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)

Scientists discover new species to force into extinction

The scientific community is all atwitter today, after a small group of intrepid explorers and adventurers working in the Amazon delta discovered a new species for humankind to slowly but inevitably force into extinction.

“It’s amazing,” said leader of the French and German led expedition, Klein Match-Aange. “To be a part of the ceaseless quest to expand our knowledge of the world’s soon-to-be-naught-but-a-distant-memory-and-a-picture-in-a-yellowing-history-book species is a privilege that can we barely describe.”

The animal is reportedly a “very rare” but “equally delicate and vulnerable” sub species of distant cousins the once plentiful Howling Silver-top Lemur, which not so long ago freely roamed the extensive cattle farms and slashed-and-burned corn fields of the Amazon Farmlands.

“This little guy – which we’ve called the Blue-tipped Howling Lemur, or Marsuplius Genocidus Extinctia - is a shy, shy creature,” explained Match-Aange, recalling the difficult task of finding the elusive ‘Blue Ghost’. “Nocturnal and very skittish, finding him was a real challenge. You won’t believe how many trees we had to cut down just to get a pic of him. All that foliage, dense undergrowth and rare orchids make modern scientific endeavours like these a real nightmare.”

Our knowledge of these elusive creatures, however, is now vastly improved.

“According to preliminary scientific observations on the animal, we can say that it’s not very different from other classic species of lemur,” said the team’s sixty-page report. “While looking somewhat different to other species in this genus, it shares a very similar diet, social behaviourisms, mating habits and vulnerability to stab wounds as its other lemur brethren.”

The report added that this “probably mean[t] a shared similarity in terms of organisational hierarchy, territorial behaviour and susceptibility to broken bones, third-degree burns and bleach poisoning.”

“Whatever their exact species, these animals tend to share a few fundamental characteristics,” the report explained, “such as how thin and easily crushable its skull is, how - much like other lemurs, small apes and some similar species of exotic cats - it dies after only one or two well-aimed 9mm slugs to the back of the head, or how valuable its bones and fur are on the traditional medicines and exotic goods black markets.”

This species of lemur is now the third animal to be added this year to our list of species we’re going to utterly eradicate one by one from the surface of the planet, just after the Java Tiger (Leo Pantherus Coati Expensivus) and the White Rhino (Bohne Maykmii Erectus).

"We're a tenacious bunch, us humans, but we need to keep up the hard work," said the report. "Even now, there are probably hundreds of rare, undiscovered species out there just waiting to be decimated into total disappearance."

Pic: by Rachel Kramer licenced under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

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.

BREAKING NEWS – TV showing mysterious images

BREAKING NEWS – 8:17am

There is confusion this morning, as journalists and media experts are trying to make sense of a new series of images that have just been release on our televisions.

At this moment we’re not too sure what these images are, but rest assured that we’ll be bringing in a team of specialists to try and make sense of these unfathomable photos. Details are limited right now, but the first image we’re seeing is of some large, shapeless blue mass covered in greenish blobs. Dotted all over the image are tiny cylinder-shaped things that appear to be silver and pointed, with some orange-coloured mess on one end. Again, we aren’t sure what we’re looking at – they could be tiny cigars – but we will keep you updated as this story progresses.

UPDATE – 8:27am

More breaking news on our top story this morning of the strange images covering our TV. We’re not sure if this is linked with all the other video footage of heads of state giving tearful speeches from unknown locations, but NASA has released another image, perhaps even more confounding than the first.

Again, we must stress that the meaning of these images is not clear, but it does appear that the tiny cigars have disappeared only to been replaced by smallish yellow-and-black circular plates, each surrounded by a small circle of concentric red rings. As always, we will keep you updated as this more details on this story come into public knowledge.

UPDATE – 8.33am

Back to our top story this morning, NASA and a team of scientists and researchers have released a new series of images to the public. Again, details at this time are unclear, but it appears that some kind of white face-like figure next to a number keeps flashing intermittently on our television screens. This number has steadily increased to be almost nine digits long in the course of just a few hours. In-house experts and media specialists still have no clue what these figures might mean, but what we can confirm that this is a very, very high number.

