All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter CiF

The Comment is Free bus keeps trundling along and shedding gems as it lurches and wobbles from one accident to another.

As someone who no longer actually posts on CiF and only visits occasionally and fleetingly, today has thrown up material for three posts, which might make up for the gaps on other days.

Anyway, it seems that usini got into an exchange about the business of trolls from the political right being allowed to break the rules to give the impression of CiF being right-on and accommodating and caring, while reasonable discussion from anywhere else gets muffled and disappears.

He asked whether any of this would change once the election is out of the way and the funny old Guardian works out where its political heart might have been buried.

Then he says this:

Hell I don't mind naming a few names but I can't remember them off hand. Next time one of the Guardian black or Asian correspondents comes on I will post them. MaM is a racist, apart from his generally ultra right views but he has been here for ages. Armaros is a ferocious anti-leftist as is tom wollacott. There are so many here now. I may end up getting modded for this post, put on pre-mod or even banned, but to be honest I couldn't care less. Sometimes I am beginning to think like Olching that the whole idea of CIF has gone so badly wrong that it should be abandoned.

Whoops!

Moments later, of course, the post, as usini predicted, was deleted by a moderator.

Mr Chekhov to the Gulag, Please!

Chekhov has this to say over on The Untrusted:

BTW: I've thrown in the towel on CIF.

They are obviously expecting me to go back with a grovelling apology, appealing for a reprieve. Well they can go and fuck themselves.

I stuck with CIF from the outset and gave it the benefit of the doubt but the Mods have ruined it.

Pity really but I suppose it was inevitable since the whole thing is run by Oxbridge fuckwits who haven't got a clue what it's like trying to survive at the "coal face"

And later:

I haven't been banned "technically". I'm in "pre mod" for calling Lord Adonis to account for his scaremongering article on splitting the left wing vote.

I didn't contravene their talk policy so there is no reason why I should have to make a grovelling apology to be allowed back in and I don't intend to do so.

Incidentally, no one seems to have missed me, and there was no collective indignation at my being ostracised, unlike Lord Summerisle who was actually banned.

However he wasn't banned for his usual reasonably thought out wisdom but for this:

"Which part of your brain do you need to have removed to become a moderator"

Anyway, like I said, It's a shame. There was the makings of a sort of on-line community on CIF and they totally fucked it up. Maybe they did it deliberately. Who knows?

Sorry, Chekhov. Obviously, you just didn't quite make it into the Air-Kiss Gang.

Do You Want To Be In My Gang?

There is a website called aSmallWorld. It is only for people who are rich and members of the international jet-set. Not for people who like to pretend that they are living in a Martini advert.

Basically, if you are reading this, you will never be invited to join - and you have to be invited, like all exclusive clubs - because your life operates at a level which is too low to be picked up by the radars of the rich and famous. You are a mere civilian.

The problem is that even with such stratospherically exclusive clubs, there have to be rules and sanctions for those who cannot comply with the codes of the blessed. 

If you make a faux pas, you are immediately jettisoned to the worst place in the known universe; a type of satellite virtual prison-ship, where there are no PAs and hangers-on and publicists and fawning lackeys: a place with the shudderingly grim name of aBigWorld.

Obviously, the threat of being cast adrift is usually enough to keep the brightest and the best in line because, like everyone else, all they want is to be loved and cuddled.

Perhaps Comment is Free is trying to adopt this approach in order to keep (not the gleaming suns and stars and flickering comets of their stellar writers above the line, of course) the filthy scum who jostle and jeer, whistle and cheer in the areas below the line, to keep them herded and fenced and in their proper place.

The problem is, it simply fails to work.

The threat of not being allowed to attend the party has now worn so thin, the party itself so boring and, er, uninviting that nobody is really bothered whether they go or not.

Groucho Marx said: "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."

It now seems that once CiF has banned people and then tells them to jump through some hoops in order to have their wonderful privileges of providing free content to the multi-million pound Guardian Media Group restored, people respond slightly more bluntly.

Get fecked.

Jennifera30 says this:

Oh I got an email from someone at Cif saying I would be welcome back after a cooling off period but I am not sure if I want to bother.

Oh, dear. It looks like the glamour of belonging to the CiF gang has finally worn off.

How long will it be before bannings turn into pleading emails asking people to join?

CiF Banning Bandwagon

Interesting that the WADDYA crowd love a bandwagon about banning when it suits them and it concerns one they feel happy to clasp to their collective bosom, but they are never quite so sure when the whole thing is simply a matter of funny old principles and concerns someone they are actually quite keen to see removed from their little party.

The little screeches and parps of indignation range from the heady heights of AllyF all the way to, er, who is winning the competition of bottom-feeder of the year at the moment?

