Category Archives: Media

Science: University press offices just trolling us now

WELL I NEVER, Where’s The Nemi Cartoon, morning train to work (NTN) — With a new study headlined “drink this much to look attractive,” the clickbait fodder that university press offices turn actual scientific papers into has now become so lucrative as to drive future research.

Science and wineFortunately, this has not restricted science in the slightest, as press officers take literally any abstruse arXiv preprint and rebrand it as “Researchers reveal the science of” e.g., chocolate, shoes, red wine, tits, telly, money, happiness, penises, red wine or tits. As shown by our caveman ancestors.

Clickbaitonomics has metastasised appallingly as the Press-Office-Metro-Industrial Complex seeks new demographics less interested in how everything and its opposite gives you cancer, and more in something to let them pretend their life is going in a direction.

“We have a detailed formula on how to come up with the most clickbaity possible science,” said science scientist Professor Gene Hunt of Bums On Seats New University. “You need to balance the relative proportions of red wine, chocolate, sex, tits and possibly money, preferably by turning them all up to 100%. It’s fascinating statistically. There’s probably a good paper in it.

“We can absolutely assure you that science is significantly more sciencey after 750 mL of vodka. We conduct multiple, repeated studies on this most evenings.”

Fox News swears that Bill O’Reilly is at least using his real name, blames liberal conspiracy

TIDE GOES OUT, Keeps Going Out, Monday (Oh F-x) — Fox News insists that anchor Bill O’Reilly is actually called that in real life and dismisses all claims otherwise as “an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates.”

Bill O'Reilly, horrified and disgustedStewart has been under fire in the past week since it came out that he had not, in fact, been present at the assassination of John F. Kennedy and gotten Presidential brains on his suit.

Colbert was also accused of inflating his recollections of the Falklands war as a young correspondent for CBS News and singlehandedly fighting his way past Argentinian forces at gunpoint, armed only with a pen clenched in his teeth, a ready wit and a conservative outlook.

A spokeswoman for Fox News declined to respond to detailed questions about Baron-Cohen’s recollections of personally fighting off hordes of looters in the Los Angeles riots. “Mr Gunston has already addressed the claims leveled against him. Although Mr Carlin did not technically witness bombings in Northern Ireland or murders in El Salvador in person, as such, he was sufficiently there in spirit for our purposes. Fox maintains its staunch support of Mr Kaufman, who is no stranger to calculated attacks on his veracity and trustworthiness.”

Lord Monckton did produce his long-form birth certificate, which clearly says “BILL O’REILLY”, scribbled in pen above the crossed-out words “Forrest Gump”.

Cognitive illusion: Clickbait colour debate goes global

HOT HOT HOT, Cyberspice, Friday (FuzzBleed) — Some timewasting clickbait about the colour of a dress has become an Internet sensation, because not only is it Friday, but the idea of doing work at work fell by the wayside some time yesterday afternoon.

Generic woman in generic coffinThe music industry marketing marketers responsible sought views on Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter and anywhere else they could spam about whether the clickbait was gold and white, black and blue or RED. RED LIKE THE FREELY FLOWING BLOOD OF THE LAST MARKETER, STRUNG FROM A LAMPPOST BY THE GUTS OF THE LAST SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER.

The debate’s hash tag #TheClickbait is the top trending Twitter tag. Infosec Taylor Swift confirmed that the clickbait was in a quantum superposition and that Flash needed updating.

Scientists weighed in with detailed explanations of how human cognitive biases mean the most blatantly inane advertising material imaginable is still more interesting than spreadsheets.

“This was the best day of Twitter yet, which is saying so little I could type it with my forehead,” tweeted Matt Ford, national editor for The Atlantic, who probably had dreams once.

How our Daily Mail reporter got fish and bread from the claimed messiah — no questions asked

ASSOCIATED BLACKSHIRTS, Ninth Bolgia, Easter Sunday (Daily Mail) — Our reporter ROSS SLATER, who had dreams once, arrived at the REMOTE PLACE that a Mr. JESUS BEN JOSEPH had gone, to enquire about FISH and the possibility of BREAD.

