Dear Readers,
Welcome to the revamped Off The Fence, our fortnightly propaganda-slash-newsletter arm. We have a Q and A on social media addiction with critic-turned-novelist, Lauren Oyler, and a letter from New Orleans from Daisy Alioto, while we we finish with a perfect ham sandwich from Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh. But first, an investigation into the peculiar, painful ironies of HIKvision.
Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Yesterday, on Holocaust Memorial Day, the Prime Minister spoke on the phone to camp survivor Renee Salt and army veteran James Forsyth, who liberated Bergen-Belsen in 1945. ‘What you saw and experienced is horrifying,’ he said to them, ‘and we must make sure nothing like that happens again.’
Perhaps Johnson didn’t see the video made by Holocaust survivors Dorritt Oliver Wolf and Ruth Barnett, who last week implored MPs to vote the ‘genocide amendment’ of the government’s recent trade bill into law. Or perhaps it’s simply that for the UK government, a Holocaust survivor is like an expert witness in a murder trial: you only listen to the one who is telling you what you want to hear.
On January 19th, Johnson’s government narrowly won a vote to prevent the addition of a ‘genocide amendment’ to its Trade Bill. The amendment would have pressured the government to terminate trade deals with states, who had been found to be committing genocide by UK courts.
At the debate, Tory yes-man Greg Hands was on his best ‘it’s about States’ rights’ form, insisting from the dispatch box that he objected to delegating authority over trade to the judiciary. He added that ‘any responsible government’ would halt trade negotiations with a country committing genocide well before a deal was reached.
Hands’ constituents in Chelsea and Fulham might be interested to know who’s watching them. Public records show that the councils of Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham both employ CCTV cameras made by HIKvision, one of the tech firms currently enabling the Chinese government’s oppression of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang – actions which experts, Uyghurs and human rights activists now almost universally brand as genocide.
Since the autumn of 2019 US firms have been prohibited from doing business with HIKvision, along with a host of other firms that the US State Department determined to be complicit in China’s crimes against the Uyghurs. At present, no such prohibition exists in the UK.
Partially as a consequence, HIKvision cameras are increasingly watching all of us. Their CCTV units are employed in Tesco and Burger King, in Hackney, in Kew Gardens, Moorfields Eye Hospital and at the Galleon’s Reach Shopping Park. There are over a million in this country, and the influx shows no signs of stopping. HIKvision cameras were watching Mr Hands when he attended, gratis, a catered viewing of a Chelsea football match in March 2019, and they will certainly have caught a glimpse of him in 2017, when he went to visit the Shenzhen campus of telecoms giant HuaWei, tweeting a photo of himself with a senior executive and calling them a ‘big investor in the UK!’
Combing through public records of HIKvision contracts, The Fence found a series of painfully ironic deals. Most strikingly, on 2nd May 2017, as an unprecedented wave of mass arrests was sweeping through Xinjiang, HIKvision announced that its security systems would be used to safeguard the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach.
In London meanwhile, security company Permanex CCS are providing monitored CCTV during the renovation of the Old War Office, the British Army’s headquarters for the fight against Nazi Germany. Of the world’s major CCTV firms, Permanex’s website advertises its use of only one: HIKvision. Perhaps, when they have both made their empty pledges this week about Holocaust remembrance, Johnson and Hands might like to take a walk past the carefully monitored construction site, and reflect on the values for which that war was supposedly fought.
Answers on a Postcard
Which prominent London fashion designer killed an intern’s dog, then made them sign an NDA?
Crabs in a Bucket
It’s hardly surprising that the two punchiest groups in equity markets – short sellers and day traders – would finally clash. What is both surprising and amusing is almost every single detail of how it happened.
On Friday, a little-known US company called GameStop – which owns gaming shops and was seen by the financial world as on its way out – saw its shares rise by a whopping 50%. This was confusing to many, not least to Mr. Andrew Left, an irascible and larger-than-life Beverly Hills short-seller who’d been publicly betting against the company.
Left became famous in 2015/16 as part of a cadre of short sellers that took on Valeant Pharmaceuticals. He accused Valeant of inflating drug sales, and its share price fell by 90% in the ensuing weeks.
