GIF-packed clickbait trumps One Direction listicle to cinch Pulitzer Prize

The literary world has been left speechless, stunned, blown away, and had their lives changed forever this morning, after a gif-heavy clickbait article about cats narrowly beat its closest competitor - a One Direction listicle outlining 15 reasons Harry is the Perfectest Member of 1D - to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literary Excellence.

The Award Selection committee – who conferred the prize to the article’s author, 23-year-old blogger James Ericson, a wordsmith matched only by Matt Stopera and Benny Johnson when it comes to literary genius – now says that it’s about time the world’s most prestigious literary award reflected the state of modern literature.

“The times are changing, and we believe the Pulitzer Prize should reflect that,” said Award Selection Committee member Ash Hitpost. “It’s about time this globally revered prize echoed our world’s deepest hopes, terrible sorrows, and inability to read anything more than 140 characters long.”

Hitpost holds fast that – much like the wide body of unconventional literature that has won a Pulitzer before this – modern works of art can be misunderstood.

“These so-called ‘cynical, demographically-targeted ad-revenue-hungry GIF-laden list articles with misleading titles’ get such a bad rap,” she explained. “But which Pulitzer Prize didn’t? Did society wholeheartedly accept Allen Drury’s works outlining the difficult world of politics and homosexuality in Advise and Consent? Was there not fervent outcry around the coprophilia of Thomas Pynchon's controversial Gravity's Rainbow?”

“Clickbait has the power to move us,” she continued. “Who could ever forget the first time they read ’27 times Friends was the most flawless show of all time’? How could anyone not cherish those early childhood memories of reading ’21 Pictures of Emma Watson that will blow you away and leave you breathless’? Who doesn’t hold close to their heart the first moment they shared ’12 facts about Harry Potter that will totally blow your mind’ - especially after you got to number 6, which totally left us stunned?”

“And the best part is, the authors didn’t have to live a drug-addled, depressed hand-to-mouth existence in a dead-end job buried deep inside the clutches of an oppressive and prejudiced society to craft these colossal artefacts of definitive importance,” she said. “Hell, writers today barely even have to look past the front page of Reddit to find the inspiration for their masterpieces.”

The selection committee applauded Ericson’s magnum opus, lavishing it with praise at the awards ceremony in Geneva.

“When we read this timeless exposé into the human condition, we were blown away,” read the award motivation. “We were left speechless. We were shocked. Number 7 had us in tears. Ericson has reached that apogee of literary greatness: he is the Hemingway of snappy bullet points, the Gordimer of Cat gifs, the Proust of content appropriation. We are humble to hold this fragment of a genius’s soul up and say that it has finally arrived: The Great American Listicle.”

And fans could not agree more.

“Thumbs up, fireworks emoji, smiley, winking smiley, crazy-grin smiley,” said 21-year-old Tiffany Megan-Amber. “Tongue-out smiley, heart, heart, 100-exclamation-underlined.”

Nazis protest 'grammar Nazis'

Facebook users and English literature students came under a scathing attack from notorious underground political group the New Nationalist Fascist Party this morning, with group organisers releasing a strongly-worded document against these people, saying their actions as so-called “Grammar Nazis” was giving real Nazis a bad name.

“It’s bad enough that everyone thinks we’re a bunch of bigoted, supremacist jerks,” said NNFP leader Seig Heyel, “but now we have to contend with the world thinking that we’re such small-minded literary snobs that we’ll correct your individual grammar and spelling errors whenever you post something at us on Facebook.”

The group now says that it is taking a stand.

“We just don’t get it,” said Heyel. “Why would you deride and despise someone for something as trivial and skin-deep as their ability to spell ‘you’re’ with an apostrophe and an extra ‘e’, or know the difference between ‘two’, ‘to’, and ‘too’? There are plenty of other perfectly acceptable and literally skin-deep reasons to hate people.”

The secret, he says, is to forget and forgive.

”We all know it’s spelt ‘lynch’ and ‘supremacist’, and that ‘black bastards’ is spelt with no ‘e’s,” he said, “but at the end of the day it’s the message, and not the material, that matters.”

In spite of this sudden counter to keyboard warriors across the internet, not all separatist political factions agree with this sentiment.

“We can totally see where these Grammar Nazis are coming from, but really we shouldn’t be so forgiving,” said Olly Impas of the Photography Stalinists. “Whenever I see someone shooting with the wrong settings, not correctly applying the rule of thirds, or cutting off arms, hands, heads and feet in their shot framing, it makes me want to shoot them, or cut off their arms, hands, heads and feet – just not with my camera.