“This is perhaps one of the biggest numbers we’ve seen on TV in many, many years,” said numbers expert Matt Matison, one of the few professionals we could contact (there seems to be some kind of a problem with telephone services). “We can only assume this means some kind of big event has happened.”

Again, exact details are sketchy, and finding the meaning to these images is proving difficult as large parts of the internet seem to have gone offline, and so we will keep readers updated as this story continues to unfold.

UPDATE – 8.37am

NASA has done it again. The latest in the series of images shows what we can confirm is definitely a figure of a human being standing next to what seems to be a large grey square with a big crack in it. We’re not sure what caused the crack, or why this person is standing next to this giant square, or even what kind of grey object would be that big, but as always we will keep you updated on this news event as it unfurls.

UPDATE – 8.39am

We still have very few details on this story. At the time of going to press the government and various heads of state had not replied to requests for comment. Let us know in the comments below what you think these strange images could possibly mean. And as always, we will keep you updated.

And if no further details come to light, well, it’s not like what would be the end of the world.

Facebook's lawyers destroyed by simple status

Facebook’s legal team is in stunned silence today, after their seemingly airtight, carefully constructed and extensive 134-page Terms and Conditions legal agreement was undone and nullified by a simple Facebook status.

“When we first started this company all those years ago, we knew we would have to have legal safeguards in place to control content, oversee copyright management, and provide a general set of user terms and conditions that apply equally across our user database,” said the legal team in a lengthy statement this morning, “but how were we to know that a twenty-something-year old in South Africa would have the legal genius to undo all our care and work in one simple ten-sentence status? It was sheer brilliance.”

Facebook now says that, despite their document’s apparent legal strength and imperviousness, this new disclaimer, containing just twenty lines of text, was like kryptonite on an Achilles tendon made of glass.

“It hit us like a sack of bricks,” they said. “I mean, quoting the Rome Statute – a document usually reserved for outlining a court’s jurisdiction, structure and internal processes – was just, wow, incredible. We never saw it coming.”

The creator of the post, who is amazingly neither a law student nor legal expert in any way - says that beating the system like he did requires nothing but clever manoeuvring.

“When you sign up for Facebook and tick the box that says you have read and understood their terms and conditions of service and use, there are all kinds of nasty controls put on your photographs and all your user information that you upload,” said Andy Vokate, whose work has gone on to protect many thousands of enlightened, seasoned internet users, “but when you stumble upon some very clever legal arguments that some companies don’t want you to discover, you’ll see that these contracts are not worth the .txt file they’re written on.”

These legal arguments are incredible, say legal experts.

“We know this argument will be very powerful in court because it’s filled with all kinds of law words and legal phrases like ‘articles’ and ‘hereby’ and, geez, ‘tacitly’. Oh, and ‘foregoing’!” said legal counsel Eric Manders. “And an even more hard-hitting part of the argument is citing UCC 1 1-308 – 308 1 -103 and codes L.111, 112 and 113. Personally, I would quote paragraph 123 subsection a1 of L ACB 123456 or the infamous precendent of Hugh Justin v. May Dissup, but this is as good.”

He added that most judges were amenable to arguments like “really, who even reads these long confusing things? We all know everyone just scrolls to the bottom and clicks ‘Accept’.”

“Especially if they’re an iTunes user,” he said.

However, this post may have opened the floodgates for public legal declarations and defences, with this judiciary tactic being applied to many other industries and services.

“With this new resurgence of customer legal protection, companies are now being force to issue counter legal statuses on Twitter and Facebook,” said Manders. “Pretty soon, we’ll be seeing counter-counter-legal-announcements, and counter-counter-counter-counter notices. It’ll be like Inception, but with more law and less confusion.”

