The 100 Worst People On Twitter

@lads_house

#ladnauseum

We need to differentiate between lads and “lads”. The former come from places like St. Helens and Keighley. They’re rugby league fans, they do seasonal work on a building site and love nothing more of an evening than downing ten pints and kicking an Asian man’s head in. “Lads”, on the other hand, are all Arsenal fans from Sevenoaks. Called “Tim”. The difference between the two is effectively the difference between alleyway rapists and date rapists. And @lads_house clearly fit into the latter category.

It was clear that a “lad” “banter” account had to turn up here sooner rather than later. You may have expected it to be @MyTrueLad, a compendium of reactionary political beliefs and fictitious Shagaluf anecdotes written by 13-year-old boys. Others may have anticipated an appearance from @UniLad, a piece of online afterbirth that seemingly exists solely to give Britain’s worst newspaper columnists something to shit 500 words about out when deadline is looming.

Instead, we’ve gone for @lads_house. They make misogyny seem so… joyless. Reading their tweets is like an episode of Men Behaving Badly script-edited by Ibsen. Stilted people going through emotionless motions, men locked into a desperate cycle of making the same tweets over and over again. Rape gag, joke from Sickipedia, let everyone know you’re going out “on the lash”, reference to mentally unstable Italian footballer Mario Balotelli as some sort of role model, let everyone know you’re playing FIFA, RT any attention you get from any woman on Twitter at all. Lather, rinse, repeat, grab a craft knife, open up a vein, let the pain out.

The conceit behind the account is that it’s run by four men who live together, four men who set their attitude towards life out in their background image. They like booze (WAHEY LADS GET THE BEVVIES IN), porn (WAHEY LADS DON’T GET MANY OF THOSE TO THE POUND), fat chicks (WAHEY LADS DON’T FANCY YOURS MUCH PHWOARR), Bittorrent (ummm… WAHEY LADS P2P SOFTWARE) and Jobseekers Allowance.

Of the four men who run the account, three are currently claiming JSA. If David Cameron really wants to dismantle the welfare state, all he needs to do is print up some billboards with “classic” @lads_house Tweets (random choice: “#ThingsThatLeadToSex a well-aimed gun.”) and write “THIS IS WHERE YOUR TAX MONEY IS GOING” underneath it. That’d be enough to make Polly Toynbee want to take a shit on William Beveridge’s grave.

I can think of no greater condemnation of @lads_house than this: an account read and written by the kind of people who start games of Football Manager as a Premier League team.

Sample Tweets:

“#LadsDont hit women…unless its something kinky in the bedroom…or she didn’t butter your bacon sarnie correctly”

“Sat outside Richer Sounds on Whiteladies waiting to see Newton Faulkner play.”

“@frankieboyle Dear Mr Boyle. Any tips on how we can troll on such a widespread scale as your fine self?”