Up until recently, the liberal Twitterati have been faced with a dilemma. By tweeting links of Daily Mail and Sun articles to their followers in order to engage in a collective two minute hate against the idiocy of the tabloid press (and their millions of gullible, easily manipulated readers), they end up sending traffic to the despised article and boosting the tabloid's web traffic and potentially aiding its advertising revenue.
It's even argued that the Mail is intentionally using what's termed 'flame bait' to lure liberals to its site, helping it get 10 million hits more than the Guardian's website each month. This has led to some claiming they'd rather remain in the dark about the content of Daily Mail articles being discussed, because reading them online could make a small contribution to the Mail's swelling coffers.
Now a solution has been found. IstyOsty allows you to link to a cached version of a Daily Mail article (alongside other tabloids) that doesn't display advertising and won't register as a hit on the website or appear on search engines. IstyOsty claims this process is 'entirely legal'.
The website has also been an immediate hit among the Twitterati, who are beginning to childe one another if they link to the actual Daily Mail website. Times columnist Caitlin Moran, for example, was ticked off by TV presenter Lauren Laverne for giving them [the Daily Mail] the 'click through' to an article, prompting Moran to respond: 'Must. Remember. @istyosty.'
When a Twitch Hunt began against Melanie Phillips on Monday for a Mail article she'd penned attacking the BBC, IstyOsty links were widely used with Twitter users imploring others to deprive the 'Daily Fail' of ad revenue. As one Tweet said: 'Dear Twitter, If Melanie Phillips must be linked to, please could it be through the @istyosty safe link? http://is.gd/fQplZD Thanks. :)' Another suggested, 'someone needs to design a WW2-style poster reminding people to use istyosty & not direct-link to the Mail.'
The embracing of IstyOsty on Twitter reveals much about the mindset of the liberals that use it. As one Twitterer put it, 'may I commend istyosty to you? A proxy that enables us to point furiously at evil papers without them getting page hits.'
At first glance, you might think that the IstyOsty strategy is for the 'evil' Daily Mail website and the like to be starved of advertising revenue and being forced to wither away. It would also be understandable to think that in the eyes IstyOsty enthusiasts, the world would be a better place if the Mail and other 'nasty' papers ceased to exist and everyone was forced to read the Guardian by default. (Tellingly a request on its website that IstyOsty also covers the Guardian has so far gone unanswered).
But, here's the rub: In such a world, who would liberals have to 'point furiously' at? Their lives would become dull and empty if there weren't columnists like Melanie Phillips to Twitch Hunt. Even IstyOsty recognises that the Mail plays an important service in allowing liberal Guardian-reading types to feel smug by 'point[ing] out how ignorant they are'.
Of course, their finger-pointing doesn't just stop at the 'ignorance' of writers such as 'Mad Mel', Jan Moir and colleagues. It's also, by extension, aimed at the Mail's 4.7 million readers. The brainwashed, ill-educated, Beta minus drones who inhabit Middle England and read papers such as the Mail not to feel superior, but to actually get news. When, for example, IstyOsty says those who advertise in the Mail are 'companies who should know better', it is implicitly saying that companies shouldn't be spending their cash trying to raise awareness of their products among the poor thickies that read it.
IstyOsty, realistically, is unlikely to make much of dent to the massive number of hits the Daily Mail gets each month. Even if the whole of Islington, Hackney, Haringey and the small handful of other liberal bastions (i.e. the places that voted 'Yes' in the AV referendum), decided to switch to IstyOsty en masse. It's more a way the chattering classes can ensure that the continued success of these 'evil' publications is not done in their name. As well as being a convenient way to differentiate themselves from the dunderheaded tabloid-reading masses.
Using an IstyOsty link is like a 21st century Twitter version of a Masonic handshake. It makes it clear you're one of the Enlightened Ones and not one of them. On the flip side, however, it is an remarkably accurate identifier of members of the contemptuous, intolerant, masses-hating, clique of illiberal liberals who are - worryingly - becoming increasingly influential in shaping British political life today.
Follow Patrick Hayes on Twitter: www.twitter.com/P_Hayes
Please remember, Mr Hayes, that when you point a finger at others, you are actually pointing four fingers back at yourself.
There's a lot of good guides to reading the novel if you'd like to understand it properly, however, I'd try sparknotes, their guides are generally solid.
You also seem to be misguided by the types of people who complain about the Daily Mail, as well, which is understandable.
I'd imagine by referring to Jan Moir you were talking about the article to the Stephen Gately article. People didn't enjoy lobbing insults at Jan Moir, in reality most of them were upset and angry because she referred to homosexual relationships as seedy. If you disagree with the homosexual lifestyle or not, to insult it is a little juvenile, isn't it?
Similarly, with regards to Mel Phillips, a lot of people get upset when she says offensive things about Muslims. A lot of Muslims live in this country, as do their friends and family, and they get angry and upset when Melanie writes offensive things about them.
Oh, and just so you know for future record, I come from Northamptonshire, which is quite close to London but far enough away to be considered a separate town and country from London.
Nobody who despises what the Mail stands for thinks, even for a minute, that its readers are ill-educated (at least in the academic sense) or Beta minus drones. However, and here's the real kicker, the problem with the Mail is that it's entirely dedicated to making its readers feel superior. Superior to anyone who isn't white, middle class, and Christian with a lower-case 'c'. Note how many of its headlines are snarky, objectionable putdowns or insulting rhetorical questions. Superiority is its governing principle, not the reporting of news.
(Please note that this comment uses humour and irony, concepts the author may not be familiar with.)
Isn’t that akin to intellectual self-abuse? An expenditure of effort, from which nothing of note issues. Wouldn’t a repository for pertinent questions be more productive? That way, those in a position to present them to the main protagonists in this soap, could do so. Even the fact that those queries were not being asked, might enlighten us to the efficacy and motives of such mummers.
"IstyOsty allows you to link to a cached version of a Daily Mail article"
While ItsyInquirete could even have time-lined presentations. Highlighting any apparent anomalies, contradictions and inconsistencies in narratives. Equivalent to having many millions of proofreaders on staff.
"someone needs to design a WW2-style poster"
Your Republic Needs You:-
To Convert It Into A Democracy.
"point[ing] out how ignorant they are"
in regard to those questions the people want answered. In addition to identifying those crooks they want pursued and exposed. Possibly even preventing the application of political handcuffs, to the wrists of hands turning over those suspicious looking stones of the rock pile.
What a stupid article.
One of your basic premises is false: I for one have no objection to making a small contribution to the Daily Mail's coffers by reading their site. If advertisers think that they can profit from a stream of visitors to a site to whose message they are wholly antagonistic, then they deserve to crash and burn as horribly as is bound to be the case. I have no sympathy for them. The Mail is performing a valuable public service by taking their money, thus hastening their demise. I suspect that many others have arrived at the same conclusion. There's a big difference between visiting an antagonistic site and buying a product because you saw it advertised there.
On the other hand, your contrarian approach to publicity is basically right. "Flame baiting", putting forward a message which is exactly opposite to the one implied, subliminally implanting key phrases - e.g. seeming to oppose IstyOsty while insistently projecting the message 'Must. Remember. @istyosty.' - it's BRILLIANT. I'd never heard of IstyOsty before, but now I must look it up. Mission accomplished.