Matthew Steeples enthuses about telling online trolls supporting Ghislaine Maxwell and the Duchess of Sussex to “bog off” given their intense dislike for such
This week, aside from bizarrely being informed that Ghislaine Maxwell is to be lauded as “a God” on Twitter and then trolled by the suggestor, yesterday another user got het up when I told them to “bog off” when they bombarded me with nonsense telling me off for not being supportive of the mendacious menace formerly known as Meghan Markle.
Responding with a poll on social media, I decided to ask the Twitterati what they viewed as an acceptable alternative to this way of saying “go away” this morning. Thus far, whilst the majority of the 100 plus respondents have suggested sticking with my favoured option, others have plumped for the more offensive “f**k off” as the way to answer these nuisances.
“Go away,” itself and “do one” have been joined by the truly, in my humble opinion, ghastly and grubby “jog on.” I examined what we called “a phrase that should be consigned to history” in August 2011 and pointed to it having first become prominent in The Football Factory film about football hooliganism.
Going further, at that time, I added:
“This awful insult got wider use in recent days after a mother from Salford used it in response to someone who criticised her defence of rioters looting stores in a BBC interview. This oik-ish woman and her Kappa clad son are unfortunately not alone in their use of this dreadful way of telling someone to ‘f*** off.’”
“On a trailer for another BBC show this morning I heard a dwarf utter it when describing how he responds when people look at him. It appears that there aren’t many places that this choice phrase of the underclass is not now used. In this vein, that Sally Bercow, the speaker’s wife, applies it when replying to negative tweets about her husband is not at all surprising.”
“’Jog on’ even gets abbreviated sometimes to ‘JTFO,’ which according to urbandictionary.com ‘adds an element of gusto and offence, for those times when the simplicity of the original phrase just don’t relay your feelings as fully and emphatically as they could.’”
“Those using the insult are even given notes actions to accompany it on one site: ‘The phrase mentioned must be preceded by raising the fore finger and middle finger to create a ‘V’ sign to the recipient. This should be followed by a movement to the side with a clenched fist and thumb extended in the direction of the movement.’”
“On Facebook there is even a group named ‘The ‘Jog On’ Appreciation Society.’ Fortunately, it only has 15 members and thankfully their aim to ‘get the phrase into the Oxford English’ doesn’t seem to have garnered much support.”
“I very much hope the phrase ‘jogs off’ into oblivion. Sadly, though, I suspect it’ll still be jogging around for some time yet.”
What’s your view? Should trolls be told to “bog off,” “go away,” “f**k off” or “jog on”? I welcome your views in the comments section below and your votes in our Twitter poll.
