GBBO #Bingate - Is nothing sacred anymore?!

Outrage Level: BOSS

I was in a rare good mood yesterday.* So much so that I resolved to avoid the news and it’s unceasing doomsdaymageddon BS for a single day and focus only on shiny happy nice things for a change. So, what did I do? What EVERY sensible British person does at this time of year, yup, watch the Great British Bake Off ('GBBO'). My first ever episode, in fact! I bought cake, I had a friend over, I made us tea. The evening was set to be downright delightful, like something out of a Beatrix Potter book but with less talking animals and more giggling at silly food names (“Massive spotted dick” – teehehehe).

For those who don't know, GBBO is a cooking competition set in a white tent in the beautiful grassy green of the English countryside. It's hosted by Mel and Sue, two daft women who pull funny faces and delight in terrible food jokes. The judges, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood are so sweet and charming that their criticism gets about as vicious as, "Well that looks, er, interesting." Call a spade a spade, guys, it looks like something a virus-riddled vulture vomited up. But no, they never would, because this is GBBO gosh darn it! GBBO is light-hearted fluffy fun, it's a nationwide cake break from all that is wrong with the world.

Until last night, when doddering old lady/super-villain Diana took fellow contestant Iain's Baked Alaska ice-cream cake out of the freezer and left it on her bench to melt in to a puddle of broken dreams. Upon finding the dripping dairy disaster and realising his hopes for the show were lost, Iain slammed the ice-cream cake in to the bin and stormed off set. And who can say they'd have done differently under that amount of pressure? It's a timed competition, you can't just start over. So... how did the judges respond to what appeared to be a blatant act of sabotage? THEY. DID. NOTHING. In fact, they voted Iain off the show because he hadn't been able to produce a cake for the final round. And did they deal with Diana? Nope, not even a slap on the wrist as far as the viewers could see. 

Lady Justice lay down on her floor and she wept.

I’ll take a minute to address those of you who may be thinking, 'Jeeez, this bitch is crazy, why is she so upset about a baking competition, it's only cake for God's sake!' WELL IT'S NOT JUST CAKE! IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE THE BASTION OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND RIGHT AND SWEET WITH THE WORLD. IT'S A BEACON OF HOPE IN AN OTHERWISE GREY AND DISASTER FILLED EXISTENCE. If I wanted to see that life is unfair and horrible, I'd be paying attention to real fucking life, okay?!? 

What the hell were the producers thinking when they included the #bingate footage but failed to have the judges comment on it? I can only assume (with my now completely cynical mind that may never trust again) that maybe the show needed a bit of a ratings boost and the producers decided to fabricate a bit of controversy to get us talking? Well GBBO, if that's the plan then why stop there? Why not make the competition more interesting by taking the bakers loved ones hostage and threatening to cut off their nipples should you come in last. And why not bring in Gordon Ramsey to start asking the bakers what the fuck they were thinking when they presented a plate full of toxic waste disguised as cake? And hey, instead of simply voting the bakers off, why not line them up and have an ex-marine kick them face first in to a puddle of bile and faeces?! This is all golden if we're changing the format of the show to make it more Twitterageous. If not, maybe sack off the controversy and stick to cakes so that we poor fools have one thing we can cling to that doesn't make us totally lose our shit on Twitter?

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*Why was I in a good mood? Because the lovely Eric over at Opticynicism had given me some much appreciated blog-loving. It’d be bloody lovely regardless but the fact that his blog is hilarious and waaaaaay more established than mine made it extra special. You should definitely check him out here.

CLICK-BAIT COULD BE KILLING YOU! Click here to find out how…

Hello my fellow rage-monkeys,

Today we’re going to talk about click-bait. Don’t know what click-bait is? Click-bait is when writers and marketers use desperate and underhand methods to get you to view their content (like this title does – forgive me). Don’t get me wrong, click-bait is not always bad. There’s harmless heart-string plucking click-bait from sites like Upworthy.com. You know, like, when you see an ad or video in your Facebook feed titled, ‘This homeless alcoholic found a kitten in a tiara, what happens next will ASTOUND YOU.’ Meh, what harm does it do? Other than lie to you, of course, because you might chuckle or crease up and “Awwww” at the video but I doubt you’ll rock back on your chair and clutch your head, screaming, “HOLY SHIT! THAT WAS ASTOUNDING!” But ultimately, your day and emotional well-being will remain unchanged.

AWW HELL NO

Then there’s another kind of click-bait. The rage-inducing kind. This is the kind I hate, because it makes me fucking angry… See, I’m livid right now. This kind of click-bait is intended to upset you, to tell you that the world is a horrible, hate-filled place and boy should you lose your shit about it right. now. I’m talking about articles about say, some Z-list celebrity calling Robin Williams “selfish” for committing suicide. It provokes anger that someone could be so judgemental without having a single-fucking-iota of insight in to Robin’s personal struggles and at the same time contributing to the already overflowing sea of ignorance surrounding mental health issues, especially in men. Ya see kids, for some whey-protein-brained thunder-cunts, it’s still considered unmanly to be depressed, to feel incapable of carrying on, ‘Men should be strong and selfless alphas… Like War Machine.’

Do you see what I did there; I went off on a rage-induced rant, because click-bait made me angry about something that really, I shouldn’t even have known about. I did the same thing when I found out Westborough Baptist Church plans to picket Robin’s funeral because he sometimes played gay/gay-friendly characters. That rant went like this: SERIOUSLY! JUST FUCK OFF YOU UNGODLY SCUM-SUCKING CAVE-DWELLING INBRED MEDIA-WHORE FUCKTARDS!

