So, the one who tweets under the handle, @HomeoReikiDogs; who variously ‘practices’/promotes/advocates/endorses (e.g.) Reiki, chakras, auras, prana, homeopathy, MMS, ‘energy methods’, ‘Moon healing’, Venkatesh, etc.; the one who claims to treat dogs and other animals with such guff. In fact, it seems any wackiness is welcome on asteroid ‘Yoda’.

We’ve sparred on Twitter a few times. But the outcome of our latest protracted spat is that ‘Yoda’ has exercised the option to block me, and so prevent further exchange. Which is fine, has the right to do so, blah, blah… However, if you’re going to block someone, but then continue publicly bad-mouthing from behind the security of your blockwall – and, moreover, resort to making accompanying derogatory statements on your blog – you might expect further justified reaction.

Recently, ‘Yoda’, with characteristic childish glee, endorsed somebody else’s tweet advocating imbibing baking soda solution in order to ‘alkalise the body’: Querying engendered responses from ‘Yoda’ in usual manner: with smiles and ticks and winks and attempts to be funny. Because ‘Yoda’ is happy, and civil, and nice, and purports to be everybody’s friend…

Sorry, no! It’s not that ‘Yoda’ is (in my opinion) just another irresponsible quack. No point in trying to reach such types: they’re lost; too far gone. It’s that ‘Yoda’ (like many others) uses and abuses social media platforms such as Twitter to disseminate misleading information. When pushed on her endorsement of the questionable ‘alkalising the body’ notion, ‘Yoda’ proffered as ‘evidence’ a document from a ‘Live Blood Analysis’ website, which appeals to Béchamp’s long-busted hypothesis, and states that cancer is ‘fermenting mold and fungus’; and followed it up with an article by Robert O. Young, a notorious quack who has been convicted of practicing medicine without a license and (according to the latest I’ve read) is awaiting retrial on other charges. Reasons for dismissing such ropey material are rejected, along with any provided counter-sources, with pledges to adhere to it even more fervently; coupled with the insinuation that you – the challenging sceptic – must surely have failed to read it, because otherwise you could not fail to be converted. Because, you know, the science and blinkered scientists confirming it as rubbish are, you know, rubbish. So fervid is ‘Yoda’’s belief that ‘Yoda’ is right. When cornered, ‘Yoda’ resorts to shifting goalposts, disingenuously misappropriating and twisting counter-statements, in attempt to deflect from the fact that ‘Yoda’ cannot justify statement to the effect that baking soda ‘alkalises the body’ – and why it is necessary to ‘alkalise the body.’

Because it doesn’t, and it isn’t.

Nevermind that ‘Yoda’ comes across like an acolyte of Brian Clement’s wheatgrass farm. Nevermind that ‘Yoda’ ignored repeated request to explain an apparent playing of the Shill Card (‘further fund self-y’). After things became tetchy, ‘Yoda’ retreated chuntering behind a blockwall, over which has been hurled the occasional publicly visible barb.

In four contiguous tweets, ‘Yoda’ rants:

‘I’ve considered long & hard how to respond to narc scep rudeness in a language they understand. 1.they admire women who swear at them, / / 2. they love woo blocks & 3. despise patience, good humour & communication (bc they can’t understand?). Clearly I’m not translating well./ /So, “mofo sceps, r autorickshaws have a “give respect & take respect” sign for lowbrow jerks like u. Chat on those lines or fuck urselves.” I hope that message loses nothing in the translation into a scepbrain. I wonder if it would reach deeper if I added cunt fuckalls in there?’ [sic]

1. Say what?! Nowhere during the exchange was anybody’s gender mentioned.
2. Not sure what a ‘woo block’ is, unless it means being blocked by a perpetrator of ‘woo’, as in quackery. Love them? On the contrary.
3. ‘Yoda’ has this way of thinking she’s funny and believing that her approach to serious subject matter should serve to pacify those who object to her twaddle; she attempts, with her smiles and her winks, to have you like her; and if you don’t find her amusing or refuse to engage in her style, then you’re ‘grumpy’. Well, I’m afraid I don’t find somebody publicly advocating ‘alkalising the body’ for health reasons very funny. (Much like I don’t find ‘Live Blood Analysis’ misinformation, or quacks like Robert O. Young funny. Rather, I find them despicable and contemptible.) She wouldn’t say why she claims this is necessary. Cancer? I can’t say for certain, but I’d guess this is where she is trying to steer us. Certainly, ‘Yoda’ has previously recommended homeopathy along such lines:

Thereafter, I’m not sure what it is she’s getting at. But as a sceptic with whom she’s very recently crossed pens, I take it she is pissed at me. Charming. Excuse me, ‘Yoda’, but you do not get to dictate the ‘lines’ of the argument. Rather, when you proceed to (fail to) argue in your disingenuous, deflecting, dishonest way, then don’t complain if you irk.

(Concurrently,) ‘Yoda’ has been firing off disparaging blog vignettes. Evil (male) sceptics, those ‘self-involved, narcissist bloodsuckers’ certainly get her goat, she previously having labelled them in accordance with Godwin’s Law, and for whom she recommends a vegan dietary change in order to ‘reduce their cancerous tendencies to suckle on random prana sources.’ But here she declares, ‘I’ve also lost all interest in healing sceps.’ Oh? Presumptive, arrogant ‘Yoda’ has deemed scepticism a disease, with sceptics in need of her healing skills?

But no more. Rather (though she’s still babbling on to others on Twitter that ‘sceps’ are recalcitrant to healing ‘energy meds’), ‘Yoda’ has taken a break from the animals she purports to heal, and turned her healing on herself. Auto-Reiki revealing that her ‘forehead chakra’ has become ‘small and slow’. Well…

I’ve been interested by an article about the excellent Hilary Mantel’s essay in the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine. Mantel warns writers, ‘if you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.’ ‘Yoda’’s default is anti-medical-science; she hypocritically appeals to and/or cites any pseudoscientific material according with her biases and beliefs and practices, with Dunning–Kruger lambasting of the ‘scepbrain’ for being unreceptive to, or incapable of assimilating it. (She is still flagging up those ‘Live Blood Analysis’ and Robert O. Young documents.) But when pressed to stay on topic and substantiate – and her foolishness exposed – the disingenuity surfaces and the charm façade cracks.

Forehead chakra? I think ‘Yoda’’s more pressing concern is her frontal lobe.