You'll remember the story about the man 'of Somali origin' who was arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences, labelled as a terrorist by the media... and then released without charge, to a great deal less attention than he received when it was thought he might be 'one of them'.
I looked at the Liverpool Echo, as they had done some good coverage of the story (the man had originally flown from John Lennon Airport). I know I shouldn't have looked in the comments, but I went and did, didn't I? And then I saw this charmer:
Umm... except he wasn't plotting to blow up a plane full of innocent people - he was released without charge. And why is it racist to mention that he was 'of Somali origin'? Because you just know that a pink person wouldn't get the same nudge-nudge-wink-wink treatment from the authorities if he'd been arrested under similar circumstances. "Yet again a black screams racism..." - yes, I can't imagine why, can you?
I wouldn't say I'm Chris Moyles's biggest fan. But perhaps that gives me a better perspective to look at this story (warning: links to the Mail) than someone who does hold him in high regard. Because no matter how otiose, annoying or irritating I might find Moyles, I don't think anyone deserves to have a private moment like the break-up of a relationship intruded into by some lumbering twat with a massive camera.
Holding her close to his chest, it seems like a loving gesture.
But after eight years together, this was Chris Moyles' heart-wrenching final goodbye to girlfriend Sophie Waite.
The pair met up when Waite handed back the keys of the Radio 1 DJ's Audi last week, after he ended their apparently rock-solid relationship.
Stay classy, Daily Mail. You stay nice and classy, eh. Still, at least they haven't decided to go in with some meaningless, pointless and prurient speculation about the reasons for the relationship breaking up. Oh, wait:
‘Both Sophie and Chris are devastated,’ a source revealed. ‘But Chris just felt he was not ready for marriage and Sophie most definitely was.
‘She wants children and a family. She wanted to settle down properly with Chris – and he had kept her dangling for some years.
‘She had spent so much time and love on Chris, she adores him and to say she is heartbroken is the understatement of the year.
'She is in pieces. None of their friends can really understand it, they seemed so happy together.’
Two ways of looking at that 'source' really. They might be someone who actually knows the parties involved; they may just be a convenient way of jemmying even more intrusion via idle baseless speculation into the story. But here's the thing: if the 'source' really does exist, and we are to believe that the couple are 'heartbroken', 'in pieces' and 'devastated', probably the last thing they'd want is (a) their mates gobbing off to the press about the details of their breakup and (b) some bastard with a giant lens looming over them and snapping away while they're going through the last rites, then a newspaper not only publishing it but allowing horrible, speculative and snippy comments underneath the online version of the story. Comments like "she has let herself go", "she's not ageing very well", "she's a bit too big for those tight jeans" and, perhaps most loathsome of all, "She would have just stolen a large chunk of your wealth in the future and maybe deliberately stopped you seeing your kids".
As I've hinted, to say I've not got a lot of time for Moyles is putting it mildly, but bloody hell - he and his partner are human beings, aren't they? I'm pretty sure that being a radio presenter doesn't mean you should be forced to have your relationship pored over by bastards on the internet - does it? And I'm pretty sure that being a celebrity, or the partner of a celebrity, doesn't mean that either. But then to think that is to think too highly of people like the Mail.
Hear me out on this one.
Yes, I know, I know... your enjoyment of just about everything on the web can, at times, be instantly spoiled by making the decision to look at the comments and see what other readers have thought about it. Look at reviews of the films you love on imdb, or books you love on Amazon, and you'll instantly be able to find half a dozen critics who've decided that the thing you love is the thing they hate. And, more than that, readers have found that they can 'have their say' on news stories, sometimes ones involving death, suicide and extreme situations, which has introduced a whole new level of callousness, nastiness and bile to public debate, as well as providing a handy platform for armchair racists and bigots of all kinds to get ham-fistedly hammering away on their foam-flecked keyboards.
