#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

How Far is Too Far?

As far as we at DMR towers are concerned no subject is too taboo to make jokes about, but context is everything. We have no problem with rape jokes, with jokes about murder, or incest, or child abuse – but there’s got to be a reason for them. We’ve done dozens of Reeva Steenkamp jokes over the past fortnight but absolutely none of them were at the expense of the victim. With satire especially, you have to always be on the side of humanity.

The Onion’s ‘Quvenzhané Wallis seems kind of a cunt’ tweet is a great example. Conceptually I think it absolutely stands up as a valid joke – it’s clearly ironic, and clearly poking fun at a desensitised social media universe where there will always be someone who legitimately thinks that. It simply taking the extreme opposite standpoint of a general consensus.

What it is lacking, though, is an awareness of the wider world. Primarily, that you’re talking about a 9 year old girl – and to do that you really really have to be making a bigger point. Social media is a very reactionary format and they should have been savvy enough to know the life-beyond-the-instant that sort of statement would have.

That girl will now forever be associated with ‘cunt’. Many many years down the line, when she has lead a full life, filled with achievements and success, that word will still be there. It will feature in an obituary one day, and that’s the real criticism here. It’s not an issue of humour, but an issue of editing. It’s not that it shouldn’t have been written, it’s that it shouldn’t have been sent.

To give The Onion their credit, though, I thought their apology was very well considered.

Last week, when the Daily Mail was gleefully reporting on the issue of ‘white flight’ from London I wrote a tweet which is still sat in my drafts folder, It said:

CENSUS: Pakis, immigrants and muzzies drive white population from London. And if you complain they’ll call you racist!”

It’s meant to be repugnant. It’s meant to be horrible to read. We’ve written before about how satire should come from a place of anger, and that tweet absolutely was. The article, and the comments below it, carried the same levels of racism, hate, fear and lies as contained in those offensive terms, and I was just cutting through the bullshit.

The Daily Mail feeds on that kind of attitude. It is a fundamentally racist publication; purposely creating division among races (and, to give them their credit, economic class, gender, sexuality and any other classification of person you wish to name). The overriding theme is of an (indigenous) white population under siege from an invading army of foreigners typified, at least by their pictures editor, by women in burkas flicking the V.

The comments sections is overflowing with carefully moderated insinuation. There’s no space for considered thought, or debate, or rationality. It’s a free-for-all gripefest about how, well, the pakis, immigrants and muzzies are ruining everything. For example, a recent article about a primary school where all the children speak English as a second language improving it’s OFSTED report was met with the following top rated responses:

 

The important thing here isn’t that the comments were made, it’s that they were approved by the paper and approved of by its readers. These are opinions constructed from a promoted worldview of suspicion and propaganda because, above all else, it brings in the bucks.

I didn’t publish that census tweet in the end, not because it wasn’t valid but because I just didn’t really want our followers to have those words appear in their timelines. People wouldn’t have retweeted it, and if in some bizarre way the tweet had become widely popular it would almost certainly have lost it’s ironic context pretty quickly.

There’s another joke that I’ve sat on for over a year now about the Taxpayers Alliance. I’m fairly sure it’s ok, it’s just really… vulgar… and while there is a larger point behind it, I’m not sure that’ll come through enough and all it’ll be noted for is the vulgarity.

I will say this, though: Daily Mail readers seem kind of like cunts.

 

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.