Provoked by this tweet, in which Daily Mail readers downvoted the comment “Say no to racism!” 2114 times (and upvoted it only 271 times), I was sceptical. This has to be a doctored screen-grab, I thought: who would deliberately downvote the uncontroversial idea of saying no to racism?
So I ran my own experiment: I registered a DailyMail.co.uk account as MichaelPTaylor (my real name) and started leaving the most uncontroversial compassionate comments I could think of on various articles. Here is one of the results:
If you’re struggling with the small font: my comment on the forthcoming demolition of the refugee camp in Calais was “This is a tragedy. Whoever is to blame, I wish the UK would do more to help the most vulnerable.” That comment has been downvoted 99 times, and upvoted zero times.
And the first response was from someone calling himself “Brooklyn the waster”, who comments “Michael, i’m guessing you’re overweight and smell badly. Ill put money on it.” That comment has been upvoted 24 times and down voted once.
So far, so disappointing. My charitable response to the initial tweet — I know there is a tendency towards racism in Mail readers. But not an 8:1 oppoisiton to “Say no to racism”. — was looking over-optimistic.
And that’s been the pattern, more or less, with nearly all the comments Iv’e posted, as you can verify at my profile page:
But here is the interesting thing: on the story “Home Office claims Calais ‘child’ migrants have been aged by conflict“, I commented “Isn’t the main thing to help innocent people, regardless of their age?“. That comment has received a hundred times the attention of any of the others, and the great majority — by a ratio of nearly four to one — upvoted it:
Now admittedly, 2817 people feel that helping innocent people is not the main thing — but more than ten thousand people agree that it is.
I really don’t know what to make of this. I would love to think it shows that people are better than we assume they are — that even among the readership of the Daily Mail, for all the hard work it’s done to promote xenophobia and paranoia all these years, most people are decent and compassionate. (And I do like to think the best of people when I can: if Anne Frank could say “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart”, so can I.)
But that does leave me needing to explain why the responses to my other comments have been so horrible. Also, the comments in response to mine have been almost uniformly hideous. (Follow the links above for examples, if you want them. You won’t enjoy it)
So: why the huge discrepancy in the response to my one popular comment and all my unpopular ones?
Update (the next morning)
Interesting changes overnight. My much-loved comment has accumulated only 32 more likes overnight, but 204 dislikes: more than six times as many!
Does this mean that the more unpleasant Daily Mail readers only come out at night?
The Reinvigorated Programmer 
Interesting – I am curious if your popular comment was an article that was linked widely on non-Daily Mail sites or somehow had a high visibility outside of the DM’s regular commenting base,
The simplest answer I can think of is that the people participating in the forums are not representative of the larger readership. It’s certainly true in other places (youtube for instance).
What a fascinating experiment. Thanks for sharing, and I am amused by how how well you were able to strike the tone of completely innocuous compassion. Knowing what you’re doing your comments are really funny (and all statements I would agree with!)
It almost looks as if the negative comments are not (just) made by another category of people as the positive support, but as if they are mere knee-jerk reflexes bypassing the cognitive functions altogether resulting in the individuals in question give in to a primitive urge to lash out or growl towards anything perceived as remotely threatening (e.g. any nuanced opinion is seen as “gay”).
I think that most of those individuals, when questioned individually, won’t act like that. Though they probably won’t appear very smart either.
I think that your well-received comment made a more nuanced, interesting point than your other Daily Mail comments, and therefore it deserved to be better-received. Some say the migrants aren’t really children; the Home Office says they really are children; you say it shouldn’t really matter whether they’re children or not. That’s a legitimate addition to the conversation and 10,000 people found it worthwhile to endorse.
Your other experimental comments were so vague and anodyne, it was harder for people to find a positive reason to endorse them. Not that they *disagree* that “It’s a tragedy,” it’s just that they don’t find *your* plain observation that “It’s a tragedy” to be a compelling insight or turn of phrase that needs to be more widely broadcast.
