(~7 minutes to read)
There was a time when news media reported interesting and important happenings in a sober fashion. Well, for most of the year, anyway—August (give or take) was known as “Silly Season” in the UK and elsewhere.
A quick thumb through the internet revealed that the reason for Silly Season is that the amount of government and business news declines in the summer, so editors needed other stories to help fill the otherwise empty pages of their newspapers.
My take is that all the experienced journalists took off for their holidays at the same time, and the juniors couldn’t be trusted to write about important stuff (perhaps junior might actually let the truth get in the way of a good story?) so they were assigned to stories about the origins of the Twinkie™, artificial insemination of crocodiles, or the finding of badgers in tumble driers.
Impeachments, invasions and major lottery wins just couldn’t occur in the month of August, because there were no senior journalists around to report them.
Okay—so Nixon’s resignation-to-avoid-impeachment happened in the month of August—like I said, why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Modern technology allows us to work while on vacation, so in theory, those senior journalists could cover anything important that happens in August. But we’d be hard-pressed to notice, because Silly Season now lasts the entire year. A high percentage of even the more sober news outlets seem to present every news item as if it were titillating trivial clickbait.
Take the following headline, for example.
“What Is This Button, And Who Just Pressed It?”
The report could be about a third-world country’s leader’s dog that’s learned to dispense its own food, a first world leader’s finger that’s just pressed the red button, or anything in between. We don’t know until we click the link.
There’s no identifiable Silly Season anymore; not online, anyway.
So in an effort to create an impression that there was a Silly Season this year, here are some topics that I’ve had on file as fodder for potential “WhaT iF” articles, but which I’ve so far not imagined into a satisfactory scenario.
Nose-picking Ban for Philippines Police
This article amused me back in August 2016 when I saw it. But as President Rodrigo Duterte’s reputation became better-known, and some of his policies and tactics came under fire, I felt the need to sit on this one as a full-blown article.
It turns out that nose picking was one item in a list of habits banned by the National Capital Region Police Office in the Philippines. The list includes scratching bodily itches, smoking, and chewing gum. And it does demonstrate the kind of choices that news outlets make when selecting headlines. If the headline had been “Philippines Police Banned from Smoking on Duty”, the article wouldn’t have gotten nearly as many clicks. But apparently people really want to read about police officers who pick their noses.
UK—“Ugly Kingdom”?
A report on the New Zealand herald’s website revealed that Europeans ask Google questions such as “Why are the British so ugly?” and “Why do the English put milk in their tea?” Other allegedly well-known attributes of the Brits are questioned too: “Why are the British so stupid / so dirty / crybabies?”
The data quoted is from September 2016, so perhaps the Brexit referendum skewed the results slightly. After all, a nation who willingly votes to isolate itself in a global economy deserves to have its tea-drinking habits mocked.
Underage Drink-driving
In October last year, police in Cheshire, England breathalysed a toddler who was caught driving an uninsured car erratically and without a licence.
“Caught” is actually the wrong word. The kid actually turned him/herself in to police. And the car was a toy pedal car.
But speaking as someone who was breathalysed at a checkstop a couple of years ago (I was sober), I can attest to the sheer terror of being breathalysed.
How did this toddler cope? Was he/she given counselling? Compensation for harassment? I hope so, because in today’s world, apparently, such encounters with officialdom can harm a child to the point that a big fat compensation payout is the only thing that will fix it.
Pick Up Your Dog’s DNA, Please
In November, the BBC’s website ran a report about a town in Spain that’s collecting DNA from all registered dogs so that they can trace poop on the sidewalk back to its owner.
Seems like a good idea. After all, owners who don’t clean up after their dogs are behaving irresponsibly by doing so. And unfortunately, wrapping the poop in newspaper, setting fire to it on the owner’s doorstep and ringing the doorbell is frowned upon in polite society.
But there was a “More on this story” link to a similar article about a town in England that was doing the same thing. By coincidence, it was the town that I grew up in.
The town’s name? Barking.
Arf arf.
Hatching a Moneymaking Plan
In December, it was reported that gougers were buying up stocks of the current “must have” Christmas toy and re-selling them on kijiji and ebay for up to ten times their recommended retail price. The toy in question was a furry little robot that hatches from an egg and… well, it doesn’t matter.
The gouging didn’t surprise me, nor did the indignation and disgust expressed by parents, even though some of them were prepared to pay over the odds for this toy. No: my reaction was amused shock. Shock that there are people who create a Christmas toy futures market and then gamble on it; and shock that parents implicitly encourage the market by buying from it.
One of the re-sellers summed it up for me though. “My kids are going to have a good Christmas because I’m making a crap-tonne of money off these stupid eggs.”
Bare Bottoms Are Vulnerable
Earlier in the year, there were reports of sewers being blocked by piranha fish while more recently, the New Zealand Herald reported that a Kiwi had won a $1000 bet by sitting bare-bottomed on a beehive.
One can only hope that the piranha fish were dead before they were flushed; otherwise, future “enthronement” might prove as hazardous for the owners as for the Kiwi—unfortunately for him, the bees were very much alive.
Data Security Sucks
In August, the CBC’s website informed us that our automated vacuum cleaners might well be collecting and uploading to its “masters” some of the most intimate details of our lives.
Such as where the coffee table is in relation to the couch.
Or how many dining chairs there are around the table.
Now, I’m quite paranoid about data collection. I shy away from many of the “helpful” features of smartphone apps because I can see some of the demographic dots that my using them could join. (However, I do confess that I’m one of the millions that click on the “I have read the terms and conditions” checkbox without having read aforementioned Ts and Cs.)
But the location of my waste paper basket or the number and nature of food particles that the vacuum cleaner sucks up? I see little opportunity for that information to be used against me, unless there’s a company out there that wants to sell me something to catch the potato chip crumbs that escape my clutches.
Smart Phone; Dumb Person
Finally, I have to share this one. The Daily Telegraph (UK) reported the findings of a University of Texas study. The headline read, “Just looking at a smartphone makes you less intelligent…”
Actually, the study claimed that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone “reduces available cognitive capacity”. Probably not the same thing, but “Cognitive Capacity” in a headline wouldn’t be so click-worthy, so “less intelligent” it is…
The study itself can be found here. Feel free to read it and make your own minds up.
Unless you’ve been “looking at your smartphone” a lot recently, in which case, you might need someone to read it to you.
That’s All Folks!
That’s all the space I have for Silly Season this year. The story about a parrot’s vocabulary being submitted as evidence in an adultery case will have to wait, as will the one about a funeral home fire that was caused by the cremation of an overly obese body.
I hope you enjoyed the selection. Feel free to tell me about your favourite “silly season” story by leaving a comment below.