Left is known for not pulling his punches. While he didn’t allege anything fraudulent at GameStop, he said it was an underperforming business in an underperforming sector, retail, and its shares should fall.
This was picked up by a now infamous subreddit, r/wallstreetbets – which decided en masse to bet against him and other hedge funds like Melvin Capital, which had short positions in GME. This triggered a short squeeze, whereby short sellers are forced to buy back a rising stock in order to cover their losses, accelerating the spike in value.
r/wallstreetbets gives off a part 4chan, part-FinTwit vibe. They are deeply cynical, risk-on trolls that often put all their money on a single stock and hope for the best. The thread has been around for years, but only this year has it truly taken off.
This year, with many users out of work or on furlough, the number of day traders has massively increased. Now, with a large platform where they can learn what the others are doing, the subreddit can literally move markets.
Between Friday and this afternoon, GME stock rose roughly 700% and almost shuttered Melvin in the process. The rise triggered a frenzy in other underperforming companies with high short interest, like Blackberry, Nokia and Bed, Bath and Beyond. Meanwhile, Wall Street financiers have called for the stocks to be suspended. A number of trading platforms intervened – most notably, RobinHood, who banned buying the shares before market opening on Thursday.
Just hours ago, the share price began to take a devastating tumble, going on to lose a jarring two thirds of its value, until just after 16:30, GME stock began to rise again. What will happen next is entirely unclear.
It’s interesting that short-sellers, who are considered the enfant terribles of the financial markets, have found an enfant even more terrible in day traders. There are huge similarities – both groups are outsiders, obsessive, socially awkward and carry a crusader mentality against corruption on Wall Street. In fact, you could argue that Mr Left is like a boomer version of the day traders. It’s still possible r/wallstreetbets will learn that if they want to take down Wall Street, they should team up with the short sellers. Then, perhaps, things might get really funny.
Brillo Bonanza
Andrew Neil’s GB News is launching a recruitment drive for 140 journalists. They are looking for ‘disruptors and innovators’ for their 24-hour news channel, and to target the ‘vast number of British people who feel underserved and underheard by their media’.
What will this mean in practice? Well, we have heard whispers that there is a talk show slot for a certain actor-turned-activist who we won’t deign to name. What cheering news for the freelance community.
A Letter From New Orleans
As I write this, I am staring at a tree that has wedged its way through the slats of the fence on our rented patio. I’ve been reading John Ashbery’s poem, The One Thing That Can Save America:
‘I know that I braid too much on my own
Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.
They are private and always will be.’
Has anyone written a text about America that isn’t actually about themselves?
The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,
And you know instantly what I mean?
This country is a mirror in which we fall in love with ourselves–self-hatred is a form of love, you know. The love of shame. There’s one line in Ashbery’s poem that matters more than the rest. It came to me after reading about a manatee with TRUMP carved into its back.
Thank you, no more thank you.
Someone did that. A human being did that. My mother had a patient with dementia who would ask, ‘What’s it all about?’ It’s a very old-fashioned question. Most of us would just ask ‘What’s happening?’ But the assumption of an it, and that it could be about anything takes a certain type of faith this generation lacks. What’s it all about? Getting ready for bed. What’s it all about? Waking up at dusk. 400,000 dead.
The place we’re renting in New Orleans is near a train crossing. I like the sound of the horn, like a ‘threnody,’ which is a word I learned recently. There’s a local movement against the horn by the train NIMBYs. A website that promises real-time horn alerts seems to be a part of this effort. As I write this, there is a green bar across the top of the website: *thumbs up emoji* Peaceful *halo emoji* (no honks for 57 minutes)
The horn reminds me of my stepdad’s parents’ home on Lake Erie. The train whistled straight along their yard, carrying its forlorn little promises. I listened to Springsteen in the car to Ohio, all the way from Providence to Cleveland. At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet. And a freight train running through the middle of my head. It took me until New Orleans to realise he’s mimicking a train whistle in the outro of the song.
On Lake Erie, I thought I could see the ferris wheel at Cedar Point from my window, but it turns out it was just an oil refinery. I only have two things from that house – a painting and a crystal chandelier. My mother told me to tag the things I wanted with post-its, but that the other adults would probably take anything of value.