So my take on the Daily Mail commentariat is:
* small population of people willing to take a second to sneer at pious statements
* much larger population of people who don’t disagree with bland pious statements, but don’t have time to be clicking “like” on all of them
* much larger population of people who are willing to either like or dislike a comment that rises to making a more substantial point
I think the issue here is that you’re entering not just the realm of second-guessing, but of third- and fourth- and fifth-guessing.
What the commenters are responding to is not what you wrote, but their guess about why you wrote what you wrote. So when the commenter insults you in response to your ‘This is a tragedy’ comment, what’s actually happening is not that they are responding to the comment, but that they are trying to work out ‘what sort of a person leaves that kind of a comment on an article like this?’ deciding that you are likely to be the kind of person who they would like do insult, and then doing so.
And then you are doing the same thing when you try to work out what they think of you from what they wrote…
It’s like the ‘black lives matter’ / ‘all lives matter’ thing. Both, if you strip away all context, are pretty innocuous statements of fact. But what makes the different is what they reveal about who the kinds of people who posted them are: working out what the choice of which thing to say in a given context means about the thought processes of the person who said it.
So when you post ‘This is a tragedy’, people don’t just see the words, they see a person who cared enough to post those words in response to this article and therefore they think what kind of point does that person want to make by posting these words? What are they trying to say, beyond a mere statement of fact? What is their agenda by posting those words?
And then they reply in response not just to the actual words, but according to their back-filling of what your agenda might be in posting them.
They probably wouldn’t put it in these terms, but they understand that speech is almost always a performative act: we don’t say things just to describe reality but also in an attempt to make a point and change that reality. If in a stifling train carriage I say, ‘Gosh, isn’t it hot in here?’ I am not just describing the situation but hoping that by choosing to say those words, at that time, I can provoke someone into opening a window.
So if someone lazy sitting by the window were to reply: ‘Shut up, it’s not that bad!’ that doesn’t necessarily mean they disagree with my assessment of the heat, just that they perceive that I wasn’t simply commenting on the heat but wanting them to do something — something they don’t want to do.
So someone who insults you for writing, ‘This is a tragedy’ may not be disagreeing that it is a tragedy: they may have thought that your agenda in making that observation was to try to produce a response of opening our borders to anyone who wants to come to Britain for any reason, which is an extreme position that could reasonably be disagreed with, and expressed their disagreement, in their inarticulate way, as an insult directed at you.
Similarly with the comment that provoked all this, ‘Say no to racism’, the down-voting may not have been because the down-voters approved of racism but because they thought (rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly) that the commenter, in that context, was not just making an observation, but was attempting a performative speech act with an agenda that they disagreed with.
Crash Random, I wonder whether you’ve hit on something: the idea that the other commenters were not responding on the basis of whether they agreed with the comment, but whether they felt it added a substantive point to the discussion. It’s an appealing idea, but I am not convinced it stands up in light of how other comments on the same stories get up- and downvoted.
Interesting point, H. I doubt that the Daily Mail commenters who responded abusively had any conscious handle on the second-guessing process you describe, but it may indeed be what was happening under the surface.
I second Crash Random’s point. I think the kind of people who tend to agree with you tend to just read without upvoting/downvoting anything, and would upvote something only if it’s bringing in a new idea to the topic. Your other comments got downvoted heavily because many folks who are anti-immigration tend to be a bit radical and upvote things they agree with and downvote things they disagree with. People who tend to agree with you are probably more like you and mostly don’t do anything (like you were likely doing before this experiment).
Unfortunatley racism is getting more and more tolerated it is the new cool and is worse than it has ever been due to terrorism etc horrible world we live in…
I think the situation is a bit more complex than that. What I see is an increasing bifurcation in society between a liberal wing where racism in any form is not tolerated — even to the point of idiocies like campus parties being shut down because students’ wearing sombreros is deemed “cultural appropriation” — and a proto-fascist wing, exemplified and led by certain right-wing media outlets, that is driving the other half of the population towards xenophobic, and specifically racist, beliefs. It’s pretty awful at both ends of the spectrum (though obvious worst at the proto-fascist wing!)
