Well, I didn't expect that. Saturday morning, I was reading up on the fallout from Donald Trump's latest faux pas, when I wanted to find out how the right-wing media was attempting to spin the revelation that he uses his fame to drag women around by their genitals, and rubs damp Tic-Tacs on the tip of his ghastly shrivelled micropenis.
This led me to Heat Street - the "news, opinion, and commentary website" run by the controversial former Conservative MP Louise "Corbyn's a Nazi!" Mensch, for Rupert Murdoch's News Corps.
I'd forced myself to look at Heat Street before, and never took it as a sort of conservative version of The Onion - just a news and opinion site that's anti-"SJW", pro-Gamergate, seeing itself at the right-wing frontline of the "culture wars". Admittedly, some of the content adopts a sneeringly humorous tone - a current story has the headline "Screaming Bearded Feminist Hijacks Open Mic at Comedy Club" - but it seemed to report the news that best fits its agenda.
So, really, you can't blame me for mistaking an article about weaponised hurricanes as a real piece, and not the satire it has since been explained to be. Let's face it, there are plenty of other conservative commentators who believe the US government are using the weather as a weapon - the godawful Alex Jones for one.
As Poe's law states: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”
And I wasn't the only one suckered by Andrew Stiles' piece for Heat Street - the couple of thousand (and counting) who retweeted me were too.
This led me to Heat Street - the "news, opinion, and commentary website" run by the controversial former Conservative MP Louise "Corbyn's a Nazi!" Mensch, for Rupert Murdoch's News Corps.
I'd forced myself to look at Heat Street before, and never took it as a sort of conservative version of The Onion - just a news and opinion site that's anti-"SJW", pro-Gamergate, seeing itself at the right-wing frontline of the "culture wars". Admittedly, some of the content adopts a sneeringly humorous tone - a current story has the headline "Screaming Bearded Feminist Hijacks Open Mic at Comedy Club" - but it seemed to report the news that best fits its agenda.
So, really, you can't blame me for mistaking an article about weaponised hurricanes as a real piece, and not the satire it has since been explained to be. Let's face it, there are plenty of other conservative commentators who believe the US government are using the weather as a weapon - the godawful Alex Jones for one.
As Poe's law states: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”
And I wasn't the only one suckered by Andrew Stiles' piece for Heat Street - the couple of thousand (and counting) who retweeted me were too.
BED-RIDDEN
My tweet - shared from bed, for those who'd like to picture me in the nude - started going viral almost immediately.
It took the best part of Saturday before people started properly cottoning on to it as a piece of fumbled satire - indeed, Mensch herself tweeted and retweeted me, and Stiles revelled in the buzz his post was getting. Mensch and her cronies had chosen a side for me, and that side was on the side of the liberals.
I mean, never mind that I'd also tweeted a link on Saturday morning to a dreadful piece on Vice, which damned the movie Idiocracy as a nothing more than "elitist porn, allowing the fortunate to mock the poor and under-educated through the sheen of the Truth". Vice claims to have no political bias, but there's little question is that its content is far more left-leaning than Heat Street.
Certainly, if I had to choose, I'm probably say I'm more liberal than anything else - but I don't really want to be lumped into any movement, political or social, which seems so inflexible, so driven by a hive mind. The arguments between the right and the left all too often end in drone-like parroting of the sorts of things their side is "meant" to believe in, and an automatic assumption that the other side is wrong.
Free thinking feels like it gets repressed for the sake of a cause. I don't want anything to do with that. Tie your colours to one mast or cause, at whatever cost, and you risk going down with the ship.
You only have to look at the current US presidential campaign. Almost half the American electorate is prepared to ignore all the bad Donald Trump does, his rambling, his lying, his lack of policy, because they're seeing only what they're conditioned to see.
Just look at how he responded to the question in last night's debate about the Trump Tapes: he avoided the question almost completely, and started shouting "ISIS" over and over again, like his brain had broken. I mean, it's not like it's going to make any difference to his supporters. Defeating ISIS is something they believe in.
