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Digital Deities: When does celebrity fandom slip into a cult mentality?

Wang Siyao
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Digital Deities: When does celebrity fandom slip into a cult mentality?

The time on the clock read a quarter past three. The house was silent, my room dark, save for the dim light of my phone screen as I lay in bed, mindlessly scrolling through TikTok. My eyes threatened to close as my thumb subconsciously swiped to the next video. A synchronised chant rang out from my phone. My brain was half asleep, though the first thought I had was that this was some cult performing a satanic ritual or something. But as the chants became clearer, my sleepy mind started to make out what they were actually saying:

“Park Jimin! Kim Taehyung! Jeon Jungkook! BTS!”

This was no cult. This wasn’t anything with even the slightest religious implications behind it. It was just a group of BTS fans performing a fan chant. In other words, just another day in the life of a K-Pop fan. My brain yelled at me to go to sleep. I did have an 8am class the next day. But part of it started to wander off, thinking about just how similarly cult members and fans of celebrities can act.

Many of us would like to think that we’re too smart to be indoctrinated into a cult. Internet users proudly declare that they cannot understand why so many people did the bidding of infamous cult leaders like Charles Manson and Jim Jones without question, only to then log on to Twitter and worship Jimin in the next breath.

While it would certainly be preposterous to claim that celebrities are evil cult leaders and fans their loyal followers blinded by lies, there is still merit in examining how online “stan” culture can mimic the behaviour of cults. In a world where the line between worshipping a so-called “prophet” and fawning over the latest pop icon is getting increasingly blurry, it may be hard to tell whether we’re sipping on some exquisite champagne or simply just drinking the Kool-Aid.

Lights, Camera, Indoctrination!

Before we compare cults with the fan culture surrounding celebrities, let us first understand the nature of cults. They utilise many tactics, such as love-bombing, information control and isolation, to manipulate people into joining them. After which, cults then play into human emotions like fear and guilt to keep their victims trapped (Verity, 2023).

Love-bombing: Cult recruiters will often shower their victims with admiration and affection, essentially “bombing” them with love, to make them think that the cult is a loving family where they will be able to feel a sense of belonging in. Many of the victims these recruiters choose to target are also those who feel unloved and abandoned by the world, making them even more susceptible to the manipulations of these recruiters.

Information control and isolation: Cults will also segregate themselves and their followers from the outside world, effectively cutting off all external influences from the lives of their followers. Members are thus only subjected to whatever information (or lies) that the leaders and higher-ups of the cult want them to believe.

Fear and guilt: Getting people through the grand doors of a cult is just the first step; what’s important is making them stay. Hence why cults and their leaders appeal to human emotions by threatening members with exile or telling them they’re going to some version of Hell should they choose to leave, thus preventing members from potentially defecting.

Putting the ‘Cult’ in Stan Culture

The modern fan culture that exists on social media is frequently referred to as cult-like by those unfamiliar with it and, sometimes, even those who take part in it. But what exactly makes these fans behave like zealots of a cult, and is Jimin from BTS really a cult leader? The answer to the latter is probably a “no” but the first may not be so easy to answer.

As humans, we actively seek a sense of belonging in group settings, be it physical or virtual. We want – we need – to fit in. The desire to belong is just human nature (Allen, 2022). Cults play into this mindset, they practise love-bombing on potential recruits to instil in them a sense of belonging. When they feel valued and appreciated, victims are more likely to fall right into the hands of indoctrination.

Similarly, this sense of belonging is what drives many people into joining fandoms (Zubernis, 2021). We crave the feeling that there is a group of people, or at least someone, out there who understands our likes and obsessions. Having someone we can talk to for hours on end about the new Ariana Grande music video or the new Marvel movie is comforting; it makes us feel seen and heard. This is the exact reason why many fans will actively seek out other fans in real life or online fan communities in search of this sense of solidarity and to feel included in something.

Another commonly used tactic by cults – information control – is also reflected in a phenomenon formed by social media algorithms: the echo chamber. Echo chambers are basically bubbles within an individual’s social media feed where whatever we see will only affirm what we already believe in, virtually isolating us from opposing views (Dhulipala, 2023). These chambers are formed by complex algorithms present in just about every corner of the internet, working relentlessly to personalise our endless scrolling experience and cater to our interests, in order to keep us online and to keep the revenue pouring in. 

To understand more about echo chambers and how they affect our daily internet interactions, I sat down for an interview with Prisha, a long-time fan of South Korean boy group Seventeen, who is active on multiple social media platforms, mainly TikTok and Twitter. She told me that the posts she sees about Seventeen were “majority positive” and that she “[doesn’t] see many negative posts”.

When further prompted about the differences in how she perceives positive and negative posts about Seventeen, Prisha revealed to me that she has a “tendency to agree with the good news”. She recalled instances where she would see posts about how a member donated large amounts of money to institutions like charities or animal shelters and would “instantly believe [the post] and wouldn’t bother to fact check”. I asked Prisha about her reasons for doing so.

“I think it’s because I have personal biases towards [Seventeen]. I watch a lot of shows of them and from their on-screen personality, I believe that they would be the type to donate money to animals or charity.”

In stark contrast, Prisha said that if she saw more negative news about the groups that she is a fan of, she wouldn’t be so ready to believe it. “I was really skeptical about the news that Seunghan from RIIZE (another group that she is a fan of) was kicked out for smoking and only believed it when I saw actual news outlets posting pictures of him smoking and not just the posts circulating around Instagram and TikTok.”

This interview revealed a lot to me about how drastically different our perception of news surrounding our favourite idols might be, all because of our inherent predisposition towards them. Indeed, as I recalled my own encounters with posts about my own idols, I realised that I don’t see as many negative posts about them as I do posts from other fans defending them against these allegations. Similar sentiments are echoed throughout the rest of the online space as well. Just look at Taylor Swift. One tweet about her carbon emissions can garner countless quote tweets from Swifties coming to her defence.

Lastly, while there isn’t a direct comparison to the fear tactics and guilt-tripping that cults employ to basically keep their members imprisoned, internet users find their way. In today’s digital age, simply logging off your account and cutting off your internet interactions is not enough to protect yourself. Some fans will even doxx their fellow social media users simply for having a different opinion.

Most commonly used by fans in retaliation to the haters, doxxing is the act of exposing private information about someone on the internet and social media in order to attack and ridicule them (Reporters Committee, n.d.). Extremely dangerous, doxxing and online harassment can go so far as users receiving death threats in the mail. As a result, many people oftentimes refrain from speaking up online about celebrities, more specifically the really popular ones, in fear of being doxxed.

With all this laid out, it is not hard then to see how the behaviours of netizens can mimic that of a cult’s supporters.

A One-Way-Street to Celebrities

Remember earlier when I said that Jimin from BTS is probably not a cult leader? Well, the answer to that may not be as straightforward as it seems. It is impossible to talk about the toxic nature of celebrity and fandom culture on the internet without talking about the parasocial relationships that fans form with their favourite celebrities.

The dynamics of a parasocial relationship are intrinsically skewed (Goodman, 2023). One party – the fan – invests a considerable amount of their time and effort, while the celebrity is often unaware that the other party even exists. Formation of such relationships can have harmful implications: it builds a cult of personality around the celebrity where fans will revering them regardless of anything that they do.

Social media plays a big part in the construction of parasocial relationships (Langlois, 2023). With internet access, many of us now have practically unlimited access to our idols all around the clock. When we see our favourite celebrities post life updates or share personal insights on social media, it can start to feel like we actually know them, fostering a feeling of genuine connection.

Celebrities aren’t completely innocent either; many of them actively play into this unhealthy dynamic. K-Pop idols are especially notorious for this. Many groups hold fan-calls and even fan-meetings. Fans get to interact with their idols on a personal basis at these events, contributing to the development of an asymmetrical relationship where, to the fans, this is a special once-in-a-lifetime experience. To the idols, it’s just part of the job.

Many online interactions between K-Pop fans and idols also heavily toe the line of appropriateness. Some idols may even act as if they’re in a relationship with their fans, leading fans to spiral into delusions. The line between reality and the virtual world starts to blur, setting the groundwork for parasocial relationships to form.

Fans can will start to believe that their favourite celebrities can do no wrong; they start to blindly believe in anything that these celebrities say. This type of behaviour is incredibly reminiscent of how cult followers act and showcase just how extreme the cult-like behaviour of fandoms can get, only being exacerbated by social media.

In Defence of Fans and Stans

Many fans, however, argue that, as long as they’re not harming anyone, there’s no real problem. They claim that they’re just having fun and expressing their love and admiration for their favourite celebrities, just like one would with any of their interests or hobbies. I previously discussed how the need to belong stems from pure human instinct. If these fans are merely acting on such human instincts, being a part of a fandom shouldn’t be misconstrued as a negative thing.

Being a part of a fandom brings many fans a form of online escapism. It can offer a sense of comfort to see bits of ourselves in our idols and other fans. It’s always nice to know that we’re seen and that we’re not alone.

We often see feel-good stories on the internet from hardcore fans who claim that a certain song or musician saved their lives during times of darkness. We can’t help but feel touched when we see people getting emotional when meeting their heroes. And how many of us have also felt a chill run down our spines upon hearing the first note play at the concert of our favourite singer or band. It is undeniable that being a part of a celebrity fandom has many psychological benefits to our mental health.

But is that truly champagne in a glass or merely a jug of Kool-Aid? The cult-like etiquette of online fan communities can clearly be toxic and harmful, and there are also larger implications. By glorifying their idols and putting them on a pedestal, fans will believe in any rhetoric spewed out of these celebrities’ mouths, be it true or false.

In 2015, reality star Kim Kardashian was issued a warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for promoting a certain drug – Diclegis – without including the essential risk information (Guzman, 2015). Just last October, Justin Bieber posted an Instagram story “praying for Israel” for all of his nearly 300 million followers to see. In the background, a picture of razed Gaza (Murray, 2023). The list doesn’t end here either; countless other celebrities have been embroiled in drama for spreading misinformation.

Fans who see these posts are unlikely to question the legitimacy of them as they, wrongfully, believe that what their favourite celebrities saying must be true. They fail to recognise the need to fact check due to their prejudices that their idols have good moral standings. This has been pointed out by the actions of netizens, by Prisha during our chat, and even by my own thoughts scrolling through my seemingly never-ending social media feed.

The Need to Cult-ivate Critical Thinking

Most of us are likely not a part of a cult. But, looking at the current state of internet fandom culture, many of us might as well be.

Navigating the online world is now more precarious than ever before. Fake news and misinformation run rampant, penetrating every crack and crevice of the internet. The rise of tools such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) – which can even now generate relatively convincing videos – only serves to worsen the problem into an even more chasmic stage of degeneration. The celebrities and idols that we worship aren’t helping either, especially not when their fans trust and accept anything that they say with not even a single ounce of doubt. But it is not impossible.

