(SATIRE) Josh McIntosh's prize-less Bingo leads to riots across the UK

Towns across the UK are counting the cost this morning after a night of rioting that saw police pelted with Bingo dabbers and fold-away chairs.

The trouble started during a game of Male Video Game Protagonist Bingo when the maverick caller Josh McIntosh announced that there would be no prizes.

“The moment I stood up and triumphantly shouted 'Bingo!' at the top of my voice was the one of the proudest of my life, rivalled only by the birth of my sixth daughter,” said retired professional ice-skater Sarah 'Queen of Blades' Kerrigan (77).

“I fully expected to be ushered onto the stage where a revolving platform would reveal the bounty I had earned through a deft combination of skill and lightning reflexes. When the homunculus who had been calling out the numbers informed me that the prize was my freshly-gained insight into limiting toxic patterns and that we were all winners I went berserk and attempted to strangle him. As my friends dragged me away I was ranting incoherently about Mrs Aran's daughter-in-law who won a BMW in the national Bingo game last month.”

Witnesses to the fracas stated that McIntosh had initially attempted to restore order. Concessions stand worker Bob Burtt said: “Josh attempted to pacify the baying mob, arguing that by surrendering to their violent impulses they were falling into the trap of externalising the aggressive tropes embodied by the cis white male identity. People in the crowd were throwing chairs and yelling at him to cite precedent and peer-reviewed sources. Eventually he fled.”

Amelia Croft (93) told MODE 5 that she relies on Bingo prizes to maintain an acceptable standard of living after her only daughter was sentenced to 30 years in a Peruvian jail for plundering sites of archaeological interest and shooting condors.

“I was incensed,” she said. “If I wanted to learn more about limiting toxic patterns I would have taken one of the numerous evening classes or Open University courses on the subject.”

Other admitted that McIntosh's behaviour earlier in the game had aroused their suspicions. Juri Han (54) said: “I could tell that something was wrong when he began using non-standard Bingo calls such as 'Brianna Wu, number two'. Mark my words he will pay a high price for his flagrant disregard of the established tropes of Tuesday Night Bingo. Just wait until my daughters Bayonetta and Bayonetta Two hear about this.”

Budding reporter Jason McFadden who has followed the activities of McIntosh and his charitable organisation Feminist Frequency, said that he was not surprised by the new developments:

“Bingo is the latest in a long list of fun activities to be hijacked by Feminist Frequency and used as a Trojan horse for their Orwellian programme of social engineering. If you want an idea of where they will strike next then write down all the things you really enjoy – chances are it will be one of those. My money is on roller-coasters, ice-cream or the new Avengers movie.”

This morning a spokesperson for Feminist Frequency urged calm:

“We would like to reassure the people of Great Britain that no one is going to take away your Bingo. We simply want to eliminate the prize winning element and drain any vestiges of fun from the experience with a view to increasing educational content.”

The actions of McIntosh have caused divisions among the ordinarily cohesive social justice community. Sarah Applewhite of the San Francisco-based think tank Selective Analogues said:

“Male Video Game Protagonist Bingo is clearly an unsuitable edutainment activity for people who are old enough to recall fighting fascism and therefore hardened to propaganda. Ideally this game should be deployed in a classroom setting where it can be used as a learning tool for children aged five or under, and perhaps disguised as a fun game to teach numbers.”

Growing Gamergater numbers fuels basement real estate boom

Growing numbers of so-called gamergaters are driving a property gold-rush that has seen demand for basement apartments soaring.

According to Clive from The North Illinois Journal of Land and Property, underground one-room apartments that fulfil a dual function as communal laundry rooms, and have shared access to kitchen and bathroom facilities located elsewhere on the property, are now the hottest tickets in real estate.

It's a trend that has not gone unnoticed by boutique social justice realtors such as 'Progressive Shacks' in San Francisco. Manager, Susan Song said:

“For decades the basement-dwelling demographic has been almost exclusively morbidly-obese, neck-bearded, white, male virgins who hate women, despite often renting these rooms from their mothers. As demand for these properties outstrips available stock, increasing rents are driving out traditional tenants and forcing them to relocate to cheaper alternatives such as their brother Chad's old bedroom. Some have even been left with no option other than to move out altogether.