In New Orleans, the lamp next to my bed is ringed with hanging crystals instead of a shade. I see them reflected in my coffee. The convenience store at the end of our street has a sign that says ‘be nice or leave’ and two billboards stacked in the parking lot:
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU HAVE IT’S WHAT YOU GIVE
(a whisky ad)
––and below that–––
KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS
(a furniture ad)
The whisky advertisement is closer to heaven. That’s kind of funny, right?
My husband smells my hair while I am working at the kitchen table, balancing my laptop on the beaded Mardi Gras runner. ‘I use the same shampoo as your mother now,’ I say. ‘I tried it while we were visiting.’
He pretends to back away in horror. ‘But she told me the reason she uses it, is because it smells like your great-grandmother’s basement.’ He shakes his head and walks away. Probably better.
I see a boy with a nosebleed in line for beignets. Palm silhouettes blowing together, so that they look like they’re boxing. A man filming a music video. A woman hanging beads on her balcony. A billboard advertising horse-drawn funerals. A green and pink streetcar like a lozenge.
My mother asks what I’ve been doing down here. I tell her, mainly working.
‘You’re halfway through your visit’ she reminds me. I’ve become the type of person who travels to a different city just to work. But isn’t that the original type of person?
I walk to a food counter near my house to buy a salad. The man behind the counter takes a long time packing the bag. While he does that, I am watching protesters storm the capital on my phone. I’ve never seen someone fold a paper napkin so tenderly.
What remote orchard reached by winding roads
Hides them? Where are these roots?
(John Ashbery again.)
I wake up that night to a thunderstorm and it takes me a second to remember where I am and what has happened. One word: coup. I walk the length of the shotgun house to check on the puddle growing under our car.
I’ve been listening to New Order’s Ceremony on repeat. I don’t think that there are any throwaway lines. Avenues all lined with trees is one of the lesser lines. But maybe the most New Orleans. My playlist leads to Joy Division’s 1980 rehearsal session in Manchester. Ian Curtis’s muffled voice hovers on the edge of comprehension: the resigned heaven knows, the angry break them all– his life like a hymnal sliding off the back pew.
We visit friends in another part of town, sitting on their patio and watching the house across the street. They list off the movies that have been filmed there. They saw Ben Affleck recently, but Ben Affleck isn’t in New Orleans now – he’s in Los Angeles, throwing out a cardboard cutout of his ex-girlfriend. A tortoiseshell cat named Enya stops by for a stroking. She belongs to a DJ that was big in the 2010s.
There is a lost cat poster on St Claude Ave.
SHAKESPEARE IS MISSING! 2-YEAR-OLD TUXEDO SHORT-HAIRED MALE
Phil Spector dies. I read about the woman he murdered: ‘Broken teeth scattered on the floor.’ Thank you, no more thank you. A human being did that.
IF HE WILL COME TO YOU, PLEASE HOLD HIM AND CALL ME ASAP
When I was younger, I couldn’t close soft things into drawers. If any piece of cloth was sticking out, my teeth would feel itchy. It wasn’t because I was particularly tidy – I really thought that objects have feelings. You have to erect barriers around that kind of sensitivity. The other day I was clicking through the rooms of a real estate listing. An old man’s winter hat hung on a hook next to the stairs. Just a simple thing like that can make you want to cry. I tell you, and you know instantly what I mean.
NOT STREET-WISE AT ALL
I don’t think that there are any throwaway lines, but I do wonder why Auden wrote another stanza after ‘We must love one another or die.’ He threw the whole poem out eventually. Idiot.
We have dinner with different friends in an outdoor courtyard. We eat canned octopus on French bread with harissa and pickled vegetables and the next day I have black crescents of ink under my nails.
Our friends drive to the place where the map dissolves between land and water, marshland. The road seemingly sits on nothing, the only supported features are the pipelines. Each side of the road is lined with chunks of concrete. They come across a lone coyote on the road. He can neither move left nor right into the concrete or standing water, only forward. (Coyotes aren’t native to Louisiana, having appeared in the 1950s, and are considered an outlaw quadruped, which means they can be hunted year-round.)
We meet these friends again the night of the inauguration on a different patio. From the next table, I overhear Mar-a-Lago, a fake Spanish phrase. It is trashy and percussive, a discarded soda can in the grass. I’m baffled by an expression I heard on the TV earlier: ‘radical normalcy.’
