Facebook to distribute likes to cancer victims

Social media giant and philanthropic website Facebook have announced that, starting today, they will now be distributing the accumulated likes, shares, and statuses aimed at ending cancer.

According to Head of Facebook's Charity wing, Sharon Lyks, the decision has been a long time coming.

"Ever since that first photo of a small girl smiling sadly at the camera, her bald head shining tragically in the little-girl-hating, cancer-giving sun, we knew we had to do something to stop this awful illness," she said in an interview with Muse and Abuse this morning. "Of course, we all know that the best way to end the combined pain and suffering of the victims of disease is to like and share photos of the internet."

The response, said Lyks, has been amazing.

"Since sharing that photo and putting it on everyone's wall, the picture has garnered over 4 billions likes and 18 billion comments," she said. "We're not sure, but we're pretty sure that's gotta be worth a lot of Internet Money."

Lyks and the Facebook team intend on taking these likes and comments to the Internet Monetary Exchange Bank later today.

The secret to its success, she said, was in Facebook users' tendency to repost the picture again and again, even if they know other people had seen it before.

"That's how much they cared about this campaign," said Lyks with a big smile. "They'll share it on all their friends' walls, even if that friend is a cancer-loving douche who replies 'oh, it's a hoax' and 'you should check these things to see if they're real, or just donate to a recognised charity', the cancer-apologist arsehole."

Facebook first shared that seminal photo in early 2003, but have now extended their charitable goodness to other worthy causes.

"World hunger, poverty, water shortages, homelessness... These are just a few of the things on the list of tragedies we are eliminating, one mouse click at a time."

Facebook's early estimates now state that homelessness and poverty are a mere 43 243 likes away from not existing.

"When it comes to creating a perfect utopian world of wonder, we believe that Facebook is right up there with those other bastions of social change: you know, email chain letters and online petitions on Change.org.

Black people can't be racist, and other UCT scandals

It’s been a while, but Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen is back – and this time, he’s not pulling any punches. On his hit list today: the UCT political rhetoric around racism after the successful removal of the Rhodes Statue.

My dear friends, it’s been a while. Since my last exposé on the Rhodes Statue, much has happened that has probably left you dazed and confused, like a Woolworth’s shopper trying to choose between two equally expensive packets of low-GI bread. So, without further ado, let me dive right into the muck to find the gems of truth we all desire so very much.

UCT students want black only spaces

A while back I spluttered on my morning coffee and melkbeskuit when I read about UCT students hosting a black-only closed event for law students in Kramer at UCT.

But actually, this is a good thing. We need closed spaces that are safe for us to discuss one immovable, unrefuted idea with people who only agree with us. In university, it is important that we give as much a safe space and respect as possible on campus for university students to share one idea in tight-knit, polarized groups.

But this just isn’t enough. How can we expect black students at UCT to feel truly safe to express themselves if there are still so many places where the hateful colonial history and embedded, oppressive culture of white privilege inflict daily mental violence? We need more safe spaces: Black-only residences; Black-only courses; and Black-only bathrooms.

Of course, this move is clearly not intended to divide the students at UCT, no! This is progress though separate unity. However, we live in an equal, egalitarian society – one in which we cannot discriminate against anyone because of the colour of their skin, sex or gender (we’ll get to our awful, anti-progressive Constitution in a bit). So we’ll need to be fair and make white-only discussion spaces for them to talk about being oppressive hatelords. We’ll need coloured-only spaces for coloured people to talk about the difficulties of being caught at the halfway house in system that only recognises binaries of white and black. Then, as is fair and just, we’ll need to make larger spaces for them to feel truly safe – white only residences, coloured only classrooms, international student only cafeterias, where they can eat without having to feel South Africa’s ingrained and xenophobic mentality of ultranationalism.

UCT students claim blacks can’t be racist; whites can’t experience racism

However, this amazing student organisation went one step further and finally proved what I’ve always wanted to say: that racism is not a two-way street and that anti-white racism doesn’t exist.

“But Johan!” I hear you shout in vituperative, frothing rage. “that’s impossible! Racism is the belief in superiority or inferiority based on different skin colour!” And yes, that’s what it may look like – but you’re wrong. Racism of course has nothing to do with race – it’s about power.

You might feel uncomfortable with someone calling you “a fucking stupid white honkey” and “kill the boer” and even “you bloody white bitch, go back to Zimbabwe” – but this isn’t racism.

The author of this statement is right: racism is about the expression of power. However, I would like to take his logic one step further and say that nobody – especially white people – can be racist. After all, racism is tied to the expression of power, is it not? And power – and the author misses this point – comes in lots of different forms. We have financial power. We have power of capital. We have the power that comes with social position or privilege. And we have power that comes from Eskom.

So, if you are a poor, homeless white person who cannot get a job and will in all likelihood die in the streets, you cannot be racist when you call someone a black baboon because you have no power.

