Violence against scarecrows soars as social justice groups target straw men

Trigger warning: The following article engages in the practice of straw-manning in order to make a broader point about the disgraceful treatment of straw men in our society.

In accordance with Mode 5's new culture of ethical disclosure, the author must entertain the possibly that he did not write the article of his own volition, but was instead manipulated into doing so by the Machiavellian puppet master - Josh McIntosh.

MODE 5 would like to dedicate the piece to The Guardian and ABC News in recognition of their continuing efforts to eliminate the insidious practice of journalism from current affairs media.

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They were once the respected guardians of our rural communities. Now in a post-9/11, increasingly urbanised United States, where 90% of children under the age of 10 are unable to correctly identify a tractor*, American scarecrows are a marginalised underclass. More recently this isolated group has become the unlikely target of so-called Social Justice Warriors, who believe that they can usher in a new golden age of equality and diversity on a foundation of half truths and arbitrary cornfield beatings.

Professor Dan Cowen of Yay! University, California, who has spent over a decade living among Social Justice Communities and documenting their behaviour, says that the recent attacks have not come as a surprise:

“A common methodology within this group is the practice of straw-manning, in which a Social Justice Warrior seeks to misrepresent the views of their opponent and then directs their attack at this fabrication, while ignoring the actual argument. It was inevitable that, in some cases, the extreme fringes of social justice would escalate in their behaviour patterns and begin venting their anger on actual straw men.”

We spoke to Ellen - a self-professed Social Justice Shield Maiden, who claims to regularly participate in scarecrow beatings, which she says are empowering:

“People online are always telling me that straw men are an invention of my own demented, malformed psyche . All I can say is the scarecrow who I felt crumple under my blows last night felt pretty real. Ha, ha, ha.”

When we asked Ellen why she felt the need to attack members of the scarecrow community, she expressed a commonly-held belief among Social Justice Warriors: that scarecrows are responsible for a tide of violent and misogynist video games that exclude women and minorities.

In an attempt to establish just how pernicious the influence of scarecrows was on the videogaming industry, MODE 5 contacted a number of AAA game developers:

Running With Scissors said: “Despite our robust diversity policy and a headhunting initiative undertaken by our Human Resources Department, which to our eternal shame degenerated into actual headhunting, we have to failed to recruit a single scarecrow.”

Of the developers we spoke to, only Ubisoft employed a scarecrow, although not in a games developing role. A spokesperson for the company said:

“We currently employ a scarecrow to watch over the cornfield in Iowa, that we purchased erroneously for several thousand times its actual value, thinking that 'cornfield' was the name of a new social media platform. Actually it's just a really big cornfield. It's still pretty great though if you want some corn.”

As the number of assaults on scarecrows increases, the reverberations are being felt beyond their insular community. Mode 5 travelled to Cornerstone, Nebraska, where Conner Burden and his ten year old daughter, Marcie, are facing ruin after their scarecrow, Mr Pickles, was savagely beaten, leaving their barley crops vulnerable to attacks by birds.

“We found Mr Pickles in three pieces. Doctors expect him to make a partial recovery but it's unlikely he will ever scare crows again,” said Burden.

Mode 5 was able to speak briefly to Mr Pickles – a veteran of the Second World War who fought at Iwo Jima as part of the 12^th Armoured Scarecrow Division:

“As scarecrows we are expected to stand firm and resolute, however I admit that a felt a tremor of fear as that sour-faced mob of blue haired harridans emerged from that Prius,” he said.

Pickles, who has a previous conviction for robbing a pharmacy, went on to describe how decades of stereotyping portraying scarecrows as expressionless blood-thirsty mass murderers have negatively affected public perception and made straw man beatings borderline acceptable:

“It only takes one scarecrow to slaughter a cabin of teenagers with a rusty scythe, and then do more or less exactly the same thing in the same location the following year, and then commit a string of murders in space, and then in the ghetto. It's not long before the public believes that all scarecrows are homicidal."

As the Social Justice movement gather momentum there are concerns about who or what will be their next target, with some states already recording a rise in attacks on statues.

Social Justice Warrior, Jemima Wilkes Booth, said:

“There's a statue of Abraham Lincoln in my home town, pointing in the direction of my house, literally doxing me! That shit lord didn't count on the internet research skills that I brag about endlessly on my résumé. Having typed his name into Google and found out where he worked. I wrote to his employees asking them if they were aware that one of their staff was a harasser of women and a potential rapist.”

“Last week I received a letter from the White House in Washington, informing me that Lincoln no longer works there. Chalk up another victory for social justice!”

* 90% of U.S. schoolchildren thought tractor was Blue Whale (MODE 5, March, 2012)