Talking satire and more with Simon Harris

[Music] I've wanted to have a good chat through the news with you for a while, because I don't know anyone else who on Twitter is just instantly there with the hot take. Would you call them hot takes? Are you a hot take? Sometimes the phrase "hot take" implies that somebody's just kind of making stuff up through it, coming up with stuff for effect, whether they agree with it or not. And I think in my case, the majority of the time I do agree with if I'm saying it because I'm looking to increase the Twitter following or getting the pay for anything like that. So it's more just that I think hot takes are designed to be manipulative from the hip, right? I mean, you say what you think and yeah. I don't always get it spot on. I don't always get it 100% correct or 100% in offensive because most of the time you can try your best not to offend anybody. And you still got to offend somebody. Come up my, you know, so I just tend to say, "Wherever pops into my head and if it's a proper opinion, great, if people want to give me a breeze for it, great, whatever." So if somebody else in 10 minutes, you can have a go at me about that instead. For those that don't know, Simon is man behaving badly on social media platforms. But I've noticed you may correct me if I'm wrong, but that was a kind of a parenting blog that perhaps you're more recent stuff around politics and around social issues that's less to do with parenting. And maybe there's a bit of a division between Simon Harris and man behaving badly now. Is that right? I mean, the experiment again, the problem with parenting blogs is that you kind of cover it all very quickly as in parenting's parenting, you know, it's hard. Oh, I've had another baby. Let's talk about that. And then once you run out of having babies and you think, "I can't have any more just for likes on Facebook and Twitter." You think, "Joe, what?" Let's talk about politics because it generally will affect people. I have a lot more than me renting about changing that peers and God knows what's. And also to be fair, politics and if there's a thing in that realm affects whatever we do as parents and however our kids grow up and stuff like that. So it's really a natural progression. I guess politics always ran through your parenting blog stuff. But I mean, the genesis for a lot of this was not a parenting blog, was it? Tell me about your first, you know, folly into the world of satrical news. Oh yeah, sat I mean, again years ago, I was running a blog called South and the South and News Network, which was designed not so much as fake news because the problem with fake news and satire is people lump him into the same category. When in fact, in my opinion, fake news has more of. Fake news is more about trying to deceive people possibly for nasty purposes. For instance, you're trying to influence how people vote within election or you're trying to start a lynch move. People sort of roaming the streets like kind of thing. That's what fake news is for. Satire is more for entertainment. And sometimes they kind of overlap one into the other. But of course, back at the time when I told that 2015 was a time when you could publish satire on social media, you know, Facebook and it would get a reasonably large number of people looking at it because there were all these restrictions in place with social media network panicking about the spread of satire, stroke, fake news. So it was basically well worth doing not just from a financial point of view because obviously you have birds and you've earned from it. But I mean, over time, stuff like Trump's election Brexit, everything else rates that basically caused all the social media networks to really crack down hard on the spread of satire, fake news, whatever you want to call it. So in fact, I mean, I think it was a lot of people who were not able to do that. But I think it was a lot of people who were not able to do that. And I think it was a lot of people who were not able to do that. And I think it was, and I mean, I mean, they were, I mean, they were, yeah, it's true. And they were generally stories of a local angle. But I mean, in a couple of cases that were so called mainstream media, the press high profile figures in broadcasts. And I think that that's fine. But I don't think that that was about a very specific time where you changed your mind about something on which you've been misled. Aside from that, you know, that being different from you've always held quite strong convictions about fairness and justice and and and you've been involved in lots of community work charity work and all of that. And so all of that built you realizing that you have this strong sense of kind of politics and you have the ability to create these situations that make right wing, you know, an extreme right wing people look very silly, you know, like whether it's forage or whether it's hotkins. Yeah. I mean, that's that's you know, and that's that's a great talent. Like I think I think in terms of doing what you want to do. Yeah, when we talk about, yeah, when you when you when you talk about traps, it's quite interesting because they're not even technically traps because I've found that so many figures out there have been so desperate to get a point of view across