In today’s complex and labyrinthine digital landscape, critical thinking has never been more critical. It is imperative that we always question everything that we see on the internet. It doesn’t matter if who is behind the account is a nameless, faceless internet user or the Queen Bey, Beyoncé, herself. It doesn’t even matter if it comes from a reputable news source. What matters is that we take matters into our own hands to seek out the truth instead of accepting anything we see on the internet.

References

The evidence from plant neurobiology for the sentience of plants is far from well-grounded

Georgy Kurakin
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The evidence from plant neurobiology for the sentience of plants is far from well-grounded

Images by Georgy Kurakin, via Flickr

For a long time, plants have been considered simple and indolent creatures only able to photosynthesise and grow. But, in recent years, that opinion has radically shifted. An emerging area of research called “plant neurobiology” postulates that plants have a kind of sentience, intelligence, personality, or other cognitive functions. These assumptions seem counterintuitive, but they do generate headlines: academic articles on plant neurobiology are published, the problem of plant cognition has its own Wikipedia article, and leading science magazines – like New Scientist and, to a lesser extent, Scientific American – feature it.  

Does science have any powerful arguments in favour of the cognitive abilities of plants? I doubt it.

There is a large corpus of articles and books where “plant neurobiologists” promote their theories. It’s comprehensive, and a sentence-by-sentence review would require writing a book rather than a short magazine article. But all their arguments have two flaws in common. First, they often refer to anecdotal evidence rather than controlled experiments with proper statistical processing of their data. Moreover, the lion’s share of any “popular science” writing on plant neurobiology – whether a New Scientist article or a book by Stefano Mancuso – consists of discussion of non-cognitive functions.

A photo looking into a woodland of thin-trunked trees with a canopy of autumnal orange/red/green leaves
“In the thick of the mellow autumn” – photo by Georgy Kurakin, via Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0

Science is far from having a comprehensive definition of cognition but, for both basic research and medicine, we consider the possibility of cognition if there is integration of information in the brain (or in its analogue). Cognitive functions are integrative functions; to be sentient, you must continuously put all sensory inputs of different modalities together, along with your memories. Based on this integrated picture, you make decisions about what you will do in the next second. Integration is not a cognition yet, but is sine qua non of cognition.

Usually, texts by plant neurobiologists include fascinating details of perceptive or communicative functions in plants, like light perception or chemical communication. It is not the same as cognitive functions – and all of this can work without any intelligence.

Plant cryptochromes – proteins that perceive light – regulate the circadian rhythms. Cryptochromes are conserved in humans, despite having lost their light-sensing functions. They still coordinate our sleep-wake cycle. But, as far as we know now, they have almost nothing to do with higher functions such as thinking and cognition, or processing of visual information. It is too optimistic to claim that plants can see when you have found a new plant cryptochrome or something like it – vision is an integrative process even at the level of the eye’s retina. And we don’t have any evidence of organs for such information processing in plants.

Plant communication that fascinates “plant neurobiologists” can also be proven intelligence-free if examined deeper. A lot of popular texts claim that plants “warn” each other about dangers – such as herbivory attack – by volatile chemicals. But these chemicals are just volatile forms of plant hormones. Plants have “invented” a genial and simple solution: if your hormones can be converted to a volatile form and be transmitted by air, they will act not only on your cells, but also on the cells of your neighbour – and elicit the same responses there.

A photograph of two flowers, one purple, open flower to the left 'looks' to one on the right, which is closed and covered in melting snow or ice. The capture has an ethereal, blurry/dreamy quality.
“Wake up, my dear!” – photo by Georgy Kurakin, via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This is the basis of such “warning”: if a plant releases stress hormones that coordinate its injury response, neighbouring plants are also affected. If humans could do this, you would have a fever when you meet a person with Covid, and you would be in pain when you hit someone. This is a really amazing skill of plants. But this way of communicating requires no thinking or intelligence; it’s technically cell-to-cell signalling, not person-to-person communication.

This example shows how much plants differ from us. Plants have evolved their multicellularity independently from our ancestors, and we have different ways to be multicellular. If animals are technically motile clumps of motile cells, plants are technically branched sessile beings made of immobilised cells. This is why plants do not need cognitive functions at all. Evolution will drive you to intelligence if you can move or speak at the start – rapid and efficient information processing could help coordinate motor or vocal reactions. But, if you have none, and solve all your problems chemically like plants do, you will experience no selection pressure to be smarter.

Similar considerations could be applied to any case when lower-level processes, like action potential generation, are used as a flawed argument for the presence of psychical functions in plants. Even having all the neuronal prerequisites for higher order processes does not warrant that they are really present. In the film “Dolphins: Beauty Before Brains”, Professor Paul Manger expresses doubts that even dolphins, with their large gyrate brains, are really intelligent. In insects, even high-level senses like pain are difficult to prove – given the fact that we have vast amounts of information regarding neural activity of insect and dolphin brains.

A small beetle sits atop a green leaf surrounded by 'golden hour'-refracting droplets of water, both falling around it and stuck to the leaf itself.
“Bringing a Little More Light Along” – photo by Georgy Kurakin, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Our data available today allow us to place plants only at the lowest level of proposed consciousness in the 9-level framework of animal cognition. So, plants are as sentient as jellyfish. But this should not be a reason to consider them primitive. In contrast, it is the one more reason to love them; they really are part of an alternative living world where intelligence is not needed. They are a kind of alien world beneath our tread and above our heads – and these “aliens” have no obligation to be intelligent.     

An unconvincing ‘psychic’ night in Hamilton with medium Elaine Claire

Brian Eggo
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An unconvincing ‘psychic’ night in Hamilton with medium Elaine Claire

Note: this piece includes discussion of losing a child to suicide.

It’s 7pm on a Friday evening and I’m nervously driving through a somewhat rough looking neighbourhood in Hamilton. Thinking that Google Maps is leading me on a merry dance towards a dead end, I prepare for a 17-point turn at the end of the narrow road I’m on, but surprisingly it opens out and my destination is on the left-hand side. In keeping with the general aesthetic of its surroundings, the ‘social club’ I’m heading for is surrounded by the type of spiky metal fencing that’s normally reserved for electricity substations.

I park my car and enter through the gate nervously – expecting to have to show some papers at any point. These are hardly the surroundings you might predict for a display of psychic mediumship, even if you had such powers.

The only challenge I meet as I enter the main function room is from the ‘star’ of the show I’m attending, Elaine Claire. Somewhat disappointingly, she has to ask my name and check the QR code on my ticket. She seems nice and welcoming, though, and appears to be somewhat aware of my sore-thumb status.

To make it clear just how much I was sticking out; I was the only person there alone, which is normally ok for a theatre-style seating arrangement, but the venue for the show was what appeared to be a Phoenix Nights style old-school social club, and the function room was loosely arranged in a cabaret style with groups of people sat at their own tables that surrounded the performance area.

I sit conspicuously at my own table and survey my surroundings. There are approximately 30 people in the room, and 27 of them appear to be women. The only other men there besides me appear to have been invited along by their significant others, and spend most of the evening pondering their pints rather than showing any real desire to dally with the dearly departed.

I’ve had a couple of encounters with Elaine Claire before: in late 2015, she replied to my email asking for testable predictions for the following year with a somewhat snarky refusal. Then, in 2017, my older daughter went to a small house party where Elaine had been brought along to give psychic readings to the attendees. She still does this, and mentioned it at the start of the evening. It’ll cost you £40 per person, presumably cash. That evening, she gave my daughter some spectacularly bad and ultimately incorrect relationship advice/predictions.

I’ve been to many psychic shows before, and I always do my best to keep an open mind and be objective about proceedings. Despite Elaine already being on my radar in a somewhat negative sense, I find myself more emotionally compelled to do so this time. At the time of the event it was less than six months since my brother had died. I still miss him, and considering his talent for making himself heard, if ever there was a golden opportunity for the dead to contact the living, this was it! As I look around the room, I suddenly feel a little less ‘different’ than the other audience members. We’ve all lost someone. There’s always a gap to fill. There are always unanswered questions.

Despite my stirring emotions, I try to keep my head together as things kick off. When evaluating these shows, my end goal is to make a judgment call on whether I believe the practitioner has any special powers or not. If not (which has always been the case to date), I will try to figure out whether I think they genuinely believe they have those powers, or whether they’re knowingly faking it. It can of course be somewhere between those two. It’s messy, and you rarely get to find out definitively.

It’s even messier in the case of Elaine Claire. Unsurprisingly there were no indications of any actual psychic ability, but the haphazard nature of the evening made it hard to gauge. The aforementioned cabaret-style seating layout could have been a carefully planned ploy from a seasoned fraudster who wanted a clear separation of friend/family groups that you wouldn’t easily see if there were simple rows of seating. It would be very easy to link each table to the email address(es) that booked the tickets, since Elaine herself was her own box office staff, so any Googling that could have been done before proceedings could have been easily tied to a specific table. Or, it could have simply been the case that this was the way the room was laid out before the evening started and there was no desire to shift any chairs around.

Round, wooden-top cabaret tables arranged in a line from the photographer to the stage, with more around the room. Lights shine on the stage in blue, green, red and other colours. Black folding chairs are set out behind the tables facing the stage. Labels D5, C5, B5 etc are placed on the tables.
An example of a cabaret-style seating setup – by Cabaret Guy-Aubert, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

What we get from this layout is a large empty space for Elaine to ‘work’, and she asks the audience if she needs to use a microphone. There was minimal response from the crowd, so Elaine decided to go without one (for what it’s worth, there was no indication that a microphone or PA system was even ready to be used). It was not a good decision, because as she moved around the room to focus on individuals or groups, she would have her back turned to much of the rest of the audience and it was very hard to make out what was being said.

The result of this was a loss of attention from many of those who weren’t being directly spoken to and, as she finished speaking to a table and moved on, the people she had just spoken to would have a little post-mortem discussion about their recently received post-mortem discussion. In terms of creating a compelling piece of entertainment, it was an absolute disaster.

To add to my indecision, Elaine also said that she would ‘try to get around every table’ during the evening’s proceedings. Could that be a calculated attempt to ‘work the crowd’ so that everyone leaves feeling satisfied and more likely to come back in the future? Or, could it be a genuine desire from the practitioner to help connect loved ones? It could be somewhere between, or it could be neither. Surely there’s no way you could guarantee that a representative for each table group could be conjured from the ether?