My friend’s husband is waiting for his local barbershop to reopen after a virus scare – an Irish guy that gave Hunter S. Thompson his last shave. MSNBC says we are witnessing, ‘a full character arc of the American story.’
It occurs to me, this could be America’s last shave. You never know what it’s all about while it’s happening.
Brentwoodfellas
Last week, we profiled the self-styled ‘avant-garde gangster’, Jimmy Holmes. His longtime nemesis, David Hunt, has also been in the news again since Mick Norcross, a 57-year old star of The Only Way is Essex, died after tweeting ‘At the end remind yourself that you did the best you could do. And that is good enough.’
Police are not treating the death as suspicious, but it has been suggested that Norcross took his own life. In other corners though, there is bafflement as to why the garrulous nightclub owner would commit suicide. Michael Gillard has reported on allegations that the late Norcross was connected through loans to Hunt, though there is no official suggestion that the ‘Long Fella’ was involved.
Yet this is the only latest instance in a long line of links between the stars of TOWIE and the Essex underworld. Ferne McCann’s ex-boyfriend Arthur Collins, was jailed for 20 years for an acid attack that left two people partially blinded. Lauren Goodger’s on-off boyfriend, Joey Morrison, served nine years for possession of a firearm, kidnap, blackmail and actual bodily harm.
And it’s not just a bunch of naughty boyfriends. Some of the fathers of the younger cast members are also linked to drug dealing, money laundering and even police corruption. Bit more newsworthy than a vajazzle!
Fergus Butler-Grauny
We were delighted to see that Rev.’s piece on the Tories and the Church of England was syndicated by the Guardian. Fergus, who is a man of immaculately liberal sensibility, then appeared in the Guardian again just five days later, quoted in Séamas O’Reilly’s fantastic long-read into how the faithful are handling mass during lockdown.
‘Strange and uncomfortable but also super interesting’
Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts is the first event novel of 2020. Applying its cauterised scalpel to the membrane of a life lived online, it also features what we’re happy to call the ‘pegging joke of the year so far.’
It’s a witty, singular novel (we’ve read an advance copy!) that we heartily recommend to our readers. But don’t take our word for it. Zadie Smith, the prime interpreter of the here and the now, says of Fake Accounts, ‘This novel made me want to retire from contemporary reality. I loved it.’ You can – and you should – buy a copy here.
But, before the publicity rush began, The Fence slid into Oyler’s DMs to ask: are you on Twitter as much as we are?
For how many hours have you used your phone today?
Says here my daily average is 3 hours and 43 minutes, which is less than I’d expect.
How many social networking sites do you use? Which do you hate the most?
I just use Twitter and Instagram. I definitely hate Twitter more, but it’s such great material, and it’s actually extremely stimulating (even if most of the stimulation is negative). Instagram is boring and obvious. That’s not to say I don’t look at it all the time, too, but I can’t recall ever getting ‘sucked into it’ and coming out feeling changed for the worse. Looking at the stories of people I know is a nice little five-minute break, but I find the general Instagram population just too weird to be interested in, even though it seems likely they are in fact considered ‘normal.’ Looking at it reminds me of being at a frat party; insecurity tempts, but it’s always forced out by repulsed disbelief that this is a thing lots of people do. Though I probably shouldn’t say this, because apparently Instagram sells many more books, and mine are so photogenic.
Has your thumb ever hurt really badly from using your phone too much and if so did it feel like a humiliation? (This happened to me and it felt like a humiliation.)
It’s usually my pinky, which I very lazily use to balance the phone. It’s not humiliating because I think there are many people who experience this, so it’s more that I feel I’m gaining access to an important detail of human experience. Of course I would rather have access to the important human experience of ‘cell phones haven’t been invented yet’, but here we are.
Who is your favourite person on social media?
They always let you down by saying something unbelievably stupid.
Who is your least favourite, excluding those currently holding public office?
Unfortunately, they are not famous enough for me to be able to mention them ethically.
Is there anything about social media that you feel is poorly understood or discussed, perhaps especially by those in creative and/or literary circles?