Yes yes yes, all of that. Some sites have become tainted by the presence of so many spiky kneejerkers 'below the line' that sometimes you wish that websites could have a warning before the comments appear and a 'here be dragons' notice to keep the unwary away from the inevitable slew of "Well, he deserved to die" or "As an indigenous Briton I'm in the MINORITY in my own COUNTRY" and so on. There are the trolls, the "FIRST!"s, the flame wars, the regular spiders who must just sit at home waiting for something vaguely liberal to be said anywhere so they can leap into action. Sometimes I imagine that a big red flashing alarm and klaxxons go off in these people's houses whenever something relatively humane turns up on Comment is Free, just so that they can leap into action almost instantaneously to dismiss it as Communism, or PC gawn mad, or whatever crime it is apparently meant to be this week, or this minute.
All this I know. And we can all find examples everywhere of these things happening. We've all seen the poison spill out under even the most benign YouTube video, as racist or sexist or nasty fights break out in the comments. I like to call them 'vomments' but then that's just me.
But... it's not all like that. And I think it's wrong to dismiss everyone as a "messageboard cunt", though of course some of these examples might lead you to think otherwise. No, there is wheat among the chaff. There is insight in the pile of hatred. And there's something else as well - a lot of the time on here, I've found most of the comments on stories to be interesting, enlightening, insightful. Of course I'm biased because my readers are the best examples of human beings in the world, but that's just a blessing I'm going to have to live with. But I don't think I'm alone in getting good, intelligent feedback, as opposed to the usual "lol fuck off" rubbish that can exist elsewhere, or sidetrack any debate into something tedious and annoying.
You can argue about whether moderation has something to do with this or not, and as I've explained at length before, I choose to moderate because it just feels right for me to do so. I'd never forgive myself if something really hatefully unpleasant got posted and I wasn't around to move it. I can't do the 'see no evil' business because I just don't think I want to have that attitude towards the content of my website. I can't wash my hands of what's on here, whether it's posted by me or someone else. I'm responsible for it all, and that's the way I prefer it.
A lot of comments below articles actually show the readers out to be highly intelligent and articulate - and, crucially, they add to the story, rather than taking away. Many are the times when readers here have not just corrected errors - which is a pain, but I appreciate it - but added new information which puts things into a wider context, or provides more evidence of something, or adds to our understanding of the situation.
Other times, of course, online comments can really be entertaining. Take for example my internet friend Konnolsky, who has provided some stellar online comments from his Smolensk butcher's shop - here's an excerpt from the latest, about Liverpool's impending takeover:
Hello! Here in my Smolensk butcher’s shop assistant Yuri plenty worry today. He passionate supporter FC Liverpool of Liverpool – as well as 24 other teams. He got tattoo of beloved Fernando Torres on his ass. Idea that Chinese businessman take over team fill him with trepidating.
Be clear. Yuri not support current US owners, Stadler and Waldorf. These terrible men typical of everything wrong with Western capitalist model, which cause current global economic crisis. They buy club with fantasy money create by mortgaging non-existent property. Borrowing on borrowing, debt on debt, non-existent wealth, assets, ownership and managerial control based on no visible business talent: this is discredited approach of Western finance and banking. (That UK banks now post record profit on back of taxpayer bailout, fail lend to small business, while continue help projects like US imperialist ownership of sports clubs, mean it only matter of time before reckoning. We hear Bank of England Governor and darts legend Mervyn King plan to call them in for stern telling off.)
There have been other examples down the years, as well, and they're still carrying on to this day. The reviews of David Hasselhoff's Best Of album are still coming in, and I vividly remember the tears falling down my face when I first saw the repetition of 'Hot Shot City is particularly good'. And what about the huge canvas print of Paul Ross?
Drill me like Texas. , 17 Dec 2008
By Rococo Choufleur "Ciao" (Eddleston, Peebleshire) - See all my reviews
As a busy working mother of two, who's a mother, and a businesswoman, and busy, I don't have time to mess around. I need food on the go, and a toothpaste I can trust. I also need to know that, when I need to know that my Paul Ross print is over the mantlepiece, it really IS over the mantlepiece. This one is. Which is what I like about it. My husband, meanwhile, who's a busy working father of two, who's a father, and a businessman, and also busy (except every second Tuesday when bellringing practice from 4pm-5pm is his only commitment) likes the fact that this Paul Ross print is wipe-clean. (My busy working husband has occasionally spilled his yoghurt over Paul's jowly mancheeks.)
