Darren Grimes Pwns … HIMSELF

Out there on the fringes of right-wing punditry, one-man Pirandello show Darren Grimes, the character forever in search of an author, is struggling to remain relevant, despite knowing next to nothing about any subject requiring research which exceeds a cursory Google search. His latest wheeze is to attempt reinvention as an interviewer, and in pursuit of this new career direction quizzed Theresa May’s former éminence gris Nick Timothy.

This, he declared modestly, was a “good interview”. But then the mood darkened, as he continued “I checked Google for the cover art and … I am quickly losing faith and patience with big tech and their blatant anti-conservative biases”. His search had yielded the book he wanted, but had also suggested Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Maybe he has an undisclosed twitchy right arm? Whatever. James Felton reminded him “It’s based on personal history and user purchases Darren”. John O’Connell of Far Right Watch responded in similar fashion. “Recommendations are based on the users reading and purchase history”. And there are warnings from recent history on that subject.

During the Labour leadership contest back in 2015, (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch told her followers “Twitter's autocomplete on Liz Kendall MP. This is the sewer that is Jeremy Corbyn's support”. But what she had seen were suggestions based on her own search history. Even more recently, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines went one better.

“The Guardian have been made to look an ass after a third-party advertising network posted a photo of a woman performing oral sex on a donkey on the front page of their website” told the Guido Fawkes blog late in 2016. Political Scrapbook had to point out “third-party ads are usually tailored to the reader’s own browsing history”, adding “This is better than the time Louise Mensch didn’t know how Twitter search worked”.

Marc Owen Jones, meanwhile, had done the same search as Grimes and made a further discovery: “this is a GREAT example here of Grimes being dishonest and disingenuous”. He also got Mein Kampf. But Grimes had been cropping the image. “Well if you don't go to some effort to crop the page like Grimes did, you will see that the other recommended books are by [Caroline Lucas] and [Fintan O’Toole], two authors who could not be further from Hitler (and supporting Brexit for that matter)”. His conclusion?

“Grimes is engaging in #disinformation (deliberately misleading info). He deliberately omits the other information to make a specific point about tech bias”. So whichever argument you accept - ads tailored to your own search history, or deliberate cropping of images to promote disinformation - Darren Grimes has been caught out once more.

And before he tries to bleat his way out of this one, no, no-one is saying that he hasn’t got a degree, or mocking him because of his accent. Nor are they pointing out that he was a pro-EU Lib Dem before he got a sniff of the right-wing Brexiteer moneybag. All that is being pointed out is that this is all about deviousness undermined by stupidity.

Darren Grimes may not be the epitome of pointlessness. But you can see it from there.

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