Vacuous Slebs

There appears to be a culture in this country that places unearned gravitas upon the brain farts of celebrities.  The people who don makeup and pretend to be someone else for a living, uttering words that others have written, or kicking a ball about or reading the news or whatever. They are just people doing a job. But for some peculiar reason, when one of these people pontificates upon a subject in the news or on politics, people latch onto it as if this person is possessed of some deep wisdom.

The consequence of this is what they like to call trolls. They aren’t really trolls at all, they are people who disagree with said celebrity – or, on some cases, do so with such vigour, that the celebrity’s poor little feelings get hurt. Yes, I do realise that there are some nasty people out there and I have been on the receiving end of online harassment, trolling and stalking. I survived. I did a couple of things. When it was just a case of trolling, I deleted and blocked without acknowledging the culprit. When it was active stalking and harassment, I did the same but with the added action of keeping copies of the relevant communication along with IP addresses in case the activity crossed the line such that it required police intervention. As it was, he gave up, which I suspected would happen.

So, it’s not really something that needs any particular action or to get upset over. Anyway, it seems that twenty years after Usenet advised “don’t feed the trolls” the vacuous celebrities have finally cottoned on.

“The CCDH’s Don’t Feed the Trolls report is a brilliant explanation of how we can start the process of cleaning up toxic discourse on social media so we can use it to do good.”

Izzard, who has previously spoken about receiving abuse for being transgender, said: “To directly engage with these trolls is to hand them a megaphone.

“The world would be a happier and less hateful place if, instead of giving these voices the attention and audience they crave, we all simply blocked and ignored them.”

Well done. You have finally caught up with the rest of us who figured this out twenty-odd years ago. Give yourself a pat on the back. Now, remind me, why do people pay these fuckwits any heed?

9 Comments

  1. Izzard is now transgender? His whole schtick was ‘straight transvestite’ before. Or, as he put it in one of his shows in which he described a meeting in France –
    ‘Vous est un travesty?’
    ‘Oui, mais un travesty executive’.

    His comedy shows I thought were brilliant. His political posturing… well that’s just embarrassing.

    But that probably makes me a ‘troll’.

  2. It seems that many people do put extra value onto famous people’s opinions, hence celebs being used for advertising. In some cases the celeb actually has some expertise about the product that they are pushing but either way, there is no way that you can be unaware that they are being paid to say that they like it. Nevertheless such advertising still makes people want to buy things.

  3. Elsewhere, someone has observed that climate obsessed teenaged girls have started plaiting their hair in the style of St. Greta of Thunberg.

  4. “I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy — and when he talks about a nonscientific matter, he will sound as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.”
    – Richard Feynman, Nobel Physics Prize Winner

  5. Why does the prick think its fine and dandy for him to have a megaphone, but anyone who disagrees with him isn’t allowed one?
    He’s clearly a nasty narcissistic shit.

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