Whatever controversy arises, judges and Facebook users alike agree on one very simple fact: that this definitely is not a hoax.

“This is perfectly sound legal advice,” they said. “I mean, if it wasn’t, would it really be copied and pasted by hundreds of other people? I don’t think so.“

Legal notice: by reading this you agree that I my writing is awesome and flawless and beyond reproach, and deserves some kind of a medal or something. You also agree to share this article with friends and family at least eighteen times.

Thank you, Eskom

A thank you letter to Eskom, from yours truly.

And here is a link to the story mentioned in the text.

Cosmopolitan mag releases shallowest edition yet

A majority-male media ownership cabal expressed its unhesitating and unequivocal delight today, after women’s magazine giant Cosmopolitan released their biggest, emptiest, most-advert-packed jumbo bumper deluxe edition yet.

“It really is a remarkable achievement,” said CEO Jake Davis. “In comparison, it makes our last editions look like philosophy textbooks.”

The issue, which is said to contain as many as 300 pages of jaw-dropping advertisements for clothes, make-up and high-end brands almost 80% of the South African women population can’t afford, as well as over 15 pages of stunning and make-you-swoon-in-desire paid advertorials, went on sale this morning at newsstands across the country.

“The latest beauty fad that will last three months at the most; the best super-secret fitness tips that we dug up on page two of Google search results; obvious health advice; and the obligatory every-edition ‘Have the Best Sex of Your Life That You’ll Obviously Never Be Able To Have Without Reading This Magazine’ article – it’s all in there!” said Magazine Editor and ex-journalist Mandy Sanders. “It’s like every other edition, but with a newer cover and prettier typeface: bigger, better, and same-ier than ever!”

Despite controversial criticisms that Cosmopolitan is a shallow ad-filled celebration of emptiness and meaningless high-brand capitalism that perpetuates a highly Westernised and white ideal of beauty, that it upholds a form of feminism that can be both toxic and oppressive, and that it excludes a vast majority of real, non-model women living under socioeconomic duress, fans of the magazine were defiantly supportive.

“Ag, it’s just a bit of fun that costs more than what many South Africans make in a day,” said 42-year-old Cape Town secretary Jane Eyre. “I like the magazine. I think people can be too critical and academic sometimes. Who cares if it causes some women to feel hideously inadequate about their body image or if it drives a culture of impaired self-esteem and warped notions of what can be deemed ‘beautiful’ stemming from a critically over-negative focus on what people look like and what brands they can afford to purchase?”

She also added that the magazine was “really, really pretty” which was “really, really nice”.

Cosmo magazine goes on sale to a predominantly rich and upper-middle-class female readership for about R40 more than most would pay for a really long string of adverts.

“We currently have about 78 000 readers,” said Sanders, “which is about 78 439 more readers than most satirical blogs run by ex-students have.”

Pic owned by Cosmopolitan magazine.
New Cosmo Cover (my edit) with female model by Alejandro Páez

10 questions that will blow your mind and leave you speechless

1. WHY?

   In the long, long history of questions, has there ever been a question as astonishing, as astounding, as simple and as breath-taking, as 'why'? Why? Just Why? Ask yourself that. The answer might surprise you.

2. WHO?

   When our early ancestors first asked this question, they never knew what they were unleashing on the world. Just the sound of this question is enough to make you stop whatever you're doing and launch into an extensive period of intense introspection and self-scrutiny. 'Who?' you ask, again and again. 'Who'?. But is that silence - or is it the sound of the abyss telling us what we fear most?

3. WHERE?

   When Christopher Columbus uttered these infamous words when he discovered the sun in 1066 BC, who could possibly have guessed the same question would be echoing endlessly in the halls of history? This question - a solid 6th on our list - will probably be asked by our children and our children's children.

4. WHEN?

   Holy crap, just let that sink in. When. WHEN. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeen. When. After a while, it stops sounding like a word that even exists. How can you answer a question that doesn't exist?