Wonderful. You might say to me "oh, it's all right taking the piss out of Hasselhoff and Ross, but those comments don't really add anything, do they?" - but they are a wonderful source of fun, more than anything, they are what they are and they're not meant to be anything other than that. The ones on Littlejohn's Britain are also rather spectacular, though in that instance they're chipping away at the idiot who wrote it in the first place, which I heartily endorse:
'Littlejohn's Britain' is the third instalment of the eclectic 'Littlejohn Mysteries', and arguably the best yet. As the novel commences we are reintroduced to maverick sleuth Richard Littlejohn; a straight-talking, no-nonsense freelance detective who stops at nothing to get answers. But Littlejohn has changed: no longer the bright-eyed optimist he once was, the events of the previous book, Murder at Mbongo Hall, have left him embittered and disillusioned with the job he once loved. However, it's not long before an anonymous tip-off from a civil servant draws Littlejohn deep into the heart of a political conspiracy which goes all the way to Downing Street.
Tightly written and highly exhilarating, 'Littlejohn's Britain' rockets along at the pace of a runaway train and never lets up. From the initial discovery of the dead prostitute ("She had it coming," a gruff Littlejohn observes with peerless humour) through to the unspeakable evil of the government's nefarious 'recycling' scheme, every turn of the page brings a shocking new twist which will never fails to excite. In particular, the climatic showdown atop the London Eye is worthy of literature's finest.
'Littlejohn's Britain' is rife with the trademark humour which has already made the series a modern classic ("bloody speed cameras!" should be the nation's new catchphrase), but it also explores a darker and more sinister side of Littlejohn's past. Tales of drinking, debauching and even a fleeting homosexual encounter are all gradually peeled away as the story progresses to reveal a complex and ultimately tragic character. With the addition of some truly horrific villains -- the scheming 'Two Jags' Prescott, PC-gone-mad Trevor Phillips, and psychotic gay Johann Hari -- the recipe is complete, and the result is some of the greatest work ever committed to print. 'Littlejohn's Britain' is simply a masterpiece; essential reading for anyone who can handle the action.
It's all about who has the power and who doesn't. We, the masses, don't have the power, and there was a time when we didn't have any. The best we could hope for was a place on the letters page of the newspaper if we were lucky, and even then it'd probably be pushed out by some batty old maiden aunt twatting on about squirrels or something.
But now we all have the chance to write, and say what we think - we have the chance to tell columnists and reporters what we think of them, and that's a splendid development. They're not looking down on us so much from their lofty perches any more; we're on a more even footing, even if they're getting paid spectacular amounts of money to write their stuff and we're wasting our own time writing ours.
No matter. The playing field is levelling out a bit, and reader comments are part of that. When Jan Moir trickled out her stupidity in the wake of Stephen Gately's death, there was nowhere to hide because there was a way of people making their feelings known - not through the traditional dusty corridors of the PCC but instantaneously. This is the world we're in now, and it's an exciting one.
The boundaries haven't gone completely, of course. There are still columnists who believe that there's a reason why they're the ones holding forth for money and the rest of us are just graffitiing their pages - because they're just so much more intelligent than us, and they understand things so much better than we silly proles who don't know what we're talking about - but their powers are fading. They are few, and we are many.
It's wrong to dismiss reader comments as an avalanche of hate, or the great unwashed having their say. Often that happens where people with extreme views know they can congregate safely - I'm thinking of BBC Have Your Say and the Mail's website as a couple of good examples - but there are other places right across the web where intelligent debate is welcomed, people comment with the intention of adding something rather than taking something away, and you can read an awful lot of great stuff 'below the line'.
I think we're all learning how to get used to this. I hope so, anyway. Of course there will be a lot of chatter to sift through, and a lot of toxic kneejerkers are only too happy to use their keyboards to throw in a few verbal hand grenades. But I think online commenting is maturing. It's a way of engaging with readers and it's something to be embraced. There are times when it's not really appropriate - I'm thinking of stories about death and tragedy, for example, or the kind of people who just go "Ew, she looks horrible" on celebrity stories - but in other places, at other times, it can be something that is really worth reading.
