VenomFangX and his triumphant not-return to YouTUBE

So, the whole Ray Comfort vs. Thunderf00t discussion was posted on YouTUBE. Thunderf00t spends a great deal of time speaking against Creationists, and anyone else who misrepresents empirical scientific knowledge about the world and our universe. As such he runs afoul of people like VenomFangX who from day one regurgitated the well-debunked lectures of Kent Hovind (convicted fraud, felon serving time in prison for his crime.)

He posts videos revealing the bad arguments, propaganda, and intellectual dishonesty of the Creationist movement and its proponents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEr_Eo8I9E

Shortly into the video, I saw this:

Uni = One

Verse = A spoken sentence

VFX has his etymological background messed up, verse in universe is from vertere, which is “to rotate or turn.” This sort of poor scholarship is indicative of VFX’s dishonest presentation—not because he gets things wrong, but because he gets them wrong, gets corrected (over and over), and never chooses to learn from it.

Thunderf00t doesn’t ridicule people about their delivery; but he does shine light on the ridiculousness of the content. Making fun of Tf00t for stuttering while having a cordial discussion with Comfort and then using that as a segue to claim that Tf00t is a hypocrite for showing people to be ridiculous is pure asshattery.

Tf00t has never claimed he has an absolute understanding of everything and he doesn’t claim to know things he doesn’t—in fact, this is the point that VFX harped on all through the first five minutes of the video. But then around 5:54 VFX says, “…you claim that you have an absolute understanding of everything.” How transparent is that?

6:25 VFX looks to an exchange where Comfort plays a game of equivocation with Tf00t. In a friendly discussion everybody doesn’t force everyone else to define everything, but according to Comfort’s context he basically tried to say “life = soul.” And Tf00t is thinking that Comfort is referring to an untestable, uncorroboratable supernatural force and is arguing against that.

I recognize the “your dog and your horrible neighbor are drowning which one would you save?” question, and I’m puzzled why Tf00t even answered it—although, he does seem to be Aspergers to a bit, which means that this honesty is going to be very pointed. Why he didn’t just turn it around to: “A white man and a black man are drowning, who would you save?” or even “A man and a woman are drowning, who would you save?” to Comfort. The positive effect of this hypothetical situation is designed to provide values for lives, and it’s intrinsically true that as social creatures we do automatically apply value to life when in life or death situations. Come to think of it, the pointed question back to Comfort would have been to take away the “dog” (inhuman) status from the friend.

So VFX: “Your sister (or how about best friend) and your horrible neighbor are drowning, you can only save one—who would you save?” By the way, we’ll flash “Love your enemy as yourself,” on a billboard as you’re deciding. Using this sort of question is really uncalled for in any sort of cordial debate.

VFX’s not-return video is poor criticism and in the vein of his usual disingenuous presentation.

The VenomfangX Scandal: Venomgate

...is over?

YouTUBE is a place rife with drama of every sort, however, few times are quite as dramatic as today when I logged in to discover numerous people from across different communities talking about the same thing: VenomFangX has left YouTUBE.

For those who aren’t savvy to this particular part of the Internet, or even this little tribe of thought, I’ll give a little bit of background. VenomFangX is a YouTUBE user who uses his evangelical creationist Christian message to basically run his channel. I mention it because it is the sole and primary purpose of his presence on the site, he makes no pretence about it, and it represents his eminence everywhere he goes. VenomFangX is the worst representation any religion could ever have—he's charismatic, smarmy, insipidly drippy, condescending, and borrows most of his material from fraudsters and asshats. He is, for lack of a better term, a popular villain.

He has left YouTUBE in the past; and now he’s doing it again. (Last time to no effect, obviously, as he didn’t leave.)

And he’s doing it on the heels of a huge donation scandal perpetrated by him. It started out in April when he posted a video about how he couldn’t keep a job because he simply couldn’t keep from proselytizing to customers; and he even proudly strutted his lack of work ethic when he displayed spools of DVDs he had burned at his current employment, using their equipment for his own gain. It is unsurprising that such antisocial behavior got him canned from so many jobs.

Thus, he came to his avid and adoring fan base and asked them for money.

Initially he asked for $500 a month—or, as he put it, for 500 people to give him $1 a month. In the video where he asked for this he intimated that he would give any amount over $500 a month to charity and named Sick Kids Hospital in Canada as the recipient. A misspeak on his end, perhaps, but he did little to then actually offer this money to them; instead he repeatedly attempted to renege on this by pretending that he’d said no such thing when soliciting donations.

Numerous tubers rose up to document, dissect, and point out the flaws of his behavior. His previous behavior certainly did not work in his favor in this as few people outside of his cult following find this to be on par with his previous actions. April ended and he probably collected far, far more than $500 but there’s no indication that he delivered even a cent of it to Sick Kids Hospital.

Numerous complaints rained down on his PayPal account, contacts to the Canadian revenue service, and even Sick Kids Hospital. His PayPal was shut down twice due to fraud. And now, his YouTUBE channel and website are gone.

The reason given is that he’s been receiving death threats from Muslims. A claim yet totally unsubstantiated. However, a message on his website states that his parents took it down, that they don’t support his actions, and they apologize if he offended anyone.

Links to two series on YouTUBE that help elaborate what happened, and who VenomFangX is. These are mostly cultural critiques by people who don’t like him very much, but they will probably give a good example of one side of the story. The other side is accessible via related videos and searches if you want to expand the depth of your net into this seedy event.

Goodbye Venom. Although, I doubt he’ll be gone for long. Here’s hoping this was the community nipping the next Peter Popoff in the bud.

Links:

VenomFangX Fraudster Exposed! by LordHathor

Dprjones examination of VenomFangX