The Lad Bible is a website aimed towards men aged 16-30; a community created a few years back it focuses on the lad culture, a term we have come to recognize since the 1990's.
Before The Lad Bible, we had Uni Lad, an online magazine for the male University student. Uni Lad has come in for a considerable amount of criticism over the years, mainly for its articles entitled 'How To Pull A Fresher' or 'The Angry Shag' which tells the story of a man who, during sex, smashes a woman's face into a wall to 'knock some sense into her'. Nice. Perhaps that goes some way to explain why the website has found itself ranked as one of the 10 Worst Websites of All Time and perhaps why it toned things down considerably in recent years.
With the ever-growing popularity of social media sites Twitter and Facebook, Lad Bible's fame has reached epic proportions in recent years. The Lad Bible page on Facebook has almost 20 million 'likes' meaning it has a huge reach. Individual posts on the page often collect in excess of a quarter of a million likes and thousands upon thousands of shares meaning they consistently produce viral content. I'm sure The Lad Bible has managed to help carve successful careers out for some of the individuals whose material they share, I often find a video doing the rounds on Facebook where someone has commented, "you should send this to Lad Bible, it's definitely worthy". If someone is lucky enough to have their video deemed Lad Bible worthy then they will pocket some money and of course reap the benefits their new found instant fame will bring with it. More social media followers and perhaps more offers of having their video featured on other online media outlets.
I'll be honest, there has been content shared on Lad Bible that has made me laugh in the past. It could be a tweet, a video of an animal or perhaps a person doing something funny or ridiculously stupid. I often wonder how set up the content may be but it's garnered a laugh from me nonetheless.
In recent years, The Lad Bible has appeared like it wants to become a reputable news outlet, often publishing political posts and articles or a current affairs story. This will often provoke a controversial reaction amongst its fans with some becoming embroiled in debate or argument and others declaring The Lad Bible has lost it, it's not what it once was.
This week The Lad Bible, in my opinion, fucked up. I think the lines between what is funny and what is acceptable became massively blurred, in fact, the line I just mentioned was crossed. The 'journalist' who published the article I'm about to describe to you hop, skipped and jumped over the aforementioned line. They totally and utterly disregarded the line.
The article entitled 'Guy Shares Sick Snapchat Of Woman Shitting Herself After Passing Out At Party' talks about why people defecate themselves when they've had too much to drink. Quoting part of an article from fellow news site BuzzFeed (which too has come in for a heap of criticism this week), Lad Bible includes a quote from a doctor who goes into the scientific explanation as to why someone might experience this unfortunate situation.
Things then take an even more disgusting and perhaps sinister turn when Lad Bible, in their infinite wisdom, decide to publish the photo of the girl who was the subject of some arsehole bloke's Snapchat.
The very first sentence in this article reads as: "This Snapchat of one collapsed woman sure is something you won't shake off too quickly".
No Lad Bible, and I'm sure the girl who collapsed won't shake it off too quickly either.
Yes, that's right people, the girl had collapsed. In the photo it looks as though she is in a comatose state, totally unaware of what is going on as some vile cretin decides now is the perfect time to grab his phone and document the unfortunate situation she has found herself in. You know, instead of deciding to check if she is OK, perhaps wake her up, take her to the bathroom, do ANYTHING other than take photos and/or videos of her in quite a sorry state.
Imagine the horror that girl would face when she wakes up with not only a mammoth hangover the following morning but also discovering she has become famous for all the wrong reasons, and she had absolutely no say in the matter.
Is that not illegal? Or, if it isn't illegal is it not hugely immoral and wrong at the very least?
Perhaps you think I'm being a bore. Or I'm in desperate need of a sense of humor transplant but I honestly couldn't care less.
I feel for this girl, a lot.
Thus, on Wednesday this week, when I saw this article shared on Lad Bible I couldn't believe a media site that has over 20,000,000 fans would stoop so low as to share the photo, in all its hideous glory, complete with utterly hilarious (!) poo-related gifs. Oh, the hilarity, my sides are LITERALLY splitting, quick I might piss myself, get the phone and Snapchat that.
Is this the world we're now in where it's acceptable to share a photo of a young woman in a not-so-very-nice situation purely for the laughs and the social media 'likes'? That photo has now been shared thousands upon thousands of times; her friends have probably seen it, perhaps her parents too. The embarrassment, the shame, the comments she's undoubtedly received; it's probably been a really tough time for her. Made even worse by a site that focuses on the 'funny' deciding to turn her horror into humor, just for the sake of a few shares, a few likes and a few cheap laughs.
Vile.