“In their place we are seeing seeing a flood of wealthy, socially progressive tenants, who are re-purposing these subterranean dwellings as salt-water lagoons where they can enjoy a lethargic, subaquatic lifestyle in a safe space, free from the predatory attentions of sea lions.”

The conquest of the patriarchal underlands has sparked victory celebrations among those who follow the tenets of social justice:

“By forcibly occupying spaces that were formerly inhabited by the CIS white male elite, and were previously no-go areas for women and minorities, we have enacted an unprecedented historic win over the patriarchy. At long last we have what they had,” said Volunteer Social Justice Warden and part-time Website Synergy Consultant, Darcy O' Keady.

Pausing to unfold a creaking Z-bed and draw a flimsy improvised curtain along a length of washing line, screening off the staircase and a washer/drier from the sleeping area, O'Keady continued:

“Yet our victory is also a bitter defeat, for in conquering the traditional homelands of the CIS white male cultural overlords, the triumphant minorities have been forced underground, driven out of sight from society while our oppressors occupy our former above-ground homes and enjoy perks such as guaranteed privacy, natural light and great views over the bay area.

“Meanwhile we find ourselves paying way over the odds for accommodation that is gloomy and substandard. This is surely a reflection of the unconscious social bias against minorities that I heard so much about at college.”

Many in the property business have advised caution among would-be landlords, describing the current demand for basement dwellings as a short-lived fad. One such sceptic is Real Estate Trends Analyst, Martha Brayley:

“We would expect demand for these properties to peak sooner rather than later. In the long-term rents are likely to fall back to what they were prior to the property boom. Once their Patreon funds dry up the blue-haired trolls who currently occupy these 'artisan cellars' are likely to find themselves back in their natural habitat, sleeping under bridges.”

*  *  *

Latest Social Justice revolution actually just a slight turn to the right

It was supposed bring about lasting to social change, but, according to recently released figures the latest social justice revolution managed only a 60 degrees turn to the right, leaving its organisers with a peripheral view of what is going on.

One of the revolutionary leaders who asked to be identified as Batman said:

“Obviously we were hoping for a paradigm shift of 180 degrees resulting in a complete cultural about-face and a comprehensive overhaul of societal norms. We did not account for the actions of our oppressors pushing our revolution counter-clockwise and stalling our momentum.”

Professor Clarence Potts of Turnidge College, Cambridge, observed:

“These social justice tail-chasers are on a downward spiral and seem to spend all their time going round and round in increasingly tighter and more vicious circles. Given their experience in this area its amazes me that they were unable to bring about a revolution. Maybe they just got giddy.”

(SATIRE) Agents of social justice to be embedded in all video games

Trigger Warning: The following work of satire contains dangerously high levels of the chemical element AS and, as such, may poison the future of video gaming.

~

Virtual ambassadors who will aggressively promote the abrasive tenets of authoritarian political correctness, and offer advice on how to profit from victimhood, are set to become standard characters in all video games.

What have, until this point, been disturbing rumours, circulated among a vociferous gaggle of self-important hipsters and overly-entitled, blue-haired indie games developers with hair-trigger tempers, gained an awful credence when Under Andrew's Mattress Games revealed that the coin-operated activist, Anita Sarkeesian, had been added as a playable character in their latest title - Citadel Downgrade.

Jason 'the Marx' Marks from Under Andrew's Mattress Games told MODE 5:

“I have been a fan of Anita's work ever since I hooked up with Deborah from the Shielded Internet Campaign and had to re-adjust my previously long-held beliefs for the sake of my sex life. Feminist Frequency's Tropes vs Feminism videos have become a crystal ball in which we can foresee the joyless finger-wagging future of our society: A culture where every thought, word and deed is excessively scrutinised and evaluated for any signs of offence, and where our basic freedoms have been worn away by the insidious coercive creep of indoctrination and self-censorship. Still at least I'm finally getting laid.”

Pausing to offer his palm for a high five which, in the interests of ethical journalism, our reporter did not accept, 'The Marx' continued:

“In the past even AAA Games developers like Ubisoft have publicly struggled with the challenge of creating playable female characters. When considering including a female character in Citadel Downgrade we, as an under-resourced indie developer, were cautious about setting our sights too high. We felt that Anita's minimal range of facial expressions and limited wardrobe choices made her an achievable goal.

