ISIS launches “most successful recruitment videos yet”

Following on from previous successful recruitment strategies and PR tactics, fundamentalist Jihadist group ISIS has today announced the launch of their most successful series of calls to anti-West, anti-Imperialist arms yet.

“All those scary bomb videos and grunts training with ak47s and rolling in the dust, leopard-crawling under barbed wire and past burning tyres, these only go so far,” said head of the pro-Islamic-caliphate movement Thea Rorrist. “If you really want to instil a burning, irrevocable hatred for all things American and its deluded, privileged, detestable citizens, then you have to go that extra mile.”

As such, ISIS is delighted to announce the release of American Idol Season 426 and America’s Got Talent Season 283. It has reportedly been a resounding victory.

“I was watching TV the other day when [the ISIS recruitment videos] came on,” said one American man. “After just four minutes of that pretentious, exploitative ‘it’s my dream’ crap, and all that shallow, deluded narcissism guided by a desire to be worshiped by thousands for being what is actually a talentless shmuck, even I, a God-fearing, rootin’, tootin’ Texan, was denouncing the hedonism of my culture and calling for the death of all American men and women.”

Media analysts agree.

“If we look closely at the hateful, pro-extremist-Islam propaganda, we see tropes designed for maximum effect,” said Television studies lecturer Harold Cress.

“Every four seconds, we are battered with stirring, nationalistic music and endless images of waving American flags. You know, scenes more patriotic than an exploding, bible-clawing, red-white-and-blue Bald Eagle shooting laser beams out of its eyes and ejaculating furiously on a pile of nukes and Chevy trucks emblazoned with the words ‘democracy’, ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’.”

These images were enhanced by other hate-mongering tactics.

“Then they add little inserts, like the glaringly knee-jerk emotional shallowness of having an obviously-ineligible four-year-old child singing Home of the Free for the AW-factor, and the talentless douche judges who have even less singing or acting ability than those they scorn and deride, not to mention the sickening product-placement. Really, it makes my machete-hand very twitchy indeed.”

In spite of some controversy over the images, ISIS remains steadfast that these depictions of American culture are far less horrific than than they how the West portrays their particular ideologies.

“Hell, the media might give us a bad rep, but at least we don’t belittle people and destroy their hopes and dreams before we behead them," said Rorrsit. “We like to think we’re a little more respectful than that.”

ISIS would like to thank CNN, BBC and Sky News for giving them an audience of millions of readers, listeners, and viewers on dozens of different channels, formats and social media platforms to spread their messages and videos across the globe.

Greyhound awarded the least disgusting bus service

It was a fine day for bus services today, after the International Travel Awards Consortium awarded the Greyhound bus services the “Least Disgusting Bus Service” trophy for allowing its customers to retain at least a shred of their dignity whilst traveling on their coaches.

“The choice was clear,” said award committee member Gol Dansilver. “Not really because they provide an excellent service or because they offer competitive prices for reliable, affordable and enjoyable travel across our beautiful country, but simply because there just isn't really any meaningful competition.”

Dansilver went on to elaborate on how, in terms of offensiveness, frustration, the irrevocable hatred a mere bus can instil in your soul, and the utter disregard for Human Rights law, the choice was ultimately simple.

“If we consider how SA Chodelink can be 10 hours late and make you sit in a bus-cum-sauna (ambiguity intended) that is not only utterly repugnant but also has you fighting cockroaches for armchair space, or how Intercrap assumes everyone on board to be Christian and then dictatorially deny you that one sorrow-drowning comfort of alcohol, or even how several other buses – Shitty to Shitty, Transkak and Shittyliner – are so massively physically offensive and make you want to throw up until you pass out or die, whichever comes first to ease your hellish 14-hour suffering, then really there was no one else to confer this medal to.”

Bus travellers across South Africa resoundingly agreed with this sentiment, applauding the committee for its frankly insultingly easy decision.

“When I think back to those other sweltering sweathouses-on-wheels that are always later than the SABC’s airing of a series people enjoy watching - those 'modes of transport' that somehow always bring with them conditions a Syrian War Refugee would consider brutal and disgusting, then I don’t really see how Greyhound couldn’t have won it,” said torture victim and frequent traveller Miles Sandmiles.

Dansilver said that Greyhound should now be considered the leader of bus travel in South Africa – or at least, the least mortally affronting when you consider your alternatives.

“Even when you take into account resurgent smaller companies, like the Blunden Shuttle service, [Greyhound] still wins. Not because, as I have said many times, Greyhound is any good, but because in comparison to the poisonous and offensive business model on which these other small services operate, forcing you to pay for a full coach if you’re the only one but then not applying that same division to a full bus meaning you’ll always fork out several hundred rand no matter what, then Greyhound still takes the cake.”

However, Greyhound now reportedly has its eyes on the last shred of bus traveller, those Masochistic people who enjoy these other services.

“We want to be loved by all equally,” said Greyhound CEO Naim Dafterdogg, “which is why we’ll be introducing a service that deliberately insults, offends and disgusts you as if you’re our torture bitch in our ever-expanding slave dungeon. We’re calling it Fifty Shades of Greyhound".