He added that he would use a gun or a machete.

“Some of these illiterate pricks out there don’t even know what an ironic play on words is .

Others, too, have reacted harshly to the NNFP’s attack.

“These facebook users are totally justified,” said one student. “I mean, if you’re going to hurl bigoted invective and racial slurs you have to be presentable and sound like you know what you’re talking about. Otherwise, why should we take your arguments in favour of a Fourth Reich seriously?

Dr Seuss books to be “modernised” for a new generation

The literary world was taken by storm this morning, after publishers in the United Kingdom announced that the much-loved and classic tongue-twisters of wordplay genius Dr Seuss will be remade to suit a more “contemporary generation of children”.

“These are fantastic works that anyone will remember fondly stumbling over as they tried to read them out loud,” said CEO of publishing giant Struik Publishing, Ruaan Alderboeks, “but sadly, in their original form, they just no longer apply to the interwebz-fluent midget Ritalin junkies were are forced by law to call our children.”

Struik and Random House Publishing now say that many beloved Seuss books will now be edited with “minor modifications” to make them more suited to the current generation.

As a gesture to readers across the world, Struik has given Muse and Abuse a sneak preview of the first in the modernised series, Sam-I-Spam, the contemporary tale of Sam, who now loves Green Eggs and Ham, but clogs up your newsfeed of Instagram pictures of this new foodie love every goddamn time he eats it.

“We’re sticking true to the old ways, but making it more modern, more cutting edge, more insert-euphemism-here-y,” he said, before adding that many other reworkings were in the pipeline, including Firefox in Sox (the tale about a web browser struggling to win a majority marketshare), Oh The Things You Will See (an ode to turning Off SafeSearch), and The Kitten In The Shoe, the heart-warming and far less creepy story about the internet’s most beloved animal.

Now, sit back, relax, and skim over this world first in a new age of poetry!

Green Eggs and Spam

I am Sam
Sam I am
I spam spam,
Spam I spam.

That Sam-I-am!
That spam he spams!
I do not like that Sam-I-am!

Do you like
blog posts and spam?
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I will not read the reposts you spam.

Would you like them
here or there?
Via email, Facebook, Twitter -
anywhere?

I would not like them
here or there.
I would not like them anywhere.
I do not want on Facebook please,
Your religious reference to 3:10 Ecclesiastes:
do l look like a Jesus fan
that appreciates your God-based Bible rant?
And I do not want your Buzzfeed junk -
the List-icle equivalent of a dead, rotting skunk -
all collated, aggregated, uncreative,
Steals traffic from content-producers in a way that’s blatant.
If I do say so myself:
“24 ways Buzzfeed is repetitive as hell”.
The monotony you call your “clever tweets”
I will unfollow, unfriend, delete.
Your blogspot.com inane debate
has become quite boring of late.
Besides, I’m only one of eight lonely readers,
and when your words hit my brain it’s like you’re trying to bleed it;
I will not read it, Sam-I-am:
not if it were the last blog in the all the land.
The Instagram tedium you incessantly punt,
makes you look like a shallow, selfie-loving c… er… character.
You abuse too many hashtags in every single pic,
and frankly, Sam, it makes me sick.
And the comments you leave all over News24:
Well, we can see how edgy they are - they’re all ignored.
And like it or not, you know it is true,
One-word tweets even have more character than you.

But what about my pics from overseas?
Will you like them on Facebook, comment, please?
This photo of me by a Dutch house?
Here I am at Disneyland with Mickey Mouse!

I do not like them,
not one bit.
About Eurotrip photos,
I could not give a shit.
I don’t like you next to what is simply just a house.
I do not like you next to a douche capitalist mouse.
I do not like them
here or there.
Long story short?
NO ONE CARES.

I do not like
the spam you spam,
I do not like it,
Sam-I-am.

Would you retweet them,
tag me please?
There’s even a ‘share’ button
to increase the ease!

Not on a PC.
Not on a Mac.
Not on any network,
You Zuckerberg twat.
I would not share them
here or there,
disseminate your mediocrity anywhere:
Not a car;
Not a train;
Not in sun;
Not in rain;
I would not read your unceasing spam -
I do not like it, Sam-I-am.

I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not like
your tedious and repetitive attempts at web-based depth,
using frankly laughably inadequate and empty microblogging platforms to discuss of what are usually
complex and multifaceted issues requiring more than just a simplistic, text-focused approach
to fully critique and deconstruct,
Sam-I-am.