1) There is a lot of good stuff on there, defining ‘good stuff’ in various ways. 2) Even if it’s a net bad, which I think it is, you can’t just turn it off. You can’t just ignore it. The only real justification I can think of for ignoring it is a desire to remain ignorant of just how out of touch you are. Which is fine, but not for a writer. Even if you know nothing about it, and the magazine you work for is read primarily by people who know at least a few people who can read Latin, even if they can’t themselves, it influences every area of society that is meaningful to a literary or creative type: politics, tech, the media, the academy, the culture industries. I’m not just talking about the obvious ways, either: the getting-the-news-from-Facebook, the Trump tweets, the increasing pressure to angle one’s book or film or academic research for optimum exposure on the relative platform. Twitter isn’t nearly as popular as the others and has this reputation for being niche, but if you’re on it a lot, over time you see how certain ideas move from the fringe to the mainstream, getting amazingly distorted along the way; the anodyne tweets become the theses of anodyne editorials, which become the anodyne messaging of politicians, who don’t even go on to win, and I’m not just talking about right-wing ideas. It is also so rare to see an original idea or original response or even an original formulation in a new book; often my response is either 1) you got this from Twitter or 2) you have no idea this lovely argument you think you came up with yourself has been through two cycles of interest and disdain online already. I think social media produces clichés very rapidly, and it’s important for writers especially to understand that.
Do you think the publishing industry wilfully distorts how much they are affected by social media on an editorial level?
I don't quite know what you mean. Do you mean, ‘is the publishing industry deluded about how much their decisions are based on what plays well on social media?’ I have no idea, because I think probably some people in publishing find it very important and others do not, and a book’s ‘performance’ on social media depends very much on genre and audience and those kinds of things. Publishing's relationship to social media is interesting because they really depend on an intermediary, the press, to have an effect. I think probably Instagram is more influential to them than Twitter, which I know from working in media doesn't really generate website traffic, so I assume it doesn’t sell books either. I’m comfortable saying that with literary fiction, the trend certainly seems to be for books that can be digested as social media can be digested, which means they have real succinct lessons and ideas, clear politics, and not too many words. People – publishers and readers – also like things that very clearly represent certain contemporary experiences, even if the book doesn’t do anything with or say anything about those experiences. But it’s important to note that these preferences don’t just come ‘from’ social media – they’re totally understandable. They’re just encouraged by social media, and the alternatives are left to fend for themselves.
With your book coming out, have you had to alter how you act on your social media accounts?
Yes, and I find it very strange and uncomfortable, but also super interesting. I decided at the beginning of January that I would post all my interviews and reviews (probably only good ones, though, my Twitter feed is not a democracy) and try to repost any praise I got, which is not something I usually do because obviously it’s unseemly. I have since learned that doing this wreaks havoc on the mind and that anyone who does it regularly should be treated with suspicion and contempt. And then there are vanity dilemmas, like: do I repost a review that is positive but gets basic facts about the book wrong? Maybe that sounds pompous, but I hate the gratitude pose authors are supposed to take these days (on social media). I would be grateful for a really in-depth, thoughtful review, but only because they are so rare, not because it’s a gift. It’s an exchange. Anyone who writes that kind of review is going to be engaged in the same ‘project’ that I like to think I’m engaged in, which is caring about literature and ideas.
Doing this promotional stuff does have the effect of making me feel distanced from social media – I don’t feel like a participant so much anymore, but someone who is making explicit requests of people there, for their time and money and attention. I try to make it funny, and I try to do ‘normal’ posts to contribute to the horrible ecosystem which has shaped me, but I at least do not believe myself, and the anxiety about making some kind of catastrophic misstep that’s always there is heightened. So much of what I usually do online has complicated or multiple motivations – I think that’s part of why social media is so compelling, there’s always this uncertainty inherent in what people are doing there – and my motivations now are super straightforward: get as many people as possible to buy my book. Which is probably why I find it contemptuous; it isn’t reciprocal, and I think a big theme running through Fake Accounts is a desire for reciprocity, how social media tricks you into thinking that people might participate in life in a fair, humane way. Another factor contributing to this distance is that some of the people who are writing about the book have been tweeting about it! Which has activated my novelist’s instincts: do they think I won’t see them? Do they not care? Do they WANT me to see them? Rich psychological terrain all around.