“The greatest challenge we faced was capturing the movement of someone who, in her public life, is essentially a static prop who is moved from camera to camera and, like Kermit the Frog, may or may not have functioning legs. We got around this problem by adding Josh McIntosh as a character. In the game Josh crouches down behind Anita, effectively using her as a human shield, while he operates her like a steam-punk automaton using a pair of levers protruding from her back.”

Colin MacKenzie – a former flatmate of MODE 5, who despite any discernible qualifications or specialist knowledge, has successfully passed himself off as some kind of fucking gaming expert in a variety of clueless TV reports - said:

“It has become a common theme in games that are set in dystopian societies for the hero to find themselves in conflict with a superficially benign, but ultimately oppressive, system of government. By including Sarkeesian as a character, Under Andrew's Mattress Games have cleverly subverted this trope, allowing gamers the opportunity to play as the autocrat. The Anita Sarkeesian-themed downloadable content in Citadel Downgrade is likely to provide fans of the title with many additional hours of utterly miserable gameplay and open up new frontiers in tedium and frustration.”

MODE 5 handed their beta copy of Citadel Downgrade to the noted YouTube game blogger Nic Hooper, whose heavy breathing, trailing sentences and long pauses have been likened by critics, in the comments section of his videos, to the sound of somebody indecisively masturbating.

Nic sent us a tedious, 14 hour video review, excerpts from which we have published below: Take it away Nic! 

~ 

“So I'm, uh, playing Citadel Downgrade... again... and uh... as you can probably see, uh, from the plaid shirt on my character, I've, uh, unlocked uh... Anita Sarkeesian....

“Uh... as you can see Anita is controlled by some kind of... homunculus, which I think is supposed to be Josh McIntosh. He's constantly muttering under his breath and he seems kind of pissed at everything. He cowers behind Anita and moves her around, I guess, using a pair of levers... so it's almost like she's some kind of puppet.”

(6 hours 36 minutes into the Hooper-stream)

“So anyway... uh... As you can see there's a guy standing facing a computer terminal, so I guess that he's some kind of software engineer. And I want to tell him that, uh... as a white male, it's not appropriate behaviour for him to be dominating the technology... so, uh, okay, I'm just going to wake Josh up... and what, uh, I'm going to do is to walk Anita over to software guy and I'm, uh, just going to walk into him.

“Okay... I got his attention and, uh... You can see that he's shouting and, uh, waving his arms about. And, uh, Anita... Rather than attack him directly what she, uh, does is she turns her back on him and refuses to engage with his opinions... or even acknowledge his existence. And, uh... you can see, uh... every time this guy tries to speak to Anita her score keeps going up... Okay, you can see now he's given up and gone back to the, uh, terminal... And now his back is turned Anita is saying something to him... and so now he's pissed again.

“So, uh... anyway Anita does have a kind of attack by proxy. If you look... if I just scroll up... uh... you can see all these guys in white suits of armour pouring in from the sides of the screen... and you can, uh, see that they're shielding Anita from this guy, so his words are bouncing off their shields... which is, uh, kind of cool, I guess.

“And then down here there are these blue haired creatures that I guess are trolls of some sort... and they have a sonic attack... like, uh, a shriek, and, uh, as you can see they're using this screeching attack to drive the software technician guy away from the computer terminal... And I think I'm, uh, just going to turn the sound down for a moment... And, uh, as you can see one of the trolls has planted a flag... so that area is now like a safe space.”

(9 hours and 14 minutes into the Hooper-stream)

“Another... uh... I suppose another, uh … I guess you could call it a thing – another thing is when I want Anita to perform a task she's, uh... she's kind of picky about what she will or won't do. Like here, uh... I need her to go through this, uh... I guess this is what some people who live in California might call a door. It's kind of essential that she visits this area because you can't finish the game if you don't go there and compete the, uh, quests.

“Okay, so now Anita is telling me that going through the door will be problematic for her. So, uh, now I'm kind of stuck. I don't know, uh, whether there's some kind of, uh, inventory item that I need to, uh, get first or some task that I need to complete... But, for the, uh, moment I'm stuck in this room... I can't progress any further in the game.”

(11 hours and 46 minute into the Hooper-stream)

“There's another – I guessing, uh, that it might be a bug but then again it might not be a bug. Like okay, uh, so earlier, about three hours ago, I asked the Anita Sarkeesian character to perform a task for me... Uh, as you can see if I just... the task bar stopped fairly early on... like, first off, I thought the game had crashed but it hadn't.

