Hurrah for Humorfeed!

So, there I was, preparing a post about how I was going to scale back my commitments to The Sleaze, maybe even put on a hiatus for a while - after all, a large proportion of its contemporaries amongst satire sites are currently inactive or defunct - when, out of the blue, I receive news that plans are afoot to revive the fortunes of Humorfeed.   Over the past few years I've announced the death of Humorfeed on several occasions, only to be proven wrong.  The site has limped along, with fewer and fewer contributors as fatigue, Google's decimation of organic traffic and ennui have taken their toll on the roster of satire sites, with, effectively, no one at the tiller.  However, the captain and officers are now back on deck and the site has a new sense of direction.  Hopefully, as well as eventually generating some non-organic traffic to the online satire world, it can also provide a much needed focus for the satire community.  In view of this, I'm left reconsidering my plans for The Sleaze.

I'd never intended to take the site offline, but in the face of ever declining traffic thanks to Google's constant de-ranking from its search results of smaller and independent websites (including, last week, the absolutely worst traffic I've seen in over ten years), it has become clear that simply publishing good quality content on a regular basis isn't enough.  The fact is that my attempts to drum up traffic and create content were taking up increasing amounts of my time and I was beginning to resent this.  There are other projects I want to pursue - I'd like to have another crack at podcasting, for instance, not to mention possibly starting a new, non-satire, site - and I can't do that whilst The Sleaze is taking up so much of my time.  The only solution, it seemed, was to reduce the amount of new content I was producing for the site and effectively putting it on the back burner, allowing it to simply tick over whilst I devoted more time to other things. 

As part of this process, I planned to use The Sleaze as a test bed for some experiments in Wordpress theme customisation.  I also planned to start shifting the focus of the site, looking at new forms of content, including shorter, up to the minute, stories and possibly some video.  All of this will probably still happen, but with the revived Humorfeed  in need of contributions as it gets back on its feet, I've decided to modify my schedule.  Whereas I had originally planned to start 'mothballing' The Sleaze at the end of March, (it will be fourteen years old come April, after all, which, in web terms, makes it decrepit), it is now more likely to be the Autumn.  That said, I will be slowing the rate of output in story terms so as to free up some time for other projects.  Hurrah for Humorfeed!

Real or Satire

God help us all - there is now a site people can go to which will check whether a story they've come across online is real or satire.  Whatever happened to the idea of simply engaging you critical faculties?  It should be obvious whether a story is true or not.  Indeed, the simplest way to tell is by looking at the site you found it on - if it isn't a reputable news source like the BBC, CNN or a serious newspaper, then it is probably bollocks.  The subject matter is probably a big clue, as well: anything about David Cameron appearing in porn films, the Queen being a nymphomaniac or Prince Charles being a serial killer are most probably satire.

I became aware of this site as a result of seeing it as a referrer in my server logs.  Incredibly, it has a database of sites it thinks are satire sites, including The Sleaze.  It ascertains their satirical status by such methods as reading their slogans, straplines and sub-titles.  In addition to this extensive examination of mastheads, it also checks their 'About' pages for clues!  Surely just a quick look at the stories these sites carry is the biggest clue as to their status?  I really do find it most depressing that there are people out there incapable of doing these things for themselves, is this what we've come to?  A world where having the words 'Political satire, news parody and surreal humour' prominently displayed at the top of each page, next to the site name, plus the words 'UK satire and humour' as part of the article's browser display title, isn't sufficient warning to people that what they are reading is a pack of lies.  I despair.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

You know what I did last weekend?  Bugger all.  That's what I did.  Well, that's not entirely true - I did some long overdue Spring cleaning and, consequently, I can now see what colour the kitchen floor is meant to be.  Anyway, getting back to the point, (a digression so early in the post, surely a bad sign), when I say that I did bugger all, I mean that I did bugger all in terms of the web.  I didn't work on any stories for The Sleaze, I didn't record or edit any audio for podcasts and I didn't do any 'back office' work on any of my sites.  It was a wonderful experience which reminded me just how much of my bloody time my various web projects take up.  It was great just to spend a couple of days crashed out on the sofa, drinking beer and watching old films.  When I did go online, it was great to just be a surfer again for a couple of the days, catching up with various reviews of obscure horror movies on equally obscure, but fascinating, blogs. 

I also took the opportunity to gloat over someone else's online problems.  I was greatly entertained by the infighting and back-biting unfolding in the forums of a rival satire site.  Now, I'm not going to name the site, as I don't want to get involved in one of those tiresome internet slanging matches, but it is run by a well known UK novelist and comic writer who recently stood as a candidate for the Labour Party in a parliamentary by-election.  Which should be sufficient information for anyone interested to work out the identity of the site in question.  To cut to the chase, it seems that some of the would-be writers had set up their own 'side project', but, by not accepting submissions for their new site, had, in the eyes of those not invited to write for the site, created an exclusive club.  There were also all sorts of allegations from the breakaway group of declining standards at the parent site, which 'justified' their actions. 