Whatever the motives of our psychic, what we were treated to was an evening of alleged mediumship that was similar to what you might expect from any mentalist’s cunning display of cold and warm reading. There’s nothing close to being accurate or insightful enough to make me suspect hot reading, though. We get some hits, we get a lot of misses, and a deluge of tenuous grasping to try to make things fit. There’s a lot of name guessing going on, or at least of first initials.

At one point we get a comedic “J. Jo. Jeh … A ‘J’-sounding name” from Elaine, followed by a blunt “No” from the audience member. We get random numbers thrown around: “Why am I getting the number three? Did it happen three years ago, or three months ago? Do you have three children?”

We find out that people were ill and lost weight before they died, and that they had problems in the lower body area, or the head area. Those who were seriously ill suffered pain and discomfort. Some of the deceased really liked music, or had a great sense of humour, or didn’t suffer fools gladly. If Elaine had channeled the spirit of a bear, we would have no doubt discovered its preferred defecatory location was in forested areas.

It was as bland and generic as you could imagine, but I appeared to be the only one who was unimpressed. What struck me more than ever was the desperation of the audience members to try and ‘take’ what Elaine was throwing out to them. At one point we had two separate tables raising their hands to whatever name or situation Elaine was ‘reading’, and Elaine chose to speak to the table that she hadn’t already done a reading for, which seems to make a mockery of the concept of bringing forth a loved one.

As we got towards the end of the evening, it seemed like there were attempts to raise the stakes of the readings. Elaine said she had a child who had been murdered with her. No raised hands in the audience to begin with, then eventually someone who was clearly older than me (I’m 50) said that a boy at her primary school had been murdered – presumably over four decades ago. The reading that ensues is bafflingly short and almost completely bereft of details.

Then, with the last reading of the evening, we hit tragedy gold. Elaine says that she has someone with them who died by suicide, and slowly, reluctantly, the last remaining table not to have received any attention raises hands. It was a heartbreaking story of a wayward child who seemed to be on a path to destruction no matter what her parents did. The story was of course vague, and it was the grieving mother and her sister (the child’s aunt) who filled in blanks.

It’s hard to imagine the crushing grief of losing a child, but there’s something particularly brutal about suicide, because along with the loss you have the feeling of impotence and failure as a parent to go with it (if you want a science-based understanding of suicide, then a good starting point is Professor Rory O’Connor’s lecture for Skeptics in the Pub Online, “When it is darkest”).

This jarring, incredibly emotional end to the evening left a nasty taste in the mouth. Grieving a loved one is different for every person, and there’s no easy way to do it. I can understand the feeling of wanting to know that the person you have lost is still with you in some way. It may soften the blow somewhat in the short term, but the grieving mother in this case had lost her daughter four years ago, and she still felt the need to go out on a Friday evening and hope that someone she has paid money to is able to tease out some form of connection. This can’t possibly be healthy. It’s almost certainly harmful in the long run.

As things finished up and we headed for the exit, I wanted to go and talk to the grieving mother afterwards, perhaps to ask her if she’s ok. The urge to encourage her to seek professional help was overpowering, but I resisted as it’s just not my place to do so. Instead, someone else approaches me and says “Sorry you didn’t get a reading tonight”. Right enough, Elaine did try to make it round all the tables, including mine. At one point she looked in my direction and asked if a car crash made any sense to me. Aside from my evaluation of the evening’s show, it did not. I shook my head and someone at the next table shot their hand up like an overly keen child who knows the answer to a question in primary school, and Elaine moved on to them.

So, not only was I conspicuous in being the only person to attend alone, but Elaine couldn’t even summon up a dead friend or relative to keep me company. It seems to the rest of the audience I may have been deserving of some sympathy, whereas I felt like it should have been very much the opposite.

Bit of a Reach: media buy-outs and brutal cost-cutting have left an open door for PR nonsense

Michael Marshall
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Bit of a Reach: media buy-outs and brutal cost-cutting have left an open door for PR nonsense

In a recent article, I examined the widely-reported ‘shock’ finding that Jeremy Clarkson is actually the sexiest man in the UK and the man women would most like to have an affair with, according to more than a dozen media outlets… who were, in turn, reporting on a press release issued by an infidelity dating website called Illicit Encounters.

This was, of course, attention-baiting PR nonsense, perfectly designed to get as many clicks and start as many online debates as possible, based on data that was spurious at best. It was the kind of non-story I have spent years following, including similar such stories from Illicit Encounters themselves, who are prolific in the art of crafting well-honed PR bullshit perfectly designed to get headlines.

As it turns out, when I was researching the Clarkson story, I stumbled across another piece of Illicit Encounters PR, published in the Daily Star, in the very same week – written by Andy Gilpin, on May 18th:

Randy love rats using static ‘caravans of love’ to cheat on partners

Randy love rats live by the adage if the “caravan is rocking, don’t come knocking” as two out of 10 have cheated in one, a poll found.

Researchers found 18% have romped in a mobile home on a “holiday” weekend. They said caravans provide perfect cover for a seaside tryst in secluded spots around the UK coast.

The dating site for married couples Illicit Encounters asked 2,000 members where they have cheated on their partners to come up with the findings.

Where else but the British tabloid press will you find terms like ‘randy’, ‘romped’, and ‘tryst’? It’s a lexicon peculiar to Fleet Street.

The article itself bears no real need for analysis – once again, an alleged user base of 2,000 members were polled for their opinions, and a conveniently marketing-friendly ‘finding’ was discovered. However, somewhat unusually, the all-important fourth paragraph reference to Illicit Encounters was actually hyperlinked within the article, leading Daily Star readers off to the infidelity website… but not directly. Instead, the URL included an intermediary site, “Skim Resources” – an affiliate marketing website. The article even include rare a warning below the headline:

“This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it.”

Not only was this a dodgy PR story based on dubious research, it was one that the Star were explicitly paid to publish (The Sun, from what we can see, got no such kick-back for their coverage of the same press release).

Such declarations of commercial motivation are rare in the mainstream press, but, knowing what to look for, I soon found the same warning in a recent article from the Daily Mirror, penned by Esti Pujana on May 22nd:

Brits waste 36% of their summer indoors – and half say they let the season ‘pass them by’

Last summer’s Met Office data revealed a whopping 33 days of unadulterated sunshine from June to August, yet a recent survey of 2,000 adults indicates that 62% feel the pressure to utilise the extended daylight, with six in 10 at a loss on how to spend it.

Consequently, 60% believe they’re squandering their summers, either falling into routine habits (39%) or failing to plan effectively (29%).

I’ll save you the time now: there’s no way you’d be able to guess the company behind the press release, and what their tenuous angle is:

To combat this, Zipcar UK, who commissioned the study, has teamed up with the creative duo from TOPJAW, Jesse and Will, to launch an online ‘Summer Selector’ tool aimed at sparking a season filled with excitement.

The dynamic pair commented: “During the warmer months with the extended days we have calculated the average Brit has 58,000 minutes of spare daylight time to make the most of. However, many don’t feel like they are maximising their summer days and the met office figures show sunshine is limited.”

“But we want to encourage the nation to get out and about this summer whether it’s visiting your local park, spontaneously driving out to the beach for the day, or even treating your family to a meal out at a top restaurant.”

Whoever Jesse and Will might be, they clearly have no issue putting their names to a marketing message like “Summer is a time for being spontaneous, so why not hire a car”. The Star, equally, have no issue profiting from it, as this article also bears the warning about the presence of affiliate links providing them a kickback on any cars hired in such a fit of spontaneity.

This is where things start to get a little odd, because on the same day, in the same newspaper, from the same writer, I spotted another classic of the Bad PR genre (Daily Mirror, Esti Pujana, May 22nd):

Superfans in the UK: Sports, movies, and M&M’s drive obsession, costing £287 a year

A survey of 2,000 adults revealed that nearly half (49%) consider themselves ‘superfans’ of something, with 31% being die-hard supporters of a sports team. A quarter (24%) are crazy about a movie franchise, while one in five are devoted to a particular video game.

You may be thinking “ah, yes, that well-known area of superfandom: M&Ms”. But if you are thinking that, just know that it still plays into the marketing message – even sarcastic mockery of the content helps spread the article, and with it the very-obvious mention of the company behind the ‘study’:

On average, Brits have splashed out £287 on their fandom in the past year. The study was commissioned by M&M’S to celebrate the launch of its new M&M’S Minis and a pop-up experience in Soho on Wednesday 22nd May.

By this point, it seemed surprising that one author had penned two Bad PR stories in the same paper, on the same day. Given how prolific Ms Pujana has been throughout May, I shouldn’t have found it all that surprising to stumble across several examples…

2nd May, Daily Mirror:

One in four adults prefer a firm touch in the bedroom – when it comes to mattresses

A study of 2,000 adults found 28% thought they’d prefer a firm mattress – only to realise they need something softer

No surprises here to see that this study was created by mattress company eveSleep. Mildly surprising, however, that Esti Pujana published the same story to the Daily Star, on the same day as the Mirror.

5th May, Daily Mirror:

One in three Brits ‘despise’ unexpected phone calls and quarter rarely or never answer

A poll of 2,000 adults found 31% ‘panic’ when the phone rings – especially if it’s from an unknown number or someone they haven’t heard from in a while

A few surprises to this one, not least that this story about rejecting unknown callers is actually an ad for a Whiskey Distillery:

The study was commissioned by Buffalo Trace Distillery ahead of the opening its first store outside of the USA, on 6th May.

Their hard-to-believe angle being, “you should be spontaneous, pick up the phone, it might be a friend inviting you out for whiskey”.

Andrew Duncan, global brand director for the brand, said: “It’s clear spontaneity is becoming a lost art form. And we think that’s a shame because many of life’s greatest experiences happen when one commits to living what we like to call perfectly untamed bolder, more daring, and less afraid of the unknown.”

“Unexpected moments shared over a glass of whiskey are, unsurprisingly, some of our favourites.”

Interestingly enough, Ms Pujana also published this same article to Cheshire Live, while other journalists picked it up for the Daily Express and Daily Mail.

6th May, Daily Mirror:

Green projects businesses are most likely to fund – and it’s not electric cars

A quarter of companies would invest in environmental education, while just over% would put funding into rainforest conservation and carbon removal projects

A straightforward press release from climate action company Ecologi, noble in goal if still slightly troubling in eventual execution.

7th May, Daily Mirror:

Brits spend the equivalent of more than two years of their lives tidying up their homes

Research among 2,000 adults found they’ll spend 54 minutes a week on laundry, 25 minutes mopping floors, 35 minutes vacuuming and 45 minutes washing up

A spokesperson for Flash, who commissioned the study to launch its new Power Spray Mop with a washable microfibre pad, commented: “If you’re going to spend this much time cleaning, you may as well do a proper job of it. But when you see just how long people will spend over their lifetime cleaning, it does make you wonder if there’s a more efficient way.”

