Derek Miller, the incoming president of the Illini Secular Student Alliance, gave a fascinating presentation at the 2012 Secular Student Alliance conference on perceptions of atheists in society and how to change them.

In short, we know atheists have a bad reputation and we know the Internet has been a blessing (you know what I mean) for atheists… but the Internet may be contributing to our bad reputation.

Derek explains how r/atheism, to name one example, actually hurts atheists. I defended that site earlier in the week, but what Derek says is worth listening to because it says a lot about how outsiders perceive us when we’re being dicks.

At the very least, watch the video from the 1:55 – 9:13 marks.