I know I keep saying I'm going to leave but I just have to write this piece because I was inspired by @kaamrev's post about the closing of the Rapport. The truth is I have a shitload to say about journ*lism in general and the South African journ*lism scene but some of it would result in me doxxing myself, and quite honestly, most of it isn't interesting if you've never been in the space. I also have a funny story of how I fricked up so badly I almost caused a long-running newspaper publication to close down permanently, but I'd rather push that memory back to the dark recesses of my psyche.

With that said, I never fricked up as badly as the who we'll be discussing today - Verashni Pillay. This is pretty much South Africa's version of G*mergate, and it caused waves internationally. My post will be organised as such:

1. What is Huffpost?

2. Who is Verashni Pillay?

3. Verashni does a hate speech

4. Verashni is in trouble

5. Conclusion

What is Huffington Post

If you're familiar with online journ*lism, you'll have come across Huffpost. It is a left-leaning publication that aims to be hip and trendy while delivering the news. Not all their content is "news" and it also features a lot of clickbait pop culture slop. It's really a terrible site. The site almost died but it was purchased by Buzzfeed in 2020. It was during this time that the site experienced mass layoffs and the Canadian arm of the business was closed down.

Go on the front page right now and see the slop they post. From experience in the media industry, I can easily tell that it is a content mill that you shouldn't trust at all. I can spot the SEO tricks and the common tactics used to increase engagement and exploit the writers. Take a random article on the front page:

The headline is stuffed full of trending keywords. They had to fit in "elon musk" and "obama" to improve SEO on Google. Secondly, the writer never had to leave their desk to write the article. It's literally a longpost based on a Tweet by Elon Musk. All it does is report on the Tweet and the responses to the Tweet. I can promise you @kaamrev puts more effort into his posts than the writer of this article did.

You can also tell it's a content mill by looking at the writer's profile page.

This is someone pooping out three articles a fricking day. 100% he has a quota to meet and he's grinding away trying to achieve it. There is no way you're going to deliver quality journ*lism when you've got to write three fricking articles every day. The only way you achieve that is by writing slop.

The worst part of Huffpost is the writing. They've been bought by Buzzfeed, as I've mentioned, and they write in that "BuzzFeed" voice. You know exactly what I'm talking about. They use Black People Twitter slang and it's incredibly cringy when you see the author is a generic white dude.

Elon Musk is getting cooked on social media for equating the policies of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party to the U.S. Democratic Party at the start of Barack Obama's presidency, after Musk recently pointed to the AfD as Germany's only hope.

Yasss! Elon Musk is cooked! Fricking kill me.

Who is Verashni Pillay

For some reason, a lot of young people in South Africa want to become journ*lists. It's mostly young people who know nothing about the job market, are probably above average writers, and are highly opinionated. The truth is that once you're in the business, it's all about SEO and meeting quotas, and most importantly, YOU DON'T NEED A FRICKING JOURN*LISM DEGREE TO DO JOURN*LISM. So many idiots get scammed into a journ*lism degree that is utterly useless when all that matters is your portfolio. Instead of going into debt paying university fees, you're better off freelance writing and building up a portfolio to work your way to a permanent position (jk those don't exist anymore it's freelancers all the way down, journos don't get permanent jobs lol).

If you're in South Africa, for a long time, Rhodes University was THE place to go to study journ*lism. It had a very, very strong reputation for being a good journ*lism university and for anyone who wanted to become a journ*list it was assumed you'd be going to Rhodes.

+++++

Quick Notes from Holly!

So I attended Rhodes University, got my Masters Degree in English there and also wasted 3 years trying to get my PhD only to fail (I'm currently doing my PhD at a different university while working). I was fricked over by my supervisor majorly and I had a lecturer bully me so hard I attempted suicide, but that's a story for another day. Rhodes used to be a fun university. I arrived in 2014, which was right around the decline of the university.

Rhodes has a reputation of being a bit of a party university, and it's extremely liberal. It is also known for the National Arts Festival which is held every year. The university is located in Grahamstown which is a small town almost entirely dependent on the university for its economy. I was in Grahamstown when COVID-19 hit. Students studied from home so the university was practically empty. As a result, several businesses shut down and the entire town was financially crippled.

Fortunately, I don't live there anymore because the town can't even provide water or electricity to its residents, resulting in mass protests. I mean, they literally go weeks without any water.

I would not recommend anyone go to Rhodes University these days. It's a dead university in a dead town. Also, due to Rhodes's liberal approach to academia, they allow you to mix and match your degree however you want, allowing you to create a custom degree of your choice. I know a couple of universities in the USA like Evergreen do this shit as well. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NEVER DO THIS. If you're going to university, get a degree with a set curriculum that allows you to specialize in a skill that is in demand. Nobody wants a generalist who majored in Psychology and History, or a weirdo who decided to major in Math and English. Anyone hiring is going to take one look, think "what the frick is this shit", and move on to someone who has clearly specialized in a specific task.

Dear lord if there's any advice I can give it's that university is not there for you to follow your passions. There is nothing passionate in a university setting. YOU'RE THERE TO SECURE THE BAG. Pick a degree that is in demand. If you want to go the artistic route, university is not the place to go. You're better off independently working on a portfolio.

Last point I want to make about Rhodes. The lecturers get paid SHIT. It's actually funny how poorly they are paid. Just look at this shit:

A fricking full-blown lecturer is only netting about $25K. Why the frick would you move to a town with no water to earn peanuts?!?!