If you are wondering whether there is a more efficient way to mop the floor, Flash’s new floor mop would like you to wonder if it is the answer you’re looking for. This story showcases a classic Bad PR trope: any regular thing that takes a small amount of time, adds up to a large amount of time over the course of a year/decade/lifetime. “Numbers add up to get bigger” shouldn’t be the headline-grabbing notion that it reliably proves to be. And this piece grabbed quite a few headlines for Pujana, who also published it to the Daily Star, the Teesside Gazette, and Wales Online.

8th May, Daily Mirror:

The top 20 moments Brits turn to a cuppa including after a bereavement and during a hangover

Research of 2,000 adults found a cup of tea is often present as we progress throughout our day – from the moment we wake up to kick start the morning and after a stressful day…

The research was commissioned by PG Tips, to mark the launch of its advert with Top Boy star Ashley Walters, Mercury Prize winning Ezra Collective and Oscar-winning director Sir Steve McQueen.

Research here from PG Tips, the nation’s favourite “yeah, I guess that will do” brand of tea, found that the nation does, in fact, drink tea. It’s a story that saw Pujana also secure by-lines in the Daily Star, Wales Online, Cheshire Live, and the Grimsby Telegraph, while the Daily Express employed a different journalist to republish the same press release.

And, on the same day as that clutch of five by-lines across the breadth of the UK, Pujana was also busy publishing a story on behalf of veganism charity Viva!, to both the Daily Mirror and Daily Star. Quite the busy Wednesday.

9th May, Daily Star:

Half of Brits don’t clean their phone after taking it to the toilet with them

In a story designed to make readers think “wait, half of people clean their phone after using it in the bathroom” Dettol secured not just a well-placed article in a national newspaper, but a direct link to their YouTube advert, too. And then, four days later, Esti Pujana published the story to the Daily Mirror, too… despite her colleague, Florence Freeman, having covered it the previous day, in the paper’s Sunday edition.

12th May, Daily Mirror:

Brits are prioritising social media over personal finances

A study of 2,000 adults found they typically devote just 24 minutes a week to reviewing their expenses, budgeting, and planning their future finances – but 48 minutes scrolling through social media platforms

How terrible, according to investing app Moneybox, that people are spending just 24 minutes per week planning their future finances – implying that 24 minutes per week is a short amount of time. It is, of course, just one minute less per week than the amount of time we spend mopping, which Flash and Esti Pujana decried as a huge amount of time just five days earlier.

13th May, Daily Mirror:

‘Fast homeware’ trend sees millions of usable items end up in landfill every year

A quarter of people feel that homeware trends are changing at an increasingly fast pace, with 62% admitting to throwing away items in good enough condition to donate to charity

Why throw things away, when they can be given a second life by the British Heart Foundation? Equally, why throw a story away once you’ve published it to Wales Online and the Hertfordshire Mercury, when you can republish it to the Daily Mirror four days later?

May carried on in the same vein. On the 14th, Pujana was in the Daily Star and the Daily Mirror letting M&S travel money and insurance warn people that they need to start saving for their next holiday as soon as they’re back from their current holiday. Later the same day, it was gambling company Lottoland using Pujana in the Daily Star and Daily Mirror to promote it’s 80s themed range of gambling games (a story Pujana’s colleague Richard Jenkins also published in the Daily Star on the same day… with Jenkins also publishing it to the Daily Express).

On the 15th May, Pujana wrote in the Daily Star and the Daily Mirror about ‘holiday choice paralysis’, and how having too many hotels to choose from is ruining the experience of planning holidays – according to hotel aggregator website Hotels.com. A website that, happily for the newspaper, offered an affiliate link – though not an affiliate link that the newspaper warned its readers about.

The next day, Pujana had food on her mind – starting with a story placed in the Daily Mirror and Daily Star on behalf of New York Bakery Co explaining how to spot an authentic bagel (hint: the company sells New York Bagels). Later the same day, she was writing in the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star, Gloucestershire Live, Lincolnshire Live, and Wales Online about the country’s cluelessness about fish – all in service to the marketing goals of fresh fish company Fish Said Fred.

By the 19th May, Pujana was publishing messaging from Kellogg’s to the Daily Star and Daily Mirror about the historic sporting events we wish we’d seen (in order to promote the cereal company’s latest sports promotion), before moving on a few days later to explain (in the Daily Star and Daily Mirror) that people are much more cautious about their exposure to the sun (thanks to survey sponsors Kopparberg), while at the same time reporting in the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star that people are poor with their numerical skills (thanks to KPMG).

The next day, Pujana was publishing a press release from Paypal to Teesside Live warning that businesses need to have more technical competency – complete with an affiliate link for the technically proficient Teesside Live. On the same day, Pujana published to the Daily Mirror a press release from MSC Cruises boasting about their use of British drinking water on board their cruise ships (cruise ships that originate, and therefore restock, in a British port), before writing on the same day in the same paper about the need for workers to efficiently track their overtime (thanks to time tracking app ProTime).

On to May 24th, and an article in the Daily Mirror explaining that:

Millennials and Gen Z turn to social media for gardening tips: Unusual hacks revealed

Of those gardening hacks, it’s fair to say one stands out as being particularly bizarre:

However, as hashtags like #allotmentuk and #growyourownfood gain popularity, 34% of all adults have also discovered unusual hacks to help their plants flourish. These include using old teabags (35%) and egg shells (32%), while one in 10 even use their body hair as a natural plant fertiliser.

Surprisingly, 11% have even resorted to using hair from their private parts to boost their fruit and veg growth. Yet, 80% were unaware that body hair is nutrient-rich and could be used as a natural plant fertiliser.

And that’s because this gardening press release is not the product of a garden centre, nor a plantcare product – but an electric shaver designed to tackle pubic hair:

Fiona Atkins, a male grooming expert for Philips OneBlade, which has teamed up with gardening and topiary experts to launch the ‘Hairy Harvest’ – a pop-up where passers-by can get a quick shave and take their trimmings home to help their own plants grow, said: “More and more people are looking at how they can start growing their own produce at home… so, we wanted to highlight the little-known fact that body hair is the perfect nutrient-rich DIY fertiliser to help Brits in their gardening endeavours.”

May 24th was a busy day for Pujana, as she was also in the Daily Mirror explaining that couples now run financial compatibility checks before agreeing to take on a mortgage together (according to mortgage provider Skipton Building Society), as well as appearing in the same paper on the same day to warn of the dangers of roaming charges, on behalf of a mobile phone company Sim Local. It was such an important story, Pujana would spend the 28th May publishing it in the Nottingham Post, the Leicestershire Mercury, North Wale Live, and Wales Online – in each case, with revenue-generating affiliate links.

It’s a surprise there was time left on the 28th May to do anything else, but clearly there was, as Pujana wrote for the Daily Mirror about the new youth trend of energy-saving air fryers (as discovered by energy company Utilita), and that houses are saving lots of money with other energy efficient upgrades (thanks to other energy company Smart Energy GB), before telling the same newspaper that it’s important to be knowledgeable about gormet food… thanks to a gourmet coleslaw range from salad brand Florette… a story which Pujana repeated for  Cambridgeshire Live, Kent Live, and Somerset Live on the same, incredibly busy day.

What is the point of all of this?

So, who exactly is Esti Pujana? Is she the most prolific journalist in the UK, writing for at least two national newspapers, while also haring around the country to publish in regionals as spread out as Kent, Wales, and Teesside?

According to LinkedIn, Estibalitz Pujana is Assistant Managing Editor at Reach Plc. She has diploma in Marketing Management, and worked as a financial manager and a sales and marketing manager, before taking a role as ‘editorial management support’, and nine months later, ‘assistant managing editor’ for Reach Plc.

And just to be clear, my issue here is not with Esti Pujana. It genuinely isn’t. She is doing a job, and that job happens to essentially be putting her name to commercially-sourced (and occasionally kickback-laden) nonsensical articles that masquerade as news in the mainstream media. It is a living, and just because she is part of a broken system doesn’t mean she’s responsible for the breakage.

Instead, my issue is with Reach Plc. Reach is the company who bought the Daily Star, and the Daily Mirror. They also bought up the Daily Express, and the Daily Record, plus the Sunday versions of all of those titles. What’s more, they hoovered up more than 120 local newspapers across the UK, including the Liverpool Echo, the Manchester Evening News and the Manchester Metro News. Reach owns twenty-six newspapers in the London area alone.

As part of their operating model, Reach have dramatically cut costs at each of those news titles, and have laid off journalists across the country. After all, who needs a robust local news team in Manchester and one in Liverpool and one in Runcorn and one in Stockport, when you can have a slimmed-down team serve them mostly the same set of articles from a local pool? In fact, why stop there – why not have a national pool of articles, that get used as content in any one of those 120 ‘local papers’, or in several all at once? And why does the person writing those articles even have to be a journalist? Why can’t they just be someone with a marketing or sales or commercial background, repackaging press releases and churning them into things that look to all of world as if they are news articles? It’s cheap, and it requires no skill at all, but it fills a newspaper just as much as real journalism might.

But, crucially, it is not real journalism; it’s cargo cult reportage, the illusion of ‘local’ news. These local titles are arguably no longer newspapers – they’re journalistic zombies; they have the faces and the names you used to know, but inside they’re hollowed out and are effectively incapable of thinking for themselves.

Sadly, these hollowed-out husks of formerly reliable local papers – and, indeed, the national titles that sit at the top of that unholy food chain, equally voracious in their need for cheap, fast content, simply fills the internet with nonsense, particularly nonsense that’s an open door for bullshit commercially-sourced messaging. Sometimes, that messaging is what a company has paid Reach to publish, in terms of affiliates and kickbacks; other times, Reach will gladly and enthusiastically publish corporate brand messaging for free, because the zombie must be fed at all costs.

Even when that cost is a robust local and national press, or institutions of journalism that have been around for well over a century.

The Bat Beast of Kent: mysterious figure spooks four at Sandling Railway Station

David Barr
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The Bat Beast of Kent: mysterious figure spooks four at Sandling Railway Station

The Bat Beast of Kent, sometimes referred to as the ‘Saltwood Mystery’, is often considered to be an extraterrestrial sighting. Let’s begin with the story as it is roughly retold today.

November 16th, 1963, Four teenagers were making their way home from a party through Sandling Lane. Something unusual in the sky caught their attention: a golden oval shaped orb, seemingly a few metres in diameter. The object was intensely bright, they began to run from it, and it followed them, before returning back to its original position, it then slowly descended behind some trees. Curious about what it might have been, the boys headed to where they thought the object had ‘Landed’, but all was now dark. Soon they heard some rustling and felt a change in the air to cold and ‘charged like static electricity’, they looked towards the sound to see a hairy figure, around 5 feet tall, headless, with bat-like wings and webbed feet shambling out of the trees.

