvoted, was "because we have to start somewhere."
No great shakes, right? Except that evening I got an email on one of my personal accounts saying "are you kleinbl00?" I did not respond. The very next day, as soon as I posted something, somebody used a throwaway account to post my name, my wife's address and my wife's phone number.
I whined to kn0thing, who took his typical day and a half to do anything about it. Meanwhile, they pushed an update which turned all the moderators green, and since I'd been made a moderator of /askreddit without anybody telling me (yeah, the PM system? Shit gets through. It's great), every comment I made for the rest of the day started 10 downvotes down.
So. I say "my wife is a naturopath" and not only does this retarded little subreddit threaten her life, they upvote the fucker who threatens her life, and one of you fucks posts my private info.
So i deleted all of my posts (all of them) and stayed off Reddit for a few weeks. Then when i came back, I used sockpuppets for another four months or so.
I'm still deeply, deeply angry at you all for it. I've never encountered blatant hostility like that anywhere else on Reddit, and it is my firmly held opinion that the prevailing belief around here that reinforcing dogma is necessary at any cost generates a dangerously hostile environment. And while it's gotten substantially better in here over the past year, there are still elements of neo-luddite jihadism in here disguised as "skepticism" that really turn my blood cold.
You'll understand if I choose not to answer that question.
Had you said that in here a year ago you'd be well below the comment threshold.
If I were a mod, I'd gladly ban the person who said that to you, and get them IP banned by reddit admins permanently. Reddit is vastly male and with that has come a lot of extreme misogyny. Any time a woman is caught behaving badly, you can bet some redditors are going to aim some serious bile her way, or towards the closest person.
And it's no surprise that such a thing would happen from r/skeptic. This subreddit is filled with many professed 'nerds' and 'geeks' who think that just because they experience prejudice at the hands of jocks, that they don't exist on a higher societal rung higher than anybody else, including women, and they embrace misogyny and white privilege in an attempt to raise themselves to the same levels as the non-geeks who once 'oppressed' them. Watching "Revenge of the nerds" is just like watching r/skeptic discuss kyiarchy. "See? I'm not so different from you. We can both make fun of rape victims and use black and gay friends as accessories just like you!"
I'm sincerely sorry that you and your wife have experience these redditors' vitriol. While I do think, rightly, and naturopathy is crap and I disagree that we just attack anything "remotely 'alternative' " you have not earned any of the abuse you have received.
In 50 words or less, defend the following:
Hyperlinks do not count towards your score. Your words, nobody else's.
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I'm glad I finally got to see this story. I had always wondered why you disappeared. From my point of view (which is a view of one that usually doesn't hang around in the less traveled subreddits), it seemed like you were well liked and then just got upset and left for some reason.
I'm sorry that people would pull some shit like that. I am, however, happy that you returned.
I've told some of it before.
It was extremely disappointing. I've met Richard Feynman. I subscribed to James Randi's mailing list in 1996. I own three books by Michael Shermer. Yet I say "naturopath" in here and what do I get?
"Burn the witch!"
So if I seem a little hostile in r/skeptic from time to time...
...well, now you know why.
I'm sorry that people threatened and degraded your wife. That's inexcusable, no matter how heated the conversation became. If I had seen what you describe I would have downvoted the comments and probably reported the threats.
Shit, people are fucking dicks sometimes.
Even though I wasn't a redditor at the time, I know i'm occasionally prone to the hivemind, and you have my apologies.
But with respect to the pubreddit, there's quite a lot of circlejerking, and focusing on the same topic here. That sort of self-reinforcing agreement sets up a cycle of illusion and rationalization, that people will unthinkingly, and sometimes violently defend. Same thing happens all over the place, politics, medicine, etc..
If your wife is a science based medicine practitioner, and actively cares about if she's doing the right thing (and constantly makes sure, since she probably doesn't have the same self correction mechanisms as normal doctors, peer review and the like) then she's doing a good thing. If she (and people like her) can get a platform that isn't immediately dismissed as stupid by traditional doctors, then she'll be helping break that cycle of stupidity, and that's a good thing.
With respect to the cycle of stupidity in this subreddit, maybe trolling will break it? I dunno.
I'm just blathering at this point, and i should sleep. Night, and good wishes.
I appreciate your apology, and I appreciate your thoughts.
My wife, as a midwife, attends peer review once a month. As a naturopath, she's required to fill continuing ed credits just like any other medical practitioner, and is under the governance of a state-certified licensing board.