Never mind the fact that there was no substance to what he was saying, no intelligence, or thought-out policy, just "ISIS! ISIS! ISIS! BILL CLINTON IS A RAPIST! ISIS!" - that's all they'll hear, and they'll ignore the overwhelming evidence that Trump is fundamentally unfit and unskilled to be a US president.
My tweet - shared from bed, for those who'd like to picture me in the nude - started going viral almost immediately.
It took the best part of Saturday before people started properly cottoning on to it as a piece of fumbled satire - indeed, Mensch herself tweeted and retweeted me, and Stiles revelled in the buzz his post was getting. Mensch and her cronies had chosen a side for me, and that side was on the side of the liberals.
I mean, never mind that I'd also tweeted a link on Saturday morning to a dreadful piece on Vice, which damned the movie Idiocracy as a nothing more than "elitist porn, allowing the fortunate to mock the poor and under-educated through the sheen of the Truth". Vice claims to have no political bias, but there's little question is that its content is far more left-leaning than Heat Street.
Certainly, if I had to choose, I'm probably say I'm more liberal than anything else - but I don't really want to be lumped into any movement, political or social, which seems so inflexible, so driven by a hive mind. The arguments between the right and the left all too often end in drone-like parroting of the sorts of things their side is "meant" to believe in, and an automatic assumption that the other side is wrong.
Free thinking feels like it gets repressed for the sake of a cause. I don't want anything to do with that. Tie your colours to one mast or cause, at whatever cost, and you risk going down with the ship.
You only have to look at the current US presidential campaign. Almost half the American electorate is prepared to ignore all the bad Donald Trump does, his rambling, his lying, his lack of policy, because they're seeing only what they're conditioned to see.
Just look at how he responded to the question in last night's debate about the Trump Tapes: he avoided the question almost completely, and started shouting "ISIS" over and over again, like his brain had broken. I mean, it's not like it's going to make any difference to his supporters. Defeating ISIS is something they believe in.
Never mind the fact that there was no substance to what he was saying, no intelligence, or thought-out policy, just "ISIS! ISIS! ISIS! BILL CLINTON IS A RAPIST! ISIS!" - that's all they'll hear, and they'll ignore the overwhelming evidence that Trump is fundamentally unfit and unskilled to be a US president.
STILES ICON
To a lesser degree, the exactly same phenomena happened in the wake of my tweet. I, and others, ignored how ludicrous the Heat Street article was, because we were blinded by our own perspective and prejudices.
We have been conditioned to believe the right are a bunch of insane conspiracy theorists, who'll say literally anything to attack the left. We'll ignore the obvious, and clutch the nuggets of evidence which support our frame of reference.
Don't get me wrong - I think even as parody, Andrew Stiles' piece was bizarre. What it was doing on a right-wing news site is anybody's guess. Who exactly was it aimed at? Was it purely there to troll people like me? Or was it mocking the more extreme elements of its own audience?
Nevertheless, it's so important to try and see beyond our own perception to the truth. We all view ourselves, and our place in the world, and other people, through a distorted lens - a self-concept built up through our past and formative experiences, our physiology, and our needs.
We look for things that fit that self-concept, because breaking it can cause emotional and psychological distress. Our prejudices might keep us scared, but in their own way they're cosy and warm.
Staying put in our own box, created by ourselves and our environment, is the path of least resistance. Stepping outside of it - to view the world as different to what we want it to be - can be terrifying. Our brain will contort itself in creative ways to avoid ever having to do that. And in doing so we kid ourselves that we have free will.
To a lesser degree, the exactly same phenomena happened in the wake of my tweet. I, and others, ignored how ludicrous the Heat Street article was, because we were blinded by our own perspective and prejudices.
