Bitchell: The Joke’s On You

A personal thank you to all my trolls


Haters, your dream has finally come true.

No, Matt Broomfield didn’t shoot me last night, leaving me to die in an underfunded NHS hospital named after Margaret Thatcher. My column is simply coming to an end.

Many will assume this is because nobody cares about my opinion: A few days ago anonymous wrote, “Go back to writing about conversations in cafes and clubs that probably didn’t happen. No-one is talking about you anymore.” But statistically nobody ever stopped talking about me.

As one of The Tab’s most read writers, I have attracted an average of 1,260 readers per week, and excluding the hate mail sent to my person email address, I have inspired close to a hundred comments.

I never fictionalized events to gain attention as some readers think. My biggest fan at Christ Church, ‘Felix Goodman’, claims he pretended to be homeless when he “met me at Starbucks” [well, someone pretending to be Felix in order to pretend that they’d met me]. Rest assured that when I searched for Felix on Facebook anyway, I found an unrecognizable face that had teeth. There’s no need to satirize Oxford students when the student body is already a parody of itself.

Other readers believe I never pay attention to their complaints. ‘most of the world’ wrote, “Don’t venture into politics; you’ll get torn apart in Oxford.
 Not that you’ll bother reading the comments or heeding the (well deserved) criticism you will inevitably receive for this”. But I skim through my comments every week.

I have favourite commenters, like the homophobe/probably closet-case Ivan Robinson and Dorothy Wadham, a Wadham student with big opinions but not enough confidence to post his or her opinions using a real name, because he or she is too scared to run in to me. Often Dorothy writes that I’m a terrible writer, although he or she leaves comments longer than my articles, and is typically the first person to troll my articles.

I considered personally thanking all my trolls, but there are too many of you. Instead, I broke down how many times trolls used certain words to insult me:

Pretentious: 4
Self-involved: 4
Visiting student/American: 4
Offensive: 6

I understood the first three words—heck, I expected them—but I never intended to offend people. After all, when did I express racist views, attack women, or use homophobic language?

I commented on what I saw and heard, without worrying if my comments went against Oxford’s status quo. A friend told me they found this offensive because I didn’t care if people disliked me, but if that’s offensive than I guess Joan of Arc offends Oxford students too.

By the way, trolls, I know I’m an entertainer, not a martyr like Joan of Arc. That was comment bait. I’m pointing that out because apparently some people know Ancient Greek without an understanding of how the internet works.

You see, there’s a reason I mentioned Matt Broomfield in my lead instead of another hater; I knew he’d understand the joke and also link it on his Facebook. There’s a reason I said a “hospital named after Margaret Thatcher,” knowing the lady hated the NHS.

Yeah, we got it.

There’s a reason I have refrained from mentioning the fifteen commenters who defended me. I could go on and on about how much I love them (hey, hey, hey Ilana Masad and Dave Watson!) but I know how to drive traffic to The Tab, and kissing my friends’ asses isn’t how to do it.

I don’t hate Oxford. I have as many great friends as I have problems with the place,  but nobody wants to read about how much fun I had on vacation in Norway – people read The Tab for entertainment.

During my interview to become a writer for The Tab I was asked how I would bring readers to the site. I said, “A lot of Oxonians hate Americans. I have a big mouth. I’m not afraid to say what everyone’s thinking. I’ll play it up. I’ll receive tons of comments.”

American morans…

And that’s what I did: I mentioned my home country, made jokes, remained honest, and discussed what society prefers to ignore. Readers bought the bait; I raised The Tab’s page views and earned new accomplishments to list on my CV when I apply for future writing jobs.

The only part that didn’t go according to plan was my expectation for Britain’s most intelligent students to understand the joke.