Snarky comments aside, the Jacob Rees-Mogg spoof was several orders of magnitude better than the Intenet Explorer one.
OK, I’ll cede bragging rights to the IE prankster(s) for fooling media outlets such as CNN, the Daily Fail, the Torygraph and Forbes. But it’s old news that plenty of churnalists are happy to regurgitate any old press release, especially one dressed up as a survey, providing you can convince them that the stuff they’re cutting and pasting comes from a reputable* PR agency. There's still enough gullibility and vanity in the world for a story like this to gain some traction, but a lot of us already discount lifestyle surveys as probably bogus anyway. After all, the same discredited ones have been coming round year after year - remember those articles about the boffin who allegedly came up with a formula 'proving' that January 19th is the most miserable day of the year? It was an evidence-free guess, made up to help a travel company flog winter sun holidays and like any fib, it hasn't become any more true just by being repeated over and over again. A bogus lifestyle survey? Oh, look, 'Dog Bites Man' it says here... **
The individual responsible for Jacob Rees-Mogg's spoof tweets was splendid, though. This artful scoundrel has created the platonic ideal of the eccentric high Tory, of whom Gyles Brandreth is a mere pale imitation. Viz:
Is there any greater pleasure than an English picnic of hard cheese, local ham, home made pickle and intelligent conversation?
I am beginning to have some doubts about that cheese. I feel most unusual.
I sense that if I were to tweet that it had been a glorious day with a cerulean sky there would be furious demands that I retract forthwith.
One forgives the barbs or lapses of taste my tweets have been known to provoke, but intolerance without wit is nothing more than bigotry.
Last night I dreamt of Lembit Opik again. Had Mr de Winter's second wife suffered the same one doubts Rebecca would have made it into print.
When King Phillip the handsome of Spain died his wife refused to accept it, sleeping beside the corpse for 3 putrid years. Take heed
An elderly Scots gentleman wandered into the chamber this p.m. and ignored all attempts, including my own, to reveal his broader purpose.
a glass of sherry so delightful that one is almost inclined to forgive Spain for her position over the Gibraltar question.
Disastrous breakfast at well known London hotel. Purportedly poached egg on toast, more like a distressed jellyfish on a Borrower's doormat.
Sorry I was rather dreaming there. I had visions of a cult following me and lost the plot a bit. Audentis Fortuna iuvat.
Genius - drink your fill here, while stocks last.
One suspects the real Jacob Rees-Mogg of being irked, not by the imposture, but by the realisation that his own repartee will never court such avidity.
* For a given value of ‘reputable.’
** Although kudos for fooling the folks at the Daily Mash and The Register who aren't usually quite as gullible as most allegedly serious news outlets. As News Thump (who were also spoofed) put it:
Those hardest hit by the revelation that the IE research was fake were spoof news websites. Many sites enjoyed making fun of those stupid enough to still be using Internet Explorer without knowing who the real butt of the joke was.
A spokesperson for NewsThump said, “We do our best to ensure all our victims are real and genuine, but we’re big enough to admit our mistakes when we invariably make them.”
“So you’re now reading a spoof article that’s lampooning a spoof website for writing a spoof article which was based on what we now know to be spoof research.”
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