“Anyway, uh, about a few, uh, minutes ago some new dialogue from Anita flashed up on the screen... So she's, uh, she's telling me that she's not going to complete the task I set her... She's, uh, going to begin working on a completely different task but she is going to need some more money upfront... And all the money I spent on the previous task is gone... And, uh, I'm kind of pissed about that because I paid her quite a lot and I did a lot of grinding to raise those game bucks.

“There's one last thing, uh, I think that it might be another bug or some kind of malware. Ever since I installed the update MODE 5 gave me on my PC, I've been getting these unblockable pop-up ads offering to analyse my handwriting... so you know guys... Uh...”

~

MODE 5 has learned that Sarkeesian's infiltration of the gaming world is unlikely to be her last, with rumours abound that she will provide the voice of a social justice obsessed, forerunner monitor in the next Halo game. According to early reports, the NPC will be impervious to all weaponry, will mark out safe spaces where enemies cannot be harmed, and will impose a progressive stack on the Master Chief, forcing him to fire upon his assailants in ascending order of privilege.

Colin MacKenzie, who apparently makes over 50 grand a year as a 'Gaming expert', despite being locked in a decade-long obsessive-compulsive cycle that sees him endlessly re-playing Hitman: Contracts, told MODE 5:

“You could compare Anita Sarkeesian's impact on the world of gaming as being a bit like Alice going down the rabbit hole and entering Wonderland. You have, superimposed upon this realm of fantasy, imagination and adventure, this very totalitarian character who tells everyone she meets to clean up their act. So now the Cheshire Cat in no longer allowed to grin in case he offends anyone and the Mad Hatter is on a 12-step program. What we are witnessing is the boot-print of a singular authoritarian vision stamped across the collective imagination and freedom of expression of thousands of gamers.”

(SATIRE) Celebrities to women of Gamergate: Stop harassing yourselves

Trigger Warning: Humorists who punch down usually end up hitting themselves in the foot.

A TV scriptwriter, who has been described behind his back as “Doctor Who's embarrassing bigoted uncle” has taken to Twitter in an attempt to save women from harassing themselves online.

Gerald Lardon, whose previous screen-writing credits include House full of Catholics and There are nerds living in the basement where I work, said: “Gamergate is, by my own definition, a misogynist hate movement. Therefore any woman who claims to be a supporter of Gamergate is also a misogynist and fully committed to driving herself off twitter with a sustained campaign of harassment and death threats.”

Changing tack slightly, Lardon continued:

“I have just this moment confirmed with myself that 100% of the women in Gamergate are actually men with very small penises, who have mistaken themselves for women. That is why they are angry all the time.

“Because they aren't proper women I am allowed to talk down to them and call them idiots if they disagree with me.”

Reverting to his original premise, Lardon added:

“I call upon all women in Gamergate to embrace the feminine virtues of temperance and modesty of opinion, and to end their pathological self abuse.”

Gamergate supporter, Margaret Lapper - a time travelling suffragette who commutes to contemporary London from the year 1912 on stream-powered penny-farthing – said:

“Mr Lardon accosted me in the street outside St Pancras railway station in a blur of tweed, leather elbow patches and pipe smoke. He was extremely belligerent and demanded several times that I stop harassing myself. At the same time he attempted to force a placard into my hands that read: 'Down with women.'

“Fortunately I was able to take refuge in the British Library. The myriad points of view represented in the library's collection of over 14 million volumes are overwhelming for a man of Mr Lardon's dogmatic leanings, and he cannot enter without his head spontaneously combusting.”

Lardon is one of many celebrities to identify Gamergate as the earthly embodiment of pure evil.

Among the movement's chief critics is the screenwriter and director Julian Weary, whose new movie - Umberto the Robot Turns 14 –  charts a young robot's development from childhood to puberty, and was painstakingly filmed over 12 years.

In a lengthy statement on Twitter, that took full advantage of the bonus characters accrued by his confirmed celebrity status, Weary said:

“Gamergate claims to be about ethics in games journalism. In fact it is a vile consortium of terrorist organisations, rogue dictatorships and hate groups, who have joined forces with the shared goal of driving women out of the video gaming industry. This includes organisations such the KKK, ISIS, and the Hitler Youth.”