If you are really broke and get kicked out of university because your parents can’t afford it, this means you lack academic, social and capital power. So if you get drunk and vent on Facebook like that oke at Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2012, it can’t be racist.

And when I’m sitting at home and the light go out, well that’s an inequality in the power relations between me and Eskom. So when if I (underpaid guest writer who still hasn’t gotten a wage increase - Ed’s note: nice try, bro) loudly exclaim that Tshediso Matona (millionaire black CEO of the state provider) is a useless braindead chimpanzee, it can’t be racism.

While black people may be offended or be made to feel uncomfortable, in this case, they cannot experience racism. Like the esteemed author said “racism and power cannot be divorced from one another” – and just by playing with one or two words, we can clearly see how this drastically affects this global, human phenomenon.

I wish I could explore this topic more and prove to you why foreigners can’t experience xenophobia and that South Africans can’t be xenophobic, but I have a word limit to consider. Perhaps next time.

The Constitution “violently preserves the status quo”

I’m going on a bit here, so I’ll keep it short: I agree.

That widely reviled and hateful document, which was brought into effect in 1994 with the transition to democracy, is a pestilence on our people and a plague on our civilisation. It claims to uphold and enshrine the most fundamental and basic rights every human deserves, like freedom from discrimination, a right to education, the right to safety, the right to human dignity, the right to vote, but these are just a clever disguise for its evil-sowing, hatemongering lies.

It’s so called rights are the reason we are living in this modern dystopia. The right to vote got us Jacob Zuma. This violently preserves the status quo of a country where we suffer daily corruption and theft.

What about the so-called “right to education” – look at all the idiots I’m surrounded by. Having basic education made them this way. Without it, they would be here, saying dumb things at my hard-earned tax dollars. And the freedom of assembly to picket and protest? This is the reason we have so many violent, street-trashing, poo-flinging protests. If we could tear up this document, we’d never have another violent march again.

Let’s not even talk about the Freedom of speech – people can just say whatever they want and are allowed to disagree with you. It makes me sick that we live in a society where people are allowed to say what they want, or even write these Protest organisation releases that make us so angry in the first place. If we could get rid of the Constitution, I'm sure South Africa would be restored to its rightless former glory or peace and prosperity. You remember those days, don't you?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like the hideous scourge of immigration, why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.

Facebook introduces new revolutionary new features

Social media users should brace themselves for a whole Facebook experience filled chock-a-block with features set to revolutionise the way you live in the online world.

“We’re changing everything,” said head of the R&D team at Facebook, Cody Compyler, “and not just the colour and logo font.”

“Facebook forces users to go through their entire lives, photos, opinions, thoughts and personality, and choose only a tiny fraction of a percentage of what is true to impress the people around you,” he said, “but most of us got Facebook when we were 16-year-old morons who thought liking a page called ‘Beer and Cigarettes’ made us look like rebellious bad boys. How can you pretend to be cool on Facebook if there’s over three years of evidence to the contrary that you can’t delete for fear of making it look like you joined Facebook this year, like your grandmother?”

This issue, says Compyler, is expounded only by its corollary.

“Then, when your mother or grandmother or someone close to you goes on Facebook, they judge you or start worrying because the only photos of you are taken at parties or trance festivals, making them say they’re worried about your ‘drinking problem’ when actually you’re not even that much of a lady-slaying party animal.”

In light of this, they’re introducing two new features: the ‘Real User feature, and the ‘Make Me Cool’ feature.

“Let’s see these features in action. If we go to my friend Jake’s profile, we can see he has photos of himself in the gym, at the beach with his really hot girlfriend, and driving around in his badass car. All of this makes me feel pretty inadequate. So if I press the ‘Show Me The Real Jake’ button over here, Facebook immediately shows me pictures of his girlfriend in a Onesie without makeup on, and here it gives us some really embarrassing childhood pictures, and here we have a collection of desperate and awkward messages to his grandmother and his ex-girlfriend who he apparently still loves to death. This is great, because now I know that Jake isn’t as cool as he seems, and also that my life isn’t that shit in comparison.”

“Now, if I go to my own profile, we can see that I have over 2943 photos and six years of likes, comments, posts and shares. I can’t possibly go through all of this and sweep all the embarrassing stuff under the carpet – that would take hours. So I just click the ‘Make Me Cool’ button and voilà! Thanks to Facebook’s coolness algorithm, I no longer liked ‘Beer’ and ‘Fast Cars’ and ‘The Hangover’ when I was 16, but instead I liked ‘The works of Noam Chomsky’ and ‘Psychodynamic analysis of postmodern literature’.”

The R&D team now report that they are working on a feature that will half the time it takes to ignore, trivialise or mock people on your newsfeed.

“It used to take as much as an entire hour to entirely debase someone’s existence and being, but we’ve cut down that time to as little as sixty seconds,” they said. “Hell, the only thing it doesn’t do for you is groan, roll your eyes and moan ‘how fucking retarded are some people?’”