that any kind of any kind of analysis of content just completely flies out completely flies out flies out. The window, you know, they just don't know they're so desperate to get a point of view across. They're just going to take something and run with it regardless if it's true or not. And the reason that is that even if they do get something completely wrong. On the side, it's out there, you know, people would have believed what they've said anyway. So in many way, they're still achieving their goal. Yeah. Even if they make themselves look a bit silly in the process, this is achieved. But not in an ideal way, not true about the two high point, no, no, no, no, not an ideal way. But yeah, you're right. I guess that's just the nature of social media. I mean, you know, even the most kind of poisonous poisonous figures go viral. Yeah, yeah, yeah, really again. Yeah. I mean, again, in the M25 issue to one side for a minute, there was the other part of the form was when I did it was just something about taking. It was actually a photo of my daughter wearing a cow ones. He actually was just 18 months old. But I have to say, I took my, um, I took my daughter to a birthday party wearing a cow wearing a cow ones. And she was kicked out because the birthday boy just the birthday child's mom was a vegan. And she got kicked out. down. I mean, the whole thing and I'm basically writing with their joke names, with their joke names in there. I'm sure there was talking about yeah, joke names, Red Herring's like, for instance, the baby, the baby was called Tania Hight. And the vegan mother was called Esmeralda Soyer being turned off. I mean, all these like red herring. It doesn't, it doesn't particularly give you much. I mean, like, don't get me wrong. I have a big, we've talked about this before you and I'm a, I'm a big fan of local press and a big fan of the need for a fair and open press and the rest of it. But yeah, I know I know many journalists hard work and journal dedicated journalists. However, having said that, it doesn't give you much faith in some journalists when they, when they miss just traps like that. I mean, it always, I think that that, that cow ones here, actually, I'm not going to say caused it because I don't want to put that on you. But it marked a moment, a change when I think that was the start of really people's using the word woke, you know, because it was around that time. I think, I think the reason that maybe I don't know if the article's about, you know, that was it the son that put out about that? Your, your cow baby story and they felt like, I mean, I mean, did they use the word woke? Did they use you of being woke? No, no, again, the story didn't even look for a couple of weeks when again, this was on a Saturday. Always happens on a Saturday for some reason. Um, Saturday morning, I'd get an email from someone on the, um, pictures desk at the sun. I think they've got pictures desk or wherever they're, whoever deals with photos. Yes. Um, so you know, hi there. Um, we've spotted this photo in an article on your news page, uh, news page. Um, is that okay? If that, do we have, I'm pretty sure to use it if we credit you and I didn't stop at that point and say, well, hold on a minute, this is fake. What you're doing? I thought, yeah, gone. It has to be a last if, and I don't think that, I don't think it could get much further. Because I would have imagined they would have bundled it up, given it to edits, a sub-elits or whatever, one point who would have gone, hang on a minute, but no, literally after a few hours after I gave a push into use the photo, I was told you after that, I was just keeping an eye on the sun's website, every 10 to 15 minutes after that going, are they going to use it? They're going to use it and then sure enough, a couple of hours later, they, there was this whole article on the sun, and it wasn't an article about a fake news story. They aren't, you know, such and such as one of fake news, it was literally an article saying, a vegan mother has kicked a toddler out of a birthday party where an L one's, and all they've done is they're literally cut and pasted the majority of the article, and then created their own article and added stuff in there about other situations where vegans have gone too far. They've even gone and we printed, they're even, no, according to them, and they've even gone and we printed all the names, all the red herrings, and it was, it was life for about three hours before, before they finally tripped and it came, and it came all, I mean, for that, you know, for that basic three hour period, it was sort of, yeah, it was in lots of, yeah, it was in the most red section, and I thought, and I thought, how many people have you just, so, so do you think, so, so, as people, we don't, I'm a checkie. So do you think then that this, that story, like, where, you know, that it being out there, what sort of impact you think that that had, do you think that, you know, it was, I guess it, it just highlights the kind of the prejudice, doesn't it? That's what it does. It highlights the prejudice that people have against, in this case, vegans, you know, which is, you know, not, not your most often talked about group people that may be prejudiced against, I don't think it's necessarily high on people's