What fascinated me was the sub-text going on in the 'debate'.  Now, I might well be misjudging the individuals involved here, but the impression I got was that the breakaways were predominantly conservative in their political views and the real trigger for their move was the realisation that the site's owner was a socialist and a paid up member of the Labour Party, (which, in my book, is very much to his credit).  Horror of horrors!  They'd been writing for a real life leftie!  Undoubtedly fearing that he might also be a horrible working class person they obviously felt they had little choice but to bale and set up their own whimsical 'satire' site set in a cosy middle class English village.   Like I said, I could be being completely unfair here, but they just struck me as typical of the conservative 'satirists' I've had the misfortune to encounter elsewhere - terrified of real satire.  Ultimately, the whole business just server to vindicate my decision to close down my own site's message boards years ago and exert an iron grip on content.  But hey, this very public dispute at least provided me with some amusement on a lazy Sunday afternoon!

Right Funny?

For various reasons too tedious to go into here, I recently had the misfortune to find myself looking at a self-styled 'satire' site which boasted of being a flag-bearer for 'conservative satire.' Now, leaving aside the fact that the words 'conservative' and 'satire' are surely mutually exclusive, this woe begotten site just served to underline the fact that right-wingers just don't 'get' satire. Instead of satirising their liberal targets, they just spew out a stream of bile and invective about them. There's no wit about it, no cleverness, no subtlety, no carefully constructed comic conceits. Just bile. They also don't seem to be able to discern between abuse and satire, or to be able to understand that offensiveness is not, in itself, satirical. Most depressingly, there were no 'ideas' whatsoever in this particular site's content, just rehashing of the same tired old right-wing conspiracy theories and scare stories, all served up quite uncritically.

Like many of these supposed 'conservative satire' sites, rather than producing satire from a conservative perspective, (which is actually what most of the 'establishment satire' in the UK does), it simply trots out party political propaganda. Their unwillingness to subject their own 'side' to any kind of satirical scrutiny makes them so relentlessly one-sided that they're virtually unreadable. Besides, if you are describing yourself as a 'conservative' then the odds are that you favour the status quo, which is surely antithesis to a true satirist, who are usually iconoclasts, always suspicious of vested interests and the established order. But that's the the funny thing: the right always likes to portray itself as the underdog on the rare occasions it finds itself out of power. Which, of course, is a fundamentally dishonest position. As I've noted before, satire should be in the service of the powerless and take the empowered as its primary target. Which is something the right can never do. Which, in turn, is why their attempts at satire are so bloody awful.

Late November Musings

I've been taking a few days off of work - I find that taking time off at this time of year makes that final run-in to Christmas slightly easier to take - repairing the plaster on the front wall of my spare room and unsuccessfully trying to replace the kitchen taps (again). Despite having more time on my hands, I find myself with less to post about here. Part of the problem is that writing here is something of a safety valve for me with regard to work. However, with no work for a few days, I find myself mellowed out and apparently incapable of ranting. Not even Crapchester's lousy Christmas lights display in the town centre, (for the second year running), haven't outraged me sufficiently. Moreover, I'm saving my anger at the stream of shit issuing from the government with regard to the forthcoming public sector strikes until next week, when the stoppages actually occur.

The only thing which has been bothering me of late is the ongoing destruction of the non-commercial web by Google. Now, I'm not going to launch into another despairing rant, but the fact is that if you aren't a big brand site selling something and carrying lots of Google ads, then the traffic situation is just getting worse and worse. One thing that has become crystal clear is that Google's current algorithms simply don't 'get' or rate humour and satire, (unless linked to a big name celebrity's site), seeing it as 'not useful' to users and therefore 'poor quality' content. Consequently, humour and satire sites are being starved of traffic and seem to be dropping like flies: the revived Satire Wire, for instance, seems to have died again, whilst Glossynews (which has been around almost as long as The Sleaze) hasn't updated for over a month. This is also reflected in the decreasing number of headlines being carried by Humorfeed on a daily basis, (the traffic driven by this site is also a shadow of former glories). Some humour and satire sites continue, though. In the main, they are either labours of love like The Sleaze, or run by people with media contacts they can exploit to drive traffic from non-web sources. Nonetheless, whatever way you look at it, the future seems pretty bloody bleak.

No Laughing Matter

Now, where were we before I was distracted by switching The Sleaze over to its new format? I was probably ranting about the current state of satire - it has become something of an obsession of mine lately. I was reminded of it the other day when I found myself agreeing with something written by Martin Kettle in The Guardian. Well, I suppose that even patronising, faux-liberal, closet Tory, middle class journalists have to be right some of the time. Anyway, he was on about the fact that what passes for satire in the public mind - Have I Got News For You and Private Eye - inevitably has a corrosive effect on political culture. Their relentless cynicism and portrayal of all politicians as venal, corrupt and/or stupid, ultimately undermines public confidence in the political system and discourages anyone with noble intentions from engaging in politics at any level. Whilst Kettle might be attributing more influence to these 'satire' outlets than their viewing figures and circulation, respectively, would indicate. Nevertheless, they are seen as the 'satire' institutions which set the agenda for the wider satire and political humour community.

That's certainly true as far the UK's online 'satire' 'community' goes - the subject matter, the tone, everything about their stories is clearly inspired by Have I Got News For You and Private Eye. Which is depressing. As Kettle points out in his article, the focus of those two 'institutions' is very narrow: corrupt, stupid politicians. It's getting tiresome, not to mentioned tired out. Even when they do foray into areas outside of politics the formula is the same: corrupt, stupid sportsmen/celebrities/journalists/fat people/poor people etc (delete as applicable). Consequently, there are whole areas of public life and current affairs which they simply aren't addressing properly. But, as I've argued before, we shouldn't be surprised as the dominant form of 'satire' these days is effectively 'establishment satire', behind its pretence of 'balance' and political impartiality' lurks a deeply conservative agenda. Which, again, shouldn't surprise us, as its main purveyors are middle class, privately educated men - part of the establishment, in other words.