Obviously I hope you won't let me down, and will fill the comments box below this post with an avalanche of "FIRST!" and "LOL GAY".
The story - a teenage girl tried to enter Britain illegally by hiding in a car dashboard. The newspaper - the Mail. The response?
Not all comments were voted as popular by fellow readers, though, and some received red arrows of disapproval:
Ah, it makes you proud, doesn't it. No...?
I know I shouldn't do it, but I accidentally let the mouse wheel creak round a notch when I was reading this relatively interesting Telegraph blog story about Labour's PR own-goal over 'Change We Can See'. And I found this comment by Phil Kean, which is a classic of its type, I think you may agree. It sums so many things up beautifully about what you find underneath stories in the comment boxes, you could be forgiven for thinking it verges on parody. But I think this is all sincerely meant:
A mental picture of Labour’s achievements since 1997
* UK bound illegal immigrants massing in Sangatte
* Fat, career benefit claimants sat in front of the TV
* Drunken girls fighting outside a pub at 1:30 am
* Reams of costly regulations sitting on my desk
* The sun reflecting off of a speed camera on the A3
* The sneaky paedophiles hiding around every corner
* The big yellow signs that say…. £1.16 per litre
* The tax bill I paid this morning
* Dole scrounging aliens calling UK soldiers murderers
* A shop full to the brim with Chinese imports
* The empty space where once stood a beat policeman
* The car tax disc costing more than some cars
* Very young girls pushing prams
* 3rd world countries humiliating UK armed forces
* Britain as the world’s laughing stock
* Brown & Blair stepping off their chartered BA 777
* Pay nothing for 1st year, then 5 years interest free
* Hayes – Middlesex, or Karachi?
* The end of saved-for luxury items – a ‘must have’?
* A knife glistening as it catches the sun’s light
* India’s space missions – Britain’s baby bonds
* Fat people waddling down the road like pregnant ducks
* Can’t read, can’t talk, can’t write – ready for work
* The have-a-go hero sentenced to 5 years in prison
* The teenage girl ignoring me as I hold the door open
* CCTV & bolted gates on schools & nurseries
* Talent: – Elton, Bowie, Floyd? – No, Leona & Cheryl
* All foreign English football clubs – Uhh?
* The death of Great Britain
I love so many things about this. I love that Phil is so angry about fat people that he has to mention them twice, and blame the Government for the fact that people eat too much. (And those fatties had better watch out if they're kids, because there are paedophiles on every corner. Every corner? Every. So here's a tip - just don't go around any corner, because there's a paedo waiting.*) I love that he blames the Labour Government for the lack of an Elton John, a David Bowie, a Pink Floyd, in this musical generation. I love the poetic but also slightly worrying description of "a knife glinting as it catches the sun's light", though to be fair he did practise that with "the sun reflecting off a speed camera on the A3" to make sure he got it right. Hey, at least the sun appears to be shining in Britain under a Labour Government though, Phil, count your blessings eh? Even if it is only glinting off knives and speed cameras. Oh, and the fact that he can't help himself to a thinly veiled "Hayes - Middlesex or Karachi?". I'd say Middlesex probably, Phil, but what do I know? I did undertake some education under a Labour Government so it's possible that I am as thick as pigshit and don't know where places are any more. Above all, I love the horror of PAY NOTHING NOW, THEN FIVE YEARS INTEREST FREE. The bastards. How dare Labour allow a situation in which people could spread payments for large items over several years, without having to pay interest on those payments. The dirty rotters!
Relatedly, here's a marvellous quote from the master of patrolling the world of internet comments, Speak You're Branes, when faced with an entry about "Clown and Starling":
Starling? Who the fucking cock is fucking Starling? Is it some kind of sideways reference to Josef Stalin, Soviet leader 1878-1953, but with an ‘r’ and a ‘g’ jammed in there so it’s an entirely different word? Is it the bird? I don’t know that much about birds. Are starlings like magpies, but for taxes instead of shiny stuff? Are they notorious as the absolute worst bird at overseeing a national economy? Or is it, as I suspect, that tedious moron Douglas Lee is physically incapable of either calling a politician by their real name or thinking up an even slightly witty substitute for ‘Darling’?