Weary's statement has surprised many fans of his work. Kenyan law student, Kito Owiti, said:

“As someone who has openly supported Gamergate on the understanding that it is about raising ethical standards in games journalism, I was surprised to learn from Julian Weary that all this time I have in fact been a participating member of the KKK – a white supremacist group with a long history of racially-motivated violence. To protect myself from my own toxic racism I have, as a precautionary measure, reported myself to the police and will be seeking a restraining order against myself at the earliest opportunity."

Back in the UK, the battle to silence Gamergate has been taken up by Chesterfield Bloke – A social commentator whose 'angry man attempts to induce an early coronary by shouting at his TV' schtick has inspired copycat shows in which members of the public are filmed shouting at their TVs.

Bloke said:

“When I was young I would spend hours cultivating a set of values based on opinions that I formed by carefully weighing up the available evidence. I used the knowledge I acquired to launch insightful satirical attacks on privileged targets, which I punctuated by gurning at the camera and blowing raspberries.

“Thankfully I can now afford to outsource this tiresome business to a consultancy firm and purchase a set of values more in keeping with the ones held by the people who finance my various TV projects. This includes my ongoing series of highbrow finger-wagging morality tales, which I write by removing the animals from Aesop's Fables and replacing them with Apple computer products and human actors.

Bloke continued:

“I have painted all the mirrors in my home black as I can no longer bear to look myself in the eye.”

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.

~

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)

(SATIRE) Patreon to implement full ethical code of practice before the coming of winter*

Trigger Warning: The following work of satirical fiction imagines a dark alternate reality where Brianna Wu really is Batman, where Zoe Quinn is dating Bruce Wuyne, where Josh McIntosh's wish upon a star transforms Anita Sarkeesian from a blank wooden automaton into a real girl, and where Patreon doesn't get around to implementing a fair, ethical code of conduct for its users, which of course it will because of all the “super helpful” emails people keep sending to the founders of the company offering encouragement and advice on how to do just that.

~

Not since Captain Scott found himself locked in a fierce contest with the Norwegian 'icetronaut' - Captain Roald Amundsen - in a race to be first to the South Pole, has the world been so gripped by the outcome of a contest for dominance between two mighty warrior kings of our age.

On one side, the fantasy novelist - George 'winter is coming... eventually' Martin – moves with slow but deliberate purpose towards finishing the two remaining books in his A Song of Ice and Fire saga, which he began writing in 1809, a year after the invention of wolves.

His opponent in the race to get shit done is the upstart peddler of e-welfare – Patreon: an online service that, in the past, has allowed impoverished hipsters to whine their way to a kind of haphazard financial solvency. Patreon is now clawing a path towards respectability by implementing a long awaited code of conduct for its users; one that will close off the possibility of the service being used as a spawning point for fiendish acts of high bastardry.

At the time of writing, people who claim to be experts on this kind of thing have judged both parties to be neck and neck in a race to the finish.

Youtube blogger Cassie Amos said:

“George 'all special snowflakes are doomed to die' Martin recently translated the first novel in A Song of Ice and Fire into the language of wolves. Last week he posted a new chapter from book six in the saga – The Fretful Winds of Summersby Place – written from the point of view of Tyrion Lannister's glove as it describes another glove belonging to Daenerys Targaryen. At the end of the chapter one of the gloves is thrown into a fire, while the other is carried away by a crow and dropped in the sea. I will definitely be attending PAX this year dressed as a sexy glove.”

Despite the recent burst of progress from Martin, Patreon remain confident that they will emerge as victor in the race to finish what they started: A spokesperson for the company said:

“Our new code of ethical practice for users is currently at the calibration stage. We are currently attempting to fine-tune all the variables by applying them to one of our most disadvantaged users, in this instance a profoundly disabled man with brittle bone disease. In the interests of accuracy we are also running a control group where over-privileged users, who have very little to complain about, will be carry will allowed to carry on acting like total arseholes with complete impunity. Only by subjecting our new code of practice to these two extremes can we develop a set of rules that gathers together all our users beneath the rainbow of equality.

“To ensure that our new rules are implemented with complete impartiality, Patreon will turn over the day to day application of our ethics strategy to a pseudo A.I. This has been coded using the exciting new 'And N' programming language, designed by Nathan Grayson by accident during his slapstick attempt to insult the journalist lothario - Milo Yiannopoulos - on the internet.”

