That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘daily mail’

The Press Complaints Commission (whose Code of Practice Committee is headed by Paul Dacre), has kindly decided not to censure Jan Moir for her article in the Daily Mail (whose editor is, erm, whassisname? Paul something?).

Which is nice.

Full commentary, by the way, at the excellent Tabloid Watch.

A little birdie told me recently that a large bank in the city is due to announce another record quarter of profits, and with that another round of record bonuses will follow. The Daily Heil will no doubt bleat on about fat cats and that sort of thing but here’s why they should just sit quietly in the corner with a large box of shutthefuckup.

In the first quarter of this year the bank in question made £1.2bn profits and set aside half of that for bonus payments. It’s fair to assume that as my source described both the profits and the bonus this quarter as record breaking it will be in excess of that figure. The bonus pool for the year is rumoured to be as much as £14bn.

And around five and a half billion of that is going straight to the treasury.

That’s a lot of schools and hospitals.

Or it’s payback of about 3% of the national debt that Gordon has kindly run up for us.

Stephen Glover is clearly harbouring paedophile tendencies. He’s brim full of moral outrage at the idea of displaying a picture of a naked ten year old Brooke Shields in an art gallery, perhaps because he feels he could not look at it without some sort of sexual arousal. In an effort to explain to middle england how terrible it he they have illustrated the article with this picture which was taken when Brooke was in Blue Lagoon.

Oh, wait, wasn’t that movie filmed in 1980? Wasn’t Brooke born in 1965?

Oh, yes, she’s not nude so that’s OK. Paedos can only fap off to stuff if there’s *actual* nudity?

We at TFS always like to hear the opposite side of the story from ours. We love to read other people’s opinions and well thought out ripostes.

But what we love even more than that are stupid people. People who have mastered the art of the hysterical keyboard mash, and who invariably fall into one of two categories:

1. Those who use the words “100%” in their posts, despite being an uneducated mouth-breather who will spout any form of quasi-reasonable sounding drivel as long as it comes from someone similarly white, middle class and boundlessly stupid. Daily Heil types, you know who they are.

2. Those who assume ironic, pseudo-pretentious poses and are utterly, utterly convinced that this impresses people with how clever he is, when in fact we openly attempt to bait him so that he will carry on churning out his own auto-back-patting postings with the aid of a thesaurus and a jar of Ribena.

We shall call them Trolls.

The Troll is a curious beast. It may lurk around in dark corners of the internet, avoiding sunlight, showers and nutritional food, and only delurking when suitably riled. These types are blessedly easy targets – it’s kind of like waving a steak at a pissed-off pitbull. You just know it’s gonna bite and bark and jump about like its arse is on fire, yet you do it anyway, don’t you?

This type will snap at the first provocation and will undoubtedly believe that TIPING THIGNS IN CAPS MAEKS THEM TRUE, I KNOW 100% THIS IS FACT!!!1.

They are the intellectual equivalent of the Youtube commentor. They haven’t really got much past the evolutionary equivalent of the “OMFG U’R SO GHEY” argument. These people are impossible to reason with; would you reason with a dog that shits on your rug then looks at you, proud of the steaming pile of turd he has produced?  No. You slap it down and banish it back to the dark corner whence it came.

Typical Internet Troll

Such Trolls as fall into category 1. have a propensity to use percentages to demonstrate FACT(TM). A prime example would be “i may not be medically trained but i am not stupid…i am the mother of a boy with acquired autism and i know 100% it was the MMR which caused the autism”.

It’s important to emphasise that Trolls like this are immune to reason (despite being against vaccinations, ironically enough) and do not let a plethora of studies and scientific evidence sway them from the path of FACT(TM). They are the only person in the debate in possession of FACT(TM), despite being a hysterical keyboard-basher jumping on an already-dismissed panicwagon created from an unholy mix of conviction that the authorities are conspiring against them and plain old middle class TEH FEAR. Of what? Who knows; maybe daylight, or other people, or rational, reasoned dialogue (most likely).

Trolls like this can be relied upon to descend in to badly spelled CAPSLOK RIDDEN HISTERIA at any point, which is always a really, really good indicator of your intellectual credibility.

They genuinely, really and truly believe that they alone are the maverick free-thinker among the sheeple masses. This makes them ripe for a bit of delusional paranoia – a really good Troll won’t let something lie until they have demonstrated their conviction that some government agency somewhere is watching them / withholding vital evidence that will prove the Troll right beyond all doubt, and that the lack of evidence to support their paranoid delusion is “pretty CONVENEINT, eh???!1”

Whilst fun to play with, having a set-to with someone like this is the rough equivalent of bear-baiting. Sure, it’s fun to see them shuffling and grunting and flailing whilst you repeatedly poke them, but it gets old pretty quickly.

The fun starts when one of the other types of Troll shambles onto the scene. The ones that are just about intelligent enough to believe they’re a wit, when in fact they’re only half a one.*

Such types will often come across in their posts as making painful yet hilarious attempts to sound supercilious and aloof, usually through the misuse of sarcasm. Phrases such as “Yes, splendid idea! let’s all do what you say, because obviously you know better than anyone else!” feature quite heavily in the blatherings of this particular Troll variant. Note that this Troll has picked up on the fact that the CAPS LOCK SARCASM approach does not work, and instead treads dangerously close to irony through reckless use of the Italics command.

Tragically, both of our pets have dropped off the radar. No doubt Bulldog has retreated to his kennel; no doubt  FrMaRiRoLu is busy creating more tinfoil hats to tide her through the summer.

So, we’re hiring. We need another pet Troll at whom we can poke much fun, wind up and who preferably contains just enough intelligence to make what they mash out in a sweaty, hysterical frenzy the type of stuff that makes people want to point and mock and laugh.

Any takers?

*Thank you Terry Pratchett for that line; you are a flying spaghetti monster among men.