Try the same “experiment” with more left leaning Newspapers The Guardian for example, I would expect the same results but in reverse.What did you expect from DM readers? This was about as pointless as posting anti Corbyn comments on Momentum’s website,getting a verbal kicking in return, then feigning shock. Why not post some video from a slaughterhouse, with the addition of the theme tune from Benny Hill onto the PETA webpage. Wouldn’t take Mystic Meg to guess the response.
I’m not sure you followed the purpose of the experiment, Steve T. My comments were not advocating left-wing policies — which I agree no-one would expect Daily Mail readers to upvote — but basic human compassion.
Hullo. I’m a Pakistani snow leopard, and I often comment on ‘Daily Mail’ as ‘SnowLeopard’. My experience has been that if my comments have the word ‘Pakistan’ in them, they usually do not get posted on DM. My anti-racism comments usually get a lot more red than green arrows.
You posted the comment:
‘Isn’t the main thing to help innocent people, regardless of their age?’
on a DM article about the refugees in Calais, and are surprised at how many green arrows you got on DM. I don’t find it surprising at all since it is very easy to read your comment as an anti-allow-refugees-to-come-in-based-on-their-age-comment. To the average DMer, the refugees in Calais are most certainly not innocent, while he (DMer) most certainly is, so, if the government decided to help innocent people, it would be helping our DMer, not barbaric Muslim refugees. That’s my two cents on this issue. Thank you for allowing me to express my opinion on your website. : )
What a depressing interpretation. I have a horrible feeling you might be right.
I remember your comment and YOU ARE A TROLL! I wished I could have red arrowed you a thousand times! Are youfuc king out of your gourd?? These are NOT people we’re talking about. These are subhuman savages coked up on drugs whose sole mission is to bomb, mow down and otherwise exterminate all Western Europeans. Let me guess: you’re a hardcore pot smoker. When you’re done posting here, all you do is jack off and do your own drugs. PS: we in USA “come out at night” as you put it. It’s daylight here. Get a clue, P Taylor. Put down the crack pipe and the pot pipe and the vein jabs and WAKE THE FUCK UP! Fucking idiot. When they stab your mother and mow down your grandmother and rape and torture your son, talk to me about “compassion” fucking bleeding ass libtard! Keep drinking the kool aid! Waste of space limey, go brush your teeth!
My thanks go to MikeTayloRisaTurd for explaining where I’ve been going wrong all this time.
Seriously, whoever you are, this is a fine piece of character comedy, and I can only admire your commitment to unflinchingly portraying someone without a clue about anything or the beginnings of a grasp of decorum.
I’ve been commenting on DM since 2013. I’m a Democrat, and I found that the correction of Pro-Trump supporters comments, is basically not allowed. Same thing when it comes, to facts about racism and/or slavery.
Yet comments that include racist and homophobic comments or words will get posted, especially if they are spaced or written differently, such as: “ni99ers” or “f a g g o t s”. When that happens I report it and it’s removed. But it does make me wonder, what these moderators are up to.
Now try and delete your DM account…and tell me how you fared..
Now try and delete your DM account…and tell me how you fared..
Serves you right you little sh1t. Human compassion? Show your compassion to people of your own kind first. Then we’ll see how much compassion you really have you little shameless hypocrite. Charity begins at home.
A nice demonstration of Poe’s Law here. I honestly can’t tell whether “I Hate Hypocrites” is a real Daily Mail commenter, or someone’s parody of one.
I like the way it’s fine to have no human compassion but it would be terribly, terribly bad to write the word “shit” correctly. Hilarious!
(And should anyone be curious as to what the proverb “charity begins at home” actually means”…)
It’s not just “fine” to have no human compassion, it’s actively admirable. Apparently.