The current evolution of the story retains only the bare bones of the original report. Most casual inquiries will insinuate foreshadowing of the mothman encounter that would happen three years later, the common elements being four teens and a headless, winged creature with the inability to walk very well – all reported by a small local newspaper.

Where it all began

The event took place in the village of Saltwood on Sandling Road, Kent, UK. It is occasionally erroneously displaced to the nearby Maidstone, which has a Sandling Lane and Sandling Park. The ‘Bat Beast’ itself is also something of a chimaera, the original story was reported as an apparition, but it has been retconned to follow the preferred narrative of UFO sightings followed by creature sightings, such as The ‘Flatwoods Monster’ and the ‘Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter’, although often UFO enthusiasts are usually more interested in the unusual lights than the ‘creature’.

There are multiple stages of erosion of the original account, but one of the earliest news reports was in the Kent Messenger, November 29th edition, 1963. In the article one eyewitness, John Flaxton says:

we saw this red light, like a red ball of fire. As we moved towards it we could make out a figure, which seemed to have webbed feet and no head. It was carrying a red lantern. We just ran.

As John states, he wasn’t alone – he (17), was with Mervyn Hutchinson (18), Jenny Holloway (16) and Tony Harrison (17). Initial reports only mention John, Mervyn and Jenny, with Tony seemingly introduced by UFO investigator Charles Stickland (at the time associated with the London UFO Research Organisation, quickly to become the British UFO Research Organisation), who launched his own investigation by visiting Saltwood on around the 6th of December. The group were heading to Sandling railway station for Jenny to catch a train home. Mervyn states “we would not have gone down the hill at all, but John had to see his girl-friend to the station” (Folkestone and Hythe Gazette, 1963).

The group were walking roughly north along a road leading to the railway station; on the left is Brockhill school; there is a bend in the road to the right just after the school, Slaybrook Corner. From here it’s about 1km to the railway station, mostly open fields to the sides of the road, but a few buildings. Beyond the station the train tracks run perpendicular to Sandling road. Sandling road continues over the railway lines, but the lines are sunken, so the road remains flat. Stickland begins to lay out what he discovered from his investigation with Tony:

While they were passing Brockhill school they saw what appeared to be a shooting star fall towards the Sandling station area. A little later they had just passed Slaybrook Corner (a right angle bend), when a glowing object was seen above a hill on the left. No light was projected from it and it did not move , It was slightly oval (but more round than oval). The light was lost sight of behind trees as they walked down a dip in the road. While descending this incline a figure was seen about 20-30 yards away on the road ahead on the right-hand side.

LUFORO Bulletin, Vol4, No.5

When later interviewed by Flying Saucer Review John updated his account of the event in the article ‘The Saltwood Mystery’:

It was uncanny. The reddish yellow light was coming out of the sky at an angle of sixty degrees. As it came towards the ground it seemed to hover more slowly. I grew cold all over as it vanished behind a clump of trees.

FSR, 10, no. 2 – Mar./Apr. 1964

It’s not a huge departure from the original ‘ball of fire’ description, but importantly he adds that there’s a perceived intentionality about the object’s behaviour, like it might be ‘landing’.

The figure

Stickland was eager to focus on the object in the sky, but he does go into the figure a little. He recounts how Tony described it; “It looked like a man with a scarlet cloak and a lantern on the left” (LUFORO, 1964). In an earlier newspaper interview Mervyn also described the figure in a similar way; ‘a man in a red cloak and carrying a lantern’ (Folkestone and Hythe Gazette, 1963). All three of the male witnesses report seeing the lantern.

Regarding the headlessness of the figure, Stickland suggests “it was not possible to see the upper part of the body, as the light was not strong enough”. He then muses, “This probably explains the headless figure descriptions in various reports”. (BUFORO, 1964)

The lights seem to have been seen beyond Brockhill School, but the figure seems to have been seen on Sandling Road, north of the railway station coming over the road ‘bridge’ that goes over the railway tracks, with the entrance to the station itself being off to the right.

When the figure appears in front of them, John describes it in Flying Saucer Review a little differently to the report in the Kent Messenger:

It was all black, about the size of a human but without a head. It seemed to have wings like a bat on either side and came stumbling towards us.

FSR, 10, no. 2 – Mar./Apr. 1964

Mervyn adds, laconically “It was just like a bat, with webbed feet and no head”.

Tony says the figure vanishes while walking over a railway bridge, just past Saltwood station, “the figure, which had reached the centre of a bridge over the railway, disappeared. It is reported that in view of its position it could not have turned down a side road.” (LUFORO, 1964)

The sighting of the lights in the sky is never directly connected to the figure, they are seen in close timing to one another, but there is nothing to suggest they are in any way connected, no specific craft was seen, and the creature was not seen entering, exiting or near a craft.

Afterwards

From this point it seems Jenny catches her train, and the three boys return to Saltwood without seeing anything else. It would seem the remaining three boys headed to the pub, John Huggett, of the Castle Hotel, dismissing the idea of a hoax, says: “Three of the boys came into the pub after seeing the ghost, they were white as sheets—it was no joke.” (Kent Messenger, 1963), There are reports of the three going to the police after the incident, but these seem unconfirmed.

It’s curious how the original newspaper articles didn’t mention the ‘wings’. It’s not inconceivable that they simply omitted the detail, but equally it’s possible it was not mentioned by John or Mervyn at the time, but they did mention a ‘red cloak’, which perhaps evolved into the ‘wings’. It’s also possible the story got editorialised, a ghostly figure is more in keeping with an historic village than a headless, winged UFO occupant.

The Kentish Express ran with John as the main witness and the Kent Messenger cited Mervyn. Stickland gained most of his information from Tony, whose name is frequently omitted from the story, as is Jenny’s. Jenny’s input is limited to saying she didn’t believe in ghosts until the sighting.

The initial newspaper articles are very much reporting on ghosts, with headlines such as “‘Ghost’ Scares teenagers” and “Rector hunts Saltwoods ghost”. The general belief being that the ghost was of one William Tournay, who died in 1903, when cloaks were very much still in style. It’s unclear how much of a local legend the ‘Ghost of William Tournay’ was, and if it would have any bearing on the sighting. Slaybrook Hall is sometimes reported as ‘haunted’ – on the 10th August 2019, ‘Kent Live’ reported it as being a “’haunted’ Hythe mansion”. Given the unusual lights, walking by the allegedly haunted house and being in an unfamiliar place, it’s reasonable to think that the group may have increased anxiety or be somewhat spooked, or at the very least may have ghosts on their minds.

Additional sightings and observations

Shortly after the initial newspaper articles another witness comes forward, who claims he saw the creature eighteen months earlier. Graham Leggett (18) told reporters, “I was walking down the hill to Slaybrook Corner, when I saw a red light, and then this eerie bat-like figure appeared”. (Kent Messenger, 1963). He says he didn’t say anything at the time as he thought no one would believe him.

The local Reverend, Rev. Stanton also offered some opinions: “I’ve heard rumours that a black magic circle meet secretly in the village, but I have no proof. I am making my own investigations. This is the evil sort of thing they would do.” (Kent Messenger, 1963). It’s not clear if Stanton is suggesting that the black magic circle would summon some kind of demon or ghost or if he is just saying they might dress up and generally try to spook people.

On November the 21st Keith Croucher (17) said he “felt a sudden breath of cold wind and saw what looked like a golden mist beginning to cross the pitch. At the centre of the mist was a solid oval light that seemed to move slowly over the ground” (FSR, Mar-Apr, 1964)

On November 23rd John McGoldrick (16) launched his own investigation into the incident, with a friend;

In a clearing in the woods we found a vast expanse of bracken that had been completely flattened- as if some huge and heavy object had rested there. Nearby we found three giant footprints, They were clear footprints, almost two feet long and nine inches across, they must have been a full inch deep.

Kent Messenger, Nov. 25th, 1963

They go back the next day with a newspaper representative, but find nothing. With all due respect to John McGoldrick, this ‘investigation’ is often overplayed, or simply misrepresented as more serious than perhaps it was; conducted by a more senior researcher. Only the Lorenzens in “Encounters with UFO Occupants” acknowledged it was ‘research carried out by teenagers’.

William Waite, however adds a little seniority to this outing: a retired senior civil servant who used to work for the Aeronautical Inspection Board, he was walking his dog in the Slaybrook Corner vicinity about a week before the sighting on the 16th, and when interviewed he said:

I saw this Bright bluish-white light, about the size of a golf ball flying directly ahead of me. It travelled quite slowly in a steady horizontal direction. It definitely wasn’t an aeroplane. The whole thing struck me as very peculiar. The light appeared from the north, crossed Sandling Road where all these strange things have been seen and then it headed out to sea.

FSR Mar-Apr 1964

What was it?

It is clear that Stickland and the Flying Saucer Review were very much biased towards the initial sighting of the lights being a UFO. Stickland has little to no interest in the figure, replying in response to Cecil Harper’s critique of his outline of the case, “I would regard the most probable explanation to be that it was a railway employee”, though Stickland acknowledges he “did not have time to go into this aspect thoroughly”.

Harper also adds that, while the figure is purported as disappearing at the middle point of the bridge, seemingly giving no opportunity to quickly ‘hide’ or runaway, there was in fact, on this bridge, a gate in the middle on the right hand side, with a path that leads down to a small ‘power house’, which a railway worker may have been simply checking on that night.

Stickland reports ‘This lantern looked like a hurricane lamp and gave out a whitish light, flickering irregularly.’ (LUFORO, 1963). British Rail used oil lamps until they were gradually replaced around 1965 by the Bardic hand lamp, furthering support for the ‘railway employee’ hypothesis. It’s also worth noting that while high visibility clothing was available in 1963 it wasn’t used by railway workers until 1964 and was not commonplace until 1974.

There certainly seems to be some kind of unusual lights in the area. There have been some attempts to explain these, Chris Wolfe is claimed to have visited the site a decade or so later; it is difficult to establish a source for his claims, but they have some merit regardless of the legitimacy of the source.

Wolfe claims that the lights could have been a train in the distance partially obscured by fog or trees, coming from the Westenhanger direction; others suggest that the lights could have been lights from the school refracting somehow in the dense fog to seem unfamiliar. Harper suggested that, as Lympne Airfield is nearby to the west, any number of flying objects could be easily explained by standard air traffic to and from the airfield.

