Back in the days when newsgroups were the centre of the internet world, there used to be – probably still is – a person called a ‘troll’. These people indulged in what we Britons call ‘a wind-up’. Deliberately trying to provoke a hostile reaction by posting something they know will be contentious, for example, posting disparaging things about religion in a religious group. Some groups, I seem to remember uk.misc was one, used to have actual ‘trolling contests’ where they would look for other groups to wind-up in this way.
As I’ve said previously, the various comment facilities introduced on some MSM sites are beginning to resemble these trolling contests with things seemingly designed to provoke reaction and counter-reaction. I suppose it is good business strategy. I don’t like playing games like that, so I decided to stop.
However, as those of us who have done things like give up smoking know, it is often quite difficult to give up completely first time. So, here I confess, and demonstrate, that I have had a slight relapse. Sorry.
Well, so what? A stupid person says something stupid. Why the big deal? If it wasn’t for all the ‘me-toos’ rushing to condemn him, I wouldn’t have even heard of this bit of nonsense. The same goes for the BNP bloke recorded by the BBC, if they hadn’t recorded it only the other handful of idiots in his audience would have heard him making an idiot of himself.
If stupid people think that something stupid said by another stupid person makes some kind of stupid sense then it is their stupid fault for being stupid enough to take it seriously. The rest of us should just shrug our shoulders, tut, and be thankful there is now one less person whose opinions we need to pay any attention to.
An exit strategy? Well, it so happens I have an early draft of Bush and Blair’s final message to the leaders of Iraq
‘Well, we came in and did what many – if not most – of you claimed to want. We got rid of Saddam, and we offered you democracy. Instead, you opted for anarchy, chaos, self-slaughter and endless massacres. YOU created this mess, rather than joining with us to build a better country. You chose to piss all over our chips instead of working with us to build a better future for you. Furthermore, like, seemingly, everyone else in this region you look to blame us for the mess YOU have made of it. Well, quite simply, we’ve had enough. So, fuck you… we’re off. Bye.’
Well, I think we can take the absence of comments as some sort of justification of your thesis. C4’s problem is that people can – if they want such stuff – get real porn elsewhere so easily these days, rather than having to sit through the ‘educational’ or ‘human interest’ stuff (A bit like teenagers flicking through National Geographic in earlier decades looking for photos of naked tribespeople).
However, the bit in your article that brought me up short was another iteration of the seemingly common current meme that ‘American TV is good’. In earlier days, it was taken for granted that American TV was, at best just cheap filler used by the TV channels to fill gaps in the schedules. A common complaint of the time was that there was ‘Too much American pap’ alongside the perennial ‘too many repeats’. Apart from early Simpsons, very early South Park
Judging by the dire offerings from the British channels of late: Spooks, Torchwood, Mrs Pritchard lumber to mind, the only possible reason why American TV can be regarded as having any worth is in comparison to British TV’s dire attempt to emulate the bland slickness of the American offerings in order to win some international sales. The Americans do it better, but it would be better not done at all.
I hoped that will be the end of this debilitating addiction to shooting my mouth off in public forums. However, there is a strange parallel universe where the MSM folks seem to live, especially the columnists. ‘Mad’ Bunting is an obvious example of one who seems to live in a world of her own creation, oblivious to the reality around her. For example, they seem to have either created, or bought into, this current notion promulgated by the government that bringing up children is somehow an arcane and difficult practice that can only be undertaken by a special, highly-gifted illuminati:
From personal experience what every family with a first young child needs is a grandmother with plenty of common sense. The lessons learnt there should be enough to enable them to cope with any subsequent child.
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Anyway, there is good news. It seems that the mobile ringtone market is collapsing. Unfortunately, it is technological progress in the ability to create one’s own tones that is causing the collapse, rather than any outbreak of good taste causing people to give up the annoying warbles for good. The only good ringtone I have ever heard, on some TV programme or other, is one emulating the ring of one of those every early big black bakelite phones from around the mid 20th century. If I could ever be arsed to bother changing my mobile’s ringtone, I’d go for that one.
It is often said that Western society has lost faith in its post-Enlightenment ideals; things such as this ought to reignite that faith, and the belief that it is something the rest of the world ought to be entitled to too.
Ever since House of Cards I have quite enjoyed Michael Dobbs’ novels. Although he is sometimes as clumsy a writer as most other thriller writers can occasionally be, I always seem to enjoy his books. Now he has a new one where: “Ginny takes her revenge on her two-timing husband by vowing to make him Prime Minister." I look forward to it.
I am white, I come from the working class… and yet. While there are some things here I can recognise there are other implications that I’m not so sure about. While I have no time for snobbery (while at the same time being an unapologetic elitist), I find inverted snobbery just as bad. I think we should, if not sneer at, then strongly criticise the ‘idleness, vulgarity, xenophobia and ignorance of so-called "chavs" or "white trash".’
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