We have been conditioned to believe the right are a bunch of insane conspiracy theorists, who'll say literally anything to attack the left. We'll ignore the obvious, and clutch the nuggets of evidence which support our frame of reference.
Don't get me wrong - I think even as parody, Andrew Stiles' piece was bizarre. What it was doing on a right-wing news site is anybody's guess. Who exactly was it aimed at? Was it purely there to troll people like me? Or was it mocking the more extreme elements of its own audience?
Nevertheless, it's so important to try and see beyond our own perception to the truth. We all view ourselves, and our place in the world, and other people, through a distorted lens - a self-concept built up through our past and formative experiences, our physiology, and our needs.
We look for things that fit that self-concept, because breaking it can cause emotional and psychological distress. Our prejudices might keep us scared, but in their own way they're cosy and warm.
Staying put in our own box, created by ourselves and our environment, is the path of least resistance. Stepping outside of it - to view the world as different to what we want it to be - can be terrifying. Our brain will contort itself in creative ways to avoid ever having to do that. And in doing so we kid ourselves that we have free will.
NOWHERE MAN
Until I didn't, I saw Heat Street's article as "typical right-wing conspiracy nonsense" - when it was, apparently, nothing of the sort - and Louise Mensch and her ilk saw me, and those who retweeted me, as "typical humourless liberals".
We were all guilty of lumping one another into an opposing hive mind, instead of respecting everyone as individuals.
And this is what most concerns me about the way political rhetoric is going. Everything has become Us and Them. Everything is polarised. You're expected to belong to a clique, or you're left out in the cold.
Last week, our own Prime Minister Theresa May gave a speech promoting nationalism over individuality. "If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere," she barked, tossing raw meat to the rabid dogs in the balcony.
Consequently, I'm now living in a country where my own government demands me to think only of my own, who I've been lumped with by a quirk of fate and geography. Never mind that I might have more in common, as individuals, with someone who lives in - I dunno - Mumbai, than I do with a knuckle-dragging, boorish, lager-guzzling, English football fan, who likes having fights. My own government, my own unelected Prime Minister, wants to build an invisible wall between me and the rest of the world.
This is not what should be happening. This is not the world, or the country, I want children growing up in. All it will do is breed more intolerance, more Us and Them, make us all much less safe. Everyone else out there is different to us, we're now being told. We here, on this little island... we're all the same. We're better than the rest of them, because we're British.
It breaks my heart, because until recently it felt like the world was making progress. And yet, here we are. Us and Them. And on Saturday I was as guilty of it as anyone.
Until I didn't, I saw Heat Street's article as "typical right-wing conspiracy nonsense" - when it was, apparently, nothing of the sort - and Louise Mensch and her ilk saw me, and those who retweeted me, as "typical humourless liberals".
We were all guilty of lumping one another into an opposing hive mind, instead of respecting everyone as individuals.
And this is what most concerns me about the way political rhetoric is going. Everything has become Us and Them. Everything is polarised. You're expected to belong to a clique, or you're left out in the cold.
Last week, our own Prime Minister Theresa May gave a speech promoting nationalism over individuality. "If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere," she barked, tossing raw meat to the rabid dogs in the balcony.
Consequently, I'm now living in a country where my own government demands me to think only of my own, who I've been lumped with by a quirk of fate and geography. Never mind that I might have more in common, as individuals, with someone who lives in - I dunno - Mumbai, than I do with a knuckle-dragging, boorish, lager-guzzling, English football fan, who likes having fights. My own government, my own unelected Prime Minister, wants to build an invisible wall between me and the rest of the world.
This is not what should be happening. This is not the world, or the country, I want children growing up in. All it will do is breed more intolerance, more Us and Them, make us all much less safe. Everyone else out there is different to us, we're now being told. We here, on this little island... we're all the same. We're better than the rest of them, because we're British.
It breaks my heart, because until recently it felt like the world was making progress. And yet, here we are. Us and Them. And on Saturday I was as guilty of it as anyone.
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