So, banning and the process of being brought back into the fold by begging to be forgiven - you know, like Galileo being forced to recant and retract, to prove that the sun really does orbit the earth - is something which is, like everything else in life, simply not a matter of principle.

We govern ourselves by expedience and whatever it takes to get ourselves back into the company of backslapper stardom.

In fact, advice is also given to simply change your name and go back under another pseudonym. Strictly against the rules and something which is always considered a sign of an utter wrong'un - unless it's your mates, then it's just what you do to stay in with the in-crowd.

So, as far as the WADDYA circus is concerned, banning is a mighty fine and useful tool when it picks off the people who comply with the rules but spoil the party - no comment other than you deserved it when this happens - but everyone presents an affronted face of united outrage when the vile and monstrous moderators clumsily pick one of the blessed.

Not that the CiFerati can be bought and sold like vegetables, of course.

The Banning of Jennifera30

If CiF is going to publish an article called "Rape as a Weapon of War", it seems likely that it will draw some impassioned comments. After all, this is what CiF is doing - trying to maximise comments and page views in order to get as many advert clicks as possible, in order to stop losing money hand over fist. It is simply a numbers game and a money-making ruse.

Anyway, it seems that Jennifera30 made some comments, which everyone seems to agree were quite reasonable. In fact, they were so reasonable that they led to an almost instant ban.

Pretty standard practice as far as CiF is concerned: ban the sensible posters to clear the ground so that the mouth-frothers and the air-kissers can rampage unimpeded.

So, Jennifera30 pops over to The Untrusted to ask whether this is the normal reward for providing free content for the multi-million pound media behemoth which is Guardian Media Group and discovers that, yes, it is actually company policy.

Meanwhile over on the cartoon car-crash which is WADDYA, people are clamouring for the moderators to explain why they have banned yet another poster who has not broken any rules.

Obviously, they can always fall back on their status of Papal Infallibility, conferred on them by Matt Seaton.

The problem is, if the idea of making a noise when anyone is banned catches on, rather than just the sweethearts of the lower-level staff and the social misfits who need the fix of WADDYA to function, CiF will have to open up a new section just to deal with it.

Unless, of course, the new editor decides to overturn the abuses of the Seaton regime and actually bring the moderators into line, rather than pretending they are untouchable and hiding behind their skirts every time the CiFerati get on their hind legs and squeal.

Guardians of Fickle Ideology

It seems The Guardian is quite sure about its ideologies in terms of censoring and banning anyone who questions them for years at a stretch, but as soon as an election comes along, the fickle heart of the media empire flutters and races and can only be quelled by having a meeting and a sing-song and coming to a collective decision about which party the mighty Guardian organ is going to back or back-stab and who is going to be as red-faced as a Murdoch by May 7, 2010.

Thanks to 13thDukeofWybourne  over on The Untrusted for pointing out this comment on Matt Seaton's roundup of the day's events, which were supposed to con the CiFerati into thinking that they would have an influence on the editorial line of GMG.

The Guardian's election editorial meeting  

Oh shit, I wish I'd been there. Love the picture (I printed it off to show my mum). It must have been surreal. I hope it opened with a wise woman uttering gnomic nonsense as a prayer for guidance from each participant's "inner single Somali immigrant mother". Did you stop for herbal tea and energy flapjacks made from organic oats and nettles? Were there prizes for the best knitwear? Worthiest countenance? Most uses of 'progressive' in a single platitude? And, at the end did Rushbridger knock out Cumbaya on the piano while you all trooped out dropping loose chains in a bucket for under-appreciated, transgendered pavement artists in Bolivia?

It was by MavisCoulter and, of course, it got deleted.

It may have infringed the moderation and community guidelines for other reasons, but the main one, of course, is that nobody is ever allowed to poke fun at the achingly right-on credentials of the Seaton Gang and its clustered acolytes.

The Twilight of the Ciferati

So, we have had the news that Matt Seaton is being demoted or shoved sideways or somehow moved onwards and upwards in a glittering career which seems to have consisted, during its CiF phase, of just being rude and boorish and not very good at the job.

At about the same time, we heard that Georgina Henry was also on the move for some reason, but it would take someone of more impassioned interest to remember why or where.

Now we have the news that Emily Bell is also turning her back on The Guardian and its sinking flagship, the once-mighty HMS CiF.

So, who is left in the office, who might know how to work the photocopier and can wrestle and subdue the cable which plugs CiF into the internets?

The only ones anyone really knows are Bella someone and JemimaReed, so expect the lights to be flickering on CiF by the end of the week.

Still, as long as Jaffa Cake Central (or WADDYA, to the cognoscenti) keeps functioning as a drop-in centre for misfits and fantasists, perhaps most of the ardent Ciferati fanbase will not notice.

PS Lots of bold and italics in that post - must break the habit.