priority lists are still out, prejudice against vegans, although I'm sure it happens. There are, you know, people who are prejudiced, being prejudiced because of their skin color or because of their sexuality, for example, and that's like, these be far more serious than being prejudiced against being vegan, but it marked the fact that the people were, were willing to accept and get angry about the fact that they saw, you know, they weren't able to kind of logically, um, analyze the situation and realize that this story's fake, even when the facts were staring them in the face. No, of course not. Even when the fact, even when, when clues like, tan your hide, I mean, it's just, it's, you know, so I, I, yeah, I find it really interesting what it says about us. Yeah. Well, I mean, the fin, the, the, the fin of really sealed the deal in terms of, oh my god, how the hell haven't you checked this properly? Was, um, in the original joke one, there was a quote from the, from the vegan mother saying, you wouldn't send your child to a Muslim with birth, like, he dresses the side of gamut. I mean, it was the most, it was most ridiculous comments to make and the sun we printed that as well. So, there's a quote. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so, why, why would you believe this? Yeah. Yeah. So, some of these, stories of, you know, ended up touching on quite, quite serious social issues and stuff. And I guess that that's what's led you from, from satire into, you know, you, you, you, um, give your opinion forthrightly sometimes on Twitter on, you know, fairly, fairly frequently about the, the news of the day. Like I said earlier, you know, you're always, always hot on that. Um, how is it, what's it like trying to, you know, use satire as a base and, and comedy as your kind of vehicle, talking about the news, um, when it's just, well, it's two things either it's really horrible or is already really funny. Yeah. Like it's, it's beyond satire. People keep using this phrase, you know, the, the current world and what's going on. A lot of it's beyond satire. I guess, for me, it's like a post-truth beyond satire. Yeah. And I guess for me, it's because it's beyond satire because it's already really funny. Now, like, don't give me one. That doesn't mean I think it's funny in the, in the sense that, um, you know, like, ha ha, I, you know, I'm actually laughing. It's, it's just funny in that like, if funny is a mixture of shock and surprise and a disbelief, um, then yeah, I just, quite often, I can't believe what I'm hearing and just, I don't know, maybe it's defense mechanism to love. Is it, yeah, I guess that's what it is. It's defense mechanism to kind of actually find the funny side in, in stuff. So yeah, I mean, how do you do that? I mean, I don't know. Yeah. I was just saying before that, um, I was even when, when the, when the social media networks started, proper panicking about the spread of satire, fake news, whatever you want to call it. And to mean, again, obviously compared to a lot of the other satire, stroke fake news publishers, obviously mine was quite small. But I mean, even when you talk to the bigger ones that are quite popular on Facebook now, they'll say the same thing about how, you know, reach is dramatically declined. What once were viable publishing outlets with financial respect just aren't, you know, just aren't, just aren't cutting it now because of the way that Facebook grew Facebook and Twitter, all the others have become really twitchy about this format of them into Taylor. But obviously, yeah, it's been quite cool. The way I've been able to kind of take elements of what I was doing before with Southland news network and just generally turning it to creating social media content now that I do for other organizations and so companies. You just, you just mentioned, I just want to ask you just mentioned the word entertainment. Do you, do you see what you do as more entertainment or activism or like both or what I mean, do you consider yourself more an entertainer? I guess what, what would you write in a form if you're asked to write? You know, when they ask you occupation and people like you and the people like me, I guess you should see my last, yeah, the last couple of them never know what's a last couple of birth certificates and applications that I've built in. Oh my god, the kids are born like, please tell me, as far as occupation, I was like, I'll, I just think it would be so good for one of your kids. Social media manager. Yeah, yeah, social media manager. I mean, if one of your kids had got dad's occupation as influencer, I think that's cool. That's so, that's so 2020, 2020 laid. There's got to be some birth certificates out there where the parents' occupation is listed as influencer. Surely that exists. It must be, I mean, to me the word, the word, the word influencer, great, so I just get this vision in my head of, you know, meet contacting hotels and restaurants and telling them that I'm going to come down for like a meal and, you know, I'm going to give them loads of exposure. You know, all the kind of, yeah, sort of sense of entitlement that comes with influencing sometimes with the black and white photos of, you know, perfectly clean kitchens where they've got like three kids in the house