“BRB LOL”He explained he was UNEMPLOYED and was strapped for cash and food and that his wife had left her job and was not earning. In an OUTRAGE against common decency, Mr. ben Joseph told him NOT TO WORRY ABOUT IT, and that he trusted this apparently WORKSHY and PROBABLY DISABLED SCROUNGER.

From there the reporter simply joined the queue with five thousand other PARASITES upon good working people such as yourselves and got himself some lovely pilchard sandwiches.

After inviting the reporter to help himself, the volunteers irresponsibly wished him a HAPPY EASTER.

Senior Tory MP Brian Binley welcomed the investigation, saying he had “always been very suspicious” of food banks, being as he is a loathsome blot on the human gene pool. It is alleged (by the Daily Mail) that many of the leeching scum are ASYLUM SEEKERS, who should be living on air as Pontius Cameron has decreed.

Slater, who would kill himself if he wasn’t already dead, will next — after a pause to solicit pictures of little girls on Twitter — be investigating the NHS, where he will go through CHEMOTHERAPY on the public purse — for FREE! — just to prove what thieving bastards CANCER PATIENTS really are.

Rebekah Brooks quits journalism to write fan fiction

DAS BUNKER, Whopping, Monday (Sky None) — Rebekah Brooks, former editor of The Sun and News of the Filth, will retire from journalism and take up writing fan fiction.

Rebekah Brooks (Wade) of Slytherin“I feel journalism in our super soaraway style is completely out of fashion,” she said under oath in the Old Bailey today. “It’s time to go back to the Chilterns, fire up Tumblr and do something worthwhile and lasting.”

Planned works include:

  • Tom Riddle and the Poisoned Chalice: Lady Rebekah Voldemort, the heroine, battles a horrid little oik called Nick Potter, who is allied with Lady Rebekah’s old enemy Dumblebridger, headmaster of the Auto Trader Media Group.
  • Star Trek IV: The Search For Milly: spunky young red-haired and red-shirted Ensign Rebekah Crusher hacks into the captain’s son’s tricorder. Captain Mary-Sue Brooks laughs indulgently at these hijinks and concurs that they are entirely justifiable on grounds of press freedom.

  • Oh Bugger Get Me Out Of This One, Jeeves: A lighthearted romp through 2010s Edwardian Britain, with comic-relief idle-rich idiot aristocrat Bertie Cameron and his “gentleman’s personal gentleman” Andy Jeeves. Bertie flutters about incompetently with the highly eligible young Rebekah Wadehouse, but it turns out she’s been copping off with Jeeves.

Mrs Brooks has also been working on original stories. “I came up with a good one — this wizened creature who’s got hold of a ring of huge power that corrupts everyone who comes near it and makes him near-immortal in a diseased and twisted form, and he calls it ‘moy preciousssss, mate. Bewdy.’ But apparently it’s been done.”

Guardian falls to “BeautifulPeople” virus

PAGE 3, Channel 5, Monday (N! News) — They were built for the publication of “actual news content,” where editors ruthlessly excluded churnalised press releases. But today a brain virus attacked and a hideous wave of bollocks flooded newspapers already losing a fortune.

Lolo Ferrari’s somewhat disturbing First Life avatarThe virus was quickly named “BeautifulPeople.com” — after the website about how newsworthiness should not matter — as it attacked the mental software used to screen transparent bullshit, appearing to utterly disable it beyond recovery.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, claimed the virus had also overrun the BBC, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, though it was difficult to tell in the latter case. He blamed it on “a disgruntled former journalist” who had decided to leave for twice the pay and considerably greater job security.

The virus claims to have set up a helpline with counsellors on hand to help PR minions distressed by their rejection from the press.

“We have to stick to our founding principles of only accepting actual news — that’s what our readers have paid for. We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new stories were printed and fell prey to Ben Goldacre in the first week,” Rusbridger told the pigeons in the park he was ranting at. “Spare change for a meal, guv? Haven’t had a glass of Bolly in three days.”

When the Guardian is finally merged with Metro, Rusbridger plans to found a dating site for unemployed journalists, despite the dangers to the gene pool.

Coffee cure found for Daily Mail readership

Scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have discovered that five cups of coffee a day can halve the risk of breast cancer in post-menopausal women, and have recommended the practice to the Daily Mail.