I have given up commenting or trying to on Daily Mail, my comments are not mean or rude, yet many do not even appear. Daily Mail publishes and promotes nasty comments. Right now they are trying to destroy Hurghada where I now live because of the tragic death of a British couple, I tried to explain that over 1500 guests are still at the Steinberger, however this comment wasn’t published. They also dislike Megan Markle, the number of articles and truly insulting comments are published almost daily. So not at all surprised by your experience.
Seriously does anyone actually know how to delete a DM account – I don’t want to post any more…they never get through….but there seems to be no clean simple way to leave ….aaaggghh help !
Really interesting experiment. I wonder if the reason for the discrepancy with your final comment is that the DM demographic is of a ‘certain age’. Derogatory commentary on younger generations is a common theme in the paper. Also, your comment is in line with the article’s rhetoric, unlike your other comments. Having said all that, it still is a hell of a jump in engagement. Are DM readers really THAT distressed at getting older?
Dear Michael, permit name to enlighten you [… snip …]
Pablo, just so you know: I censored your comment: something I have never needed to do on this blog before, and hope never to have to do again. — Mike.
Oh dear Mike, is the World a terrible scary place? People point out a simple truth that makes you feel upset and triggered. Best go back to your safe space and calm down. Weak sauce.
Sorry, Mike-dreams-of-echo-chambers, I’m not following: what is the simple truth that has supposedly made me feel triggered?
Hi Mike, great blog, I write a post that doesn’t concur with your ‘Lego – Dinosaurs – Socialism’ genius mindset, and you delete it. So I then infer you want to live in an echo chamber and read your own opinions, because you are an insecure man with little faith in being able to display your own intelligence, who can’t read an opposing truthful statement about the real social problems extending beyond your pathetic trolling of the Daily Mail forum without feeling triggered. WHich is why you reflexively keep harping on about your qualifications. Hence – I have 13 O Levels, who cares? But you think you are some sort of mega wise Lego Lord in grandad suede shoes, who thinks straw man, and using false narratives are how to debate things – When that fails, you revert to the ‘because I said so’ line of argument. When that seems not to work you have to delete posts, and melodramatically lie to anyone reading for extra Wizard Mike XP points, pretending that you wouldn’t ever delete a post unless it had made you wet your pants with liberal outrage. It is quite feasible to log onto to this ego jerk site with any name you like, from behind a VPN, or using a anon email from Switzerland and be a hundred different people from anywhere in the world. A fantastic programming wizard like yourself ought to be wiser about the ways of the Internet and made the connection between two subsequent posts. I just used a different name. Lolz0rz!! Quad Damage Lego and Salami Champ! – Mike dreams of living in a Socialist state when opinions are controlled, and he can do the controlling – Good job mind expanding supposed educator.
Well, I-like-suede-shoes, alias Mike-dreams-of-echo-chambers, alias Pablo-Escobar-the-Troll, this is becoming tedious. I’ll allow you one more comment to make your closing statement, then I’m going to start spamming anything that’s not making a constructive contribution. Go for it.
Hi Mike. Thanks for your informative blog. I post frequently on the Daily Mail as Animal-Lover but I’ve had about enough of them. I notice every time I ask for a removal of a post they will do it but I pay a price, so to speak, by having one of mine removed.I’m not a fan of royalty in the 21st century but I do feel sorry for Meghan Markle and the worst trolls seem to come out at night, so I ask for their racist comments to be removed. Within a week, one of my comments will be removed over silly stuff, but the DM makes its point: don’t bother us too much on Meghan Markle, whom they consider unworthy to be a duchess.I notice many articles about black/mixed race people will be moderated but not those on Meghan because it brings in the nastiest remarks and click bait too. What a sad, vitriolic website they are! Thanks for your experiment.
Thanks, Animal-Lover. I suspect that, as a community, the Mail commenters have gone too far for moderation to much affect them.