More Satire With Balls

I feel like I've spent a large part of the day underwater. The other part I've spent sat in the car vainly waiting for the downpour to ease off, whilst the moisture from my rain-sodden clothes fogs up the windows. Listening to the rain drumming on the roof of the car has given me plenty of time for thought, particularly about the nature of satirical humour, and online satire in particular. I mentioned in a recent editorial that I'd been lurking around the message boards of another satire site, in the hope of finding some kind of satire community to replace the one at the now defunct Humorfeed members forum. Sadly, I was to be disappointed, finding only a bunch of middle class smart arses instead. Anyway, I found myself back there the other day, only to left somewhat nonplussed by a recent thread in which one of the members, apparently in all seriousness, admitted to having no idea as to what the phone-hacking scandal was all about. Now, bearing in mind that this is one of the biggest news stories to break in years, with the potential to completely reshape the UK media landscape, not to mention its political impact, it really is quite worrying to find someone associated with a satire site claiming ignorance of it.

It raised the question, in my mind at least, as to whether it is possible to write satire if you have no interest in, or knowledge of, current affairs. Ultimately, I suppose, it all hinges on how one defines satire. For many, the only real satire is political satire. The lampooning of politicians, ideologies and political institutions is what distinguishes satire from mere 'humour', they would argue. If we accept this principle the, clearly, no satirist worth their salt could possibly dare to claim ignorance of major news stories. However, the reality is that satire, as defined by the dictionary, has always encompassed more than just the parodying of politics. It is about making fun of and challenging all established mores, whether they be political, social, cultural or economic. It's about being iconoclastic and undermining the status quo. By this reckoning, it is entirely possible to write satire without any interest in politics and current affairs. It just wouldn't be political satire. You could quite easily bang out stories satirising popular culture, celebrities, religion, even royalty, without ever reading a broadsheet or watching an edition of Newsnight. Which might explain why so much of the UK satire I encounter online is so bloody whimsical, never going for the jugular, instead dancing around its subject matter, ineffectually jabbing at it with the sort smart-arsed quips celebrities on panel shows have scripted for them. Their humour might, technically, be clever, but its shallowness betrays a lack of real passion about the subject matter. Whilst there's nothing wrong with a bit of whimsicality, when writing satire you not only need balls, (metaphorically speaking, in case anyone thinks I'm implying that women can't write satire), but every so often you have to be prepared to kick your subject in the balls.

Humorfeed Update

It seems that reports of Humorfeed's death, (mainly emanating from me), are hopefully exaggerated. Whilst it isn't up and running again, it does now display a message:

5/20/11: We're experiencing technical issues with our database at the moment. We are working to restore service as quickly as possible, and apologize for the interruption. In the meanwhile, please visit our partner sites.

So, with a bit of luck, it seems that the old site could be operational again sometime in the foreseeable future. Which, as far as I'm concerned, can only be good news.

When The Laughter Stopped

I'm sorry to say that Humorfeed seems, finally, to have died a death. Today it's just showing MySQL errors instead of headlines. Which doesn't really surprise me as, yesterday, I was unable to log in, receiving the same error messages when I attempted it. Sadly, the site has been in decline for some time now - the members' forum abruptly vanished a few weeks ago, and fewer and fewer members seemed to be posting stories there. It's a real pity that this has been allowed to happen - there's been no explanation or contact from the site admins for months now - as Humorfeed provided perhaps the only source of targeted traffic for satire sites. More than that, at its peak, it provided a focal point for the online satire community. That said, recent years have seen the 'colonisation' of the online satire sector by increasing numbers of professional and semi-professional sites, none of whom seemed to have much interest in the 'community', seeing other sites as competitors rather than colleagues.

So, where does that leave The Sleaze? Well, despite my continuing support for Humorfeed, the fact is that it has been delivering less and less traffic to The Sleaze over the past few years. Facebook and even Twitter have surpassed it as traffic sources in recent months, so it's collapse will have minimal impact. All I can do is press ahead with my long overdue revamp of the site, which will make it far more Facebook and Twitter friendly. It will also be far friendlier to mobile devices. The increasing use of smart phones, iPods, iPads and the like to browse the web is a trend no webmaster can afford to ignore. So, whilst its demise probably won't hurt The Sleaze in any significant way, I'm still sorry to see Humorfeed in its current dire state. Whether there is anything that can be done to rescue it, or whether there is any appetite amongst what's left of the online satire community for creating an alternative, I just don't know. If any of the old Humorfeed crew are reading this, get in touch and let me know your thoughts. Surely I'm not the only one lamenting the passing of this once great institution?

Third Best Satire Site on the Web?