Then I thought, whose day was ruined here? Whose emotional well-being was disrupted? Yep, MINE. And maybe yours too if you had a similar (but probably less profane) reaction to these stories. And why? Because some media fucknuts decided to make it “news”. Some asshole saying something assholey does not need to be news, but it sure does sell more than dweeby so-called “proper news.” If a website can create a title that upsets and angers us it makes us more likely to click through to the article and, by default, increase their site traffic. This means they can report back to their evil advertisement overlords that they get ‘X number of unique visitors each month’ and ‘Y numbers of clicks per minute’.  So they’re peddling hate for monetary gain, wouldn't that make them kind of like Satan's little helpers? Yes kids, yes it would.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Maybe the next time you see a headline that makes you jerk forward with your best AWW-HELL-NO face on, ask yourself, ‘Is this really something I need to see? And if you do, ‘Does the injustice justify the rage?’ For articles about terrorism, war, miscarriages of justice, media and political corruption, etc then the answers should probably be ‘Yes Pleb, of course, you derp!’ But for articles about barely-even-famous-anymore folks saying douchey things, maybe they should be No. The less we read this tripe, the less they’ll produce because it will no longer be financial viable. So instead of clicking, why not carry on living your awesome life? After all, the Twitterati will respond to Twitter douchery with counter-vitriol and politicians and the police can deal with douche groups in their local community – and all that can be achieved without assholes being given a global stage for their assholery and upsetting our otherwise beautiful days.

Women Against Feminism and Women Against Women Against Feminism – Why Everybody Loses A Bajillion IQ Points

If you're reading this you probably know all about #WomenAgainstFeminism. At any time if you head over to Twitter and search the hashtag you are likely to be bombared with a wrecking ball of fuckwittery from either side. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly a few people from both sides trying to engage in proper dialogue, but these folks are completely lost in the din of idiots screaming insults at each other. I can't be bothered to click the hashtag and see the latest because my eyes may start bleeding but to save you the trouble of reading it yourself it can essentially be summed up thusly:

#WomenAgainstFeminism Because [insert some bizarre and unlikely reason which completely misrepresents feminism] and also because feminists are bitches/sluts/satan-worshippers who eat the remnants of aborted babies!

#WomenForFeminism Why the fuck are you so God damn stupid, my fucking brain hurts just thinking about you.

#WomenAgainstFeminism See, I knew feminists were bitches. STOP OPPRESSING ME, YOU STINKING NO-ARMPIT SHAVING BITCHES!!!

#WomenForFeminism WHAT? YOU STARTED IT! You insulted my beliefs based on misinformation, you dumb mother-fucker!

And so on and so forth until everybody loses a bajillion IQ points.

As you can see, some really well versed and reasoned arguments on both sides there... Excuse me for being flippant (or don't, I don't care) but my frustration lies in experience, because I took to Twitter myself to try and dispel some of the BS grenades being thrown around about feminism. I'd perused the Tumblr account (I know, eurgh, don't even-) and found that many over at Women Against Feminism think that feminisms is about hating men, not shaving your pits and generally running around screaming "BUT THE PATRIARCHY!" I wanted to show people otherwise. I was attempting to be friendly and helpful, here's an example of one tweet that seemed to really get folks talking ('See, feminists don't hate men') --->

"Oh how nice, did people respond well, Pleb?" No, internet. No they did not. The responses I received to this attempt at friendly dialogue were so out of this fucking world that I had to stop replying to them through fear that my brain would actually implode if it had to process that amount of crazy. I was accused personally of calling all men rapists (I had never once done this before... but I do now, just for lolz), my boyfriend was accused of being an 'internalised misandrist' (because sure, why the fuck not?) and of course, as must always happen in any debate, I was compared to Hitler (I shit you not... evidence below and here). 

It was shortly after that I realised hardly anyone wanted to have a sensible chat about anything and the ones that did were being completely drowned out by the crazies. People just wanted to scream at other people. So I decided to leave it alone, carry on with my awesome life and let the rest of Twitter fight it out between themselves. (Well, almost...)

But now I'm done, honest. Because if you want to be a dick to people on Twitter that's cool, I personally love being a dick on Twitter, or on Facebook, or in the supermarket for that matter (‘Steal the last Pizza Express Individual American, will you? NOT ON MY WATCH, ASSHOLE!’). And yeessss, I know not EVERYONE has been a dick and if that's you, thank you, you did good, kid and I mean that. But to the rest of you who called people names and told them to “STFU” well, you just wanted to be dicks, so please stop pretending this is even remotely about Feminism. Because it's not, it's about dickishness. And you’re not helping either side of the argument. 

Personally, I'm proud to call myself a feminist. I'm proud of all the passionate men and women out there busting their hump volunteering at Rape Crisis Centres; or working with Police Forces to try and end domestic violence; or campaigning hard to stamp out female genital mutilation; or providing health care to pregnant women in need or HIV infected rape survivors. I'm proud of all the strong feminists out there who are trying to make real and lasting changes to make the world a better place for all of us. If you feel you don’t need them, meh, that’s cool. Seriously. But please don’t call a bunch of strangers on the internet 'idiots' and 'bitches' because they do.