I have found they ban members on both sides of the political spectrum, often times over nothing abhorrent. It’s irritating to say the least. The rules state they don’t want you to simply agree or disagree, but add meaningful and relevant comments. Yet you do that long enough, eventually you’ll get banned. I’m surprised you haven’t been! I have been banned more than once; I’ve finally just given up completely. If one asks for a reason for the banning, they’ll take comments made and throw a few random ones up there, and claim after reviewing, they’ve decided the ban will stand. Yet posting anything relating to certain articles that in and of themselves are insulting, by simply agreeing and giving your own reasons, they’ll ban you eventually. I don’t post racist, homophobic, religious, or any other slurs. I dislike Trump but I also dislike the ever-increasing extremism on the left, too. My main stickler has been a staunch loathing of Meghan Markle. She is a extreme narcissist at best, a sociopath at worst, and I do not like her. I think she pressed Harry into a hasty engagement and marriage and I think she’s terrible for the Monarchy. My dislike, however, has NOTHING to do with her race! Harry could have married someone entirely black – that’s NOT my issue with her. Yet, one of the comments used against me – was one stating that her skin hue was NOT the reason for my dislike! They banned me for something else, and then when I ask that they review the ban which, as far as I could tell, was regarding Smollett and how the story was unbelievable from the beginning ( so far as I could tell, because I would screenshot comments before posting and that was the last one made before being banned ), they provide posts which fit the criteria they asked for! Contributing to an article with meaningful discussion or observations. Perhaps they should stop writing articles that in and of themselves violate their own community guidelines, and then perhaps the comments wouldn’t be something they use against normal people like myself. I had something like 100K upvotes compared to 15k downvotes, and even the examples they provided they had to go back months and the irony is that their article all but explicitly encouraged it! As your statements prove, they certainly don’t like people using statements that are too general, or that most anyone would agree with in any usual context. But dare to say anything relating to their own article and they’ll use it against you to ban you. Another example, their own headline was censored. They used “b** ****ing” in the headline!! I was with my husband Who looked at it and said “did they actually just use bum fcking in their own headline and then censor it?“ I laughed, and commented with an LOL, saying that while I knew they meant bol—locking, Americans and maybe even some Brits could misinterpret it as bum *******!” Gave another LOL, suggested that they not use a headline that they themselves must censor, then said thanks for the laugh this morning… and that was used as an example of why I was banned! It wasn’t MY fault they had a space in their censor so that people could think of a naughty phrase… yet by simply bringing it up, it was used against me and stated that my ban must stand. There were at least two other examples, none of which had been recently stated. That whole site is just utterly absurd. I have considered putting up my screenshots along with the articles just to show what hypocrites they are, but I just can’t be bothered. Let them run themselves into the ground.
In the end, I think “let them run themselves into the ground” is the only rational conclusion.
But isn’t life a bit too short to hate Meghan Markle?
Shooo I’ve left really dark/racy comments on purpose to TRY and get banned. Never have. You can’t close your account – that kinda bothers me. They probably enjoy my entertainment.
Life is too short to bother reading DM articles, let alone comment on DM articles!! The only purpose the app had was to waste users’ time, and nobody realises how precious time is, until they’re almost out of it! The app has been deleted and it feels freeing! The only time I thought about that awful woman was when she was brought up, and 99% of the time, it was only the DM drumming up pointless stories about her. I’ll never like MM, but there is certainly a lot to be said for out of sight, out of mind! Take care. =)
:thumbsup:
I’ve been reading DM on and off for about 7 years, with limited commenting on my part but I do often read the comments section. I agree with the assertion that the population commenting regularly at DM includes some really racist, xenophobic elements. However, from my own experience and many, many comments I’ve seem from people seeking to withdraw an red arrow – I really think a significant percentage (25%?) of red arrows on any given comment are nothing more than a result of scrolling the comments page and accidentally registering a downvote with one’s thumb. Just some food for thought.
