THAT’S NOT NEWS! 9 July 2016

Welcome to THAT’S NOT NEWS!

To kick off the first THAT’S NOT NEWS! post, two little crackers from news.com.au. Something tells me News Corp will prove to be a rich source of THAT’S NOT NEWS! material and both of these are a clear example of why.

NotNews1-PokemonGo+FacebookCheater

The stories among which our first two THAT’S NOT NEWS! articles were nestled were certainly of varying calibre (no pun intended). The first three covered the latest unfolding US shooting thing, which was that afternoon’s developing lead story. One was about an Aussie basketballer sending a touching tweet to fans (he “wrote a sincere letter”, apparently), while another concerned a woman who discovered the headaches she’d put down to hangovers were actually due to cancer. “The older I’m getting the worse they seem”, the Essex woman—at the ripe old age of 24— explained, of her clearly frequent yet massively misinterpreted headaches. She is from Essex, I guess, so it’s possible that she’s been drunk since she was 11.

There’s seriously enough material right there in that one paragraph to keep me ranting for years! But I digress…

So, why is everyone going crazy over Pokémon Go? No idea. The article doesn’t actually reference anyone going crazy about anything. It does, however, allude to grown adults regressing to their childhood, but since that’s an apt description of virtually every other twenty or thirty-something these days, it’s hard to know exactly who such a statement excludes.

The on-page headline, however, is more accurate. The article is basically just an instruction manual for prospective Pokémon Go players.

But hang on: aren’t there already enough people wandering the streets with their eyes glued to a mobile device? Do we really need them to be even more engaged with their phone screens than they already are? Apparently we do. But to convince them to actually show any interest in the “the real world”— you know, that thing that’s all around them that most of them hardly ever look at—their mobile screen will now show them elements drawn from the Pokémon franchise, overlayed on the view of what’s directly in front of them, as captured by their phone’s camera.

The upshot? Not only will we still be dodging fucktards who already don’t watch where they’re going, but according to the very enlightening instructional video we’ll now also be ducking, weaving and dodging them as they attempt to throw magical shiny glitter-filled balls at computer-generated images which they believe to be somewhere off in the real-world middle distance. Oh happy day.

In a word (or three): THAT’S NOT NEWS!

And neither is this…

Here’s what this little gem boils down to: a 22-year-old thermal insulation engineer called Stevie is waiting in the queue for a self-serve “coffee” machine in a Shell service station near Chester in England. For the record I’ve used those things in the UK, thus the parentheses, coz that stuff sure as hell isn’t actual coffee! But I digress…

He eavesdrops on the phone conversation of the woman in front of him. Granted, that’s easily done these days, given that most people lose all sense of volume control when on a mobile call. But, again, I digress.

Stevie hears the woman telling the person on the other end—whom he somehow assesses to be “another man”—that she’d told her partner—whom he somehow assesses to be the “David” he hears her refer to—that she’d be in a meeting all day—which he somehow assesses to be a lie—before laughing—which he somehow assesses to be proof of the lie—and then discussing a hotel—which he somehow assesses to be the location where she and the person she’s talking to will meet up at some point that day—which, in turn, he somehow assesses to be proof that she’s cheating on David with the person she’s talking to.

So, after taking all of this in, what do you think the average 22 year old with a hood obsessively positioned just so on his head would do next? Would he ignore the conversation, stop listening and/or mind his own business, like any right-minded person would (or should) do? Nup! He pulls out his mobile—which I groundlessly assess to have already been in his hand, his eyes already fixed on its screen before his eavesdropping even commenced—and cranked up Facebook—which I again groundlessly assess to have already been locked and loaded—and starts punching out a status update to “expose the woman’s lie”. Like you do.

He names the woman’s partner, notes where she is, what she’s wearing and what she’s just been overheard saying. He not only states the model of her car, but even quotes its number plate, which I groundlessly assess to be proof that Stevie is a fucking weirdo and just a tiny bit spooky.

But here’s the kicker (and you knew this was coming): this douchebag doesn’t suggest that he actually knows the woman, or her partner, or the person she was talking to. But, at 22, he no doubt has a couple of thousand Facebook friends and, so, thought it odds-on that one of them must surely know the cheating harlot, poor hard-done-by David, the woman’s lover and/or her car registration.

Helpfully, the article also confirms that our resident social media good samaritan hasn’t yet heard anything from David or the woman—quelle surprise! But, he has received thousands of friend requests, thanks to his post having been “liked by 12,000 users and shared more than 5000 times”. No doubt this made Stevie infinitely happier than he ever would’ve been made by the knowledge that he’d helped David avoid hurt or saved a relationship. Well done, Stevie… you privacy-invading twat.

Undeniably… THAT’S NOT NEWS!