I’m just fed up with this. I sometimes assume Harriet’s surname means ’son of Harper’ before realising that if that actually was her name I wouldn’t ever get to read it. Every time I summon up the masocourage to look at a right-wing blog and see if I’ve not been wrong all along, I have to waste twenty minutes of my precious life ploughing through the sixty-two latest hilarious incarnations of Comrade (Has-)Bean Jocksky Bottler McLeonidBrezhnev Tartantits One-Eyed Idiot Barry “Bagpipe” Soetero Haggisface until I finally get to some lazy variation on “McBroon” and work out it must be the Prime Minister.
Though I suppose they’re just as stumped when they read ‘Gordon Brown’.
Now that's funny.
* Phil also complains about "CCTV & bolted gates on schools & nurseries" - but surely these are wise precautions if there are sneaky paedophiles hiding around every corner? Maybe those measures are just symptomatic of Labour's paedophile boom; they obviously wouldn't be evidence that we're so worried about 'paedophiles around every corner' that we're turning schools into prisons.
I was just about to make a donation, then read this article, talk about tribal culture, how much of our money will be whittled away to these gangs of animals, catch the looters by all means but hand them to the authorities and get on helping each other survive, this behaviour belonged in the jungle 150 years ago. The problem is these people are damaging the relief funds for all the innocent people
- Paul Hutton, Abingdon UK, 17/1/2010 13:32
When there's a natural disaster, society inevitably breaks down. Horrific things happen when human beings are starving. And luckily we who aren't in Bongobongoland can sit in our comfy armchairs, grab a mouthful of popcorn and watch the madness, the misery and the despair unfold, all the time passing judgement on people in the most appalling of circumstances. Isn't it fun?
So you can imagine the excited lip-licking and "Oh this is going to be terrible" as Mail readers slowed down to look at the wreckage of this car accident in Haiti:
You mean to say people aren't queueing up in orderly lines for a pat on the head when their homes have been destroyed and they've had no food? How strange. It must be the fact that they aren't Westerners that's doing it, then. No wonder these savages are struggling - after all, it's important to mention voodoo, above all, when discussing Haiti, just to emphasise the point that these people are somehow backward, somehow savage, somehow less deserving of any sympathy, or indeed empathy if it ever existed in the first place. They aren't like us. That message is clear. And vigilantism and violence has taken over - vigilantism which, as you'll remember, was perfectly OK with Mail readers under other circumstances, but which is mysteriously suddenly a bad thing when it's Haitians doing it. I wonder why?
The narratives are clear. Here are the savages, in Bongobongoland, barely civilised at all, believing in voodoo, looting and turning to anarchy - because the white rescuers haven't come to the rescue yet. And there's a graphicness about the way in which these situations of violence are shown that wouldn't be acceptable under other circumstances:
The normal rules of journalism change, when there's a disaster involving non-whites. The bloated bodies can be shown. The bloodstains can happily be sprayed across our screens. The whole eviscerated unpleasantness can be put right in front of us - after all, only 16 Brits were believed to be among the tens of thousands of dead in Haiti. Brown bodies, well they're unpleasant, but they're OK, aren't they? It's not like we're looking at white people suffering, is it?
If we're going to show corpses, fine. Let's show some freshly-cremated corpses caused by drones in Pakistan. Let's see some people ripped to pieces by 'our boys' and their heavy artillery. Let's see some of them blown to bits rather than in a coffin with a union jack on top. If we want news that's red in tooth and claw, then fine, I'm all for it, but let's have it all. Let's not have different rules for different races. Let's show everything, the whole disturbing, dirty, horrible shooting match. Or would that be too much for our readers? Is it only a fun spectator sport when it's happening in Bongobongoland?