and you get the impression that literally the kid dropped the bike right on the floor and it's well worth free. That kind of maintenance, well, I just really don't buy into the whole influencer thing. Yeah, I mean, I do stuff that is obviously influencing, but it's when you call yourself an influencer and you turn up places and you call yourself an influencer. I have an influencer that I'll just shut up seriously. But I mean, again, the stuff that I do, yeah, it's partial, it's partially influencing, it's partially activism, possibly it's partially intact. I mean, again, to me, an activist isn't just me, isn't someone like me who sits behind the keyboard because again, there's only so much that I can do set on the cable from a time perspective. You know, I'm not, wait, I'm not one of these people that you'll find marching and taking part in protests, you know, the people that are actually making a real difference. I think, you know, I'm just someone who happens to have an online platform, what I try to use to achieve that kind of goal. But I mean, I want to call myself an activist. No. I mean, especially, I guess, from my point of view, as an outsider, I would say that a lot of what you've done is having a positive impact. I love what you're doing, you know, talking about issues on social media. I think that there is a space for voices in the political world and in the, you know, social, civil discourse world. There are a space for non-traditional voices, right? So, for example, I'm a big fan of Carol Vorderman and the way that she's using her platform as a TV host and as somebody who's known for being a co-host of a of a quiz show. She's using her platform now to speak out about government corruption and about the mishandling of PPE and about issues around. Yeah. And you can tell that she's scaring people. Exactly. And I think that that's because you've got like the Daily Mail constant hit job being an all sorts of things. Exactly. And I think that that's because that fear is coming through because people like her with order and, you know, to my point, people like you, they're people that are relatable. You're people, you know, that have grown up in a world where we share our lives online and it's not too unusual to do that. I think that, you know, we've now all, all of us have now fully adapted to a digital world, perhaps more than and now more than ever, like the older people, maybe above the age of like 50 or 60, have them. And you're just, you're there and you're on social media and people know you and they relate to you. So when you then point out the bad things going on around us from corruption to, you know, or even actually the good things going on around us as well, which you do a lot of, you do a lot of raising, you know, money for charity and pointing out the good that exists. I just think it's going to worry the, worry the establishment. And, and, but that's why it's a success. And that's why I think what you do is in a way kind of activism. I don't think it matters that you don't see it as that. And I think, you know, that is up in a way, it's probably actually a good thing. You don't 100% see it as that because perhaps that has that contributes to its naturalness. And it's because you, you know, you speak from the heart, right? Like you like, like we said, you shoot from the hit with something made you angry on, you know, or you see something in the news, probably like Boris Johnson yesterday, attempting to, you know, essentially be a, I just saw an awful headline. It was the, the head, the front, the, the front page of the Daily Mail, and it described when it was being agile as a cat. And I just thought, that's gross. But yeah, whatever. Boris Johnson me, I've got an idea of, what, what, I'm, say, what one was on about either, yeah, agile as a cat. That's okay. Well, it reminds me of pseudo sexual. Yeah, we know what sprang to mind. George Gallow, sorry. You know George, oh, God, you remember George Gallow, which I put a lens on. Yeah. And he had to be a, and he cooled up to her feet. This is in the big brother house in like what? 2000, I don't know, nine or something, probably. And he had to, they were role-playing weren't they? And George Gallow, he, he had to, I was, maybe I'm, there's probably some horrible Mandela effect going on here. But I'm sure he was in a leotard, maybe not, maybe I've imagined that bit. And I think if I have imagined that bit, that's even more worrying than than any of this in the first place. But yeah, and he had to pretend to be a cat. Anyway, sorry, complete tangent, probably the greatest tangent of all time. But I mean, again, I mean, again, obviously the front page of the mouth when, you know, the entirely predictable, I think, from page of the mouth as a result of yesterday's proceeding was, I mean, if obviously, you know, if obviously Boris C's performance was such a massive success at one point, why did you see his sort of lawyer pull a face that was sort of reminiscent of someone who's just in how to wasp. Good. I know. Sometimes the jokes do just ride that. You say that. You say that. But you sometimes the jokes do ride themselves, but it was Lord panic, wasn't it? And you can see them. You could see the panic in Lord panic's eyes. Yeah. So you must see things like that. And what