• 
  It Takes A Lot to Laugh (It Takes A Train to Cry): The Tragedy of Hulk Hogan
• The Crucifixion of David Geithner, In Which Gawker Learns the Meaning of "Don't Shit Where You Eat," and Conde Nast Gets a Clue About What to Do With Reddit
• Yik Yak Yuck! These Boys Are Not Alright
• The Triumph of the Roly Polys: An Expert on the Law of the Jungle Awards Accolades
• Haters' Rights vs. Human Rights
• Iphigenia, Silent No More
• Death by Indifference — Not Seeing the Problem Is the Problem
• The Silence of the Pigs
• When Terrorists Fear: Popehat Gets a Call From Donna Barstow
• The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned
• Embarrassing Followers
• Pharaoh and The Red Sea
• "Streisand Effect" or "King Syndrome"?
• Sparking Up A Cyber-Frankenstein: Pushing Yellow Journalism to the Megacrowd
• Thought Crime and Its Devotees
• Parody vs. Fabulism
• "Black Robe Fever" -- Popehat Reveals His Malady
• I Robbed Leonard Cohen
• The Spirit of Surrender
• The Tale of William Popehat Hearst
• A Topic of Discussion Small Enough For Little Minds
• Unemployed Lawyers Go Zombie, And Why
• The Pizza Effect, and Why Crowds Are Stupid
• “As God Is My Witness, I Am That Fool”
• Bloom’s “Global Brain” and The Last Man on Earth
• Shitstorm by the Sea – The Sean Parker DIRA
• SMISH: Social Media-Induced Self Hate
• SMIDS: Social Media-Induced Delusional Syndrome
• Phuck Photobucket

The Triumph of the Roly Polys: An Expert on the Law of the Jungle Awards Accolades

by Charles Carreon
March 6, 2015

People called them different things — sowbugs, pillbugs, roly polys, potato bugs.  The little black, armored bugs that ball up and pretend to be dead when you touch them.  They’re a pretty low form of life, but they’d make perfect Netizens, according to Sam Biddle, the fallen Gawker tech pundit who took a “sabbatical” last year before Christmas after his tweet urging a resurgence of online bullying fell on many thousands of irritated ears connected to fingers that went to work clicking his demise.

Biddle now engages in deeper thinking, and has been suspended from off-the cuff tweeting.  In one of his tortured, post-DIRA posts, Biddle gave fellow-DIRA-victim Justine Sacco his highest praise.  Justine, who was savaged online for tweeting that she doubted she’d catch AIDS while in Africa, because she was White, garnered an online apology from Biddle after she phoned him and they met for drinks.  During their meeting, Justine essentially accepted Biddle’s tender of his guilt-rotted heart, further softened by the drubbing he’d received over his own misconstrued tweet.

Biddle was then able to reveal the extent of his admiration for Justine.  To put it simply, what really turned Biddle on about Justine was that she knew when to shut up.  Right away.  Curl up in a ball.  Tuck your head in your bottom, don’t move and perhaps the threat will take you for dead and go away.  It’s not a very inspiring position for a free speech advocate, but this is the law of the jungle.  Obey or die.

Biddle, riddled with reputational death himself, mocked fate in a danse macabre.  Bowing low before Justine, he swept the dirt, kissing the locket of her shoe.  This is supreme wisdom — she remains silent.  Together they will endure despite the kiss of death that never fails, and she will rise from the grave of her Internet burial.  For in this life, it cannot be the case for Sam Biddle and Justine Sacco that savvy brains such as theirs will look out of desolated eyes, watching their careers expire.  No, and denial is a river.