I began this article with a quote from a reader brave enough to voice the unspoken racism - and yes it is* - that tarnishes this whole smelly coverage. That a disaster has happened is without question. That people are suffering, and that lawlessness happens under these extreme circumstances, is understandable for anyone other than the sort of total witless cunt who hamfistedly crayons in their hate-filled "all others must suffer" response beneath Daily Mail articles. Is looting as prevalent as the focus on it suggests? Or are other things happening at the same time, communities pulling together, helping those in need, looking after others even though they have little - or is it all the sneery westerner's wet dream of savage blacks turning into anarchy without a firm hand keeping them under control? Is people helping others more or less common than looting? Why don't we see pictures of that instead of the looting, or the violence? Or are we just being shown pictures of what it's expected we want to see?
* As ever, there will be those who say that racism isn't racism, even when it's racism. I don't care for such people. You go telling yourself that. I don't care.
You know earlier I was explaining why I moderate comments? Here are some good examples of why, underneath an article about Gurkhas 'overwhelming' military charities if they take up residency in the UK thanks to Joanna Lumley's campaign:
Yes, you read that right. All non-white people are 'non-standard issue'. Pink is the 'standard' colour for human beings, you see. And yes, immigrants are 'besmirching' our landscape.
LT also points out the difference between good immigrants (Gurkhas) and bad immigrants (everyone else):
That thought is quickly picked up and carried:
You see, certain types of immigrants have all done NOTHING for Britain. As opposed to those other brilliant types who have contributed such sparkling comments on Daily Mail stories. LT's view, however, that some immigrants should be allowed in is a little too mild for some commenters:
But others reserve particular venom for Joanna Lumley herself:
I imagine what will happen next is what usually happens with stories of this type. Having allowed this soup of witless cunts to outracist each other for a good while, comments will suddenly become suspended and will disappear into the ether, as if they never happened at all. The Mail will get to have its cake and eat it - set up the story (which isn't particularly unpleasant in itself, yet which presses a few of the hot buttons with phrases like 'influx' and 'overwhelmed'), get a ton of clicks from the usual suspects, then let the poison melt away like snowflakes, leaving no trace, as if it was never there.
It's a fairly smelly way of doing stuff - allowing loads of comments which you then withdraw at a future date. Unless the Mail thinks views like these are perfectly acceptable under its brand name and alongside its advertisers? But I don't think it does really. This fairly naked racism highlights why these commenters have come here - they know they're welcome, and it's not hard to see why, because others happily buy into the bollocks tabloid mythology about immigrants - you know, how those asylum seekers get given massive tellies and great big mansions and there's nothing anyone can do about it, the sort of stuff you read in the Mail on a regular basis:
I do agree with one thing: you have to wonder about the mentality of some people.
This is not a post about the Mail's coverage regarding Akmal Shaikh's imminent execution, because their coverage is fair, detailed and very good, despite (a) one article having been written by the usually awful Sue Reid and (b) slightly contradictory headlines:
From reading the articles it seems there's quite a shadow of doubt over his conviction, his intent to commit the crime and his mental wellbeing at the time he did it, all of which should, perhaps, be taken into consideration when deciding whether he should be shot through the back of the head or not. Or not:
It's this kind of bludgeoning, roaring "NO, I'M RIGHT" that allows people to be sneery and snobby about what they read on the internet, lumping we poor bloggers in with the kind of folk who type in CAPITAL LETTERS underneath Daily Express stories or who patrol internet forums looking to upset others.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to say what they want, nor that only experts should be allowed to discuss things, nor that I know better than everyone else; it's just that comments like these are typical of a kind of compassionless, hate-fuelled contempt towards human beings that seems to be rather more prevalent in comments underneath Daily Mail stories, for example, than you might find elsewhere, or in real life.
It drags us all down - all of us 'on the internet' are tarred and feathered to be just the same as these jokers, those who would happily see a mentally ill man shot to death and couldn't care less about any of the doubts surrounding his conviction or the circumstances of the case. To answer the question that many will pose - 'well why don't you go on there and correct them?' - all dissenting voices are quickly crushed:
Some would say this just goes to show the classic equation - give people anonymity, and a forum to say what they want, and they'll be quite hatefully awful, in a sense that gives you a glimpse into why people used to be able to stand around smiling after lynchings or cheerily participate in genocide; it reveals the dark side of humanity. I'd like to hope we're better than that, but maybe we're not.