Hi, you were down-voted because people don’t agree with your bleeding-heart whining. For example, the demolition of the “refugee” camp in Calais was not a tragedy, but actually needed to happen a long time ago. These people crossed international borders illegally and are going to whatever country offers them the most in “free” economic benefits. Some are there to cause trouble. Bottom line is that the UK, France, Germany…and others, need to remember that their citizens come first, both in economics and in safety. That is why you were voted down.
Every now and then I wonder why I have to put up with this kind of tiny-minded xenophobia in the comments to my blog. Then I realise: wait a minute, I don’t.
“Mike Hunt”, leave off now. I don’t want to block you, but I will if that’s what it takes to keep your ill-informed hostility off my blog. If you want to comment constructively, feel free; if instead you want to continue with this kind of thing, I suggest you take it back to your natural home at the Daily Mail.
I’ll make one more comment and then leave you alone as you wish.
I’m not xenophobic, nor “tiny-minded”. I’ve lived in multiple countries, on multiple continents. I’ve seen what is good and what is bad. What I’ve realized is that a common culture and language are important to society. Diversity, insofar as taking the best of another culture and making it a part of your own can be good. Diversity insofar as maintaining it separately within your culture is bad as it causes division.
Just look at Sweden, Germany…and even the UK (London especially). Do you recognize any of these places anymore? Crime is out of control. Free speech is quashed. God-forbid if you make an observation about who is causing the trouble. How about your culture? Can’t you see how your culture is slowly being made to bend to the cultural sensitivities of those coming in (legal or not)?
Compassion is good, but not at the expense of your own.
Germany has just experienced the steepest drop in crime for 25 years — but people are in more fear of crime than ever. Hmm, I wonder why that could be? Probably not hysterical tabloids.
In the last ten years, the murder rate in London has fallen by nearly a quarter from 165 to 130. But I expect your perception that the opposite is the case is not caused by hysterical tabloids.
London homicides now highest annual rate for a decade – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/12/london-homicides-now-highest-in-a-year-for-a-decade or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London
Germany is harder to figure out. The government has already been caught manipulating the media and crime stats. Also, they count illegal boarder crossings as a crime, so now that the majority of the immigrants Merkel invited have crossed, the overall numbers are lower. Murders, child p-rn and drug offences have risen. https://www.thelocal.de/20180509/what-we-learned-from-this-years-crime-statistics-and-what-we-didnt Still, even if some of this is perceived, isn’t that the right of German Citizens to feel safe in their own country?
I’m not even sure to start with Sweden, but it is a mess, and you know it is bad when you can lose your job and go to jail for pointing it out.
Thank you for your time, your response and for allowing me to post on your blog.
Yes: against a backdrop of violent crime falling across the decade to 2017. Unless you’re going to argue that there was no immigration until 2017, and then suddenly the country starting filling up with violent foreigners, the data doesn’t fit your narrative at all.
Of course it is true that something has happened in the last few years to reverse the trend of increasingly peaceful London life. But it’s clearly not immigration. I wonder if it could possibly be linked to the stream of hate and fear from tabloids that both facilitated Brexit and has inflamed its aftermath?
It’s the Daily Mail…….it’s sh1te
if you truly believe immigration is not to blame for the problems we are having in london and the problems germany are having the you are a FOOL
Many articles and thus, the forums, go on the USA version of Daily Mail. I have noticed that there are surges of xenophobia when the yanks are awake and we are not. Although in UK ‘awake time’ it’s pretty appalling.
The British Meghanophobia is what amazes me. Man they hate that bish! lol Two young idiots in love is all they are but the pure hate amazes me.
Hi I as others before me arrived at your post because I was searching how to delete a daily mail account. For the life of me all I can fin is log on. Even the profile doesn’t give any information. When I Google the question I mysteriously don’t get any results. Anyone able to help please??
Shock, horror! Someone has different views to me!