While it seems somewhat unnecessary to further explain away the figure, as the ‘railway employee’ hypothesis is more than sufficient, Wolfe is also credited with the ‘crow’ explanation. He is claimed to say that while visiting the site he saw a group of crows strangely illuminated, that in his opinion could be mistaken for a large winged humanoid. This explanation, while perhaps surplus to requirements, is often rather unfairly mischaracterised and dismissed out of hand as Wolfe saying the creature itself was perhaps ‘just a crow’. (Leon, 2022)

There is almost no effort from anyone to address the webbed feet. It is an unusual observation, from the distance of about thirty yards on a poorly lit road. John McGoldrick claims to have found large footprints, but given the creature was seen on the road, any footprints would have to be from the nearby woodland or grassed area, and cannot be directly connected to the sighting. Unless in very soft surface area, such as dry sand, webbed feet would generally leave only a three toed footprint.

If we accept the railway employee hypothesis, then it seems only sensible that they may have been wearing gaiters or wide-bottomed trousers. Meanwhile, some members of the UFO community have suggested the ‘webbed feet’ could be part of a ‘spacesuit’ or similar attire.

The disappointing end

There are a lot of moving parts to this relatively simple story, but they don’t really add up to a coherent, consistent narrative. We end up with a headless, web-footed, bat-winged creature, when we started with an obscure humanoid figure walking over a bridge, holding a lantern.

It’s hard to believe that the reports about the figure holding a lantern have somehow gone under the radar, as they are very much part of the primary source of the whole case – the three main witnesses all mention the lantern. It would seem that no one wants this figure to be holding a lantern because it does not fit their narrative; mothman did not carry a light, and why would an extraterrestrial with no head or eyes need a ‘flickering’ lantern? It undermines both arguments. The same goes for the cape, which has seemingly transformed into wings.

Add to that the inconsistencies of the original eyewitness, the constant amendments to the story itself by publications like Flying Saucer Review and the various news outlets of the time, plus adequate natural earthbound explanations for the lights and the figure, many of which were brought to light immediately after the initial reports. It’s not as though natural explanations had been rigorously ruled out or deemed unlikely or impossible, they were simply ignored or purposefully dismissed in the pursuit of a supernatural explanation.

The UFO aspect of the story never particularly takes off. There is some implication from McGoldrick that he might have found the ‘landing site’, and there certainly appears to be some usual lights in the sky with no clear immediate explanation. Logistically it seems spurious that even if the lights were indeed a landing UFO and the creature were the occupant, it would have had to have quickly exited the craft as soon as it landed to be seen over the bridge, yet the creature is said to shown no great speed and any craft was not said to be seen accompanying the creature.

The other sightings introduce an interesting problem, they suggest that the lights are appearing frequently, possibly running to a schedule, like a train or aeroplane. There is little to suggest that the lights weren’t just the illuminated train windows appearing through trees or mist, which would only compliment the sighting of a railway guardsman being present near the bridge. After all, we do know a train was due to arrive – we know Jenny was there to catch it. It is unclear if a train was heading in the opposite direction while the four were walking towards the railway station.

It seems reasonable to think that there was no evidence of a deliberate hoax, there is some corroboration from the pub landlord that the original group were indeed spooked by the encounter, and there is a fair amount of consistency between the reports from the three boys. While additional sightings of the figure can be questioned as influenced by previous reports or even fabricated, there do appear to be some kind of unusual lights appearing with some frequency in the area, which may have various explanations, although none confirmed.

References

  • Gerhart, K, Encounters with Flying Humanoids: Mothman, Manbirds, Gargoyles & Other Winged Beasts. 2013
  • Ghost a Flying Saucer? (1963) Kentish Express, December 13th edition, 1963, pg 1
  • ‘Ghost’ Scares Teenagers. (1963) Kent Messenger, November 29th edition, pg 3
  • Girvan, W (Ed.). (1964) ‘STOP PRESS Landing in Kent’, Flying Saucer Review, 10, no.c1 – JAN./FEB. pg 36
  • Girvan, W (Ed.). (1964) ‘The Saltwood Mystery’, Flying Saucer Review, 10, no. 2 – Mar./Apr. Pg 11-12
  • Leon, A. (2022) Bat Beast of Kent.
  • Lorenzen C.E & Lorenzen J. (1976) Encounters with UFO Occupants
  • Rector Hunts Saltwood Ghost. (1963) Kent Messenger, November 29. 13th edition, 1963, pg 1
  • Stickland, C.A. & Harper, A.C. (1964) ‘The Saltwood Sightings’ BUFORA Journal Volume 1 No.1 Summer, pg 12-13
  • Saltwood’s Ghost, (1963) Kentish Express, 13th December
  • Saltwood’s Ghostly Visitant has Glowing Background (Nov 27th, 1963) – Folkestone and Hythe Gazette, pg 2
  • Stickland, C.A., LUFORO (1964) ‘SIGHTINGS AT SALTWOOD, NEAR HYTHE, KENT’ Bulletin Vol.4 No.5 Nov-Dec-Jan 1963-64, pg 2-4
  • Swancer, B. The Mysterious Bat Beast of Kent, Journal News Online September 6, 2021, viewed 5th Jan 2023
  • Bat Beast of Kent, Cryptid Wiki, viewed 21 Nov 2022
  • Morphy, R. Bat Beast of Kent (England) Cryptopia, March 5th, 2010, viewed 5th Jan 2023,
  • Hatswell, D, (28 Jan 2017) The Bat Like Beast Sandling Park Kent 1963, 28 Jan 2017 (Accessed:5th Jan 2023).
  • Swancer, B. The Mysterious Bat Beast of Kent, Mysterious Universe, Sept. 7th 2021, viewed 5th Jan 2023

Zero Hour for climate change: the time is now to back the Climate and Nature Bill

Peter Spring
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Zero Hour for climate change: the time is now to back the Climate and Nature Bill

How do we know climate change is happening? How do we know species are evolving? There was, and remains in some places, strong denial of the latter. The same kinds of responses have emerged to deny the former, too. The big difference is that climate change has the supercharged facet of huge economic impact. Greed, need and vested interests often trump rationality, sometimes perilously.

Fossil fuels are epicentral to the huge expansion in human economy over the last 200 years. It will take massive changes to policy and ways of living to extract ourselves from this self-destructive machine. The pain of failing to do so will far exceed the pain of grasping the nettle now. The rational response is to follow the science and reconstruct our economies on a low carbon, sustainable basis. It won’t be easy, but it is doable – or at least it was, had we started in the early 1980s.

In the 1970s a major American oil company hired the best climate scientists of their day to do a well-funded study to evaluate exhaustively whether the greenhouse effect would lead to global warming. It seemed innocuous. After all, one of the theory’s discoverers thought global warming could benefit humanity, at least in Scandinavia.

But those scientists reported back that continued use of fossil fuels will increase global warming, and to such a degree that by 2050 climates will have changed dramatically and detrimentally. Their data were congruent with the famous hockey-stick graph of CO2 emissions over time against average global temperatures that emerged shortly afterwards. Its projection is very worrying.

The rational response by that company should have been to invest in sustainable energy production and move away from fossil fuels. This would have given them a huge lead over their competitors, who would have to scramble to stay in the game, once this epoch-making study got into the public domain. They could claim to have saved humanity. They might even have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Instead, they buried the report and doubled down on fossil fuels. Inevitably, the bad news trickled out. Friends of the Earth became aware of this report in the early 1980s. Sadly, Big Oil’s response was to carry on exploiting fossil fuels, so that levels of CO2 pollution have significantly increased since that report. Like the tobacco industry two decades before, they hired PR merchants to peddle denial and obfuscation.

How do we know whether climate change is happening or not? Some claim confidently that it is, or it isn’t. They often confuse, sometimes wilfully, climate with weather. Their source: the media, who find extreme weather events and their tragic aftermaths ideal click-bait.

So, we now see dramatic footage of every hurricane, flood, drought, landslide, and wildfire. The seemingly increasing frequency of these calamities confirm for some that climate change is actually ‘true’; Others dismiss these as the extreme weather events that humanity has always endured, and that the media are just having a field day. They are both to some degree correct, and incorrect.

Climate is not weather; rather patterns of weather, and those complex patterns are best left to meteorologists, geographers, and climate scientists to ascertain. And they have. And they are very concerned, witness the exasperation of the UN’s IPCC climate scientists’ latest opinions.

Rational citizens place trust in those scientists in the belief that their scientific processes are properly scrutinising their findings, so that those findings are reliable enough to base policy upon. But obscurely funded think tanks exploited the relativism of truth as well as weaknesses in some social aspects of scientific method to claim the greenhouse effect theory is flawed and selective, the conspiratorial workings of a liberal elite, out only to perpetuate endless academic research funding – ironic, given the inordinately bigger payouts available in the world of Big Oil and its financiers.

They proffered any and every alternative theory that could dispute it. If done in goodwill, this is fine: it is how science works. Some theories they mooted do have a bearing on climate change, such as solar activity. But none of them can explain the hockey-stick graph. Scientific process promotes the survival of the fittest theory for the facts in question, and this theory has survived all attempted refutations to date.

Then social media, that perfect channel for misinformation and deceit, came along. The think-tanks went into overdrive, morphing no longer defensible outright denial into weaselly ‘climate scepticism’. On the flimsy evidence of a misconstrued use of jargon, one climate scientist was harried into attempting suicide. All the alternative theories disputing CO2-induced climate change get rehashed into that digital miasma where critical thinking and rational debate is replaced with conspiracy theorising and gaslighting. It wouldn’t matter, but these people vote, yet are rarely exposed to contrary views. When they are, they’ve been gaslighted to dismiss them as conspiracy theories. The IPCC gets dismissed in this vein.

What can the rational person do? I ardently supported Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace for decades, but little changed. So, when the explicitly science-led Extinction Rebellion (XR) arose, I joined it in 2019 and participated in several actions. We did inspire Caroline Lucas’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, but that remained a Bill (it has since been revived as the CAN Bill – more on which in a moment). XR splinter group Just Stop Oil was even more disruptive, but still nothing changed, other than good young folk getting banged up in prison, our rights to demonstrate diminished, and the government cynically signing off more oil and coal production, with the laughable excuse of energy security.

Rationally, you would think that, with surveys such as this ONS survey showing about 75% of people are worried about climate change, acting on climate would be the most important political objective. Yet the Tories are now rowing in the opposite direction to the Paris Agreement, and Starmer has watered down Labour’s green initiatives on the grounds that we cannot afford them. Can we afford not to? Short-termism is the blight of all our politics but is particularly problematic for long-vista climate solutions.

So, one last push, I’ve joined Zero Hour. They are asking every Parliamentary candidate in the forthcoming UK General Election to commit to the all-party Climate and Nature Bill (aka CAN Bill) and to steer it to becoming law in the next Parliament. To persuade them, Zero Hour are inviting their constituents to sign up to declare that candidates will only get their vote if they commit. They are also asking local businesses and organisations to sign up too, flying their logos in solidarity.

