Buzzfeed apologises for endless stream of shallow, un-lifechanging garbage

Citing the endless stream of failed attempts to “blow your mind”, “change your life”, “make you weep” and other such hyperbolic click-baitery, the chief editor and long-time writer at viral media website and “content aggregator” Buzzfeed has this morning issued a long and heartfelt apology to the internet, people who originally made the content they so brazenly “aggregate”, and the world in general.

“We just want to say we’re so damn sorry,” said editor Plaie Gerize. “Looking back at our long and ugly history of hyperbole, exaggeration and outright lies, we want to wholeheartedly apologise.”

Gerize’s list of apologies was long.

“We’re sorry. We know that Picture Number 8 didn’t blow your mind. We know Number 6 wasn’t perfect, as we said it would be in countless articles,” he said, permanently deleting the entire website in a show of ultimate contrition and sorrow. “Those fabulous snaps of Jennifer Lawrence didn’t prove that she was perfection, and that series of photos that was supposed to restore your faith in humanity was completely inadequate. We're scum. We're cancer. And we’re sorry. We can’t say that enough.”

Pictured: the new Buzzfeed website, with all relevant changes.

His apology extended to all the content that the Buzzfeed team as a whole –regardless of country or origin or format – had produced.

“Even our videos. When they weren’t silly or ham-fistedly trying to send an self-evident life-lesson, they were just totally trivial. Also, time and time again we totally blew down the importance of individual people’s hard work and passion by never using their name and just reducing them to their sex, nationality or even just ‘someone’. We should have given them due respect, even if it is hard to get a click out of you by using someone’s full name.”

He continued.

“We’re also sorry for having outright stolen content from many sites. Sorry, ‘aggregated’. Or maybe ‘curated’? I dunno, which word are we using these days?”

“Furthermore, we’re sorry about contradicting articles that provide you with reasons why each member of your favourite boyband or series is the best one. Like those twenty articles which individually claimed why different members of Friends or One Direction or The Backstreet Boy or whatever were by far the best. I mean, how did we not see how black our souls were, posting these kinds of articles at the same time and having each written by the same author? How could we have been so spineless as to not have an editorial stance on anything?”

“Finally, we’re sorry for using social issues and controversial topics to squeeze a few cheap clicks out of you. Like videos where we show people giving homeless people a pizza or a hundred dollars in a video that probably makes eighteen times that, or with serious issues that don’t deserve to be trivialised in shallow, bullet-point, GIF-heavy listicles.”

Having realised their errors, editors and writers at the website have since vowed to take courses in ethics and journalistic values, and have furthermore vowed to never oversimplify an argument or concept by using cat pictures or images cut from popular culture.

“We realise now that our insatiable hunger to just get that click out of you, to bleed you and other readers for pageviews and time, made us blind,” he said in a long, profound, ten-chapter essay that didn’t contain one picture or numerical bulletpoint. “It turned us into monsters, veritable scum-sucking bottom feeders who lurked on Reddit and subReddit forums and Tumblr pages, copy-pasting and rehashing and resharing old and boring content because we knew that, hell, you’d click whatever old shit we regurgitate.”

The move has been met by widespread praise.

"Their apology was amazing, incredibly. It literally blew my mind and changed my life," said one internet user. "In fact, if there was a list of 10 apologies published on the internet somewhere, this would probably be at number 4."

Those wanting to know more about this story can read this exact same article on The Huffington Post, Upworthy and Elitedaily.

Ubisoft announce upcoming release of “actually finished, playable” game

Ubisoft is taking a massive U-turn from their established business model, after this morning’s announcement that they’ll be making a game that actually works when you put it in your computer or console.

“We know our customers are just used to a certain ethos and experience when they see our swirling logo,” said CEO for the company, “but I think it’s about time we acknowledged the world’s clamouring for change.”

As such, Ubisoft has announced that they cancelling their original plans for their next release This is Literally Just a Corn-flecked Shit We Took In A Game Case, and are now in the process of developing an original IP that isn’t Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry and will actually work and not have hundreds of dollars of microtransactions embedded into the core gameplay.

Ubisoft's most recent release has been scrapped in
favour "of something actually worth buying"

“We know we’ve become the villians,” admitted the French publishing giant in a lengthy statement. “We’re a bunch of fucking cynical money-hungry pieces of shit who aren’t content with just some of the money but who have to ravage our customers’ wallets for every last dime like rapacious, dollar-devouring vultures by putting a price tag on what is actually content that should really just be in the original game or unlocked to reward normal game progression. We’re a bunch of soulless stains on humanity with our desire to control and stifle our trusting and naïve loyal customers by abusing the system of review embargoes. Some might even say we’re a collective of detestable, low-life, scum-eating bastards because we don’t even release a game that works without extensive patches and updates, or that we're even cowardly, irresponsible and abusive rectal worms because we still refuse to have a working returns policy that compliments legislation aimed at protecting customers from harmful business practices or inferior products. It’s about time we change this.”

Ubisoft now say this massive shift in organisational ethos is the product of long periods of existential introspection and meditation.

“Remember our last over-bloated, super-hyped piece-of-shit that didn’t deliver on its promises? No, not Unity, we’re talking about the other one, Watch_Dogs. We’ve learnt our lesson. You can’t just take disparate and singular elements and hype them into a ground-breaking gamechanger only to have it all too apparent that said element is just a shallow and unimaginative context-specific gimmick to peddle more copies.”

Ubisoft also apologised for their other flaws.