She became a naturopathic doctor and a midwife because she was interested in the practice of healthcare, not the business of healthcare. Her practice allows her to spend much, much more time with her patients and focus on increasing their wellness, rather than getting 15 minutes to prescribe this drug or that. Not that there aren't any number of conditions that should be treated with prescription medicine - but that so many of the chronic conditions that lower quality of life really respond best to diet, exercise and counseling.
The problem she faces - all the time - is that most people interested in "alternative medicine" have fundamentally given up on allopathic care. They're the ones who know in their heart of hearts that vaccines give you autism, fillings cause brain damage and that laying on hands will cure your ills. And frankly, you have to get a little woo with them just to get them to listen to you - I got to discuss anal swabs over dinner last night because my wife is trying to get her partner to swap over to a more accurate hepatitis test and her partner doesn't even really believe in germ theory. Meanwhile, most people on the Western side of things think that anyone telling you to get more sleep, eat better and get some exercise so that you can stop taking blood pressure medication is a charlatan and a witch out to drain your bank account.
I dunno. It just gets tiresome defending one side to the other every day and then getting pilloried by both of them. Your viewpoint is diminishingly rare.
I think it was probably a small group of assdicks who did this. Hopefully they aren't representative of this entire subreddit. I'm not one of them, at least. :P
(For the record, I support your position on natural medicine. Most of it, anyway. Let's see if I get downvoted for it.)
...that'd be a yes!
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I give two shits what you accept. When I tell you I deleted every post I had, it's mighty white of you to demand "evidence."
And I can extrapolate all day long. What I said was that I'm still very angry and I don't forgive this subreddit because I see many of the exact same behaviors perpetuated every single goddamn day.
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err, what?
I was saying she deserves credit for being a midwife, not that she was doing something wrong.
Props = Kudos = Upvotes
I never really considered being born to be a medical procedure, but I guess it is huh? Kinda weird really.
In the United States it is considered a medical emergency.
And one where hospital practice is so far from evidence based it's terrifying.
Seemingly people in r/skeptic did. At least that's how I read it.
But "Natural Medicine" that subscribes to science is just... medicine.
You'd think.
I've learned that's anything but the case, at least as far as r/skeptic is concerned.
What I don't understand is why you would get r/alternativehealth shut down but not r/skeptic if r/skeptic is the one that threatened your wife and r/alternativehealth just threatened to ban you. I don't follow the logic in that.
r/skeptic is a community of people discussing pseudoscience and quackery. And while this community is occasionally as dogmatic as r/atheism, there are definitely bright points. Not only that, it is (by and large) open to debate and discussion and serves the needs of no one in particular.
r/alternativehealth was clearly demonstrated to me to be a place where there would be no discussion. Not only that, but 90% of the articles came from exactly two names, and 70% of the articles came from exactly one URL. I submitted a thing or two, and occasionally someone else would, but once I started thinking of them as angry trolls rather than misguided hippies, it bugged me. So I submitted them to r/reportthespammers... which doesn't guarantee banning, but it pretty much assures review.
What could I report r/skeptic for? Harboring dangerous twats? There's dangerous twats all over reddit - you oughtta check out some of my fan mail. I reported the threats and kylev took them down. I believe this to be a place that breeds senseless anger (much less now than it did), but it did nothing that violates the Reddit charter.
mind expanding on your opinions about r/atheism ?
r/atheism is a support group, not a debating society.
There are elements in there that really would like to discuss the finer points of why Dawkins is right about this but wrong about that, but they're positively drowned out by the faction that hates living in Middle America, surrounded by churches, pledging allegiance under god every morning, with football players thanking jesus for touchdowns and "in god we trust" on every bill in their billfold.
So they retreat to r/atheism to talk about how horrible religion is, how persecuted they are, and what giant idiots anyone who believes in god is. And it's just not attractive, and it's just not productive.
I'm an atheist. My father is a devout atheist. I grew up in a religious town surrounded by churches and I resented it. But as I grew older I realized that I had lots of friends for whom a steady belief in God was what kept them going day to day. And I realized that many of the things that shook me to my core growing up just didn't bother them - God would take care of them, they knew it. And I realized that from a perspective of happiness, I'm the one missing out - their ability to take something on "faith" gives them a great deal more comfort than my belief that all things have their roots in logic and frankly, it does not make them worse people than me, logic be damned.
So when I say I am a fundamentally faithless individual, I do not say it with pride. I do not say it to gloat. I say it to acknowledge that there is something missing in me that is present in the majority of humanity - and that while it's occasionally fun to gather with like-minded individuals and throw mud on everyone else, it's hardly constructive or attractive.
r/atheism would have you believe that the death of God would create a utopia on earth, so best get out your pistol.
