Hold the Front Page 🤡🤮💩

No later than yesterday, some status Samaritans — bless them, I’d kiss their fingers — gave Kal Kalych’s content the rating it deserves.

They showered him with emoji from the heart 🤡🤮💩

Whereupon, naturally, our status dung beetle blew his top bottom.

Not everyone knows this: authors and owners of Telegram channels can’t see who exactly is leaving which reactions under their posts.

The working theory is that only Pavel Durov himself can — and French justice, bien sûr.

So hand out your hearts boldly: deranged channel admins won’t track you down, judge you or hand you over to a status tribunal.

Reaction statistics only show the number and type of taps.

Who exactly left the flame, the heart, the clown or the fragrant little poo remains a mystery shrouded in Telegram’s corporate veil.

In chats and private messages it’s different, of course: tap the counter and there’s the killjoy in person.

Reactions are the main sign of life on a channel. A post with flames and hearts catches the eye. A post without reactions looks like a dead post: people scroll past without blinking. The subconscious never fails: people gravitate towards pop slop that already has social proof.

A new channel falls into a logical paradox — chicken and egg, or as I prefer to call it, oyster and bergamot.

No reactions — the posts look dead. Dead posts don’t bring in subscribers. No subscribers — no reactions.

A vicious circle. Sour, but round.

So there’s nothing an author enjoys more than a fragrant little poo, an alcoholic clown or a thumbs up under a post.

The very thumb which, by unwritten protocol, the author is obliged to sit on in Emirates business class.

As an artist of the folk genre known as “status slanging match”, I’m interested in any attitude you have to the material: on substance, on the facts, and even in the form of a small digital turd.

Begging for upgrades is this channel’s core business.

The age of emoji has arrived.

So give full expression to your inner tolerance. Don’t be afraid of being shamed named.

Yours ever faithfully, and ever faithfully betrayed,

Hyatt Marriott-Hilton-Smythe, Esq. 🤡