Apparently The Sleaze is one of the top five political satire sites on the web. According to a hubpage entitled 'The Best Political Satire Websites', that is. Whilst it would be nice to be given this accolade by some august body, respected throughout the world for its expertise in satire, rather than from a page set up by an amateur enthusiast on a commercial platform, I'm quite happy to take such a compliment from any source. The fact is that, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, running a web site can be a very lonely business - it is surprising how little feedback from readers you get. You simply have to assume that they like what they read from the fact that some of them keep coming back. Moreover, why should we give more weight to accolades handed out by some (usually self-appointed) expert body, than to those awarded by enthusiastic amateurs? Indeed, that's always been my problem with the awards often handed out on the web - their criteria are usually obscure and the authority of the awarding body unclear. At least with individuals and amateurs these things are clear - they're giving the accolade because they're readers who like the recipient's work. What better reasons or greater authority can you ask for.

For what it's worth, I'm not entirely sure that the compiler of this particular top five is actually a reader of any of the sites listed. Indeed, the list, (in which The Sleaze comes in at number three), looks suspiciously like the first five results you might get by putting the search term 'political satire websites' into a search engine. But like I said before, I'm willing to take accolades from anywhere these days. I only wish that The Sleaze was getting the sort of traffic you'd expect the third best political satire site in the world to be getting. Actually, I've pretty much given up trying to work out what's going on traffic-wise. It's all over the place - some days (like today), both visitor numbers and page views are consistently high, others they plummet. I can't discern any real rhyme or reason behind these fluctuations, (other, obviously, from the fact that posting a new story usually produces a twenty four hour spike in visitors, sometimes longer, depending on the story). Anyway, I'm thinking of quoting this accolade on the site's masthead - "Rated as Third Best Satire Site on the Web", or something similar. After all, every other site I see seems to have some quote or other, allegedly from a newspaper or magazine, saying how wonderful it is, at last I could have something similar that I hadn't completely made up!

Where's My Bloody Traffic Gone (Again)?

Maybe it is because I went back to work today, but I'm not in the best of moods. Which is probably why the total lack of traffic to The Sleaze today, despite a new story being posted and various other traffic generating efforts on my part, is really pissing me off. Once again, I find myself asking why I bother? Well, this time I really have had enough. I've got better things to do with my time. So fuck the lot of you. Despite what I frequently say about The Sleaze being an 'underground' site and not wanting hordes of visitors who aren't really interested in its content, who have just come because it is 'trendy', or the latest internet 'sensation', I do get very irritated by the fact that, in spite of knowing that I have the superior product content-wise, it is other sites, full of truly crappy, poor quality stories, which seem to get, not only a high volume of traffic, but also greater recognition both on the web and in the wider media.

Before I start sounding too egocentric and arrogant, it isn't just The Sleaze which I see suffering in this respect - there are a whole slew of humour and satire sites out there regularly publishing innovative and high quality material, which barely register on the public's radar. Hell, The Watley Review, Wear Your Cape, Satirium and All Day Coffee, to name but a few, put out some great stuff, but do they get the recognition they deserve? Indeed, you can say the same for just about any of the sites featured on Humorfeed. Why is that? Interestingly, I was reading an article in The Guardian the other day about teenaged bloggers who have become influential, when I came across a quote from a media commentator, who noted that sites often increase their traffic and visibility, regardless of the quality of their content, as a result of being linked to by an established popular site or featured in a newspaper. In either case, they noted, the exposure they get is based on luck. The sad truth is that, still, the popularity of sites is based upon fads, rather than quality. no wonder I get pissed off...

Laugh? I Thought I'd Never Start

It's been a while since I've taken a crack at other online 'satire' sites, largely because I've been lucky enough to have avoided any really shit sites for quite some time. However, it has been my recent misfortune to stumble across the site of a self-styled 'humourist' whose output - whilst prolific - is truly woeful in terms of quality. Now, I don't want to start one of those pathetic 'flame wars' which seem so beloved of some denizens of the web, so I'm not going to name the miscreant or his (I assume it's a he) site. Nevertheless, I will outline exactly why I think that his stuff is utter bollocks. Most fundamentally - it isn't funny. Simply stringing together a lot of expletives, interspersing it with 'characters' with 'hilarious' (and in the case of ethnic characters, often racist) names, spouting vitriol on some vaguely topical theme, isn't really satire. The thing I find most uncomfortable about these 'stories' (if, indeed, we can grace these 'narratives', which generally seem to consist of a list of loosely-linked 'gags', with such a term), is the racism (black people are regularly referred to as 'very sun-tanned', for instance) and knee-jerk reactionary attitudes which seem (to me) to pervade them. All of the 'stories' seem designed to confirm the narrow-minded prejudices of their audiences. Perhaps I've misunderstood it all these years, but surely the point of satire is to challenge established norms and conventional wisdom, thereby inviting readers to reassess their own views and prejudices? It certainly shouldn't be reinforcing the status quo.

Mind you, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on someone who is clearly a rank amateur. Supposed professionals are equally capable of writing utter crap and claiming that it is satire. Some of the weakest so-called 'satire' I've read over the past twelve months has come from a site which proudly proclaims that its authors are newspaper journalists, as if this somehow qualifies them to write satire. Sadly, they've taken the lazy route and, having seen a couple of episodes of The Thick of It, think that all you have to do to write cutting-edge satire is throw together some topical references, mention the names of a couple of politicians, smother it in expletives and adopt a tone of weary cynicism. Sadly,what they've forgotten to include is any wit, originality or imagination. Unfortunately, this site seems to get a fair amount of traffic and coverage in the wider media. It is a favourite for being referenced by pseudo-celebrity bloggers. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised as it is precisely the sort of 'satire' site which appeals to the mainstream - slick and non-threatening. Like the amateur I lambasted earlier, its stories never actually challenge the conventional world-view held by the majority of mainstream readers. They like it because, whilst the swearing makes it seem 'edgy', there's nothing in it which will make them feel uncomfortable. Best of all, from their point of view, it has 'credibility' because it is written by 'professionals', who surely must know what they're talking about, mustn't they? Well, not really. But if you like your satire bland and toothless, then it is definitely for you. Personally, I think I prefer to stick to producing my 'underground' satire site - we may be offensive, but we're never bland!

