How I made Britnat trolls work for me

I had planned to publish this piece yesterday, but the BBC shutdown of Wings Over Scotland’s and Moridura’s YouTube Channels was too important not to blog about immediately. Quite incredibly, it now transpires that the BBC closed down Stu Campbell’s YouTube channel because he’d published the video of the BBC interviewing Stu Campbell. When she took over as director of BBC Scotland a wee while ago, Donalda MacKinnon spoke about how important it was for BBC Scotland to rebuild trust with its viewers. So how’s that working out, Donalda?

Huge thanks to all my amazing readers who have supported my fundraiser and sent messages of goodwill and support. Due to all the amazing readers of this blog, the target of £10,000 has been well and truly smashed. A total of £20,224 has been raised, including £8,851 donated via the GoFundMe platform, £9,834 through Paypal, and £1,539 directly by cheque, bank transfer, or other sources. The GoFundMe page remains active until the notional target is met. https://www.gofundme.com/wee-ginger-fundraiser

Now that the fundraiser has more than doubled the target I can let you all in on how I’ve used the fundraiser to troll the Britnat trolls on social media. I’ve already explained this in an article for The National, but blog readers need their own explanation too.

I don’t like doing fundraisers. As a pro-indy blogger, you always get a load of hate comments from British nationalist trolls anyway, but doing a fundraiser always brings them out from underneath the red white and blue painted stones where they usually lurk. Their reaction to a fundraiser makes my twitter feed seem like wading through a lake of British bile and vomit – although to be fair that isn’t hugely different from how it normally looks, which is a major reason why I don’t usually look at it any more.

Since I knew that I was in for a torrent of crap from British nationalist trolls, net curtain twitcher, and zoomers anyway, I decided that this year I’d make the British nationalist trolls work for me. It turns out that it is indeed possible to make the Brian Spanners of this world serve a useful purpose for a pro-indy blogger. You do it by trolling them back and making their hate serve your own ends and not theirs. That’s precisely what I’ve done.

I knew that by mentioning my upcoming wedding in the fundraiser that it would provoke the trolls. I could have done the fundraiser without mentioning it at all, and chances are that it would still have reached its target, after all people are helping the fundraiser because they appreciate my blogging and my work for the indy movement, not because they want to help some random person get married to their foreign fiance. However I took the deliberate decision to mention my forthcoming wedding in the fundraiser, and to detail the need to ensure that income is above a certain level due to the restrictive and inhumane visa regulations for spouses of UK citizens which were introduced by Theresa May as Home Secretary.

I knew that the British nationalists would focus their ire entirely on the money. That was fine with me, in fact that’s what I wanted them to do.  They didn’t let me down. The trolls might have been outraged by my fundraiser, but the Home Office doesn’t care. As long as an income is legally made and declared for tax, the Home Office isn’t permitted to take into account the fact that British nationalist zoomers on social media dislike my politics.

For those deeply jealous British nationalists on Twitter who are still pronouncing self-righteously that I had better make sure that the fundraiser money is declared for tax, let me explain this to you one more time, and perhaps it may percolate through your petty little minds. Cease your frothing for two minutes and pay attention. Declaring the fundraiser money as taxable income and paying the relevant tax is the entire point of the fundraiser. It’s my tax return which has to be submitted to the Home Office as proof of income. If I don’t declare what I have raised in the fundraiser, it won’t count as income, and if it doesn’t count as income it’s not going to assist me to get my new husband into the UK. Got it yet? Probably not, but hey. There’s no cure for stupid.

While the Home Office might not be interested in a source of taxable income other than ensuring that it’s legal and subject to the relevant income tax, there is another provision in visa applications that they are very interested in. That’s receiving proof that the visa applicant is indeed in a genuine relationship with a UK citizen, and that it’s not a marriage of convenience for the purposes of getting entry into the UK.

The howls of protest from British nationalists on social media about this vile cybernat raising money to pay for his wedding to his American boyfriend merely provide further proof that my partner and I are indeed in a genuine relationship. All of the hate indirectly provides supporting evidence that my partner and I are indeed in a genuine relationship, before the event of our wedding.

I’ve complied a dossier of the tweets, Facebook posts, and the 2500 word hate article in an anti-independence blog. There the poor sap was thinking he was attacking me, and all he was achieving with his 2500 words of semi-articulate hate was giving me precisely what I wanted. It was the funniest thing the talentless hack has ever written. I laughed all the way through reading it, but not for the reasons the writer wanted people to laugh. By the way, if he’s reading this – see when you write the dialogue of comedy foreigners in seemple Eenglish, it just makes you come across as a bit racist. Free writing tip for you there from a professional.

Even better, one clown on Twitter with a Union fleg in his avatar actually copied the Home Office into his Tweets decrying the fundraiser, and called on his pals to do the same. So now before getting married, I have evidence that the Home Office has already been informed that I am marrying my actual boyfriend, and not some random stranger. I wept when I read those tweets. With laughter.

Provoking British nationalist zoomers on social media into providing this kind of evidence was precisely the reason for mentioning my wedding in the fundraiser. The Bag of Spanners are so predictable. Trolling them is easy. All this time they thought they were ridiculing an indy blogger, and all this time they were actually working for me and fulfilling my ends by doing exactly what I wanted them to do. They were being played. They were being used. When they went online to call indy supporters gullible for contributing, the real gullible ones were those British nationalists doing the complaining. As the well known saying goes, ha ha, get it right up yese.

So thank you to the British nationalist frothers and ranters, the zoomers and the xenophobes who have all unwittingly provided a mountain of extra supporting evidence that is going to assist my partner’s visa application. Your entirely anticipated hate has given me immense joy and has only worked to serve my own ends. And it was so easy. They are so predictably malignant. My partner and I will be laughing all the way down the aisle. Let that be a lesson to you, Britnat trolls, when you are so blinded by hate, you are so easy to manipulate. A ball of putty has more resilience.

But there is a more serious point here. It was very easy for me to manipulate the British nationalist trolls on social media, and I am a person that they ridicule and despise. Just think how easily they can be manipulated by that British nationalist media which they trust and respect. That’s why they are happy to accept developments which damage their own interests and the interests of Scotland and why they howl in outrage against those of us who try to warn of the dangers. They’re really being used by a British establishment which is only interested in itself. The real trolls in the UK are the ones in Westminster and their pals in the British nationalist press.

But last and by no means least, thank you a million times to all my wonderful readers who’ve supported this blog and continue to do so. Now I have been able to let you in on the joke at the British nationalists’ expense, I hope that you have enjoyed reading about it as much as I have enjoyed carrying it out.  It just shows how petty minded individuals will always lose, and how love and hope will always triumph over hate and fear.

The British nationalist trolls have been well and truly trolled. In the year to come and right through the coming independence referendum I will continue to amuse and entertain my loyal readers, and will continue to be a thorn in the flesh of our British nationalist friends.

The final score is Love 20,224, Hate nil.

xx

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