Life is too short to put up with assholes

Dave Silverman has spoken out about the mess at Mythcon in Milwaukee last weekend.

I saw the video of the Mythcon event. I heard people laugh and cheer at a victim of sexual assault being taunted via Twitter with a shameful shitty tweet.

My blood boiled. My adrenaline flowed. My bile bubbled. If you’re one of the people who cheer when victims get taunted, you’re an asshole. And I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I want nothing to do with you until you figure out how to have some empathy.

When you’re organizing an event, the most important thing you can do is make sure that people feel welcomed. Celebrating the diversity of our community also means recognizing that we have work to do to make our events reflect the larger community of atheists. It’s something I strive for every time I sit down with my team to work on our events.

We can’t tolerate intolerance. We can’t abide elevating those who spend their time trolling, and harassing, and alienating the very people who we’re in this fight to help. We have serious work to do and we need serious conversations about how to do that. I don’t have time to waste on people whose only interest seems to be provocation for provocation’s sake and not on making the lives of our fellow atheists better.

Our convention next year is March 29 to April 1 in Oklahoma City. Like every year, we’re going to have new people you’ve never heard from. We’re going to talk about tough subjects. But we’re going to do it without making people feel unsafe at our event. We’re going to have a great time celebrating our community and the people in it. And we’re going to do it while working to help people.

I do what I do to make a positive change in this country. I’m 51 years old and I don’t have the time or patience to put up with assholes.

There are a lot of comments thanking him, and a few defending the harassers and complaining about “SJWs” blah blah blah. Like:

All the sanctimonious lecturing and white-knighting and rape hysteria and identity politics is why people like Sargon have an audience.

No, people like Sargon (Carl Benjamin) have an audience because there are a lot of mean assholes in the world.

Dave was speaking out four years ago, and I’m glad he still is.

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