Tag Archives: news

Savouring a spree

On the face of it, 2016 is a great year to be peddling hate.

Ostensibly, the page you’re staring at now like a cow looking over a fence is intended to allow people to vent their spleen at everything from falafel to football via fatwas. Its purpose as I conceived it was to allow people to laugh or rage at life’s many stupidities. People hate a lot of things and there’s unlikely to be a giant jay cloth of joy passed among all 7.4 billion of us to wipe that all away any time soon. Might as well try to make light of it, accept the futility and anticipate the next disaster with a shrug, a pint and another pint.

This year above all should be a great year to write silly rants about what you loveable humans have been doing to each other. And yet here we stand, halfway through what seems to be the beginning of the end, and what I’d foolishly come to believe was my heightened ability to chuckle at even the most heinous event is cracking under the pressure. Civilisation is going stunningly wrong, and I can think of barely a goddamn thing to say about it.

Continue reading Savouring a spree

A toxic mix of desires

I recently screwed my face up reading Van Badham’s article on the sexual violation of Jennifer Lawrence, and female celebrity nude photos in general. The quote that caused this face scrunch was the following:

“[To look at these pictures (no context applied)] is an act of sexual violation, and it deserves the same social and legal punishment as meted out to stalkers and other sexual predators.”

As someone who is aware of the daily abuses and institutionalised sexism that is subjected towards my earthly sisters, part of me wants to agree that it is indeed a sexual violation to view female nude material you have no consent to. After all, it is immoral, a clear violation of privacy and pertaining to nude (and therefore in this case, sexual) material but I still can’t help but feel a niggling itch that it’s an over-exaggeration of terminology.

Sexual violation usually refers to assault of some kind, or other sexual deviations such as voyeurism. The act of looking at the photos, however, doesn’t require that same level of dedication to one’s own perverse sexual self-gratification as being a voyeur in someone’s bushes. Irrelevant misogynistic last-minute resistance I hear you cry. I’m afraid I don’t mind girls and that, it is actually an argument for reason but I’ll come to it later.

Allow me to break this down using ‘star’ as a substitute for any famous person involved.

The creation of the photos were star’s choice and therefore cannot be compared with child pornography, which Van Badham did, in a rebuttal to criticism of her article.

The automatic cloud storage of the photos were perhaps unfamiliar to star. It’s either a lack of understanding of the technology or star knew and trusted in the cloud security but either way, it’s irrelevant to the crime. No ‘she shouldn’t have been so stupid’ victim blaming from me.

They were copied from the original file, not taken. It doesn’t matter, it’s still theft BUT we are talking about data. Analogies about personal property being stolen such as someone’s TV are not relatable. And by the same token data theft that is beneficial to the public is not relatable, like Snowden’s revelations.

The distribution or supply of stolen data to the public is highly immoral and an abuse of privacy. If it isn’t already, it should be illegal.

Now, with that cleared up. Let’s get on to the wankers.

One thing that was missing in Van’s article was the MO behind the ‘criminals’ she would have locked up for taking a peek, the reason why someone would think it’s OK to look at the photos against JL’s will. Van ignores the psychological and more importantly sociological conditioning of men who view women as objects, and for people in general to sensationalise celebrity.

These two things when put together give a toxic mix of desires that on the surface is disgustingly intrusive and underneath embarrassingly immature. While I agree it’s deplorable to take a look, it does not require the same compulsion you see in sexual predators. Men (or women) who have speciality sexual tastes that they keep within the confines of their privacy (where in the creation of said materials no law has been broken) are not and should not be covered by the same legal prosecution as those who opt to take it outside of their bedroom. Viewing these photos is inconsequential to the direct abuse of JL et al as, although a case may be argued for the popularity and ad revenue of the sites that gets raised as a result, the harm was done when the pics were put into the public domain.

Because of this men who view these photos need a good slap and awakening about the world they live in, but to be sent down?

There is I fear an opportunistic aura around Van’s article.

Her attack on a ‘crime’ she knows to be predominantly committed by males seems a great way to highlight the constant abuses men subject on women through their wicked evil ways, and take an underhand jab at them. The link she included to the site of the photos themselves in a way seems like a smug taunt, a dare to click. And advocating further invasions of privacy to track down those who have invaded someone else’s privacy.

It reeks of hyper-feminist, yellow journalism. The 2D, black and white, right and wrong argument in a 3D, colour world of variables.

Oh and just to be clear Ms. Badham, I didn’t give a toss about any of these photos until your article. So if I get done for viewing them for context in this kind of debate, I’m fucking taking you down too for persuading me.

Showering with your socks on

Guess which national paper’s website I was reading from these headlines:

· Black man can’t pronounce Worcester.
· Mother has huge tits; take a look.
· Jedward nearly drown.
· Troubled star moans about being rich while in rehab.
· Kanye West is still a ‘GENIUS’.
· Clarkson: fat.

Of course it’s the Daily Mail. Well done to those who got it right, and for those who said The Sun or The Mirror, you win too, because all their news is the fucking same.

Even the BBC jumped on the pricktard band wagon with this little gem about Mohammed Abu Khdair. “Mohammed, pictured here taking a selfie, was a sixteen year old boy (reflective pause) with a fashionable haircut.”

Granted the Beeb don’t like talking about uncomfortable issues but Jesus, give us some credit. We don’t need a trail of delicious breadcrumbs to keep our interest in stories.

If it wasn’t for Lee Camp’s Redacted Tonight on RT (Which you all should watch to prevent your brain rotting with stupidity) I may have already thrust my skull through the glass of the BBC front door and yelled “This pane is broken in case you hadn’t noticed” just to let them know what their ‘news’ broadcasts feel like to me.

Not all news is bad I suppose, there are some facts in amongst the bullshit. Some of those facts are even relevant. So maybe I should look at these specific stories I saw on the Daily Fail’s website.

I’m sure fashion is amazing. All those different fabrics and colours are like sooo in right now or not but the sheer amount of semi-celebrities caught stepping out of a petrol station toilet, larking about on a beach, rubbing themselves against a tree or throwing a pet down the lens is exhausting. The paparazzi must be like an army of ADHD-riddled snap addicts. A lovely dress that has an inbuilt coffee machine or a pair of sunglasses that can see through clothes sounds like great fashion news; Mrs Steven Gerrard’s post-meal pre-fag sarong and flip-flop combo does not.

The Mail generally hates ‘foreigners’ and non-whites but mocking the Labour MP Chukka Ummuna over his pronunciation of the word Worcester is the equivalent of mocking a Mail columnist over their pronunciation of the name Chukka Ummuna. They may as well have screamed the headline “MAN MAKES MISTAKE: NO HARM DONE”.

Some bird has obtained size HH breasts. This is basically just a subtle nod back to the days of the freak show. Add in a bit about her being a mother to have people hate her: story done.

Shia Lebouf got famous and drank a lot. Robin Thicke made a song about forcing his aging genitalia into teenage models and when his wife left he cried and made a song about that. Kanye’s mad and Clarkson’s fat. Am I the only one seeing this?

I didn’t cover Jedward nearly drowning as that’s the only bit of news I thought was worthwhile.

You shouldn’t read newspapers, listen to the radio or watch TV for anything. Sit in your house in darkness and put your tinfoil hat on, and your mild addiction to eating mayonnaise out of a Metallica cap and showering with your socks on may just hit the headlines. You’d love that five minutes of fame, wouldn’t you? You make me sick.