The spokesperson added:

“Winter is coming but ethics are coming first. Ride the ethics wave in the year 2093AD*”

Freelance Games Journalist, Lyle Havers, who claims to have a lover in every AAA Games Development Team from Amsterdam to Port Royale, said:

“The race between George Martin and Patreon is shaping up to be a real tortoise and the hare situation, only with two tortoises. For some fucking reason one of the tortoises has three eyes.”

*MODE 5 has been asked to point out that 2093AD is a provisional date only.

(Satire) Intel recruits brilliant polymath

Trigger Warning: This obvious work of satire was co-authored by a senile, second-hand PC running on an Intel Core 2 CPU, partnered to an erratic cooling fan that sounds like an anonymous heavy breather masturbating in a public phone booth. Kindly recalibrate your eyes to safe-space mode before reading.

~

It's a sunny morning in Santa Clara, CA. Overnight the grounds of our hotel have been over-run by pelicans. MODE 5 counts 81. A large number are engaged in an impromptu, but vigorously contested, hacky sack tournament. A gardener watering a raised flower bed outside the reception informs us that the birds are employees of the Microsoft Corporation:

“They come here roughly once a month on business, and to attend the team building seminars at the Marie Stein Foundation. They're big fish eaters. Good tippers too.”

MODE 5 has been summoned to the cutting edge 'Techquarters' of the Intel Corporation - a pseudo-sentient building installed with an environmental operating system so advanced even Stephen Hawking can't work out how to open the windows. On the taxi ride over, my driver tells me that MIT professors believe a practical solution to the ventilation problem may only become available after somebody solves the Hadamard Conjecture. In the meantime negotiations are under-way between Intel senior management and the building's air-conditioning units, of which there are over 2000, each controlled by its own A.I. Recently the air conditioners have divided themselves into three factions and are presently engaged in a bitter, religiously-motivated climate war. Upon arrival on the Intel campus I am advised not to take off my coat, or accept any propaganda leaflets that are blown in my direction.

In the chilly, 2000-person capacity 'Feels Auditorium'® (named after Benjamin Feels, the co-founder of the Emo® movement) the Head of Development Team Development, Brian Wick® is navigating a labyrinthine stage set, built to resemble the scaled-up architecture of the company's latest T-class® Icosacore Processor®. Ten minutes later, and with a waiting audience of boorish technology journalists – among them The Guardian's Jessica 'shoe on head' Havisham - growing increasingly restless, he at last locates the exit of the innovation maze®. Taking the small piece of cheese offered to him as a reward by a pair of cognitive behavioural therapists dressed in lab coats, Wicks ascends a short flight of steps to the podium. His breath condenses into a white fog as he addresses the small crowd:

“On the 25^th December, 2014, Intel launched its latest T-class Icosacore Processor with the advertising slogan 'A processor so advanced it will empty your bank accounts, then fuck your life partner hard from behind, ten times faster than its closest rival.'

“This marketing strategy has drawn heavy criticism on Twitter which, according to our Head of PR, is worse than being reprimanded by God.

“We understand the misdirected anger our actions have elicited. In hindsight it was a mistake to place so much emphasis on the T-class's boundless libido and casual attitude towards obtaining and fecklessly spending other people's money. I am here today to state categorically that the T-class Icosacore Processor will not engage in sexual intercourse your significant other, nor will it attempt to rob you. Functioning genitalia and the insatiable desire to acquire money by any means necessary have been removed from the commercially available version of the processor, although the original spec will still be optional for some governments and large corporations.

“In an attempt to regain the trust and goodwill of our customers, Intel is pleased to announce the foundation of a £300 million diversity project headed-up by someone who knows a thing or two about this issue.

“I present to you the newest addition to the friendly family of American patriots we like to call 'the Intels'. Lady's and Gentlemen, please welcome Anita Sarkeesian®.”

A prim, unsmiling woman, dressed in a plaid shirt emerges from the wings to scattered applause and robotically takes up position beside the podium. Wicks pauses for a second while the audience settles, before continuing:

“Unfortunately the servomotors powering Anita's lower jaw are currently offline. She will be unable to smile or answer any of your questions...”

