Stephen Smoot's Vendetta

[drumdude]

You guys are going about this all wrong. The simple way to unmask the author is what proves the Book of Mormon true. Stylometry!

Stylometry.jpg

(I can't wait for the blog post from DCP taking this seriously )

[Doctor Scratch]

Smoot writes:

Perhaps the good Doctor neglected to take his Donepezil this morning and has forgotten that I have already repeatedly criticized the Heartlanders (including Jonathan Neville) on my own blog and using my own name. If I ever want to say something about the Heartlanders, I would not hesitate to do so under my real identity, not a pseudonym.

My profoundest apologies if this ruins the fun for Doctor Scratch et al. over on Mormon Discussions.

I don’t regard watching someone crash and burn as “fun.” I think that the Mopologetic conflict with the Heartlanders is exceptionally nasty. There seems to be an easy way out: make peace. Find a way to disagree. But instead, we get “Neville-Neville Land.”

So, why might Smoot use a pseudonym? It could be that his boss at the B. H. Roberts Foundation doesn’t want to be associated with toxic Mopologetics. Or it could be that Smoot, working on a PhD is worried that critics will do to him what the professional Mopologists have done to critics working in academia: think Bokovoy. Murphy. Etc.

But I think the real reason is that Smoot is desperate to land a position at BYU and he is terrified over the way that the politics might play out. Internal academic politics got DCP kicked out of the Maxwell Institute (allegedly) and what Smoot wants more than anything is to be the next DCP. Peterson used a bogus (but obvious) pseudonym in ZLMB for quite a time, and it didn’t help him in the long run.

[malkie]

Dr. Scratch sure has the Mopologists in a tizzy over this. DCP devotes an entire blog post to this topic, while Stephen Smoot and Peter Pan both show up in the comment section (at the same time) and make several panicked denials. Hilarious!

Folks, you can't make this stuff up.

As usual, Dr. Scratch is playing chess while the Mopologists are playing marbles.

Lol.

DanielPeterson > Stephen Smoot

Stephen Smoot: "the collective sleuthing powers of the Doctor and his minions leave much to be desired."

They always have. But uncontrolled imagination and unrelenting malice compensate to at least some degree.

what projection.
Keep in mind that this is the same person who, on the sayso of the anonymous and thoroughly unreliable neo-nazi poster "smoky", named an innocent film professor in Brooklyn as being Lemmie. Incorrectly of course, but you have to wonder how bewildered she must have been at the sudden onslaught of Mopologist hatemail from members OF HER OWN RELIGION.

Peter pan, smoot, and peterson are indeed in a, shall we say, collective panic.

And who can forget the "scratch is Chino Blanco" fiasco?
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... esnt_stop/

[Tom]

DCP just gave himself away...

DanielPeterson Stephen Smoot
2 hours ago
Stephen Smoot: "P.S., my understanding from listening to Robert Boylan's interview with Spencer Kraus is that "Peter Pan" is some fellow down in Alabama named Richard Nygren. But whoever this Mr. Nygren may be I cannot say. I have never met him, nor have I ever corresponded with him online."

I've never so much as heard of him. I briefly looked for him online, but found nothing. I'd like to think that he exists, though.

My bet is that he's one of my multiple personalities, just as you are.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5928642929

But in the blog entry posted before that comment...

They think that it’s Steve Smoot — who is something of an obsession with my very obsessive anonymous Malevolent Stalker — or that it’s Dan Peterson, or that it’s Steve Smoot at the direction of Dan Peterson. Actually, it’s none of those. (I myself learned only a few months ago who it is, because s/he told me; until then I was almost as much in the dark on the subject as my Stalker is.)

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... curse.html

So? Peterson was contacted a few months ago by the actual blogger, but 2 hours ago says he has "never so much as heard of him"?

Sure, DCP. Sure.

Intriguing. I would add a few pieces of data:

In April 2021, Peterson wrote:

Incidentally too, although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the estimable “Peter Pan” is somebody with whom I’m acquainted, I don’t know his (or her) identity, and I have absolutely no connection with the Neville-Neville Land blog.

In May 2021, Peterson wrote:

“Peter Pan,” the principal figure behind the valuable Neville-Neville Land blog — whose identity I do not know, although I wouldn’t be surprised if s/he were someone with whom I’m acquainted — contacted me by email late last night to tell me that Mr. Jonathan Neville has posted an entry about the film on one of his approximately 3,437 blogs.

In September 2021, Peterson wrote:

Incidentally, the person behind the Neville-Neville Land blog recently identified himself/herself to me. As I had suspected, it was someone that I knew. But I hadn’t known who it was. I’m grateful for his/her service.

What are we to conclude here?

[Marcus]

I think we can conclude, at a minimum, it is not someone named Richard Nygren. That’s the only way DCP’s statements about having no idea who Nygren is can be taken as true, when combined with the evidence of his previous statements.

[Marcus]

When this issue of who's behind the blog first came up, I posted this article, found in BMAF archives, by Rappleye. i can't remember why it was concluded Rappleye wasn't Peter Pan, so maybe it's worth a second look. here are some excerpts, and note the title and the date:

Home » Book of Mormon Geography in Neville-Nevilleland

Book of Mormon Geography in Neville-Nevilleland

The contents of all BMAF publications are the sole responsibility of the individual authors and therefore do not necessarily represent the views of BMAF or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Book of Mormon Geography in Neville-Nevilleland

by Neal Rappleye
Friday, September 4, 2015

Jonathan Neville is an advocate of the Book of Mormon Heartland Model who has been generating an endless array of polemical posts against Mesoamericanists, including me, on two different blogs. Like other Heartlanders, he has adopted an unfortunate mode of discourse that blames Mesoamericanists for damaging faith and even misleading the Church. Also like most Heartlanders, he has never produced a detailed study of Book of Mormon geography.