“We spend millions of dollars on breath-taking graphics and realistic settings which no one can appreciate because the framerate and resolution is locked or limited or sinks to levels seen only in the biopic penny arcades in the early 1900s,” they said. “It’s about time we stopped making the same game again and again – you know, even peppering our new IPs with done and cliché elements like towers you have to visit to unlock portions of the game or map? – and ceased this brainless obsession with graphics and ‘an immersive, cinematic experience’ and just made a simple, awesome game with great mechanics and moving storytelling. Did you even understand what the hell is going on in our last game? DNA, memories, something something, Templars, New World Order? Who even knows, bro?”

This is not the first time Ubisoft has teken a responsible decision – earlier this year they announced they didn’t want to “oppress and insult women by putting them in a game as shit as Unity.”

“Woman have it bad enough,” said an executive at the controversial press conference, “why would we want to degrade the further by including them as playable characters in an inexcusable piece of shit like this?”

However, the company was shrewd about details for the upcoming game.

“Why do you even care what kind of game it is?” the said. “I mean, you’re going to buy it anyway.”

The game, which has already scored a perfect 10/10 from IGN, will go on sale for $60 in Q4 of 2015.

Note: at the time of going to press, God had not responded to prayers that The Division be good, please, just be good.

Pic (my edit) from AJC1

Man leaves insightful comment on News24, apologises, crashes internet

pic: atom.smasher.org

A man left almost 4 billion people without an internet connection after he left an insightful, non-racist, non-sexist, non-inflammatory post on the News24 comments section.

The post, which was based on real, peer-reviewed, well-published and trusted studies and called for a move away from fragmentary knee-jerk hateful responses to the articles, was left at about 4:14pm yesterday, said Internet Specialist and Network Analyst Maus Kliken.

"As soon as he clicked 'Enter' and posted the comment, the Internet went under incredible strain, trying to figure out why there was someone constructive and non-racist on this particular page," said Kliken.

According to Kliken, roughly 14 racist and hateful replies later, the man posted an apology.

"Never, in the history of the internet, has anyone publicly apologised and accepted fault on their own part for their posts," said Kliken."The Internet just didn't know what to do. Hell, it didn't even have an error message for this kind of problem."

This is not the first time the internet has been brought to its knees by an internet user, and once again, the Rhodes Student Representative Council is finding itself having to prepare real-life replacements of social media sites in order to prevent riots and violence.

Social Psychologists and Online Persona Theorists are baffled as to why the man would do such a thing.

"The Internet is a battlefield that eats considerate, kind people up  for breakfast," said Social Psychologist Dr Qwak Sharlottan. "Why anyone would go on the internet and willingly destroy one of its key pillars is just bizarre. We can only assume that the man is an uttter Internet Sociopath. He probably doesn't even LOL, and doesn't find Bacon or pictures of kittens in little bibs all that appealing. The sick fuck."

However, some specialists have other theories.

"We think we know who the man is, after sifting through the debris of the internet, and we checked out his online presence. According to his facebook and twitter profiles, he only has 8 friends and started serious online activity last week. He just didn't know what he was doing," said Internet behaviourist John Angers. "How was he supposed to know online comments etiquette without the necessary lived experience?" 

Artist's rendition of a typical day on the internet.
Pic: Flickr, Matisse_Enzer

 

Angers went on to suggest that some sort of sandbox unconnected internet should be created to prevent these kinds of issues.

"We need people a space to practice small-minded bigotry without endangering other 'net users," he said.

Meanwhile, Internet specialists have called on a huge global network of trolls to restore the Internet to its former balance.

"Right now, a highly-trained team of crack keyboard professionals are calling each other 'mindless fucktards' and 'dum niggars ruining ths gr8 county'," said Lieutenant John Web of the Internet Restoration Committee. "The internet should be back to normal within days."

SRC confesses guilt, apologises

Following extended controversy and student outcry on innumerable topics of debate, the Rhodes University Student Representative Council (SRC) has admitted that everything is their fault, and have promised to be better in future.

In a press release this morning, SRC President Worstpun Sumbahdi expressed the Council’s regret.

“When I logged on to the SRC facebook page this weekend and saw people asking me what was to be done about the sleeping security guards, the terrible weather, the broken roads, and everything thing else that makes the world a harsh, brutal place to live in, I knew we had screwed up big time,” he said.

Many other Councillors added their heartfelt apologies to the document.

“I know I should have stopped the rain and saved the roads,” said Weather Control Councillor Carey Stopfluds. “In future, I’ll do my best to stop these acts of god.”

However, Sumbahdi added that they were in the process of working out exactly whose fault each individual problem was.

“We’re launching an internal investigation. So far, our crack team has determined that I’m to blame for the dropping rand, while Tom Changemore, our Activism and Transformation Councillor, was behind the Marikana massacre, the rising petrol prices, and the shortage of food at Pick ‘n Pay,” he said, adding that these were just the preliminary findings. “We’re still trying to find out who was responsible for the power cuts and horrible Grahamstown water.”

When pushed for comment about what the SRC was going to do about all the recent dramatic occurrences at Rhodes and across the Eastern Cape, the President was clear.
“Purple Thursday,” he replied, “ ’nuff said”.

The SRC has since taken drastic action to ensure that this travesty never happens again.

“We’ve hired a team of crack bones-throwers and sangomas to make certain that our students never have to suffer again,” said SRC Media Liaison, Rick O’fay. “We’re also looking into getting some crystal balls, or perhaps creating a SRC Prophetic Clairvoyance Councillor portfolio.”

Students have met this apology with contentment.

“At first I wasn’t sure whose fault it was that my car didn’t start this morning, but now I’m glad to know that it was those guys. Now we can all move forward,” said third-year Finances student John Whinemore.

Other students have stressed similar thoughts.

“We can just forgive and forget,” said first-year Constance Bichin, “at least until the next time a security guard sleeps outside the library.”