does that make you do you get angry? Do you immediately want to go and, you know, find the find the comedy in it or what, you know, what's what's the world of politics doing to you right now? It's quite difficult to find comedy in it. It's quite difficult to find humor in it, other than obviously bashing Boris type here. Or even just because obviously the sheer background of everything saying, well, okay, the sheer number of people who died and who are unable to, you know, give their loved ones the sort of send off that they would have normally expected on the regular circumstance, because they were so persistent on following the rules. And to me, it always comes back to that photo of, um, cringles with the second sitting at, um, Prince Philip's funeral. Okay, I know that she's allowed in one photo, but on another photo, the animal's out a little bit, you see, other people they were with the fact was they're still following the rules. So, you know, there you have the highest profile possible, the highest possible profile person in the most high profile of circumstances following the rules. And it was also, I think it's quite well known now that, um, the government even offered to relax certain aspects of the rules. It was beautiful. And I might as do a query was just like, no, absolutely not. The optics would be horrendous. And I'm not doing it. So I think, well, if she could do it, you know, why the hell could the government not do it? Completely, I completely agree. A lot of people, I completely agree. It's interesting. I mean, human for it. Cause I'm thinking, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, the humor from it is difficult. I mean, it's interesting that, um, you should talk about, you know, being difficult to find the human. I think you, so are you saying that that means you try and you don't think you do it? Because I think you do. I think you find the human a lot of stuff. I think it's a really good talent. I think it's needed. I think that, um, even in our darkest moments, you know, there needs to be humanity and humanity is is laughter and its sadness and its light and its dark. Um, so I think, you know, you do manage it and you do, you do do a good job of it. It's interesting. You should whack the queen there. Um, I, uh, question I really wanted to ask you actually is, um, would you, would you consider yourself a voylist? Cause you, I've noticed you, you've found yourself, um, quite, uh, follower of mexit and Harry and mexit situation. Harry and Megan's situation. Yeah. And the shoe, oh, it's just, do you know what I came, I wouldn't describe myself as an out-and-out royalist. I just see, I'm just not at the centre. I'm not one of these people who believes the monocleus should be abolished. You know, I'm kind of somewhere in the middle, which that's the problem these days. You know, nothing's really allowed to be in the middle of anything. You have to be this option or this option. You know, but again, I'm actually someone who's, well, he was actually pretty, he was, um, pretty self at the time. Obviously, our king Charles. I mean, last March, we actually met him through the work that we do with Facebook. We actually met him up at Facebook, say, called in London, talking about Ukraine, humanitarian relief groups and stuff like that. You know, so I'm not someone who's gonna sort of see how to sit here and tell you, you know, I've watched the Monica. I just, I can't, what I do, why do you think, however, is that the monarchy will found me do obviously need to modernise. And the biggest opportunity that they had to modernise, in a generation would have been Harry and Meghan being front and centre because of, you know, the whole thing was literally, it was, it was, it was just an absolute open goal for the monarchy that they'd somehow missed one for one reason or another. Well, I just, if I'm being honest, it's suppressed. The press and society have literally, it's just, you know, I see some, I see the way that people like Dan Woodson and Mel have been going on and one of the things that Jeremy Clark has said and he has warned them to, you know, it's been violent. It's been literally unhinged. Yeah, it's been, it's been unhinged. I can't think of my, I can't think of a better way to describe than unhinged. My, my view on it is that I think the Royal family for centuries, for, for, you know, thousands of years Royal families have relied on being visible to the public and being, being, and the public looking at them and being influenced by them, you know, like I am always amazed when learning about history, just how much influence over even fairly recent political events such as World War One and ever a fairly recent global event, shall I just say, how much influence Royal families had over these events, you know, World War One, the kings and queens of European countries were instrumental in shaping when and where and how the war started. And Royal families have always done that and that's part of their purpose. And in order to do that, they need to be seen, they need to be being talked about. I think my overall feeling about the whole Harry and Meghan situation is that it shouldn't, I don't think you would do long-term damage to the Royal family because the only thing that possibly does long-term damage to