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Page 1 Page 2 Perhaps volume is too vast a word, heck, chapter is probably too much of an exaggeration. Part might be more appropriate, but in this day and age where one is trying to desperately grab those page views amidst much competition, advertising blurb is key.

Yes ladies and gentlephones, the Internet is so full of things that are wrong, that the thing itself wrong! You've no doubt heard many a factually incorrect joke on a radio programme, or read a blatant lie in a popular newspaper, but one thing all these mediums can hopefully agree on, even if the irony of stating that fact is lost on us, is how much wrong there is on the Internet.

Each day I read a lot of Internet, I work on the Internet, I make things for the Internet, sometimes I wonder if Terminator had it all wrong and the world has already been taken over by a passive monster that demands to be fed with our attention. If there was a god, then he/she/it would be really annoyed about how much time we spend feeding the alternative god that is... the Internet.

One thing that drives me crazy, is wrong. I hate wrong, I really, really hate wrong, almost to the point where it is an OCD. I don't mind opinion, I have no problem with opinion, you might not like a certain song, you might love a certain TV programme, prefer gawping at naked breasts instead of reading about world news in your paper every day, hark back to the days of hanging, that's all okay. But just don't say X is Y when it isn't, that drives me mad.

And I have bottled up my madness no longer, as today I'm embarking on an attempt to cure myself of this ill, by ranting at all that is wrong on the Internet. Unfortunately it is a big place, so this could take some time. Anyway, let's have a quick look at things I read on the Internet that were wrong this week.


Andrew Parker of The Sun Was Wrong

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I know, I know, pointing out things that journalists, and I use the term loosely, from British newspaper The Sun is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but anyway. Last Saturday they posted a news item entitled, "S and Dem: Candidate poses in fetish gear". The tabloid headline is an unusually accurate title for this pile of trash, the newspaper not the lady featured in said trash, though it ticks all the expected boxes.

But soon after it quickly fails when it states that Holly-Ann Battye, "has left her party embarrassed after posing in S&M gear on a fetish website." What is the name of this website I hear you cry? It is none other than DeviantArt, which I guess sounds a tiny bit perverted. Needless to say, anyone who has ever been to DeviantArt, and yes you just have to visit it from the comfort of your own keyboard to find out, not a hard task for a journalist surely, would struggle to honestly call it a fetish website, or even an erotic website.

It describes itself as "The World's largest online community of artists and art-lovers!", and whilst I am in no position to dispute the first part of that sentence, the second is hard for anyone to argue with. I'd love to know if Mr Parker of The Sun bothered to check the site before he wrote libellous comments about it, much as I'd like to know if the people who posted comments to it attacking Ms Battye's looks are anything other than ugly.

I think I've invented a rule for the Internet Mark 2, this shall be it's first rule. Before you criticise someones looks, you must first present an accurate portrayal of yourself in whatever state of undress is equal to that of which you critic. I hope someone is writing these down.

Anyway, on Holly's DeviantArt webpage she says, "I'm proud of who I am =]", which is obviously a lot more than the posters to the comments section of The Sun website, hiding behind aliases. Which leads us quickly on to a bit of irony, as one comment by tampico said, "She's got a head like a boarding house cat." Click through to his profile and you see amongst his hates, "Do not like snobs." No inconsistency there then.
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Posted by Robert John Shepherd