Originally published at: Mastodon users embrace columnist's funny error about a fictitious "John Mastodon" | Boing Boing
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And this, children, is what happens when copy-editors and proofreaders no longer exist.
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Copy-editors of the world, untie!
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Oh thank goodness, I’d been trying since yesterday morning to figure out who the hell this John Mastodon guy was and why everyone was talking about him. Not hard enough to actually dig out the reasons of course, just an occasional “who is that?” when I’d see someone posting about the fictitious person.
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John Mastodon is a bit of a movie buff. The film he likes the most is Scorsese’s Goncharov, I’ve read somewhere.
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John Mastodon is a giant of a man, ‘e is. Drinks five kegs o’ ale at every meal, bans Nazi instances left n right but ne’er suspended a journalist.
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It’s really impressive he was allowed to stay around as long as he did given the generations-long blood feud between the Mastodon family and the descendants of Jebediah Twitter.
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I’ve known John Mastodon since university. One of the nicest people you could hope to meet. Thanks to that irresponsible columnist, John has had to go into hiding and is off-grid for the time being.
He would like everyone to know he is fine and in no danger. His friends can contact him by leaving a message at that place where we had that thing (they’ll know).
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Never mention this to either side of the feud:
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It’s the type of “error” that’s really revealing about bad journalism. Someone misread “join” as “John.” That’s understandable. But in order to support this misreading, someone then had to start fabricating a story about there being a singular founder behind Mastodon, and that this was an actual social network named after the founder. That’s not reporting, that fucking fiction. Seeing the name “John Mastodon” doesn’t imply that a) they’re a real person, rather than a mascot, or that b) they invented and named a social media platform after themselves. It also completely fails to understand what Mastodon even is, on a fairly fundamental level (software, not a social media platform, although it’s used as shorthand to describe platforms that use it).
That’s a pretty fucking dangerous approach to writing “news” stories.
Although they also introduce this kind of shit, too, because it’s not just “I made a typo” kind of mistake, it only starts that way. I recollect some British tabloid, a few decades back, had a story about the New Caledonian crows whose tool use was being studied. Except in repeating the story, a vital “r” got left out. So some helpful editor decided it needed some synonyms to spice things up, so the story went on, blithely, about the exploits of these “Antipodean heifers”… (I forget if they invented any details of whether they were supposed to be using their mouths or hooves to hold these tools.)
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His best friend is Bill Brasky, and i heard that both of them like to go base jumping without parachutes for fun.
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John Mastodon is vegan but he NEVER mentions it.
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Really? I heard his best friend was named Bunbury. He lives up in the country and he’s not doing so well.
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You’re right, that’s especially bad for anyone calling themselves a journalist, so I just looked up the author. He worked for more than two years at National Review and was also President of the Cornell College Republicans, so he’s got a strong background with a certain type of fiction.
He also only started as a staff writer for Mediate this month. So maybe he won’t be working there much longer if they want to pretend to be a reputable outlet.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaac-schorr-79979817a?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
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Whoo boy, it all makes sense now.
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Mastodon, Mastodon
Six foot eight, weighs a fucking ton
Musk beware, Musk beware
He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming
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