[Patrick100]

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/ ... y-addicts/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Mail Online, the more insistent, bitchier spawn of the Daily Mail, is now the most visited newspaper site in the world. Its 45 million or so monthly visitors tune in for its unique mixture of human tragedy: “Pensioner watched in horror as husband choked to death on sample of free ham at Sainsbury’s deli counter,” and hope: “mollusc mucustouted to beat wrinkles.” But neither of these are the real draw. The reason why Mail Online has been so spectacularly successful is because it has perfected a genius formula for peddling misogyny, a formula as addictive as crack.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/ ... y-addicts/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ezinra]

Ratcheting cruelty up a notch from its rivals, Mail Online normalises a level of vacuous bitchiness last seen, for most of us, in high school.

That's about right.

I think the article would benefit from setting the success of Mail Online in the wider media context, because it's been a while in the making. This fad for judging and sneering (fuck, I hope it's a fad) entered the mainstream with Big Brother and reality tv. It was gendered through the magazine sector — lads' mags and the rehabilitation of Playboy-style porn on the one hand, Hello! and Heat! on the other. And it became sexualised through cheap-and-sleazy satellite tv channels, beginning with Kelvin McKenzie, cunt of all eternity, and his news-bunny-and-naked-presenter trash.

The sidebar of shame could not exist if Major or Blair had had the courage to draw up a half-decent privacy law. It wasn't for a lack of asking. Clare Short's Page Three bill was proposed even before that, back in the mid-1980s. This isn't a new problem. The internet has only made it worse — the sheer size of the Mail's sidebar is what makes it overwhelming, it's a veritable bombardment of misogyny. What's surprising, perhaps, is that it should be the luddite, pearl-clutching Daily Mail that has reaped the reward. But as the article in the Indy suggested, it's always been Fleet Street's true home for hatred.

[Patrick100]

This a very apt quote

If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for nothing - GK CHESTERTON

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Or, of course, if they are angry already the editor knows how to efficiently press their buttons.

[Patrick100]

Or, of course, if they are angry already the editor knows how to efficiently press their buttons.

That writes the other half.

[Malcolm Armsteen]