Anyone who can vote in UK elections can sign up on their constituency’s page, found via their postcode. Local businesses, societies, schools, churches, and anyone else that wants quicker action on climate change can sign up as organisations.

I’m hoping that sceptics and humanists and their societies will sign up, and wave the flag of science and rationality, against vested interest and short-termism.

Jeremy Clarkson isn’t the sexiest man alive – he’s just headline fodder for a dodgy PR campaign

Michael Marshall
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Jeremy Clarkson isn’t the sexiest man alive – he’s just headline fodder for a dodgy PR campaign

If we are to believe the recent headlines, we might want to check on the women of the UK. Specifically, headlines like that which appeared in the Daily Mail, on Thursday 16th May:

Jeremy Clarkson, 64, is crowned the UK and Ireland’s sexiest man for the second year running beating the likes of Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland and Idris Elba

Or, from the same day in the Mirror:

Jeremy Clarkson named UK’s ‘sexiest man’ for second year beating likes of Idris Elba and Tom Holland

And the same day in the Daily Star:

Jeremy Clarkson somehow named UK’s sexiest man by women looking for an affair

And later on the same day, in the Daily Star again:

Piers Morgan fuming as Jeremy Clarkson beats him in UK’s sexiest man poll

And later on the same day, in the Mirror again:

Piers Morgan rages after Jeremy Clarkson is crowned the UK’s ‘sexiest man’

And then later, on the same day, in the Mail again:

How Jeremy Clarkson, 64, won the title of the UK and Ireland’s sexiest man – and it’s good news for average blokes everywhere

Not to mention the Express, who led with the angle that former-MP-turned-TV-host Ed Balls was shocked at the desirability of Clarkson:

GMB host says ‘I don’t understand’ as Jeremy Clarkson’s crowned sexiest man

The Express, as it happens, would cover the story more directly, but not until the next day:

Jeremy Clarkson beats Tom Holland and Idris Elba to win ‘sexiest man’ for second year

For their part, the Metro spoke to an expert to get their take on the appeal of Jeremy Clarkson – and by ‘expert’, they meant “celebrity mindset coach and relationship expert” Noor Hibbert. And then there was the coverage in the Oxford Mail, Nottinghamshire Live, OK Magazine, and Joe.co.uk.

That was day one. The next day, the Independent got in on the act:

Jeremy Clarkson has been voted the UK’s sexiest man and it makes total (weird) sense to me

And two days later, the Daily Star couldn’t resist a third bite of the cherry:

Jeremy Clarkson says he may be ‘sexiest man alive’ – but he’s ‘something of a porker’

It wasn’t just the mainstream press – the Twitter account PopCrave broke the news to their 1.7m followers, in a tweet was viewed almost seven million times.

UK’s Sexiest Men Alive 2024 (according to 2,000 women on dating site Illicit Affairs): 1. Jeremy Clarkson 2. Tom Holland 3. Prince William 4. Gareth Southgate 5. Cillian Murphy 6. Idris Elba 7. Romesh Ranganathan 8. Sam Thompson (from Made in Chelsea) 9. Russ Cook (aka endurance athlete Hardest Geezer) 10. Dermot O’Leary

“This is crazy” replied one user. “Ok I’m neither British nor attracted to men so I might be way off base here, but Dev Patel didn’t even crack the top 10?!” tweeted another. “Prince William above Idris Elba? Be serious” said a third. “Are women in the UK … okay?” asked one, and “Is the UK okay?” asked another.

So, what’s going on here, is the UK filled with women who are just dying to get into bed with the guy who lost his Top Gear job because he gets aggressive when he’s hungry? I suspect not. There’s more to this story, sufficient even to warrant analysis in a skeptical magazine. Returning to the Daily Mail’s initial coverage:

“Jeremy Clarkson has officially been crowned the UK and Ireland’s sexiest man on Thursday for the second year in a row. The presenter, 64, beat off a long list of competition including the likes of Prince William, Idris Elba and Cillian Murphy.

The Clarksons Farm star scored an impressive score of nine out of 10 points in the annual poll conducted by IllicitEncounters, which bills itself as ‘the best online dating site for married people'”.

This story is not actually a piece of anthropological or sociological research about the sexual fantasies of a nation’s women – it is a thinly disguised advert for a website that wants to encourage readers to cheat on their partners. Yet, even so thin a disguise as this was enough to sucker in dozens of national and local news outlets, several mainstream TV pundits, and hundreds of thousands of readers, each of whom diligently did their part to share and popularise and discuss and spread the marketing message Illicit Encounters had used to bait their hook.

The annual Sexiest Man poll from leading married dating site, Illicitencounters.com is voted by 2,000 of its female members.

The women are asked who they think the UKs sexiest man is, asking them to score a 50-strong list of the past year’s most famous, culturally relevant names from most to least ‘sexy’. Each name was scored 1-10 (10 being the highest) based on their ‘sexiness’.

The methodology of this study, according to the infidelity website behind it, involved finding 2,000 female users of the website and presenting them with a list of 50 names, inviting each name to be scored. At best, of course, this couldn’t find the ‘sexiest’ name on that list (let alone in the country), but the name with the highest average score.

However, that is not the most significant question to be raised about this finding. Illicit Encounters claims to have 1.4million users from the UK – although, if true, that represents 1.4million accounts, with no real guarantee that those are unique accounts. They also claim to have 1,000 daily logins – but that may include users who log in multiple times per day.

They also claim that around 45% of users are female. If true, that would put them above their peers and competitors – when rival infidelity site Ashley Madison was hacked, data revealed that just 3 out of every 10,000 female accounts was real.

Interrogating the survey methodology, sadly, proved impossible, as the only phone numbers available for the company were the discontinued mobile number of their former press officer, or an online tech support number which went straight to voicemail. However, there is another alternative origin story for this survey – rather than being a survey or real-life female paid-up members of the site, this may be the product of a PR survey from nonsense PR specialists OnePoll.

Almost a decade ago, I would regularly fish stories like these out of the press, and trace their origins back to the survey company who were paid to conduct the research, and OnePoll were accountable for the overwhelming majority of such stories (a situation that, according to researchers in the field, the management company boasted about as a point of pride). At the time, I tracked plenty of stories in which Illicit Encounters, specifically, hired OnePoll in order to conduct surveys that would form the bases of PR stories. Is it possible that the company has had a chance of heart, and now conducts the research for themselves, on their own platform, interrupting discussions of infidelity in order to ask their definitely-substantial female userbase their opinions on the sexual potential of right wing journalists? It certainly isn’t completely impossible, I suppose.

On Clarkson himself, it’s worth highlighting that one of the first dodgy PR stories I ever picked apart, all the way back in 2010, was a story from an online hookup website in which they asked their female members to speculate on which celebrity had the biggest penis, and Jeremy Clarkson topped the list. Every time I’ve given a talk about PR in the news, for the last 14 years, I have included the example of the Clarkson’s Cock story. Even when I would give lectures as part of university journalism degree courses, I’d open with Clarkson’s Cock.

In my opinion, this isn’t actually a case of women across the UK swooning over Jeremy Clarkson, and it’s not even – in my opinion – likely that some women on a website dedicated to infidelity quite fancy Clarkson. The entire list feels, to me, like it was designed to come up with eye-catching results, in order to maximise attention.

In first place, there is the controversial choice, someone that people will be surprised and annoyed by. In second place, Tom Holland: an objectively handsome and well-liked actor, who serves as the instant comparison to the victor. Then in third place, Prince William, another choice that people will argue over the inclusion of, but someone about whom any story will automatically guarantee attention. Fourth place, Gareth Southgate the man leading England into the Euros this summer, who is likely to be in the spotlight an awful lot over the next few months. And then two undeniably attractive people in Cillian Murphy and Idris Elba.

This is a list perfectly designed to annoy people and draw ire and derision, therefore maximising attention for the website it’s promoting. And it clearly worked, given that the story has been viewed and shared millions of times online, and that it was featured in dozens of national newspapers, and dozens of regional newspapers dying for content. It was debated on breakfast television, who are equally hungry for content and for potential conflict. Attention seekers like Piers Morgan jumped on the story and made it their own, to keep the conversation going. This story was perfectly shaped to get absolutely maximum bang for very little buck.

Now consider for a moment if, instead, the company had decided to pay for an advert. What would it cost to get a full page, prominent advert in fifteen different newspapers over the course of three days? And for an ad on Twitter that’s seen by millions of people, and engaged with by at least hundreds of thousands? And then a TV slot, at a highly watched time of day, on one of the most popular channels.

All of this would have costs high five figures, at the very least. But, instead, pay a few hundred quid to a polling company and you’ll have strangers the world over discussing your marketing message as if it is true, and as if it is news. It’s easy, and it’s simple, and it’s cheap, and it’s effective, but it’s tawdry nonsense that cheapens our media.

I’ve been covering ‘Bad PR’ stories like this since 2010. Hell, I’ve been covering Bad PR stories specifically about the fuckability or otherwise of Jeremy Clarkson since my earliest days in skepticism. Apparently nothing has changed in that time in terms of how easy it is for dodgy companies to hack their way into a broken, desperate and diminished media, in order to hijack public discourse with their brand messaging.

Blinded By The Light: countering extremist disinformation in Glastonbury

Bob Brady
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Blinded By The Light: countering extremist disinformation in Glastonbury

I recently had to go to Bristol for work, so I decided to get in touch with a friend of mine who lives an hour down the road in Glastonbury. As luck would have it, on the day I was able to visit, two local groups called Glastonbury Independence Alliance and Community Solidarity Glastonbury were holding an event called Blinded By The Light, an event aimed at countering extreme right wing messaging in Glastonbury, with particular focus on The Light newspaper.

Photo of a poster for "Blinded by The Light?" event. Taken by the author.

As a member of the Skeptical community in the UK, I had heard of The Light Newspaper through listening to Skeptics with a K, and from reading Mark Horne’s articles about The Light and the community pushback against it taking place in Stroud.

Put briefly, The Light is a free newspaper, founded in September 2020. Self-styled as a “truth” newspaper, it spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories. Had I heard about this event taking place anywhere I would have been interested, but the fact that it was taking place in Glastonbury made the event especially intriguing.

I’m sure that most people know of Glastonbury as the UK’s largest mud and music festival, but not as many will be familiar with the small town in the county of Somerset after which the festival is named. To those in the know, the town of Glastonbury is synonymous with all things alternative, spiritual, and occult. This is abundantly clear to anyone just taking a walk down the high-street. It seems every other shop is offering crystals, decks of tarot cards, incense, bundles of sage, singing bowls, aura readings, soul healing, sound therapy… The list is endless. There are even a surprising number of private residences with posters in the window advertising mystical services of one sort or another. 