Get over it, if you don’t like how the readers of the Daily Mail react to your comments then don’t use it. Zero ‘rocket science’ involved…….
Don’t you think it’s interesting to try to understand how these people’s views cohere, or fail to?
Their users are people with multiple accounts and flag your comment for deletion when they don’t like it. Don’t waste you time there. They are also racists obsessed with Meghan Markle! They like using Daily Mail because unlike social media, they can hide their identity and it’s easy to have multiple ones.
I think that a lot of what you’re seeing on the Daily Mail in the comment section are Russian trolls, other kind of trolls, and bots. You can count on at least 50 to 75 at any given time directed to articles with a certain political bent. I’m talking about the U.S. section.
They are there to gaslight and demoralize those with common sense, and cause division and fighting.
Cheerthinker, that had not occurred to me … but it does seem horribly credible now that you raise it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/registration/1568279733988622/Chunkebuh/profile.html
I confronted one of their own troll above and got banned. Never posted any derogatory remarks. Just asked people how can they hate someone so much without knowing her at all. But the comments on Prince Andrew were mostly defensive that age of consent is 16 etc.
Also really singing praises of Kate and really hating another human being for no reason. May be the first person I ever saw hated so much without even committing a crime. Not even a traffic offense.
So coming back to this troll above, I told him/her that I see what you are doing and I know you are going to ban me because I keep telling people under his/her comments that just by looking at the comment history, one can see thousands of comments on average per month is clear sign of troll. most top rated comments apparently.
Just to add that reason I am so upset is that it take one mentally unstable person to follow the hate and create another Jo Cox incident. Meghan is not with the presidential security and neither was Jo but that one single person who is so consumed with hate created by Daily Mail will end up in making someone losing their life.
I agree, JAO. I’ve mentioned before on here, several times, that I think the murder of Jo Cox was the single most significant act of political activism in the whole Brexit saga, and there’s little doubt that the Mail and other publications with similar rhetoric contributed to making that happen.
The Mail’s comment section, the reations to comments, and general commenting on sensitive subjects IMO is similar to road rage. When behind the wheel in the relative protection of ones own vehicle, people feel comfortable to vent displeasure in the most over the top, aggressive (sometimes violent) ways. Like simply when someone pulls in front and it is a tiny bit late so the driver has to slightly apply the break, and then that driver slams the horn down for 10 seconds and says something like ‘I hope you *ucking die you ****!’
This is what I find similar to a HUGE section of DM commentors. Behind the protection of their screen with no confrontation or repercussions these people show their worst, perhaps vent all the agonies of their own life with very nasty attitudes. They are normal people who have become internet trolls but have not realised that they have become trolls.
It is part of our society in the UK too sadly . I love our Country but our people love to hate things and a dramatical witch hunt or condemnation is top of the bill. The media, especially the Mail, know this very well. Gullibility is an easy game.
Eric Cantona, the man the masses think is insane, is not insane at all but in fact very insightful as he sums up the relationship the public have with tabloid media. ‘When seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. ‘
An interesting experiment, but not surprizing. There should be a huge message to read from this & that is the British people’s patience is wearing very thin regarding mass migration. Britain is a set of tiny islands compared to other European states & the current wave of mass migration is very unsustainable. Our services, housing, health care, schools & so on are very over burdened. Women like me also see who these people are & they are mosty fighting age males & to be frank it is frightening. I would welcome refugee families with open arms, but these are very few & genuine children even fewer. As regarding other comments on Meghan Markle, most people hate her because of the treatment of her ailing father, not becuase she has a slight tan! She has also shown disrespect to the Queen, by pusing in front of her at events & other rude behaviour. She claims to be a feminist (I am a feminist!) yet she has used rich white men to get where she is & when they are no longer of any use she disgards them, shamefully. Harry could have married a very beautiful African lady with good character & most Britiish (including myself) would have welcomed her with open arms. Sadly though Meghan appears to have a socialist, globalist agenda & she comes across as greedy, selfish, hypocritical & shallow. Her recent attacks on the Royal Family do not help her cause either as she is fueling the abolish monarchy brigade.