~

A few hours later MODE 5 finds itself handcuffed to Intel's Deputy Media Containment Officer, Harriet Garnes, who takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the Intelsphere. This turns out to be a 12-storey hexagonal block. The original spherical building broke free from its foundations in 2010 and rolled down the hill devastating the neighbouring Native American settlement of Wuquinn Butts (English translation: Shimmering turquoise river of the eternally butt hurt warrior buffalo).

“Anita swept through here like the 2004 tsunami cleansing our work engagement habitat of anything that she found problematic...” Garnes enthuses.

“...At one point we weren't sure whether she was pointing at a potted plant or Jerry, our Chief of Online Security and the only person who knows how the anti-virus software functions. Just to be safe we got rid of both. Now half of the computers on site redirect to a website streaming anthems praising the achievements of the North Korean leader - Kim Jong-un.”

Another employee who insists that MODE 5 calls him by his office nickname - Bradley Porter Jnr - says:

“Everyone was blown away by how Anita has outsourced critical thinking to a third party. While we were all wasting time formulating ideas and concepts into sentences she was reading them off cue cards held up by her PA - I can't recall that guy's name – Josh, I think, or maybe Jamie.”

After a buffet lunch of what are later revealed to be pelican sandwiches (“There always seem to be loads on campus so we thought we'd eat them” one of the in-house catering staff tells me) we hook up with Kyle Carsey – Director of Human Resources. Carney turns out to be as excited as the rest of the team at the prospect of Anita's appointment. He offers us a moon cup of Kool Aid from one of the 100 gallon drums that are situated at the centre of every work area. We politely decline.

“We knew Anita had good contacts in the tech and gaming socio-spheres as she often posted the personal details of these individuals online. We felt that somebody with her breadth of experience could only be an asset to Intel and we intend to make full use of her talents,” he gushes.

MODE 5: “Anita has become adept at concealing her abilities, or maybe we haven't been paying close enough attention. Can you briefly outline what they are?”

“Sure. The insights Anita gained while working alongside a registered pick-up artist will certainly come into play as we develop the dating algorithms that will form the bedrock of the Intel employee breeding program. Her previous career as a handwriting analyst will aid us in the development of the image recognition software we are creating to track down escapees from the afore-mentioned breeding program.

 “And it doesn't end there: Anita's 'shut up, listen and believe' management credo, coupled with her zero tolerance approach to any form of debate, has already increased efficiency, shortening the length of meetings by up to 97%.

“Her knowledges of Japanese history, her cultural sensitivity and her soft touch diplomacy are sure to bolster our reputation is the far east.

“By writing off the entire male gender as the collective bearer of an invisible, socially corrosive malaise eating away at the foundations of human civilization, she has elegantly streamlined our diversity program by instantly dismissing around half of the global population.

I would say that the thing I like most about Anita is her professional attitude and, in particular, the way she puts to one side any personal reservations she has about her work in order to get the job done. She says that she doesn't relish the prospect of stereotyping an entire group of people, but for the greater good of diversity she'll damn well do it.” 

During Carsey's monologue, MODE 5 has become aware of Maurice Moaner, Intel's Head of Financial Numeracy, hovering in our eye-line waiting for a lull in the conversation. Sensing an opportunity he now steps forward. MODE 5's attempt to shake his right hand is inadvertently thwarted by Harriet Garnes, to whom we are still securely shackled:

“Anita has a proven track record of raising venture capital that significantly exceeds the initial amount requested..." he says. 

"Combine this with her ability to take very large sums of money and then invest them in an inferior, incomplete product that looks like it was made for a few dollars, and is released way behind schedule, while, at the same time, maintaining the goodwill of her investors, and you have a paradigm-changing business model. We predict that by embracing Sarkeesian economic theory, Intel can probably get away with issuing one new processor every two decades. I can promise you now that when that processor eventually appears on the market it will be a sub-standard design that will bring nothing but ruin and misery upon all who purchase it.”

 As MODE 5 prepares to depart the Intel campus we spy Anita and her PA – Jonah? leaving the Intelsphere via a fire exit, trailing long sections of buckled copper wiring and attached plasterboard behind them.

As we await the arrival of a solar-powered taxi, their battered pick-up truck draws up alongside. Jason? - the PA - leans out through the driver window and asks MODE 5 if we know a place where they serve cocktails in jam jars.

We plead ignorance and they pull away. As the truck slows on the approach to a gentle downhill bend the brake lights briefly illuminate a 'Fuck the patriarchy' bumper sticker.