5. WHICH?

   Seriously, this question gets us every time. It doesn't matter if someone is asking us to pick between two equally delicious breakfast cereals or seeking clarity as to whether a black-dressed broomstick-saddling woman is a spell-casting harlot belonging to the Dark Lord and Damned Soul-eater Satan and his black shadowy cabal of wicked deceivers testing the faithful and pure. 'Which', now matter the context, is one of the most powerful questions you can ask.

6. WHAT?

   This question, just, wow. We can't even. 'Can't what?' you ask? Exactly, bro. Exactly.

7. CAN YOU EVEN FUCKING COUNT?

   We don't know about the rest of you, but this one really left us gobsmacked. We're not sure if it was the creeping, disturbing realisation that there's an obvious contradiction between the title of this article and its content, the niggling feeling that we've made little numeracy errors in the body of text, or even the dawning horror that even an expensive university education leaves you prone to embarrassing mistakes that not even a child would make, but this question is nonetheless a haunting, haunting quandry.

8. HOW?

   Like, HOW, though? How? Let that sink in for a second. Let us know when you have an answer in the comments below - or we'll be flabbergasted for the remainder of our lives.

9. WHY IS MATTHEW WRITING THIS CLICKBAIT CRAP?

   When Matthew asked himself this, it left him quiet and mopping in his room for ten minutes. Try it for yourself. Just remember that we tried to warn you.

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

New SA Zoo popularity soars

A new zoo has hit the South African big-time, after video footage of a savage battle between the different members of this private enclosure went viral online.

“This zoo has been around forever,” said media analyst Wile D’animo, “but recently its popularity has soared through the roof – all because of a massive and fierce fight between the various specimens in this small space. There was howling. There was yammering. There was hissing and roaring. It was true primal savagery, the likes of which we have never seen before - even in the far calmer, far less bloodthirsty Kruger [National Park].”

Though many experts are baffled by the sudden interest in this beastly, chaotic slice of nature’s true ugliness and disorder, some believe it is due to the sudden remarketing of a brand fraught with misguided preconceptions.

“This particular enclosure is only one of many similar hundreds across the world,” said one zoological specialist. “However, where most iterations of this zoo in other countries are boring, calm, quiet and peaceful zones where battles between the various species inside its walls are short and almost cordial, this one broke the mould. It was chaos. Like staring into the black, abyssal heart of Mother Nature’s dark side.”

The zoo, which is maintained by tax payers’ dollars and is known only as the PoRSA, has captured the public's attention with its wild spats and blood-thirsty struggles between opposing beasts.

"Where else in the animal kingdom can you see the mighty Ayencius Phumelele Stone Sizani locked in mortal struggle against its archnemisis Deeyayus Mmusi Maimane, or embroiled in a life-or-death brawl with Iyeffeffius Malemia Julius?" asked one Youtube commentator who differed from the rest in that they didn't use the footage as the basis for a lengthy thesis arguing smugly in favour of white supremacy. "There is just something about watching these animals fighting over the rotting and slowly festering remains of that favoured prey, Kountree Southus Africensis, the you just can't look away from. It's like nature's car crash."

Other media analysts, however, say that the popularity will be short lived.

“Really, they’ve ravaged all the best parts of what is left of the lifeless, devoured carcass, and now they’re locked in a tooth and claw battle over the last few bones,” said Johnathan von Johnathanson. "It's only a matter of time until something gives."

And though visitors can hope for a sighting of the rare and reclusive Ayencius Zumus Jacob, zoological experts says they shouldn’t get their hopes up.

“There have been many pleas and calls by thousands of visitors and fans of the zoo to have this animal finally make an appearance, you know, actually be visible in this enclosure,” they said, “but they shouldn’t get their hopes up. The King of the Beasts rarely ventures out of his large Private Enclosure, and prefers to remains in his preferred natural habitat of gold and green".

Pics (edited): Hyena by Joanne Goldby, Vulture by Jerry Pank, Lion from Rochkind, and Olive Baboon from Nevit Dilmen