Have you ever quit social media? If so, what is that like and should we try it?
Yes, I quit Twitter for about five months last year. I was disappointed at how few life-changing results I experienced.
In Case You Missed It
Popula’s Nathan Munn found something dark and mysterious lurking in his father’s Montreal basement – luckily it was merely the remains of an actual Nazi soldier’s shooting gallery.
The New Yorker got under the rhythm, blues, and funk of Pixar’s Soul.
Like all great questions, the New York Times hits on one you may not have considered before, but will find impossible to stop thinking about afterward; If A Shrunk-Down Hand Were To Squeeze The Coronavirus, Would It Squeeze Or Shatter?
Katie Notopoulos discusses The Great Deplatforming of 2021 in a seething, searching piece about the role of Big Capitalism in fighting those who abuse the web for nefarious ends. Pull quote: ‘For over a decade now, when it comes to content moderation, social media platforms have played the cop — accidentally shooting themselves in the dick with their own gun, letting the bad guys operate with impunity, doling out mere speeding tickets to Mafia capos, and barely bothering to dust the donut crumbs off themselves when law-abiding citizens come in to file a noise complaint.’
What does Werner Herzog have to do with skateboarding? Absolutely nothing, but that didn’t stop him giving a truly probing, insightful and invested interview on the topic with a skateboard magazine, even commentating on selected videos: ‘So many failures, so many times... It doesn’t do good to his pelvis.’
And finally, we once again familiarised ourselves with…
...A Perfect Ham Sandwich
Aged 90, sports commentator and Irish broadcasting royalty, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh continues to enjoy a second, perhaps third life, as an ASMR-gourmand. This video, in which he demonstrates his own perfect version of a ham sandwich – or hang sangwich in local parlance – has long been feted in his native Ireland, and is enjoying just one of several recurrences further afield.
Its appeal to the layman is clear. Ó Muircheartaigh’s accent, hailing from the wilds of Dingle in Kerry, is soothing; his pronouncements stolid, reliable and rinsed through with just enough words in the Irish language to sound otherworldly and serene. His delivery is slow but not halting, and there is something innately pleasant about a man prepared to slow the world down to his own glacial pace, even if – it must be said – his sandwich itself proves controversial.
Irish people have, however, been fans of Ó Muircheartaigh for many decades, primarily for his fabled skill as a commentator of Gaelic football and hurling matches on national broadcaster RTE, where his uncanny knack for quick thinking and homespun absurdity marked him out as a poetic savant in the field. There are innumerable quotes which he accumulated over a life’s work, spoken in the heat of big matches or the lulls between play. All, it must be said, delivered in a more hurried tone than his sandwich tutorial, but none the lesser for it. Some fine points below.
During an injury-stopped play
…and Brian Dooher is down injured. And while he is, I’ll tell ye a little story: I was in Times Square in New York last week, and I was missing the Championship back home. So I approached a newsstand and I said, ‘I suppose ye wouldn’t have The Kerryman, would ye?’ To which, the Egyptian behind the counter turned to me and he said, ‘Do you want the North Kerry edition, or the South Kerry edition?’ He had both – so I bought both. And Dooher is back on his feet…
On keeping identities clear in the heat of a match
Teddy McCarthy to Mick McCarthy, no relation, Mick McCarthy back to Teddy McCarthy, still no relation.The stopwatch has stopped. It’s up to God and the referee now. The referee is Pat Horan. God is God.
And while we’re on the subject of God
I saw a few Sligo people at Mass in Gardiner Street this morning and the omens seem to be good for them. The priest was wearing the same colours as the Sligo jersey! 40 yards out on the Hogan Stand side of the field, Ciarán Whelan goes on a rampage… it’s a goal! So much for religion.
As for his sandwich-making career, much of that video’s current popularity can be traced to its recurring status as a favourite among ‘ASMR’ communities on reddit, who pursue the titular autonomous sensory meridian response (AKA that involuntary tingle that spreads down from your scalp to your spine when you experience a particularly pleasing sensation) by sharing audio and video which makes them feel soothed, relaxed or stimulated, and among whom the video is‘legendary’, and likely to continue picking up plaudits for many years to come. Just don’t try and turn it into a work of musical theatre, as one unlikely punter has already called dibs.
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TF
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