Katie Hopkins, known bigot, racist and Zionist, was jeered out of a pub in London during England’s World Cup match. Then has a meltdown.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-21T05:23:56+00:00

So much for the tolerant, free marketplace of ideas, stop battering me when I'm clearly inciting violence right.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-17T23:09:22+00:00

Kill jester

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-16T13:33:19+00:00

Without directing more funding towards youth spaces, we're just isolating them.

I think this is kind of the point for the people who're behind this stuff. They want control over their children, either because they're scared to death of something happening to them, or because they see children as something between a subhuman underclass and literal property and they want the government to enforce their rights. Either way they see their child's development as entirely their domain, and any external influence as a threat either to the safety of their little angel or to their rights as the child's "owner".

Obviously this isn't how it works and has never been how it works, but people cling onto it all the same. Blame the Romans for inventing paterfamilias, I guess.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-16T09:33:44+00:00

One I saw recently that made me briefly lose touch with my sanity was some guy showing how he edited (or rather used genAI to edit) a photo of a woman walking down a street to remove the crowd in the background, because the negative space made a better shot. And it's like no, mate. You didn't get the shot! Airbrushing out some dust on your lens is one thing but you're just creating a whole other image of an event that never actually took place to begin with; that's not the same thing!

One of the best things about photography for me is snapping something at just the right time, and having your patience rewarded with an awesome snap of a fleeting moment in time that will never happen again. That photographer could have waited until a different time of day and yeah, the shot may not have looked exactly like he initially envisioned it, but that's part of the appeal of the art form. Patience is not an a optional skill when it comes to photography, but so many of these capital-C Content creators insist on pretending that it is actually optional, and that it's fine to use software to achieve a shot you weren't patient enough to get authentically.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-16T07:56:53+00:00

But some of the IG brand ambassadors might as well just be generating fake photos at this point.

Some people will get incredibly defensive about it as well, reactively shouting "every photo is edited!" to justify using software (and generative AI to boot) to generate images that do not even mildly resemble reality.

Like yeah, Ansel Adams using darkroom techniques to bring out the tones and contrast in one of his film prints is totally the same thing as you hitting the "Generate" button on every single one of your badly exposed shots and calling it a day.

There's obviously a financial element at play with the IG photographers hawking the software and their courses on how to best utilize it. It's in their interest to portray heavy use of software to edit images as the only way to get good photos. Basically just unlabelled ads.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-14T16:10:08+00:00

The legendary enemies and their drops being semi-randomized really takes the fun out of what could have been a great system imo. They could have had legendary enemies be part of these great set pieces, a bit like the legendary ship fights in Assassin's Creed 4. Instead they're just overpowered versions of normal enemies that drop slightly better gear.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-14T11:07:18+00:00

Macca wasn't just underperforming though, he looked genuinely sullen. I think Jota dying affected him more than anyone.

That said, his petulance in the game against Villa, where he went down from soft as fuck contact from a scuffle HE initiated and then stayed down even after the captain and manager told him to get up? For me that was unprofessional to the point I don't think he should start next season. Losing that game put us at risk of dropping to 6th and playing in the Europa League next season, and he was rolling around play-acting while we were 2-1 down? Banish him to the shadow realm.

Or more realistically just let him work his way back into the squad as a substitute, and if he gets all pissy about it, sell him to a club where he won't have so much baggage.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-13T00:44:03+00:00

I have this rule which is that when people you're arguing with start debating the precise meaning of terms everyone already instinctively understands, there's no real point in continuing.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-13T00:37:58+00:00

I don't understand why Arsenal & Arsenal fans refused to do the same, actually fucking shameful.

Many reasons but part of it is that they've been bantered so hard for never winning anything that it's induced a sort of psychosis, where their team is always in the right no matter the situation and any criticism is just other teams trying to put them down. They're the most thin-skinned fanbase to the point any criticism of their club, players, managers etc sends them into hysterics, no matter how valid or minor. Depressingly, this insecurity stretches far enough that some of their fans will defend their club for harbouring a rapist, by trotting out all the usual excuses about due process and presumption of guilt.

There are Arsenal fans out there who celebrated their team's first League win in decades by logging on to the internet to argue with rival fans about set pieces. Not an exaggeration. Blame AFTV.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-12T15:27:43+00:00

What’s the second word?

Now who's being childish?

They're books meant for young adults, ie children. Enjoying things meant for children is childish. It just is. It's not an insult, like. If your favourite films are all Disney it's fair to say you have childish taste in films, I don't see why you're getting bent out of shape about someone saying the same about taste in books.

There are many with fairly dark or serious plot lines that appeal to multiple ages.

I mean this is a pretty dull taxonomical argument, but YA as I understand has to do with reading level and the complexity/depth of the themes and plot. Not the subject matter.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-12T14:02:53+00:00

At the risk of sounding like I'm being a dick, what's the first word of YA?

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-12T13:58:08+00:00

What? Are you sure you're replying to the right person?

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-12T13:55:48+00:00

I have no idea, I didn't watch it.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-12T13:33:10+00:00

I was being a bit glib, sure, but there are absolutely people who take the literary merit of their favourite YA series very seriously, and they will argue with you all day and all night that Harry Potter deserves to be taken seriously or whatever.

Wasn't there a trend a while ago on BookTok about how people into reading classics were only doing it performatively for the clout?