Autumnal Musings

So, here we are in the middle of Autumn. Summer's but a memory and the leaves are tumbling from the trees. I love this time of year. I especially like it when its largely dry, as it has been around here, and the fallen leaves stay crisp, crackling underfoot as you walk. There's nothing quite as enjoyable as kicking your way through piles of leaves, hearing that wonderful 'swishing' noise as they scatter. Then there's the smell - I love the scent of Autumn leaves. Even better is that wonderful smell when they burn them on bonfires. Ah, the joys of Autumn. It's also, of course, the time of year when my central heating starts kicking in and, inevitably, malfunctioning. It's always the actuator which plays up. Take my advice, never use those bloody spring return types - the springs go after a few years and they won't switch the valve back to hot water only. This year I've acted swiftly and replaced the old actuator with a fully powered 'motor on/motor off' type. It works perfectly. Not bad for something I got off of Ebay for less than thirty quid.

Leaves and actuators aside, Autumn is also the time of year when we website owners can usually expect an upturn in traffic. However, this October, the slump which has gripped The Sleaze since the beginning of June continues. Every time there seems to be a recovery in traffic, it peters out after a few days and falls to seemingly even lower levels. I've given up trying to analyse what might be wrong with the site - my Google Page Rank (for what it's worth - I don't set much store by it), hasn't changed in over a year, I have more pages than ever correctly listed on Google, Yahoo and other leading search engines, and many of those pages (especially the index page) rank pretty highly for various relevant search terms. In theory, I should be doing a lot better. It could be that people are being distracted by things like the credit crunch and US elections - although that's never been a problem before - or maybe people just aren't interested in satire any more. It has occur ed to me that the collapse of Satire Search might have had an effect. Although I wasn't a member, I used o get a lot of referrals from sites which were on it. With the feed's demise, they've probably lost traffic, which has a knock on effect for me. Anyway, I'm going to press ahead with the site's redesign and relaunch it in the next couple of months, and see if things improve then. If not - God knows what I'll try next.

The All Too Predictable Truth...

...is that if you post a story called something like Sex in Space you'll suddenly see your web traffic spike. Which is exactly what happened yesterday. Whilst I'm actually quite proud of the story, which is genuinely satirical, I have no doubt that had I not given it such an obviously suggestive title, it would have passed by virtually unnoticed. Yet more proof, if any was needed, that sex is what drives the majority of web searches. The best we satirists can hope for (and I suspect it is a vain hope), is that some of these smut-seekers actually read the stories they click on and, before they know it, experience some satire. There's always the chance that they might even enjoy what they read and come back for more. It's unlikely, I grant you. But we have to cling to these slim hopes if we aren't to simply give up and start amateur porn sites instead. At least then we'd be giving the punters something they wanted.

Mind you, it's a minor miracle that Sex in Space ever saw the light of day after its first two thirds were trapped on my inoperative hard drive for the better part of Sunday. Luckily, as I chronicled earlier, I was able to sort out the problem and get my laptop up and running again. However, to add insult to injury, the keyboard then began to fall apart. Despite these travails having put me seriously behind schedule this week, I've finally managed to get back on track. Hopefully my laptop problems should now be behind me, with the purchase of a new laptop (a second hand IBM T43), although I'm still using my ill-tempered old Dell until I finish installing software and transferring data to its replacement. So, now that I'm back in business, you can expect to see a new editorial soon over at The Sleaze, to be followed by the last story of this silly season (subject yet to be decided).

Suicide by Satire?

Back on the thorny subject of web traffic, or the recent lack thereof, to be precise. After speaking to other site owners, I was ready to simply put the last couple of months dreadful dip in traffic down to the 'summer slump' - a combination of good weather, people going on holiday, students being away from college and sporting events often result in people being drawn away from the web at this time of year. But then I got to thinking, I hadn't experienced this sort of thing over the previous couple of summers. So what was different this year? Well, most obviously, the stories I was running. So, I decided to remind myself of what I was running this time last year. The difference with this summer was startling - last year we had rampaging giant breasts, naked wrestling ex-Presidents, celebrity animal killers, smoking terrorists, swastika spankings and sado-masochistic secret agents dominating the front page. Sensational stuff that drew the in the punters in droves.

Compare that to this summer, when I made the mistake of running mainly straightforward (by The Sleaze's standards, anyway), political satire. Bad mistake! As I've noted before, the commonest search terms bringing visitors to the site seem to concern smut and perversion. These stories just weren't going to do it! Interestingly, the publication ofA Life in Pictures which kick started a modest recovery in traffic to The Sleaze. Whilst not a provocative title, and although it contains no smut, the story has proven popular. To capitalise on this success, I quickly followed it up with The Day the Earth Got Spanked, a heady mixture of aliens, abductions and flagellation. Again, a winner in traffic terms. Traffic this week has been much stronger (although today isn't too clever, so far). Consequently, another slice of satirical smut tentatively titled Sex in Space is currently in the works.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, I hate to say it, but we've pretty much confirmed that satire just doesn't sell to the great unwashed of the web. This is emphasised by the fact that, thanks to some tweaking of title and description tags, the site now ranks pretty highly in Google for searches like 'political satire'. Has that resulted in any new traffic? No. None at all. As if we needed reminding, the truth is that most web users seem to be searching for porn. A depressing truth. Still, at least my traffic seems to be improving (in terms of visitors, if not page views) after two utterly dire months. I'll just have to be satisfied with that.