It is fair to assume that a good chunk of the visitors and local residents are here because of the mythology around Glastonbury, and its reputation as a spiritual hub. Given the often discussed pipeline from alternative health and spirituality to right wing conspiracy nonsense, you could be forgiven for thinking that Glastonbury may well be the sort of place where The Light could garner a loyal readership with little effort. It’s these factors that make this event particularly interesting, and dare I say it, hopeful?

The event was held in the United Reform Church. As we approached there was a polite yet sharp-edged conversation taking place between an older man wearing a camera-mounted hat and a woman, who appeared to be one of the organisers, in a white T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Anti-Fascist”. As we walked past I heard him say “but how is he a fascist”, to which the woman responded “I didn’t say he was a fascist, but he is extremely right wing…” On entering there was a big board with key facts about the event and The Light, including a list of event rules. A collection of handwritten questions were also pinned to the board asking “What is Fascism” and “What’s Fascism got to do with The Light?”

A photo of the board with questions and answers on it taken by the author. The question "What is fascism?" has answers pinned saying things like "rampant sexism" and "racism".

In the main body of the church at the pulpit stood a woman with brightly coloured hair in a pixie cut laying down the law. “This is a discussion, not a debate. If you want a debate you can have one, but not here. If you don’t like the agenda, leave, no one is forcing you to be here, go organise your own event.” 

A photo of a print out of the event rules taken by the author. The event rules include "no filming or photography - so that everyone feels safe to speak freely", "this is a public discussion, not a debate - the purpose is not to win an argument, but to freely share information and support", "listen to all speakers with quiet respect - do not shout out or disrupt the talks or the questions from the audience. There are plenty of formal opportunities for questions and discussions" and so on.

She also said something to the effect of “We will not tolerate hate speech. If you want to say something and you think it might offend someone or be interpreted as hate speech, don’t say it, here or, well, anywhere!”. It was clear that this was going to be a friendly but no-nonsense event. 

After going over the ground rules, she gave an overview of the motivation for the event from her perspective. She stated that she had no interest in shutting down debate or in shutting down The Light, and said that she thought some of the content is actually quite good, having enjoyed an article in a previous edition which focused on the Rwandan Genocide. Holding the paper in her hands she said “some of the articles are good, some of them are benign, some are just facile” injecting the word facile with such naked disdain that the audience erupted in laughter. 

She went on to say “but it uses left wing talking points to smuggle in a different agenda. There is an article in here on Palestine and the first half is good, but the second half involves quotes from a known antisemite! There are so many people they could have contacted for quotes! Why have they chosen to go for a known antisemite! You only need to google him to know that he is openly anti semitic! They’re using support for Palestine as a Trojan Horse!” 

She went on to decry how this paper, masquerading as alternative and anti-establishment, is actually promoting regressive right wing views.

After her rallying cry of an introduction, she introduced the speakers who would be delivering talks on various key topics for the rest of the afternoon.

Challenging The Cosmic Right

First up was a representative from Community Solidarity Stroud District with his talk Challenging The Cosmic Right. It seems he has a long history of activism and is no stranger to direct action, including but not limited to living in trees to block the building of new roads and such. 

He had sympathy for those who had been pulled in, and agreed that the government ought to be scrutinised over their response to and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, he drew the line at denying that COVID-19 was real and spoke of the worrying trend towards the denial of other illnesses, such as the claim that sexually transmitted diseases don’t exist and that germ theory is a lie. 

Being a long standing member of left wing community groups, he told us that he had witnessed friends of his go from being members of Extinction Rebellion to believing that anthropogenic climate change was a hoax. He also told us that he had recently heard people with Palestinian flags on their lapels come out with Islamophobic talking points. For him there was no doubt that The Light was effective in recruiting leftie liberal types to the conspiratorial right. 

A photograph of a print out from the event taken by the author. The print out explains some of the perceived issues with The Light paper including examples of misogyny, racism and antisemitism.

Speaking from experience, he stated that simply ignoring The Light wasn’t working. He explained that this is why Community Solidarity Stroud exists. They write open letters and hand out leaflets explaining why The Light is so toxic (often only a matter of feet away from individuals handing out The Light, he said that this particular bit of direct action can on occasion get tense). 

Members of Community Solidarity Stroud even go to the effort of reading every single issue of The Light and reviewing it on their website. Their website also makes leaflets available free of charge so people can print them out and distribute the leaflets themselves. This sounds like arduous work, but, according to the speaker it is starting to have the desired effect. These acts of information sharing and non-violent resistance are starting to help people see The Light for what it is and some people are starting to turn their back on it.

The Light, The Right, and the Fight Ahead

An older woman holding a sign which reads "I can't believe I still have to protest this fucking shit".
The protesting woman meme, referenced by a speaker at the event

The next speaker introduced herself as a lifelong socialist, and early in her talk told us that her feelings could be pretty easily summed up with the oft-shared meme of an older women holding a sign which reads “I can’t believe I still have to protest this fucking shit”. 

She started by restating the concern that The Light picks up on leftist issues and uses them to bring people to the right, and said “left wing people are feeling adrift at the moment”, briefly highlighting what could be one of the key reasons why The Light has been so effective at recruiting people to the right, and why individuals on the left might be particularly vulnerable to radicalisation at the moment. 

Her observation was that The Light has managed to dovetail libertarian and neo fascist arguments, which at first glance seem contradictory, given the libertarian position argues that governments should be minimal, allowing individuals as much freedom and responsibility as possible, while the fascist right often wants to assert high levels of control over the population. But, she explained, haven’t fascists always wanted total freedom for heterosexual, cisgendered white men – or at least the dominant group – and total subjugation for pretty much everyone else?

Her talk focused heavily on the role of misogyny in the far right agenda, and the regressive ideas they espouse when it comes to gender and reproduction. She references The Great Replacement theory, and how it centres the fears of some white people that they will become the minority in countries where they currently hold social and political dominance. If one buys into this argument and sees white people becoming a minority as a problem that must be solved, then the solution is obvious – white women need to get back to the home, stop focusing on their own careers and the “unnatural stress of the workplace” and fulfill their moral obligation to reproduce with white men. 

Alongside this “white women as baby factories” approach, indigenous peoples, black people and all people of color need to be prevented from reproducing as as frequently as white people, or even at all – through the use of forced sterilisation. This is classic eugenics. 

She argued that women’s bodies are, and have for a long time been, a political battleground, and explained that “misogyny is as central to fascism as racism is”, concluding that in the fight against fascism, we must protect the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies and protect women’s access to safe reproductive healthcare, including access to birth control and abortions. She ended her talk by focusing on the importance of abortion access in the fight against fascism and highlighted a campaign backed by MSI Choices, which proposes that all pregnant people should be protected from prosecution for ending their own pregnancy. I didn’t realise at the time, but MSI Reproductive Choices was previously known as Marie Stopes UK and, well, the less said about Marie Stopes, fascism, and eugenics the better.

Gender Diversity: Hidden Histories and Fighting For The Future

The next talk covered another area where The Light shines with technicolour nonsense – the topic of gender. This talk was delivered by a representative of The Diversity Trust, who focused on the myth that transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people are somehow a new phenomenon. They gave a clear-eyed crash course on the history of gender in different cultures, and the evidence we have that demonstrates how gender as a binary thing that maps perfectly onto external genitalia is a relatively new concept, exported from north-western Europe across the globe as part of colonial expansion. The Victorians have a lot to answer for. 

The speaker explained that the destruction and systematic suppression of research into gender diversity goes a long way towards revealing why many people are convinced that this is a new phenomena. Gender non-conforming people have always existed, it’s just that across time and culture the words used to describe people who do not fit into a binary have changed, and that in some instances their existence and history have been actively suppressed. They illustrated this by showing us one of the most famous images of the Nazi book burnings and explained that, despite having seen this image countless times in school and in documentaries, they had only recently learned that the books being destroyed when that image was captured are books from Institut Für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin, an institute specializing in sex and gender studies; a pioneer in transgender medicine which famously treated Lili Elbe.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14597 / Georg Pahl / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5415527
Nazi Party members at the Opernplatz book burning in Berlin, by Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14597 / Georg Pahl CC-BY-SA 3.0

Science denial – doing your own research

The next talk was half an hour of bread- and butter- skepticism happening in the heart of Glastonbury; a whistle stop tour of the key tenets of the scientific method, and a defence of the need for experts in the face of the oft-repeated-but-hollow mantra “do your own research”. The speaker emphasised that what we are up against is not an abstract philosophical problem – it is imperative that we fight anti-science and anti-expert rhetoric if there is any hope in curtailing climate change, which many people, including the speaker, see as being the real existential threat of our time. 

She went on to say that individual action is important, but for real change to happen governments and big businesses need to change. They won’t change unless we put pressure on them and hold them to account, which we will not do if we do not believe in and take seriously the impact of anthropogenic climate change. I found it encouraging that a basic primer on scientific skepticism was being presented in this setting, and the fact that the organisers recognised the need for it showed, for me, an astute awareness of the vulnerability in the public that The Light is trying to exploit.

What is Conspirituality?

The final talk was delivered by a woman who introduced herself as a philosopher of science and a pagan. The aim of this talk was to explore the historical link between the occult and fascism. This promised to be a fascinating talk but unfortunately it was difficult to hear what was being said due to issues with the microphone. Because of this, and with work commitments looming, I decided to take my leave. 

Overall this was an excellent event, although one thing that seemed to be missing was a talk focusing on racism delivered by a person of colour. The topic of racism was broached several times, and perhaps if we had stayed to listen to the final speaker they would have covered this more. It’s difficult to know why there wasn’t a single talk delivered by a person of colour, perhaps the organisers couldn’t find a person of colour who was willing to speak at the event – as we all know, when people of colour try to speak up, especially on the topic of racism, they face disgusting harassment and even death threats. As an attendee I was surprised how cordial the whole event was, but I could understand anyone refusing to speak at an event designed to challenge a highly circulating right-wing conspiracy newspaper. 

Despite the event covering heavy topics and discussing some of the uglier aspects of humanity, overall it was a very hopeful event. There, in Glastonbury, the locus of UK mysticism, the residents are fighting back against right wing rhetoric, promoting some real honest-to-goodness skepticism, and drawing attention to the threat of the ‘wellness to right-wing’ radicalisation pipeline in the de facto capital of English spirituality. 

It is easy to become disheartened in what is often described as a post-truth world, but it gave me a renewed sense of hope to find that there are allies in the fight against propaganda, conspiracy, and radicalisation in a town where alternative beliefs are the norm.

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