Turning topic into race, gender issue “exactly what was needed”

True progress showed itself on Facebook today, after an innocent, inoffensive status was immediately turned into a racial and gender issue.

The post, which was a harmless joke about the Springbok’s match last weekend against New Zealand, only lasted 12 minutes before being skewed and twisted out of context and proportion to become an embittered flamewar about racism and sexism in the white-supremacist-capitalist patriarchy of televised sports culture. In just one day it attracted thousands of comments and arguments from incensed online commenters.

The status’s author, Jake Hendersen, now says that he’s glad they’ve started a “conversation” around race and sexism.

“You know, when I posted my status I just wanted to poke fun at New Zealand friends about this weekend’s match and say ‘springboks r the best lol all blacks are so useless’, not knowing my awful spelling would cause a digital meltdown,” he told reporters this morning.

“But now that hundreds of people are typing out ALL-CAPS hate speech, racial slurs, ad hominem attacks and demands that the idiots on the opposing side go read a fucking book, I’m glad to see a ‘discussion’ has started. This is just the first step one a long, arduous journey to a future free of racism, gender-based hatred, and harmless humour.

The post, which now stands at 21 485 likes and 11 792 comments, has been called “just what we all needed” by Human Rights advocacy groups.

“This is how we change the world: by getting people coming together, talking, discussing, and calling each other 'total retards who haven’t even read a book in their damn lives',” said chief researcher for Rights For All, Nelson King Jr. “You know, a lot of people might say, ‘oh, Nelson, but completely misunderstanding and detracting from the simplistic comedic value of the original post and embroiling the entire internet in a foetid clusterfuck of ad hominem attacks and fallacious, shallow arguments littered with faulty logic or emotional jabs will just divide and separate us all,’ but that’s where they’re wrong,” he said.

“This is how true progress is made: by just putting everything on the table, showing our cards, and turning every internet user against each other in a horrible, embarrassing hate-thread that everyone tires of in just minutes.”

However, internet analysts now believe such a peace could be all too brief.

“People have the ability to overcome great barriers and create a better, more tolerant future of peace and prosperity devoid of casual humour,” said web expert Hilby Bloggin.

“But come on, this is the 21st century. How could there ever be lasting peace when every ten minutes we have something like Caitlyn Jenner or Cecil the Lion to hate each other over?”

Man gives to charity without making elaborate viral video

The philanthropic community is in uproar today, after a man reportedly donated a large sum of money to a charity organisation without filming an elaborate viral video.

According to the man, who for some reason beyond the comprehension of modern man wishes to remain anonymous, he didn’t even tweet that he had done it, or even take a selfie or use any hashtags like #charity.

This isn’t the first time he’s pulled such a mad stunt – sources close to the man say that back in August 2014 he didn’t dump a bucket of ice water over his head before giving R50 000 to an organisation working to find a cure for ALS.

And while many people say this is pure madness, scientists say that the science is feasible.

“We’ve been looking into the neurochemistry and psychology behind such irrational acts, and we have to say that the science is sound,” said lead researcher for the study, Cora Layshin. “Turns out, you actually can donate money without making it about you or yelling to the entire world in hashtagged ALL CAPS that you’re so goddamn selfless and giving and kind.”

But this is just the beginning, say scientists conducting similar research.

”We’ve been looking into the innate, very natural links between being a good human being and making sure that it’s also tagged on Facebook and linked to your Instagram account,” said Dr Narsa Sistique of the Institute of Brain Studies. “Peer-reviewed research and carefully experimentation shows that – in an utter contrast to popular belief and going against everything certain Youtubers know to be true – you can donate money or food to homeless shelters without making exploitative Social Experiment videos that make thousands of dollars in ad revenue.”

International Charity organisations have jumped onto this trend, and are now challenging thousands of budding social media philanthropists to the bold and daring new "Just Donate some Goddamn Money" challenge.

”We know that it’s difficult to comprehend, but dozens of peer-reviewed papers on the matter have shown that you can do things like asking your girlfriend to marry you without having to stage some huge viral flashmob video,” said Dr Sistique. “Every time you do something like have a cup of coffee or a vegetarian quiche at a local bistro, or go to the gym, or go for a 22km bike ride on a Friday, you can actually do it without flooding everyone’s social media feeds with it. It’s crazy, but true.”

However, not everyone is too fazed by this shocking discovery.

“There may be one or two people who upset the system by giving money without making a viral video,” said online philanthropy expert Jack Givvens, “but as long as there are hundreds of people who make viral videos or do a No Makeup Selfie challenge without giving a cent, we figure it kinda all balances out.”

Study finds something that can’t be easily turned into clickbait

Confusion abounds today, after a ten-year scientific research program found something that can’t be oversimplified or easily turned into clickbait.

According to researchers at the Centre for Galactic Astrophysics, who have been looking into the nature of blackholes and how they interact with space-time, the results of their study, while incredibly important for the advancement of astrophysics as a science, cannot be easily turned into an image-heavy and arbitrarily-numbered list of things that will totally blow your mind or leave you speechless.

“We’ve been looking at the results, and we must say that we’re conflicted,” said Dr Theo Reece of the CGA. “I mean, the data really does change the way astrophysicists look at the complex equations and science of spatio-temporal interactions between objects of astounding mass, but when it comes to telling Buzzfeed readers that ‘These Scientists Have Been Researching Blackholes – And What They Found Will Completely Blow You Away’ we come up totally empty-handed. I mean, what good is scientific advancement if it can’t be completely reduced to an overly simplified misinterpretation for idiots to share on the ‘I Fucking Love Science’ Facebook page?”

