Month: February 2023

So more things have been said in the wake of the Andrew Torrez affair, Eli said much the same as Noah (i.e. that he knew but was asked not to take action) except acknowledging he’d been told in 2017, and it still didn’t really satisfy a lot of people, especially given the further accusations that have emerged of them being told that shit had happened and not taking the charges seriously. I don’t know. The whole story’s faintly sickening, cos I don’t really know the best way to respond to it all, and the emotions it’s generated in people in the Facebook private group have been wearing ones.

What I have done is scale my patronage back; I’m not subscribed to Scathing at all now (I actually only occasionally listened, to be honest—I mostly subscribed cos I wanted to give them a bit of extra money—and when I really want to I can do so via Youtube just as easily) and I’ve cut my GAM subscription from $3.50 to $2. That extra $1.50 didn’t give me enough to be worthwhile.

I have misgivings, because the fact I’m still subscribing at all is, frankly, kind of selfish. Basically I’ve just had too much fun and entertainment from them over the years and I don’t really want to give that up, however ho-hum some of the behaviour has been off-mic, and I have mixed feelings about still supporting that even if I am cutting back on doing so… cos in the end this does come down to people’s livelihoods being affected; Andrew’s co-host on one of his other podcasts is actually kind of relying on that as his main source of income, plus a lot of people are having second thoughts about the GAM live shows which were a big thing for them.

And therein lies the really galling point, cos if something like this were to happen to someone I hate I’d have no issues with them losing out badly as a result. How much pleasure and amusement have we derived from Alex Jones being fined nearly one and a half billion dollars after the Sandy Hook court case? But when it’s someone on my side, I’ve got to wear it when it happens to them. Can’t be a complete hypocrite… a partial one is bad enough. I’m leaving it at that. Sick of thinking about all this, let alone writing about it.

EDIT: just to make everything better, Thomas from Opening Arguments has now come forth with the claim that Andrew abused him as well; nowhere near as bad (as he put it) as what Andrew’s done with others, but he’s still cut up about it cos all this other stuff has, as he said, made him realise that was in fact what happened to him, and how he didn’t feel like he could even talk about it by virtue of him being, you know, a man, cos these things don’t happen to men, do they… he put all this up in an audio post that was hell to listen to cos he’s, you know, processing what happened to him in real time and dealing with what that means for him and how he’s treated other people in his position. The whole thing is hideous and getting more so. I’m pulling out of the PIAT FB group for a few days, cos I don’t know how much more I want to know about all this.

So, as a follow-up to yesterday’s post:

One, Andrew Torrez put up an apology, which he started by saying the details in the article were wrong and he could prove it, and that’s… certainly one way of beginning an avowed apology for wrongdoing, but anyway, having said that he then went on to also say the accusations were basically true, and that he did that sort of thing when he was dissatisfied with his marriage. Hell of a thing to admit in a Facebook group your wife’s a member of, but whatever. He’s basically been booted from all PIAT groups and duties.

Two, Noah from PIAT addressed their silence on the subject. He claimed to have known since November ’22 when he was first approached with the news that complaints had been made against Andrew, but had been instructed to keep schtum about it (except with Heath and Eli, the other two main hosts) and not do anything about it until all relevant legal stuff was done. Once he knew the story was about to go public, he felt he was no longer under any compunction to not take action, so action was accordingly belatedly taken. He thinks they did the only viable thing that could’ve been done, but he regrets having lost people’s trust as a result.

And I think he’s actually being perfectly sincere, particularly on that last point, cos I think people do have perhaps higher expectations of him given his particular place in the atheist community. It was a pretty good explanation of where he stood in the whole thing and I see no real reason to doubt it. Unfortunately, it contained absolutely no reference to reports that they knew of stories about Andrew’s misbehaviour since 2017. Accordingly, a lot of people (comme moi) are still… unsatisfied at best, and I think with some good reason too. I know there’s legal issues involved, but the longer they hold off answering questions, the unhappier people are going to be with them…

Oh dear.

