La Wloo!!… How To Be a Lebanese Journalist/Blogger Know-It-All

This is a reply to the La Wlooo!!! column at BeirutNightLife.

It starts when you go to college and get a degree. This degree is the key to everything. Just because you have a degree in biology doesn’t mean you can’t discuss psychology and just because you have a BA in psychology doesn’t mean histology is out of reach. It’s all under the umbrella of knowledge.

And what better way to make yourself known that to express your all knowing self?

So it begins: the process of becoming a Lebanese journalist, blogger, writer, what have you, know-it-all.

1 – Find a platform:

You can start your own platform and express your exquisite level of knowledge all you want. What’s better would be to go around and search for a website that desperately needs your knowledge in order to generate debate and thus, website hits. That way, you won’t have to start from scratch and you can propagate your expertise regarding everything to a wide range of audience. They, as in the masses, are gullible. They will eat up anything you write about and help spread it around like there’s no tomorrow.

2 – Talk about anything:

Men and Facebook? How they’re gay for saying “looool?” – what an exquisite idea. You can write an op-ed about that. Women wearing strapless bras? That’s internet gold right there. Mini-skirts, showing cleavage? You betcha! A SEO-friendly title would help. How about you bring in the Arab hits as well? Let’s see… you can write: LEBANESE GIRLS HAVING SEX. That’s sure to get their attention, now wouldn’t it?

3 – Your opinion is fact:

Don’t let people tell you otherwise. After all, you know it all. Anything you know, they simply do not and they simply cannot *insert appropriate meme because they are hip these days* be correct while you are wrong. Therefore, you need a high-horse to climb. Then on top of that high-horse, add a pedestal. Because you’re that in these days. You’re also very high off the attention. Why not take it literally? The people are commenting en masse. Most of them agree with your all-knowing self. You are on cloud 9. You are on top of the world.

4 – Don’t Let Anyone Bring You Down:

Some other fake know-it-all come around and try to tell you off? Just shrug them off as haters. Write a sarcastic article about how they got you to crawl on your bathroom floor and weep. Then tell them off because that is exactly what a true-bred Lebanese know-it-all like you should do. While bashing their heads off, you can also blast Kelly Clarkson’s Mr. Know It All to get you in the mood of it. “Baby, you don’t know a THING!” you will sing to the screen while your fingers bang on your keyboard.

5 – Use Vulgar Language:

An article is never complete without dropping terms here and there that will get heads rolling. You know it all so there’s no way that such terms can be considered offensive. When you talk about hoes, you’re doing so because they are hoes – no way around telling it like it is. Those that don’t understand that are simply not enlightened enough. Vulgar language is here to serve your all-knowing self. And it will definitely make your article more appealing to the reader. There’s nothing more than a read filled with your grotesque depictions of people. You must shock people in order to get your point across. To talk about mini-skirts, you must use the language of those mini-skirts.

6 – Point Out Your Wittiness and Sarcasm:

Many of those miserable non-know it all readers will feel your article degrading and demeaning. After all, they cannot but be dimwitted lovers of those whom you’re talking about. So you must conclude with an italicized disclaimer that your article was sarcastic. People are just not on your level of intellectual capacity to know that your articles are reeking of social sarcasm at a situation you find peculiar. Besides, you don’t want to let people feel you’re attacking them personally now, you know, just in case.

“This is how it feels to be schooled in the art of writing a respectable satirical article”

16 thoughts on “La Wloo!!… How To Be a Lebanese Journalist/Blogger Know-It-All

  1. Epic my friend, epic. That BNL column has been getting on my nerves for a long time.
    There’s a huge difference between expressing an opinion respectfully and being disrespectful about it and acting all-knowing.

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  2. I never liked her tone but respected her opinion. But that italicized sentence at the end “The awkward moment when your sarcasm is so advanced that people actually think you are stupid” was epic: I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. That was terrible. Worst of the worst!

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  3. Love it!! Ma assaret fiya. Her “column” is ridiculous. She has no idea what a column is and what the standards for a column are!!! You’d think she’d be embarrassed but noooo. She’s PROUD!! LOL. And sorry but she’s not sarcastic. She’s cynical, judgmental and so hung-up on herself. The one thing she got right was that she belonged there, in that bathroom… Elle appartient au monde des chiottes! 😉 haha

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  4. “Waw…Euf…damn…she got served”.. walla i’m a good writer..i’m just out of words!! honestly I understand the point that this girl was trying to make, and she is a pretty good writer….but the line between sarcastic and narcassitic is very thin, and if you cross it you just come off as a b****…sorry for my language…
    sarcasm is however a very common defense mechanism…it’s a way to show off a rough exterior…in an attempt to hide a soft interior 😀 psych 1010 🙂
    Columns do support subjectivity and personal opinion in order to leave room for debate…but come on the tone of this article is just asking for negative feedback…if she had chosen a more diplomatic tone then maybe even the “hoes in hooker heels” would even take a second look at the article and try to get something from it….

    Dunno…just saying 🙂

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    • Sarcasm was not on the list I memorized a couple of months ago in my psychiatry course 😛
      Thank you for reading. And I basically said the same thing you did to a person who commented on my post about her “hoes” article.

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