a Royal family is being forgotten about. I think as long as they're being talked about and as long as they are taking front pages of newspapers, you know, Charles, he's an elderly man like all of us, he's not going to be around forever. The new story will move on, the new worlds will come through. And I just think that to a certain extent, if Charles, King Charles has read his history books as I'm sure he has probably far more history books than I have, he will know that there's no real threat from this. It's just tabloid fodder. There's always existed. And the sheer number of scandals that the Royal family have been through and they're still standing, I think, is testament to the fact that they have a high chance of survivability. And in the meantime, it's great, I think, that we've got people like Harry and Meghan to serve as role models and, you know, William and whoever people choose to be their role model, there are far worse, whoever young people especially choose to be their role models, there are far worse role models than any of the members of the Royal family. There are probably far better ones too granted. But I think that certainly, you know, following the charities, works that they do and the support to organizations that they bring is a positive thing. And yeah, that's my heart take or my shoe from the hip on the role family thing. But, yeah, so what's what's true is true. It's just it's just mad because if things would work out differently, you know, we would now have, you know, William and Kate would be doing their thing and how are you, Meghan, obviously William and Kate would be modernizing the Royal family and their fashion. And how are you, Meghan would be modernizing the Royal family in their way that they'll be working together. There wouldn't have been any of this ridiculous media friends either that has literally just pitted one against the other, you know, and it's been this, it's just the whole thing's been mad. But in fact, there was a massive open goal to be scored in terms of moving the monarchy forward, especially with the Queen dying recently, you know, Queen, there's a second dying recently, you know, there was a massive opportunity for everybody just to move on and take the Royal family forward. And it just hasn't happened because so many in the press and beyond them. And even possibly we're in the Royal family themselves in terms of the leaking and placing of store and we can just be literally one big frenzy to drag itself back into the gutter again. I was pleased to see this morning actually, just while we're on the subject that's a new story about Prince William who is in Poland. And he visited an LGBT bar restaurant and had dinner and food there. He used a gay bar. So, you know, I just think that it just goes to show actually how influential, you know, that these people can be and how important it is, that they use that influence to do things like that really, just, you know, in a country which to say it struggles with, with homeophobia and discrimination, with being understatement. And for the future King of England to choose LGBT venue is, you know, it's impactful. So, I don't think we should underestimate the positive impact that's not a worry. These people should have. I mean, the only problem there, the problem there is obviously you're going to have people over here now who literally hang on any word or anything that comes from William and Kate who are going to be like, he did what? He ate where? You know, because they're so set in their mindset. Yeah, but they can possibly get their head around the fact that he'd go to an LGBT it's described as an LGBT restaurant. I think it would change a lot. Yeah, and I've never been to an LGBT restaurant. You know, you would have thought that somebody who isn't quite as sympathetic to, you know, LGBT issue would sort of see something like that and go, oh, I actually perhaps I'm going to change the way that I think. That will obviously be like, and I, that will obviously be like a perfect well. And you just know that it's not going to happen for some people. And that's like, that's like the real shame here. Absolutely. This has been a, a fascinating conversation. We, we went into this, you know, dear listeners, I should say now we run into this thinking that we were going to have a chat about what's going on in the news. As always, though, I usually find my guests far more fascinating than the day's news. And so it's been really nice to hear you talk about all the, all the, all the stuff that you've been, you've been doing. Will you come back soon and we'll have a proper chat about what's in the news? Yeah, definitely. As, as promised, but it's been absolutely wonderful to hear all about what you do. And I hope that anyone listening who hasn't yet discovered the wonder of Simon Harris, man behaving badly on Twitter and on Facebook, do go and help that down. And, and give him a follow. Thanks for listening to the podcast today. As ever, it's been a pleasure talking with you. If you enjoyed that, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. And if you want to take part in discussions that help us shape the topics that we're talking about on the podcast, search for our Facebook group. Don't change the subject. Until next time, speak to you soon.