CGA researchers now say that they are back at work searching for four more facts in their massive study that will fill a 10-item, 150-word listicle.

“It’s going to be a difficult task – like finding a needle in a haystack, or original content on Buzzfeed,” said Reece, “but we’re confident that, by early January at the latest, we’ll have found something dull and uninspired enough to get you through the last four points on the list so that you can read item 10 and do your obligatory reshare on Facebook and ‘lol’ comment.”

However, “writers” at the social media viral sites now say that they’ll probably just go ahead with the article anyway.

“We’ll just churn out the listicle anyway,” said Killean Jurnlizm, section editor for the sciences beat at the viral website. “I dunno, maybe there’s something on Reddit we can just steal and paste in… Besides, since when did our readers care about scientific accuracy anyway?”

Plagiarist unsure how to reword original content

An area journalist is reportedly unsure today, after meeting countless difficulties in rewording a rival website's news content while trying to make it look like his own original work.

“The world of cutting-edge journalism is a competitive and challenging place,” said 32-year-old part-time journalist and most-time “content aggregator” Robin Hartikles. “But nothing is more challenging than sitting there with another website’s content in front of you and a thesaurus in one hand trying to figure out how to balance synonyms with word replacement, phrase alterations and content mixing to make it seem like this is your own, fresh, original story that came solely as a result of your hard work.”

Hartikles explained why, unlike with images or photos on the internet – which are bloody easy to steal or pretend exist in the creative commons – written work still presents a challenge.

“There are so many possibilities, and doing it wrong means you’ll at the very least have to pretend that the source information is to blame,” he said. “What happens when there are specific words or a very specific vocabulary that makes for sentences that cannot be altered for fear of losing all the phrase’s meaning? This is why ‘curation’ or 'aggregation', as we call them in the business, are artforms unlike any other.”

This particular article – a series of photographs and accompanying descriptions pulled directly from a thread on a world renowned source of much free viral content known only as Reddit.com – is proving difficult, said Hartikles.

“What do I do? Do I reorder the words? Do I right-click the word in MS Word and choose from a readily available list of synonyms? Do I find other sources and blend the two to make it seem like this is original thought? It’s such a tough decision. All I can say is thank GOD for all that practice I got with Turn It In and my university essays.”

Whatever his choice, Hartikles is steadfast that he can never stoop to citing original sources.

“Have you ever read an article that says ‘reported The Sunday Times last week’ or ‘according to an article by The City Press,” he asked. “Admitting that I got all my information from another websites’ hard work would make me look like a journalist who is lazy, unethical and unprofessional.”

He added that “citing source material is also so much work”.

“It’s bad enough that I have to jump through more hoops than a trained circus animal to credit photographers for their images,” he explained, adding that by “credit” he meant “neglect to include any and all relevant information that might lead to the original photographer getting any site visits, advertising revenue, or even exposure, that beloved bread and butter of artists everywhere.

Hartikles was quick to refute colleagues claims that he is “a low life scum-sucking bottomfeeder mooching off the sweat and blood of real journlists” saying that he has totally had original thoughts before.

“For example, I came up with the new word that describes the new journalists of the future,” he explained. “A Plag-ournalist.”

Readers wanting to know more about this story can read it in slightly different wording and with my name in tiny letters at the bottom on any other news website in the world, except Buzzfeed, because they've closed down their website.

Pic: Bill Branson, for National Cancer Institute (Creative Commons - public domain)

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.

Incredible! Young girl gets crippling student loans, broken dreams at just 14!

Most people would wait until their mid-twenties to mount up crippling student debt and a mountain made entirely out of the shards of shattered, pointless dreams – but 14-year-old Thessalonika Arzu-Embry isn’t most people.

Yes, you heard us. At just fourteen, Thessalonika has done what most would only dream of: get a piece of paper that entitles you to a ceaseless job-quest in a market saturated with equal qualifications and desperate graduates and lets you finally be a part of the horrific system of modern indentured servitude that will have you paying off your tuition until you’re lying on your death-bed, signing away your kidneys to a loan-shark.

“It wasn’t easy,” she said to reporters. “It always helps to have your family around you, supporting you every step of the way.”

Social services are now investigating this abuse.

However, despite this incredible news, some doubt the credibility of her degree.

“A degree at fourteen?” said one fellow graduate. “How can that be a real degree? How are we supposed to take you seriously as a critically-thinking member of worldwide academia and intelligentsia if you’ve never been utterly trashed in a bar on a Friday night rehashing the same old tired arguments to people you’ve just met about why Marxism or Socialism isn’t the answer, or about what the relative merits are of a capitalist democracy in today’s ever-changing political atmosphere? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Others agree.

“Oh, Jesus, when I was fourteen I was also a snotty bookworm,” said one guy who reiterated that this wasn’t a rant borne from ugly, embittered cognitive dissonance and jealousy. “I mean, I could easily have gotten a degree too. Just, you know, I was busy. With stuff.”

Even large corporations have added their voice.

“We congratulate the young girl on this fantastic accomplishment,” said food giant McDonalds, “but we also don’t understand it. She is far too young to work in one of our many chains across the country. Why would you want a degree in Psychology?”

However, Thessalonika remains adamant in the face of heated criticism.

“Many people say that the qualification isn’t worth the piece of paper it’s printed on,” she said, wearing her robes and posing for a photograph that would of course go immediately viral, because people can’t believe that fourteen-year-olds are capable of doing anything more than garbled idiocy.

“I totally disagree. It *is* worth the paper it’s printed on.”