+++++

Verashni Pillay attended Rhodes University where she earned her degree in Journ*lism. Verashni quickly proved herself to be quite the ambitious journ*list and she wrote for a number of popular South African publications including News24 and the Mail & Guardian. She has won a number of prestigious awards for her journ*lism. I'm not going to list them all because quite frankly I don't care. All that matters is that she was a journ*list of note in South Africa and she worked her way up to eventually become editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post in South Africa.

Verashni Does a Hate Speech

Verashni's woes began when she allowed a blog to be published titled "Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise?". You can still find the blog post online. The author's name is Shelley Garland and the author basically argues that white men should not be given the right to vote, and that their assets should be forcibly redistributed.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170414001415/www.huffingtonpost.co.za/shelley-garland/could-it-be-time-to-deny-white-men-the-franchise_a_22036640/

For the sake of stirring drama and outrage, I'll post a few choice quotes here

If white men no longer had the vote, the progressive cause would be strengthened. It would not be necessary to deny white men indefinitely – the denial of the vote to white men for 20 years (just less than a generation) would go some way to seeing a decline in the influence of reactionary and neo-liberal ideology in the world. The influence of reckless white males were one of the primary reasons that led to the Great Recession which began in 2008. This would also strike a blow against toxic white masculinity, one that is long needed.

A withholding of the franchise from white males, along with the passing of legislation in this period to redistribute some of their assets, will also, to a degree, act as the reparations for slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, which the world is crying out for to be paid.

Although this may seem unfair and unjust, allowing white males to continue to call the shots politically and economically, following their actions over the past 500 years, is the greater injustice.

Almost immediately, the article garnered widespread attention both locally and internationally. It got so big that fricking Jordan Peterson commented on it:

Locally, many groups cried racism and attacked Huffpost for publishing the piece. Afriforum, a group focused on the rights of Afrikaaners, accused Verashni Pillay and Huffpost of hate speech.

https://mg.co.za/article/2017-07-31-fake-huffpost-blog-could-see-white-men-pulled-out-of-voting-queues-afriforum/

This did not deter Verashni and amidst the controversy, she fully defended the piece. Thanks to the wayback machine, we still have access to the article.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170414225013/https://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/04/14/this-blog-on-white-men-is-going-viral-heres-our-response_a_22039753/

A few quotes from Verashni to make you seethe:

Garland's underlying analysis about the uneven distribution of wealth and power in the world is pretty standard for feminist theory. It has been espoused in many different ways by feminist writers and theorists for decades now. In that sense, there was nothing in the article that should have shocked or surprised anybody (or so we thought.)

It would appear that perhaps much of the outcry derives from a very poor reading of the article -- or perhaps none at all.

So in response she basically shits on her readers telling them denying white men the vote is pretty normal feminist theory.

Verashni is in trouble

Well, a big plot twist emerged. Shelley Garland does not exist! The whole thing was a fricking prank written by a white man! Not just a white man, but a fucing full-blooded Boer named fricking Marius Roodt. That's a peak mayo name! Roodt wrote the piece to prove that there was little fact-checking done in South African journ*lism and so he wrote a piece where he intentionally inserted errors and he got fricking published! He made an absolute fool of Huffpost, and he's not fricking sorry about it.

https://www.news24.com/news24/i-do-not-regret-it-huffpost-fake-blogger-20170525

Eventually, the backlash got so bad that the article was taken down and an apology was issued.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181205145757/https://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/04/14/this-blog-on-white-men-is-going-viral-heres-our-response_a_22039753/

But this wasn't just a thrashing on social media. There were legal consequences to face as well. The South Africa's Press Ombud found that the article amounted to hate speech, resulting in Verashni stepping down from her position as editor-in-chief.

Since the incident, Verashni has taken on the role of the victim and has framed herself as a victim of online hate mobs. This is ironic as she tried to stir hate mobs against white men. She is just getting what she tried to dish out to others. When speaking on the matter, Verashni brings up many of the criticisms of modern journ*lism that I've brought up and she confesses that the site is basically a clickbait content mill where writers are stretched to meet insane quotas.

"He targeted a stretched newsroom that was being asked to do way too much with too little resources: we were being asked to publish 30 unique pieces of content a day in addition to wire stories and international content from the other HuffPost sites. We had three junior reporters and were refused sub-editors, despite my warning that we would run into legal trouble given the rate at which we were publishing. In addition, the editorial team was under enormous pressure from management to produce traffic and clicks."

https://themediaonline.co.za/2017/08/verashni-pillay-opens-up-about-her-hate-speech-appeal-victory/

She has also released a Ted Talk about her experience and how she got shamed because of the piece.

Quite honestly, it's an annoying video to watch. She hides behind the fact that she is a female BIPOC and argues that her identity is the reason she was attacked, and not the fact that she published an anti-democratic article arguing that white men should not be allowed to vote.

Conclusion

Verashni was knocked down but she's not out for the count. She currently works at radio station POWER 98.7. I have no knowledge of the station or what it does, and I'm not in the mood to research it. Did she learn anything from the experience? In my opinion, no. I don't think she understands or accepts that she published disgusting hate speech. That blog post should have never been published and it was only possible because

a) THE EDITORS ACTUALLY WANT TO STRIP WHITE MEN OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE

b) Huffpost is a content mill that cares more about clicks than facts.

For this reason alone you should never read Huffpost. It's inaccurate garbage mass produced for clicks. So what do you think of Verashni's story? Do you think she got what she deserved? Or was she the victim of a mean prank?