For Your Delectation - Tripartisan.org

OK folks, I'm going to do something I rarely do - give a plug to somebody else's site. The site in question is Tripartisan, a site which aims to be a social news-type site specialising in satire. You know the sort of thing - Digg, Propeller, Reddit are all well known examples of the social news site - people sign up as users, submit stories and vote on them. Hopefully, a community of like-minded individuals grows up around the site, they get exposed to stories they might otherwise have missed, the stories themselves actually reach an interested audience and get some decent traffic. Everybody's happy. Of course, all this is easier said than done - getting these things up and running is the difficult bit. In order to attract users, they need publicity. So here I am, doing my bit for a new start up.

But why am I championing this particular site. Once again, I must stress that I have no connection with it. I do, however, have an ulterior motive - the need to generate traffic for The Sleaze. That's the unique selling point of Tripartisan - it specializes in satire. None of the other social news sites do this. Sure, they have 'humor' categories, but if you submit there, you'll find yourself rubbing shoulders with cute pictures of dogs in hats, videos of people falling over and stories about people getting their penises stuck in letter boxes. In such circumstances, carefully crafted satire doesn't stand a chance. Consequently, such sites tend to drive very little traffic my way (or to most other satire sites). That's why I think we should get behind this new venture. So, if you are a satire-site owner reading this, get over to Tripartisan and start submitting your stuff. Even better, if you are a reader interested in satire, get over there and start submitting stories from your favourite sites. Go on. You know you want to.

Right Off the Target

Don't you just hate it when somebody completely misses the point of a piece of satire? Indeed, completely miss the point of satire itself? Not surprisingly, I experience quite a lot of this, when people fail to grasp that everything on The Sleaze is completely fictional and intended to be read as satire. Recently, however, I came across an astounding example which didn't involve any of my work. What makes this particular example so incredible is that those doing the misunderstanding clearly fancy themselves as satirists. To cut to the point, I had the misfortune to stumble across a right-wing would-be humour site that seems to see its role as redressing the balance against all us naughty left-wingers (or 'progressives' as it likes to call anybody who doesn't embrace the Bush world-view). As a response to similarly photo shopped images of Bush, it presented two pictures of Barack Obama, one in the guise of Mad Magazine's Alfred E Newman and the other showing him as Hitler. Now, this is their 'ironic' justification of these pictures:

"Leave it to rightwingers to describe Barack Obama as Hitler, Alfred E. Newman, or Barakula! Progressive satirists would've never done this to Republican candidates! We would've never printed a picture of George Bush as Alfred E. Newman on a magazine cover and ranked it in top 40 best magazine covers! Progressives would've never put a mustache on Bush's face and call him Bushitler. "

But obviously (to any semi-intelligent person, anyway), it simply isn't the same thing at all. The depictions of Bush had clear satirical purpose, based upon his persona and policy. Depicting him as an idiot, or as a repressive dictator presiding over military invasions of foreign countries and the repression of civil liberties at home, whilst clearly an exaggeration, make sense within the context of actual events. It's called satire. Depicting Obama, who is not in power, who has not embarked upon any military adventures and has not oppressed anybody's civil liberties, makes no sense whatsoever. Indeed, depicting a black man as a dictator who presided over the genocide of racial minorities in Europe is downright offensive.

Just in case this was an isolated example of missing the point, I had a look at a few other articles on the site. These simply confirmed my initial impression - these people are utterly clueless. One item, in particular, caught my eye; a whinge against Google. Incredibly, these clowns were (as far as I could see, quite seriously), taking Google to task for celebrating such events as 'Earth Day' by customising its logo whilst ignoring Veteran's Day or D Day! Jesus! Where do I start with this crap? You see guys, Google is a global brand, and is understandably keen to promote global events. Events which might not otherwise get that level of publicity. Veteran's Day, by contrast, is a purely American event (the rest of us tend to have Remembrance Day, instead), one which everyone who's likely to be interested in already knows about. As for D Day, well, what about the Battle of Trafalgar, Waterloo, Austerlitz, El Alamein, Iwo Jima, etc? We can't spend all our time 'celebrating' dates from history.

Far from 'redressing the balance', these guys are simply revealing themselves as a bunch of humourless knee-jerk reactionaries. A word of advice guys, try actually understanding what satire is and how it works before you try to respond to it. You are so missing the point!

How Not to Write Satire...

Now, as you know, I'm not one to knock other so-called 'satire' sites (OK, I'm lying. I love ripping the piss out of them), but sometimes I come across something on such a site which just screams out to be ridiculed. In this case its an incredibly pompous post by a 'writer' on the message board of a certain very well known 'satire' site which tries to lay out some guidelines for us hacks. It's too long to reproduce in full, but I'll share some of the 'highlights' with you (the publication's name has been removed).

