Two years ago today, this blog appeared on the Guardian website. The fact that you’re reading this should be pretty conclusive proof that it’s still there.
There was no real fanfare or buildup beforehand, it was just “there” suddenly. It came about after the Guardian Science people put out an open call for proposals for new blogs to expand their science blog network. Seeing as I’d done a couple of posts that were reasonably well received, I pitched the idea of me doing a regular satirical/humorous blog. I expected it to be rejected out of hand, but obviously someone had spiked the Guardian’s water supply with hallucinogens at a key moment and they thought it was worth doing. Surprised me as much as anyone, in all honesty.
I love science, and talking about science, but I never agreed with the apparent consensus that writing about science has to be deathly serious, or lofty, or words like that. Even comedians who talk about science (who are becoming increasingly common, which is great) seem to refer to science as a means to show how ridiculous something else is, rather than making jokes about the science itself. I figured there was scope to do that and still make it valid and educational, to varying extents.
Thing is though, that’s not something people seem to expect. Satirical science posts aren’t that common, and when it’s under the Guardian Science banner, it’s fair to say that most expect it to be a genuinely serious science piece. This led to numerous misunderstandings. But being the “comedy science” guy at the Guardian has also led to many entertaining occurrences over the past two years. So here are some highlights.
Front page chicken
One great way to get your work noticed is to have it on the homepage of the Guardian website, which is visited by millions of people every day. And I remember the first time I was featured on the Guardian website front page. It’s an incredible honour to be singled out and publicised in this way. What could possibly go wrong?
Well …
Let’s be honest, I’ve not got the sort of face to get away with this sort of implication. It makes sense in context, as it was linked to a (spoof) blogpost I did about an online threat. Trouble is though, that context is absent from the front page here, so it just looks like the Guardian is telling millions of people that I’m something of a sex pest.
I assumed this was a deliberate, if alarmingly dark, joke by someone on the front page team. I’ve since been informed that it was not, and this is used as an example in the training about “what not to do”. So that’s reassuring at least.
But since then, the front page team and I have somehow gotten involved in a bizarre game where I write the most ridiculous titles imaginable and it ends up being on the front page with my face under it, as if I’m a Daily Mail writer who’s become incredibly lost.
It’s a Wonderful Blog
January last year saw the premiere of Brian Cox’s Wonders of Life documentary. There had been a lot of talk about it in the science communities online and so forth. A lot of people weren’t happy about it, largely because it was a physicist covering biology so it was definitely rubbish, etc etc. It struck me as a bit odd that so many scientists would arrive at a firm conclusion without any evidence, as it hadn’t even been on yet. So I decided to parody this attitude by reviewing the show.
I said it was confusing, weird, didn’t make a lot of sense, stuff like that. I concluded by saying it’s important to have more informed opinions before you go and start making declarations on things, because you could be getting stuff wrong without knowing it. This was a meta-joke as it was made apparent (I thought) half way through the piece that I’d actually watched It’s a Wonderful Life and was reviewing that as if it was a serious documentary, thus being guilty of the exact thing I was accusing Cox of.
I’ve explained it so thoroughly as it was obvious from the comments that many people didn’t get it. I was angrily accused of “not even watching the right thing” countless times, as if that wasn’t exactly the joke. Angry anti-Cox people were citing it as if it were genuine criticism, pro-Cox fans filled my Twitter mentions column with vitriol, revealing they hadn’t read past the title. It was one of my best days ever.
The highlight was an angry message from the BBC graphics department, who had apparently read the piece and, in a panic, hurried to check where the footage of the documentary turned black and white. Those who say subtlety is hard to convey online, they have a point.
Dean’s face flood
When UKIP councillor David Silvester claimed that same-sex marriage was the cause of UK floods, everyone was quick to dismiss him as an idiot. I went for the opposite approach, using science to prove why he was right (while actually achieving the opposite).
It was a popular piece, but the best thing was when my friend Gareth who works at the BBC was looking for an image about the story, and a Google image search revealed the following.
I had inadvertently flooded Google images with the same photo of my (sexy) face, with a few David Silvester islands thrown in for good measure. Achievement unlocked!
Daily Mail duelling
Just over a year ago, there was a story in the Daily Mail about some guy who claimed that humans will eventually evolve beaks.
Don’t ask.
I liked this idea though, so expanded on it with a joke piece about how humans may evolve in response to modern technology and habits etc. Then, much to my surprise, the Daily Mail repeated my story as if it were serious. I then wrote a post about this. I did wonder if this would lead to a never-ending back-and-forth, like some blog-based version of tennis. But it didn’t.
A Mail commenter did call me MISTER STAR TREK!! though, which was on my business cards for a while.
Everyone loves Hitler
It’s one of those things where you don’t plan it, but it blows up in entirely unexpected ways. I was reading some sci-fi stuff about time travel, and it mentioned the desire to kill Hitler, as per usual. I thought a post about why this was a bad idea might be a bit interesting, but mainly I wanted to see if I could get a pro-Hitler blog in the notoriously left-wing Guardian. Turns out I could.
People seem to really like Hitler, and it’s been my most popular post to date.
Apologies to Google
I may roll my eyes a bit when someone doesn’t recognise an obvious spoof for what it is, but it’s a bit much to expect algorithms to do it, especially when I am actually blogging on a news site. So I do feel I should apologise to the algorithms that collate Google news stories, because I think I’m messing them up. Most ironically, this occurred with my satirical blog about the Turing test being “beaten”.
It’s happened a couple of times, but this one is my favourite, as I love the irony of software not being able to recognise a joke article about the Turing test. That’ll show ’em!
Dairy-based fame
I’d heard that if you have a media platform, companies will send you free samples of their product if you mention them. This has happened to me once.
I noticed the trend of yoghurt advertising being targeted at women, and wrote about why this might be (I was bored).
The next day, I got an email from a yoghurt company employee, offering me vouchers for free yoghurt. She said it was her job to monitor “all the yoghurt-based news” (I love that this even exists as a job) and that, thanks to my post, I am now something of “a celebrity in the world of yoghurt”.
That’s the title of my autobiography sorted, at least.
Other stuff
There have been plenty of other things going on too, this is just a bit of a highlights reel. I can’t stress how much of a privilege it is to be in a position to spew the contents of my warped mind onto one of the most popular and respected news sites in the world, as and when I like.
This post is just to acknowledge how bizarre it’s been to try and do science-comedy in such a public forum. And to say thanks to the Guardian people for letting it happen at all. And also thanks to the people who actually read this guff, a group whose numbers crossed the line into “obscene” long ago. It’s much appreciated.
Dean Burnett and the Brain Flapping blog actually have the same birthday. This seems right. He is on Twitter, as ever, @garwboy
