#banbenefits

What I thought would happen was that it would become a mixture of those who got the satire and those that didn’t – I thought we’d have some kind of meta-Poe’s Law hashtag burst for a while and we’d all learn a lesson about how ridiculous the attacks on benefit claimants really are.

What actually happened was that virtually everyone got the joke immediately, and then promptly ran with it in a way that was far funnier, far more honest and far more sincere than I ever expected.

It actually became rather beautiful, with people sharing their stories and experiences of being on benefits with a sense of humour and self-awareness that could never be found behind a thousand closed doors in Westminster.

It also solidified for me the sensation that the public aren’t blind to the divide and conquer tactics of the government, nor the endless negative propaganda being peddled by the papers. When the BBC starts going down the line of asking if Mick Philpott is representational of JSA claimants you know we’re in trouble, but the public seem well aware of how bullshitty this all really is. I think everyone did good today.

These are my pick of the tweets –> #banbenefits

A Note on Being Hacked

No, we weren’t hacked. It was a joke, what with Twitter being in news over being hacked and all. Thanks to everyone who joined in, willingly or unwillingly. It was a lot of fun.

The roots of this idea came from another parody account I set up a while ago that never really went anywhere, mainly because I didn’t have the time to pay attention to it and only a few tweets in it had already begun to feel repetitive.

That account was @protestm0vement and was a direct reaction to @protestmovement who tweet the most backward, illogical, moronic, counter-productive stabs at protest I’ve ever seen. These are the sort of people whose singular inability to grasp any of the central issues they tweet about actually harm their argument.

Thus when Twitter was hacked it seemed a perfect time to go back to that idea, but with a much larger audience.

There is another point though, which has been a theme of ours for a while – never ever trust anything you read on Twitter. We love our followers very dearly and are genuinely thankful for the attention they give us, but I’m kind of amazed that as many people believed it as they did.

How can we legitimately combat the misinformation and underhanded techniques of the real Daily Mail if something as obviously fake as our ‘hack’ is taken at face value? We all do it, we all read tweets that seem to justify our pre-existing opinion and we take those tweets as fact – but the truth is that unless there is a link to a verified and legitimate source then it shouldn’t be trusted.

We weren’t out to make fools of anybody and we’re not trolling for more followers – we’re just trying to find new ways to keep the account fresh, and poke fun at some other targets in the process. If you did fall for it, though, don’t feel bad. Yesterday we tweeted

GAY MARRIAGE: Conservatives insist “it’s Adam and Eve, not an all-you-can-eat cock buffet.”

…and someone still thought it was real.

 

Trolling the Daily Mail

Sometimes, during the course of our day writing jokes, we’re required to visit the Daily Mail website or use their app. Sometimes, we leave comments. We’re not saying it’s big, we’re not saying it’s clever, we’re not even saying it’s funny… but here are some of them:

I’d love to be able to say there’s some kind of conclusion that can be reached from these, but I’m not sure there is. DM readers are, in many cases, quite savvy and they can spot deliberate attempts to mock or offend with ease. Much of it depends on context, and often our deliberate attempts to wind people up are ignored in favour of far worse (and, one assumes, far more serious) comments.

Truth be told – there’s very little that we can write that wouldn’t be spotted by a moderator that isn’t already present somewhere else on the site. It’s like going to a KKK rally and trying to be more racist than those present. It just doesn’t work.

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In other news, we’re taking a break for a little while. There’s only so long you can stare into the abyss before you realise the abyss is staring back at you, and choking every last semblance of dignity and compassion from your soul. Which, when you think about it, explains Peter Hitchens perfectly.

We’ll be back soon enough.

The DMReporters

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