"This is the new XXXXX assignment board, which anyone can open up. It is for assigning excellent comedy tasks or giving inspirational ideas.

I AM LEAVING THIS FORUM FROZEN FOR FUTURE XXXXX WRITERS

XXXXX ALERT!!!!

I found a site with the funniest names in the world for you to use on your stories. The names secretly say an odd name. If your reader is intelligent they will get caught by surprise and throw out a laugh. These are a few funny names without surprises: Goofy, Maynard, Dufus, Bluto, Goobert, Fanny, Titsy "

God damn! That's where I've been going wrong all these years! Screw satire, I should have been using more fake names which are also double entendres!

Here's an example of this guy's suggested 'story assignments' for other writers:

"We need a story accusing Britney Speers of being disrespectful for trying to have sex with men. Demand from Britney that she have sex instead with lesbian women who are also a bunch of disrespectful opportunist. Use the picture of that demonic toy gremlin and under it put "Britney Speers" Put a statement in the story where a politician tells reporters, "Britney should sleep with a woman to know how it feels being an innocent man." We are news reporters and this is part of the job.

This will be a powerful story and it will lure thousands of people into your page producing amazement at the unusual perception. "

'Unusual perception' is one way of describing his fixation on Britney and lesbianism, I suppose (a large number of his story suggestions are along similar lines, and he even suggests a reference work on the subject of lesbianism for research purposes).

"Primatology is the study of primates. It is a diverse discipline and primatologists can be found in departments of biology, anthropology, psychology and many others. Physical anthropology is a branch of primatology, which is the primatology of the genus Homo, especially Homo sapiens. The fields cross over in the study of the hominids, which include all ape-like ancestors of man and the other great apes (for a list of common ancestors with other living species see The Ancestor's Tale)."

No shit? Fascinating, I'm sure, but utterly random. Here are some more random nuggets of wisdom:

"mel·o·dra·mat·ic adj1. behaving, speaking, done, or said in a way that is more dramatic, shocking, or highly emotional than the situation demands2. relating to or typical of melodrama

fur·lough n1. a period of leave granted to a prisoner, usually as a reward for good behavior and to reduce incarceration costs"

Thank God you clarified those definitions. How foolish I'd have felt if, in my ignorance, I'd used those terms wrongly!

"Random subject search:

cats and dogs living together

the end of the world

jokes on mistakes made by religion - religious hypocrisy is a hot topic now, build on it and ride the wave.

humiliating famous people

head hunters

sex - most popular

stupid things that happen

laws that authority violates

political promises

women's weaknesses

stupid looking animals - example: slow turtles, flamingos, ugly bats, snails, roaches, fleas, dodo birds and any animal that is really goofy to catch a laugh."

You've saved my life - just when my ideas were beginning to dry up, you've given me an inexhaustible source of humourous stories! I'll go off and write that satirical piece about head hunters humiliating famous people with stupid looking animals right now!

And finally:

" This is the only way to become a good comedy writer:

The best way to improve your comedy is to watch stand up comedians and take notes every time you hear the crowd laugh. Write down the joke that made the crowd laugh and then analyze the joke to discover the components that sparked the laughter."

Actually, I thought maybe being able to write, having an original take on events and, er, being funny, came into it somewhere. Obviously, I'm wrong. I should be following a strict formula for every story, ensuring they all include such surefire satirical elements as lesbianism, Britney Spears and cats and dogs living together.

Is it any wonder that 90% of online 'satire' sites publish utter shite, when their 'writers' think along these lines? The idea that analysing stand up comedy routines can somehow help improve one's attempts at written satire lies at the root of this malaise. The two things are entirely different beasts. A lot of stand up comedy is still based around banging out a series of 'gags', all self-contained, with neat punchlines. Writing stories requires the development of ideas and characters, leading to some kind of comic or ironic conclusion. Just stinging together a series of 'gags' (or even worse, just presenting a single 'gag' in written form), does not constitute a 'story'.

Depressingly, this particular forum post was followed by responses from the site's other 'writers' telling this guy that they really didn't need his advice because they were already successful satirists, having written and published literally hundreds of stories apiece. Hundreds. All of them utter shit. All of them too piss poor to be published anywhere other than on the site in question. A site which will publish stories submitted by anyone. Presumably on the basis that, by the law of averages, at least one of them must be good. Sadly, none are. In fact, the overwhelming majority aren't even stories as such, in my opinion. At best, they're just ideas which, in the hands of someone with talent, might form the basis of a story. As it is, they're just a couple of hundred words, often not arranged into any combination which constitutes intelligible English. In other words, they're just 'gags'. There's no development of ideas or themes, no clever reversals of reader expectation, nothing. Just simple (and usually not very funny) 'gags'.

Needless to say, the site in question isn't a member of Humorfeed. It just wouldn't make the grade. If you want to read real online satire, written by intelligent human beings who grasp the rudiments of written English, take a look at any of the sites on Humorfeed.

