The Entirely Non-Ironic Death of a Lad

The following is the entirely true story of one of the greatest website founders this country has ever produced, and his tragic demise. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, but all the events are true (Disclaimer: in the same way that Fargo was true). It is written in present tense because this is more exciting.

  

The 2.00 pm L.A sunshine pours into the bedroom through the rips and crumples in Darren Webster’s Venetian blinds. The floor is littered with computer servers, laptops, empty champagne bottles, take away boxes, cigarette ends and vomit. In one corner stands a plasma screen still showing the main menu for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. In a huge heart shaped bed Darren is sleeping his hangover off loudly and deeply, his legs intertwined with those of two of the most expensive and inhibition-free call girls available on the West coast.

On the bedside table Darren’s mobile phone begins to vibrate angrily and blares out a club remix of Gangnam style. Somewhere beneath the hazy film of champagne, coke and belligerence Darren’s eyelids flicker but he doesn't reach over and the phone goes to voice mail.

“Darren baby it’s Eddie! Just a quick message to let you know I've secured the McDonalds deal, you’re welcome! They've agreed to all our demands and they’re giving you a cool million to advertise on the page! As you suggested the M is going to be held up by two topless birds with massive tits and Ronald Mcdonald will be having a big wank over them! We've come a long way baby, hit me back when you get this message.”

Darren gets up and walks over to the dresser. He looks briefly into a mirror covered in photographs of himself with various supermodels and Premier league footballers. He takes in his disheveled appearance before racking up a huge line of cocaine and arranging it into the shape of a pair of breasts. He snorts the lot but feels nothing but a faint ringing in his ears, so immune is he to feelings and Class-A narcotics. Darren scratches himself and glances over to the wall, covered from ceiling to floor with various posters and promotional leaflets for his website, his baby, his life’s work.

It is over five years since Darren co-founded the LADbible with his friend and business partner Steve.  Eddie has never said a truer word, Darren has come a long way baby.  A long way indeed.

One of the prostitutes begin to stir from the bed, slurring her words badly and asking for money or water or something, breaking Darren from his reverie.

“What is it?” he asks irritably, walking over to the Xbox and picking up his favourite controller,

“David baby, can we have some more coke?”

“What do you think I am, made of cocaine?!” Darren shouts, briefly considering the logistics of such a project and then rejecting it, “besides what are you even doing in here? This is a bedroom not a kitchen which is where you and all women belong ha ha ha #lol!”

“But, Danny baby...”

“No! Get out of the emporium of Lad and get me a bacon sandwich ha ha #sandwichwench!”

The two women stand up and start to argue but Darren puts his fingers in his ears and shouts “la la la I can’t hear you la” until they leave and he returns to his game. He has completed this particular chapter of the Call of Duty oeuvre many times but it doesn't matter. He coolly dispatches another rag-head terrorist but again derives no feeling of achievement. Darren puts the controller down and a single tear forms in the bloodshot and sleep encrusted corner of his eye, as another passenger jet roars overhead.

 How did it come to this?

Darren walks over to his laptop and logs into the LADbible. The changes that the website has undergone over the years have been extraordinary. From humble begins as an internet meme, to an ironic series of laws thought up by knowing students being faux misogynist, to its current incarnation, a literal bible. An online bible worshipped by millions of 16-25 year old men. Many of whom have dropped out of society altogether to live in Lad communes where they spend their days playing Xbox, watching football, masturbating each other to hardcore pornography and tweeting about feminist dykes and how best to spike women’s drinks. Every Sunday there is a piñata in the shape of a woman that everyone hits with sticks until it rains down pornographic magazines, cans of Carling and statistics on the disparity in wages between men and women in similar job positions.

Darren watches as thousands of posts per second fill the screen and selects one at random; it is a joke about a celebrity rape victim, written in a speech bubble coming out of the mouth of a kitten with a Hitler moustache. Darren clicks on the user’s profile. The boy is five years old. His display picture is him dressed as fireman Sam sitting on his Grandmother’s knee. Below is a comment from one of his preschool friends, “Don’t think much of that pussy mate! #lol #old” Darren sighs deeply and clicks another link, it is a photograph of an unconscious woman on the floor of a nightclub, Darren scrolls down to the comments.

Fannydragon96: Hey, the only thing worse than women is disabled women, am I right guys?! #mongs

Rickygervaisisgod: I agree!

Spunkmaster7: Yes you are correct

Thepussylord: Man I hate them women!

Dicksplash123: I wonder what Mario Balotelli would make of all this?

How did it come to this?

The door to the room opens and the LADbible cofounder Steve, resplendent in a Union Flag suit crosses the threshold. His eyes rove around the room and finally rest on Darren, his friend, his business partner, his ally of five years, weeping gently at his laptop.

“Darren, I...” he begins but Darren raises a shaking hand to stop him,

“Steve, it’s awful...it’s...”

“It isn’t our fault Darren! It was funny! We both agree it was funny! Students mimicking 1970s attitudes on the internet! We weren’t to know people wouldn’t understand the admittedly wafer thin veil of irony! We weren’t to know!”

“We should have known!  As if anyone prepared to identify themselves as a lad would have any concept of irony or self awareness! We’ve created a monster.”

“It was funny Darren, it was funny. We wanted to be politically incorrect and annoy the stupid squares and the man hating PC feminists!”

“But we didn’t want this!” Darren screams, pointing to a blog by an 18 month old baby detailing, in his opinion, which race of women are the sluttiest.

Steve can’t think of anything to say. Darren nods slowly and stands. In one motion he has pulled his laptop from the table and thrown it out of the window and into the swimming pool shaped like a penis below. Steve watches transfixed as Darren puts on a pair of aviator shades, ejects his Xbox game and inserts on a Roy Chubby Brown DVD. He walks over to the stereo and turns on Chris Moyles’ latest collection of humorous novelty songs and climbs up onto his desk.

“Steve, I want you to remember me this way.”

Darren reaches to the ceiling, pulls down a noose, and wraps it around his neck. He takes a pair of women’s underwear from his back pocket and looks deeply into his best friend’s eyes.

“Hey Steve, how many lads does it take to change a light bulb?”

“I don’t know,” Steve whispers, almost inaudibly,

“None. Let the bitch cook in the dark.”

And with these words Darren drops his trousers, stuffs the underwear into his mouth and steps off the desk, masturbating furiously as he writhes on the end of the rope like a fish on a line. But a fish with women’s pants in its mouth and one that is also capable of masturbation.

Steve hesitates for a moment as his friend twitches violently from side to side, making hideous guttural choking noises and still wanking away. Steve pulls a gun from his jacket, takes aim, and shoots his business partner squarely between the eyes, pausing only to take a picture with his camera phone.  He lets out a sigh that seems to have been brewing in his tattered soul for years and watches as the blood soaks into Darren’s Keith Lemon T shirt and drips slowly onto the carpet. He turns away and points the gun at his own head.

Outside the gates of Darren’s Los Angeles mansion the feminist group protesting Darren stop singing their lovely songs as they hear a gunshot. Followed by another.  They cannot know what has just happened beyond the large front door but seem to sense the enormity of the sound.

“What was that?” asks one.

“Forget it, ladies. It’s LADbible town.” A policeman says, in a funny cinematic reference.