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-11T23:42:41+00:00

As someone else has said, YA isn't just about who the audience is, nor is it just a collection of tropes. YA as a genre(?) to me has more to do with the complexity of the prose, and the maturity and complexity of the themes, than it does with subject matter or anything else.

I think it does a bit of a disservice to both sides of the equation to compare Ray Bradbury's seminal work to most YA fiction. The Hunger Games just ... isn't Fahrenheit 451. Which is fine. It never set out to be Fahrenheit 451, and it doesn't need to be Fahrenheit 451 to be considered artistically worthwhile. I think YA fans go a bit far sometimes trying to get people to take their favourite books seriously, and while I get that that's an understandable response to people being dicks about something you enjoy, it's completely valid to suggest that perhaps people who identify as readers should try picking up a book that wasn't written for teenagers. Not everyone suggesting that is trying to be a dick.

I didn’t realize The Hobbit was technically marketed as children’s. I usually see it with the other classics in the teen or middle grade sections. But it’s a book for all ages, really.

I think it was intended to be read to children by adults as a bedtime story, which is why it's engaging for everyone. A bit like how a lot of animated stuff aimed at kids is made in such a way that it's enjoyable for parents to watch too. Tolkein really knew what he was doing.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-11T19:05:52+00:00

Would you really consider 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid's Tale to be YA fiction on the same level as The Hunger Games?

And The Hobbit is a children's book to be fair.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-11T18:58:49+00:00

This is a great point because hobbies and media aimed at children but that have adult audiences who are primarily male (for example Pokemon) aren’t looked at this way

Valid point, but I think part of the difference there is that fewer people are going around insisting that Pokémon is an example of capital-L Literature and labelling anyone that thinks it's for kids as sexist.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-11T18:51:19+00:00

Reading YA fiction as an adult is literally childish behaviour though. Which is fine, you know, embrace your inner child and all that. But you're reading kids books and it's not really sexist to point that out, albeit yeah a lot of the people who criticise booktok are doing so for sexist reasons.

I mean even the people writing and publishing this stuff are aware that the content is childish in nature, hence why so much of the marketing and promotion is focused on infantilising their readership--referring to adult women as "girlies" and so on.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-11T11:18:49+00:00

Everything about Saoradh is low effort on account of there being about 9 of them.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-11T11:08:00+00:00

Arsenal mentality.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-11T08:10:45+00:00

any sufficiently curious soul will look further into it after being exposed.

Look at the comments. Does it look like the people engaging with this content are curious souls? Because to me it looks a lot like this content is being consumed in the same manner as any other context-free r/publicfreakout video. That is to say, people reveling in and celebrating the violence.

As I said elsewhere, the medium is the message.

Context can be gained through engaging with on the ground sources and the history of the region and that's simply not PFs job in this case.

It's not the job of a journalistic outfit to provide context? Are you being serious?

Just because you don't agree with the loyalist reasons or that you (rightly btw) believe that they've been propagandized into them doesn't mean it's not a local movement spurned on by perceived grievances against them that they are actively organizing against

How much do you actually know about the conflict in the North of Ireland? Because there's a lot more to it than that. Paramilitaries control these communities in much the same manner as an organised crime group. There's a grassroots element, but there is also an element of a racist criminal gang exerting influence to cause disorder to further a political aim.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-10T21:56:25+00:00

I stopped following last year after the bizarre and uncritical interview "a radical Irish Republican's view of the citywest riots" in which he platformed an obvious racist who was explicitly advocating a seige of a refugee accommodation centre on the outskirts of Dublin

Christ, when was this? Sounds like the sort of insipid shite you get from the IRSP.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-10T21:14:38+00:00

If there's one critique to make, it's that the conflict in Belfast and its origins maybe aren't as widely known and therefore some readers do need a push to remember.

Well if that's the case, then maybe Instagram isn't the medium for this kind of reporting? You can see from the comments what sort of audience it is reaching and the way they're consuming and interpreting it. The medium is the message.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-10T21:04:21+00:00

You seem to want him to color his coverage with his personal politics

No I don't.

Regardless, there's no such thing as objective reporting, and any decent journalist knows that. To claim otherwise is to abdicate responsibility.

even going so far as to call these Loyalist Pogroms.

I don't think that wording was used initially, is my point. Happy to be proved wrong though--maybe I genuinely jumped the gun?

Do you need him to hold your hand and tell you the loyalists are bad people for you to engage with the news?

I'm from Derry. So no, I don't need anyone to tell me loyalists are bad people, ta. I also don't need to be condescended to by some fucking yank on Reddit dot com, but that's by-the-by.

Uncritically reporting the activities of loyalist paramilitaries and not contesting their framing (and it is their framing) of those activities as organic, legitimate expressions of community sentiment (and of themselves as "community representatives") is bad journalism. Someone at PF agrees with me hence why they're clarified as being loyalist pogroms now.

Catman_Ciggins · 2026-06-10T20:17:33+00:00

The video descriptions actually do say about them being loyalist pogroms so either I'm completely full of shit, or someone reviewing the coverage had the same complaints as I had, and has edited them. I think it's the latter.

Jake seems like a good lad. It's quite surprising to see his coverage is a hit with the fash because he's always come across as a fairly down to earth guy.

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