I don’t know anything about Mandisa Thomas so can’t comment on that. I know P. Andrew, though, cos of his connection to my favourite podcast. And as they say in the classics, son, I am disappoint. I’ve wanted to talk about God Awful Movies on here before now, and, well, this isn’t exactly how I thought I would start doing so…

I discovered God Awful Movies via Youtube in 2016, this being when I finally got adequate unlimited broadband here so could actually put YT to good use at last. And around that time I found myself watching quite a lot of atheist content for some reason, such as Steve Shives’ “An Atheist Reads” series when he was still doing that, and Rachel Oates when she was starting out doing similar stuff… and somehow I latched onto an interview Seth Andrews did with these three guys who’d started a podcast called God Awful Movies skewering Christian cinema.

Perfect. I’d discovered the wacky world of the Christian film industry thanks to Mu-Meson Archives, now here was a whole show devoted to tearing strips off it. Bad movies and bad religion. This couldn’t have been better for me. And at that time YT’s suggested videos handily linked to an episode of the show, which I recall being Rock: It’s Your Decision, so I listened to that and knew I was onto a good thing. Been a listener ever since.

The podcast was spun off from an occasional segment of The Scathing Atheist, Noah’s main show which still continues and just celebrated its tenth birthday; GAM has since grown into a mini-empire of its own with a cast of semi-regular recurring guests, including Andrew Torrez, their legal representative (cos after they turned themselves into a proper company, Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, they needed one of those). Andrew was a pretty good cohost, he was always good at losing his shit on those episodes where the filmmakers depicted dubious legal situations, and his knowledge of how those things would (or wouldn’t) work in the real world made those episodes even better.

And the best thing was, PIAT produced a pretty good little fan community on Facebook. Cos it has to be said, the atheist movement has left a fair bit to be desired on the personal level, an unfortunate number of the bigger players in it have turned out to be a bit shit; and, frankly, God’s anti-fandom is a large part of why I don’t identify myself as being part of it. (Not unlike Doctor Who fandom in some ways.) But the unofficial PIAT group on Facebook was and still is great. By and large the people there are cool and reasonable and it’s generally fun to hang around.

Consequently, when scrolling through Facebook this afternoon and the first post I see from the PIAT group was them noting that they were severing ties with Andrew Torrez… yeah, that came as a bit out of nowhere.

Unfortunately, the situation itself hasn’t, by the look of things. If you look at the article linked way back at the start of this post, it turns out Andrew has actually had accusations of sexual harrassment levelled against him since 2017. And, somewhat more troubling, it now looks like the PIAT gang have known about them for a similar amount of time. Which, if that’s the case, also means they’ve done nothing about it for that amount of time too. Apparently they’ve also only just discovered that the story was going public, hence why they’ve done this much now… but still.

And I’m… kind of pissed. I have sunk a fair amount of money into GAM and Scathing over the years, five dollars per week between them, which works out at over $250 per year. Can’t remember when I started paying for Scathing, but I signed on with GAM in 2016. I’ve helped keep them going for a long time now, and I’ve been happy to do so if it meant them flourishing and able to keep making content, and now… I don’t know. I’ve raised an eyebrow, to be sure, at some of their sponsors, some of whom have proven questionable like Robinhood or BetterHelp, the latter of whom they’re still with despite people raising issues about them with the PIAT gang, but I’ve overlooked them. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

The situation is complicated by the fact that there’s been no other official statement up to the time of writing. This is something a bunch of people in the Facebook group are pissed about, though I can understand the difficulty the PIAT mob are facing, in that they probably shouldn’t say anything about the problem person without legal advice, but their legal advisor is the problem person. I don’t suppose that finding someone to immediately replace Andrew is an easy prospect, and I don’t discount the nightmare that this must be for Noah Heath and Eli. But, to paraphrase an old Liberal Party election campaign, there are questions that have to be answered, and the longer they hold off answering them, the more people are going to be pissed.

And the answers are going to have to be really good when they come.