Modern Blogs are Rubbish

Apparently there's this chap called Andrew Keen who thinks that much web content is crap and that bloggers don't read. Not surprisingly, he's become very unpopular in some parts of the web. Actually, I have a lot of sympathy with his position. What he's actually saying (or so it seems to me) that there is a growing tendency to give the doings of internet amateurs (bloggers, those who post videos on YouTube, commenters on message boards, Wikis and the like), equivalence to the work of professionals in the spheres that they are blogging or writing, or whatever, on. This, he argues, is slowly but surely undermining legitimate media, as it is engulfed by the rising tide of amateurism. He singles out Wikipedia, arguing that its main selling point - the ability for anyone to contribute and change entries - is actually its greatest weakness. Any authority it strives for is undermined by the fact that the ill-informed and biased can, and do, post material which is misinformed and downright wrong, on just about every subject. Again, it is a question of equivalence. The fact is that knowledge isn't democratic. Not all knowledge can have equal status: some is right, the result of careful study and/or experimentation, backed up by facts; some is just wrong, the result of prejudice, ill informed opinion and formed from lies and half-truths.

As I said, I don't think Keen is entirely wrong. Indeed, on the issue of Wikipedia, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Ultimately, the trouble with the web is that, whilst it does provide a wonderful opportunity for all of us to be heard,m to be able to present our opinions with a minimum of censorship, the sad fact is that very few of us have anything worthwhile to say. Just read the average blog - it'll most likely be the inconsequential witterings of some suburban everyman (or woman), chronicling their ordinary life. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that a lot of people think that what they are writing is somehow important or significant, that their literary genius has been unjustly ignored by the mainstream, or their political acumen suppressed by the mainstream. Trust me, none of those things are true. I see it with online satire. There are quite a few of my contemporaries who have pretensions of being 'mainstream', that they are comic geniuses on a par with established writers and comedians. Again, that's unlikely to be true. Personally, I have no such illusions. I'm just a guy who writes stories he thinks are funny as a hobby. If some of them make a few people smile and brighten their days, all the better. I'm no unjustly ignored satirical genius. The fact is that my sense of humour is pretty black and offbeat - it's never going to find much of an outlet in the mainstream. The web is the only place it is likely to find anyone else who appreciates it. I'm underground and proud of it!

The bottom line is that we've all got to lighten up - we're not producing great literary works here. We're all just amateurs who have the good fortune to be living in age where our work can get wider exposure than could have been dreamed of even ten years ago. We mustn't lose sight of the fact that we're still catering for minority tastes. It's just that we can reach a bigger minority than before.

The Sleaze Remix

You know, I'm a little pressed for time today and I really don't have time to make a proper post. Instead, I'm going to follow the example of the music world and 'sample' somebody else's writing in order to pad this post out. Obviously, this isn't plagiarism as I'm just using the sample to 'set a tone' for the post. So, here goes with a 'sample' from a recent story in the ever excellent Watley Review (if you are going to steal - sorry, sample - you might as well do it from the best):

"Massachusetts has awarded more than three hundred letter Es to nineteen shopping centers in five counties as part of an economic development package designed to spur commerce."

Great stuff, eh? See how the immediate mention of E's can take us into a psychedelic drug induced ramble, even though that was never the intention of the sample's author! See, already I'm subverting, not plagiarising, the sample! Wow, man! See those groovy elephants fly by! Cucumber dinosaurs and ready sliced bears! Hey! Getting into a bit of a 'Strawberry Fields' groove there!

"The appendage of an E to the end of a business name has a demonstrable, if poorly understood, effect upon small business revenues; it is often termed the "Mr. E" effect, after the Harvard economist Edgar Ennis who first identified the phenomenon in the 1940s. Businesses with the extra E are able to charge anywhere from ten to fifty percent more for essentially identical goods and services."

Mr E! 'E's a good! 'E's a good! 'E's a good old boy! (Bugger, I'm plagiarising - sorry sampling - something else altogether there). How about; Mr E, 'E's an eeeeeeeeeeeconomist! Eeeeeeeeconomist!? Hell, this is going so well, I think I'm going to try remixing the original sample a bit now!

"We are frankly relieved - re - re - relieved that the governor has taken this bold and visionary step st-st- step-step-step," said James Peterson of the Pioneer Valley Chamber of Commerce. "These extra-tra-tra-traneous vowels may mean the difference between success and failure for many small to midsized bus-bus-bus- businesses- es- es- es."

Hey! I'm really enjoying this! How about a more radical remix, combining the sample with some of my own text?

"It's not a panacea," warned Milt Goldberg, an economist with the Brookings Institution. "You also need to be
sex pests being put to the ultimate test
sure you're distributing the correct vowel; extra Es may work well in Massachusetts, whereas in some cases,
a quick one off the wrist would result in instant disqualification, unless they've done a deal with the mysterious 'Wanker'
as with Mayor Bloomberg's distribution of extra 'Os' in Little Italy last year, other vowels may be more
the opportunity for a quick handy shandy before the next temptation rolls up
appropriate. And it should be noted that the 'Mr. E' effect doesn't work when the clientele is insufficiently
rubbing their lovely arses in their faces
literate to tell the difference between Shoppe, Shop, or Ship."

Jesus! That was brilliant! OK, to round things off, a bit of a rap remix:

"There's just something about that extra letter," MUTHA! "Even when it doesn't make sense. I mean, MUTHA! I don't know what a 'Krogere' is, but I didn't know what a MUTHAFUCKA! 'Kroger' was in the first place. MUTHAFUCKA! And I'm certainly willing to pay more for groceries at a Krogere than a Kroger. MUTHAFUCKA FUCKA!"

So, there you have it - the Watley Sleaze Remix. Possibly the easiest post I've ever written!