Finally I would like to ask you a genuine question. If British people are so racist, xenophobic, narrow minded knuckle draggers, WHY are people from the 3rd world willing to risk their lives to get to Britain?
Compassion is a fine quality to have, but compassion, like charity should start at home, with our own homeless, poor elderly (I lost my beloved mum just two months age) & British families living in poverty. You have lots of passion for “refugees” but do you have any compassion for British people scraping by day to day on a pittence, in dispare living in desperate poverty?
Our homeless, veterans, disabled, elderly, & our children? Our warriior Grukha brothers who are left homeless?
Food for thought….
Isn’t it obvious? They mistakenly thought you were criticizing the government (that accepted the migrants) for ‘only helping children’ despite their motto being ‘to help all’. The DailyMail is ult right, they defend Trump and even defend Ghislaine Maxwell (all the comments that criticized her or cheered her being jailed got downvoted to oblivion). They are anti-mask and anti-vax and show full support for movements like the Freedom Convoy. They hate people who live in government housing, single moms, ‘the woke generation’ and especially immigrants.
If you ever want to win their approval on an article featuring a celebrity, be sure to be as nasty, hateful and spiteful as possible (they even hate on Julia Roberts) and stop at no one! Calling Bella Hadid ‘ordinary’ is also their guilty pleasure.
The people they hate the most:
Meghan & Harry
The Beckham family
Biden
Borris Johnson
The Kardashians
The Jenners
Jeff Bezos/Girlfriend
Travis Scott
Kanye West
Prince Andrew (however, all the comments on earlier articles regarding his scandal/his denials were positively viewed/supported)
@Mike Hunt
You claim “These people crossed international borders illegally and are going to whatever country offers them the most in “free” economic benefits. Some are there to cause trouble.”
Yet the very same Europeans you praise and believe deserve to be protected at all costs from immigrants, are the same individuals who invaded and completely depleted an entire population via a blood bath. Everything that xenophobes (like yourself) fear as worst case scenario, is exactly what your ancestors did to other nations.
@Vix Nepal Traveller
Food for thought: Your people are actually the ones that did EVERYTHING that you fear (as worst case scenario) the immigrants would do such as wiping out the entire native population and taking over (i.e., U.S.A, Canada, Australia….). Additionally, they’ve also conquered and overtook basically every nation at some point, killing and wounding others.
A lot of the people who immigrate to the U.K. are from (former) British Colonies. Why is that the British have the right to not only immigrate but to fully take over these countries meanwhile individuals of that nation should never be able to enter yours; pretty hypocritical.
I absolutely agree that people can be so vile when commenting on articles published by the Daily Mail. It makes you realise how sad and bitter a section of society really are.
I think a lot of the comments are simply fake/doctored. Someone made a video on YT regarding this, where their comment was initially upvoted for about an hour, and then suddenly after two more hours received a ridiculous number of downvotes [like 20k – a rather silly number given the number of comments on the page]. After which his comment was actually removed. He had written something purely factual which contradicted the “report”. Then a bunch of convenient counter-comments [supporting the “report”] magically found their way into the comment section and got upvoted many times. Then the comment section was closed.
I’ve seen other reports of the same thing, and there were certainly oddities occurring in my commenting history, especially over the last 2 years. My comments are selectively screened out depending on the content I have written, and this is post-print.
If they are not completely made up in-house, then they are certainly curated in some way to give a certain impression. Perhaps the reason it seems so crazy is the same reason any organization tends to suffer from randomness – the staff base a lot of the screening on their own whims and current preferences. So some comments get through and others don’t, and some are just plain made up – depending on the current staff’s sense of humour and mood.
People should be free to comment without censorship People have died to give us that right otherwise you might as well be in China or Iran