...I can weigh and consider Sorenson’s and other Mesoamericanists’ interpretations. Can Neville, or any other Heartlander, show me where this has been done by an advocate of the Heartland Model? You see, I would love to take the Heartland Model seriously, but they haven’t given me anything to take seriously. This is why Gardner says that the hypothesis (meaning, of course, its advocates) “really doesn’t care much about geography.” And although Neville takes umbrage to this statement, his constant haggling over early Church history statements and serious lack of any detailed analysis of the textual-geographical data really serve to illustrate the point...

...Amidst all his ranting about straw-man arguments, however, Neville is prone to commit such logical fallacies himself...

...Neville then offers an absurd explanation for this problem:
<quote snipped>
As far as straw men go, this is the weakest kind. Where to even start?

...we need to be able to do more than simply put the names of Book of Mormon cities, rivers, and seas on a map willy-nilly—the stories and events that tell us about those places need to fit a real-world location. Otherwise, Zarahemla might as well be in Never-Neverland.

http://www.bmaf.org/node/591

[Moksha]

It has to be someone with an LDS apologetics background, otherwise, how would they be able to crawl three miles through the mud and avoid all the trip wires then emerge from the muck and mire to plant their explosives and escape again into the night? True guerilla fighters unlike those school marms at the new Maxwell Institute.

[Doctor Scratch]

I don't think that it's Rappleye. You'll notice that that comment is from 2015, and that was around the time that Hamblin was getting his ass kicked by Phillip Jenkins. At one point, Rappleye attempted to challenge Jenkins, and Jenkins took him to the woodshed and completely humiliated him. After that, Rappleye was a lot more low-key and tended to stick to publications that were more "scholarly" in tone. He has tended to avoid the more hostile interactions that are at the heart of Mopologetics. If he *has* continued with the hostile activities, it has escaped my notice.

Smoot, meanwhile, was up to antics like "tapir bukkake," and his open attacks on Neville and the Heartlanders go on for much longer and are much more vicious in tone. For the entire time that he's been participating in Mopologetics, Smoot has had a hard-edged, sadistic, vindictive side: you can sense a lot of bottled up anger there--a need to hurt other people in order to feel powerful. It's something that he either picked up from the older apologists like DCP and Midgley, or he already had that tendency in him and he was drawn to the classic-FARMS Mopologists due to "fellow feeling," as it were.

Meanwhile, the tidbits that master_dc and others unearthed are another important clue. Why would Smoot's personal blog and "Neville-Neville Land" have the exact same security company from Canada? master_dc suggested that perhaps some "middle man" was involved--such as the More Good Foundation--but if that's the case, then you'd expect a lot of the apologetic websites and blogs to use a similar service. Well, go ahead and do whois lookups for FAIR Mormon, Interpreter, Rappleye's blog, Brian Hales's website, and so on. Do they use a security service, too? And if they do, is it the same one as Smoot's/Peter Pan's? Is it based in Canada, and in Toronto, no less?

At the end of the day, I think it's completely reasonable to assume that Smoot is the author of "Neville-Neville Land." For my part, the only thing that would convince me otherwise would be for some other hardcore Mopologist to come forward and claim it.

[Rivendale]

I don't think that it's Rappleye. You'll notice that that comment is from 2015, and that was around the time that Hamblin was getting his ass kicked by Phillip Jenkins. At one point, Rappleye attempted to challenge Jenkins, and Jenkins took him to the woodshed and completely humiliated him. After that, Rappleye was a lot more low-key and tended to stick to publications that were more "scholarly" in tone. He has tended to avoid the more hostile interactions that are at the heart of Mopologetics. If he *has* continued with the hostile activities, it has escaped my notice.

Smoot, meanwhile, was up to antics like "tapir bukkake," and his open attacks on Neville and the Heartlanders go on for much longer and are much more vicious in tone. For the entire time that he's been participating in Mopologetics, Smoot has had a hard-edged, sadistic, vindictive side: you can sense a lot of bottled up anger there--a need to hurt other people in order to feel powerful. It's something that he either picked up from the older apologists like DCP and Midgley, or he already had that tendency in him and he was drawn to the classic-FARMS Mopologists due to "fellow feeling," as it were.

Meanwhile, the tidbits that master_dc and others unearthed are another important clue. Why would Smoot's personal blog and "Neville-Neville Land" have the exact same security company from Canada? master_dc suggested that perhaps some "middle man" was involved--such as the More Good Foundation--but if that's the case, then you'd expect a lot of the apologetic websites and blogs to use a similar service. Well, go ahead and do whois lookups for FAIR Mormon, Interpreter, Rappleye's blog, Brian Hales's website, and so on. Do they use a security service, too? And if they do, is it the same one as Smoot's/Peter Pan's? Is it based in Canada, and in Toronto, no less?

At the end of the day, I think it's completely reasonable to assume that Smoot is the author of "Neville-Neville Land." For my part, the only thing that would convince me otherwise would be for some other hardcore Mopologist to come forward and claim it.

Wasn't that this conversation? viewtopic.php?t=135385. I remember that beating.

[master_dc]

I just took another quick look at it. I think the customer number is probably Google, LLC's. There are way too many random sites that have the same customer number, but they all share a registration via google. I am not sure if Contact Privacy, LLC is only used for urls registered in Canada, or if all US transactions also use Contact Privacy, LLC in Canada as well...

****UPDATE****
I just confirmed that all url's registered via google share the same customer number and Contact Privacy Inc in Canada is the privacy provider.