I think that's sort of endemic to human nature. We have a tendency to seek out people that think like us, and when the uniting issue is something that's contentious, one uniting factor often seems to be contempt of the other side. Just because this group unites under skepticism doesn't mean it'll be exempt from the normal cognitive biases.
I don't know what we can do to change the community, other than to educate ourselves about knee-jerk skepticism and the slew of common biases. I think there's a real need for organized skepticism, and I get the impression that you and your wife hold skepticism in high regard too. Do you have any ideas about what we can do to change the community without abandoning it?
Allow me to point you at the dictionary:
Most of the explanations listed use the words "doubt" and "disbelief." A "skeptic" does not have a side - a skeptic says "show me the evidence so that I may decide myself."
A "skeptic" does not see the word "naturopath" and downvote, call someone a whore and threaten their life.
What can be done to change the community? That one's really fuckin' simple, too - recognize that "skeptics" are people like The Mythbusters - those who go "I dunno... this seems whacky" but are willing to come to their own conclusions one way or the other because the mere fact that they're questioning it means they need to come up with an impartial answer.
Skeptics are not Bill O'Reilly, who justifies his air time by finding people who reinforce his worldview so that he can drip mockery upon all those who oppose him.
Take a look at the front page of r/skeptic. Go ahead, I'll wait. Do me a favor, though - count how many posts are "questioning."
Now count how many are self-congratulatory posts about the idiocy of the outside world and how it must be crushed.
What's "skeptical" about that?
That makes sense, I suppose I was not clear on what r/alternativehealth was reported for. Personally I am not sorry to see it go.
Oh, sorry, I replied to your comment before reading further. My breach. I apologize.
I think it makes perfect sense when you include the fact (according to Kleinb100) that the subreddit was just a ruse for SEO and/or a playground for two people to talk to each other and refuse to listen to anyone else. I think he would have reported any subreddit that demonstrated these issues. He could have gone after r/skeptic but I believe he did the right thing and went after the subreddit that was actually suspect and not really contributing to the Reddit community. He didn't just lash out at r/skeptic, which I probably would have done, considering what occurred here.
I also like to think not that "/r/skeptic threatened his wife" but rather "people in r/skeptic threatened his wife." While it irks me the way Kleinb100 keeps saying things like "you fuckers did this" I can sympathize with his anger, and realize that his actions appear to me to be more logical than visceral.
Meanwhile, if someone had done that to me, I would be through the roof and gone from Reddit forever. It's disgusting how people can be so heartless and cruel. Do I hate the people of Westboro Baptist Church? Yes. Do I wish them dead? No. I wish them to realize how ugly they are being and change their attitudes towards their fellow people. What's better, a dead bad guy or a live ex-bad guy?
I know I got off topic and I kinda used your comment to make my own comments. But I do see the logic, at lest my logic, in Kleinb100's actions.
It really comes down to 2 things:
when I come in here spoiling for a fight, I get one.
when I came in there looking to make a mild correction, I was told that dogma is the only acceptable content.
It was after that that I decided to float the "SEO" balloon to see what happened. And what happened was r/alternativehealth got banned.
There are all sorts of insensitive, inflammatory subreddits on Reddit. There aren't many that not only linkfarm, they demand absolute obeisance from everyone who reads them.
I've been reading through this mass of comments and I don't understand one thing. If you are so angry with this group why do you persist in coming here. If I am angered with a group on reddit I ignore them and leave them alone. It seems a bit Quixotic of you to keep hammering away at this.
It's not dead, just locked.
That's the same thing, for practical purposes. It's a subreddit with no mods that nobody can post to and nobody can see.
How can you tell it doesn't have mods? The mod listing is of course unviewable, and I know that sending a PM to #AlternativeHealth won't throw an error even if there are no mods.
You're right that it's dead for all intents and purposes, but technically they could have locked it, chosen a new mod, and added a bunch of past submitters as approved contributers... I guess as long as it's a little self-contained universe, it doesn't matter to the rest of us.
Because I know things that you don't and have been asked not to speak of them.
I was excited to see what appeared to be a viable replacement (/r/altmed) appear, only to discover the mod is an AIDS denialist. *sigh*
So! I'm creating my own damn subreddit. No science-bashing will be tolerated. You're welcome as a mod.
Wow that's quite the conspiracy!
I read all of it expecting to be belair'd at the end
No, he Gumped it.
Fuck you. And I mean that sincerely.
I think this is probably the last subreddit in here that still looks for belairs.
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