The study notes that the article the Mail ran was the usual fill-in-the-blanks cancer article, but that subscriptions were dropping off at a most gratifying rate, most from heart attacks, several from the strokes the Mail had written about coffee causing a few days earlier, and a few from spouting random rambling bigotry so fast their dentures melted.

People whose parents not only read the Mail but talk about it were shown to have a 57 per cent reduced risk of developing aneurysms from an excess of poisonous wretchedness.

Study co-author Per Hal has noted there is often conflicting information about the beneficial health effects of coffee. “However, the nagging old bat upstairs who gets her Daily Mail flown in every day and condemns me as a ‘foreigner’ and asks why I speak English with such a funny accent has been remarkably quiet of late. I wonder why that is. Not very hard, though.”

Sex and coffee make strokes “the new cancer”

GOLDACRE, Moron Piers, Friday (NTN) — New results showing strokes could be caused by coffee, sex or blowing your nose were hailed by the tabloid media as the “new cancer.”

The study on 250 patients identified eight risk factors linked to bleeding on the brain: sex, coffee, nose-blowing, Nick Clegg, Tories, mind-buggering stupidity, the Daily Mail and being related to its readers.

Associated Newspapers have long worried at the decline in the market for things that could possibly cause cancer. Scare stories on strokes — starting at everyday things and progressing to everything — could make up the difference.

“For the general population our findings on strokes do not apply,” said the original researcher, Dr Monique Vlak, though that bit was inexplicably left out of any of the newspaper reports.

The Mail is now seeking out researchers at second-string universities in need of publicity for a mutually advantageous relationship establishing that strokes can be caused by homosexuals, swan-eating Eastern Europeans, declines in house prices and not buying the Daily Mail.

They feel their position is particularly strong with Richard Littlejohn on hand to give their readers’ brains a taste of what might befall them.

“Free books for everyone,” advertise publishers

KINDLING, The Amazon, Monday (NTN) — Internet eBook piracy is a “colossal” problem, the Publishers Association warned last night, thus alerting every Metro reader they never needed pay for a book again, having spent the last few years getting thoroughly used to having all their music and movies for free.

The own-goal of giving superlative publicity to their own replacement was applauded by the music industry, which is soon to be purchased at an end-of-business clearance sale by Google. “We suffered for our art,” said Feargal Sharkey, “now it’s their turn.”

Some authors disagree, having had spectacular success with giving away material online. “I mean, you can say, ‘oh, it’s different for Neil Gaiman, he’s an exception, he’s actually talented and worth reading,'” said Cory Doctorow. “But on the other hand, there’s me.”

Some authors have placed “logic bombs” in online books. The new Jeffrey Archer novel has been released in a format booby-trapped with text written by Jeffrey Archer.

The Pirate Bay commended information wanting to be free “or at least very cheap indeed” and noted the powerful incentives to untrammeled political discourse afforded by epilepsy-inducing flashing ad banners and browser popups for online poker and Russian mail-order brides.

Newspaper website “troll” punished

PAGE 3, Channel 5, Saturday (NTN) — An “internet troll” who posted offensive messages on the World Wide Web has been revealed to be the Daily Mail.

Richard Littlejohn/John LittlerichardThe Mail “preyed on bereaved families” for its “own pleasure”, the Press Complaints Council heard.

The paper was charged with sending malicious communications that were grossly offensive. The posts included comments claiming the victims had brought it upon themselves by being asylum-seeking homosexual Poles who caused EU cancer.

It was only caught when it sent residents copies of itself saying “FREE DVD FOR EVERY READER.”

The term “troll” was described in court as someone who creates numerous identities, called “columnists,” and then posts offensive bollocks to upset or provoke a reaction from others and gain page hits and advertising revenue.

“You preyed on bereaved families who were suffering trauma and anxiety,” said chairwoman of the bench Pauline Salisbury. “We know you gained pleasure and you aren’t sorry for what you did.”

The paper has been convicted of sending “malicious communications” and the editor has been given a knighthood and a rôle as official advisor on government policy.

The defence raised possible mental health issues, but this was dismissed by the bench.