William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an old media troll, lifelong fanboy of the lulz and, as the mentor of Ambrose Bierce, could be considered a forefather of Encyclopedia Dramatica. Long before the dawn of the tubes Hearst was one of the first journalists to come to the realization that people love to read about scurrilous shit and often favor such news above all else. Hearst devoted his entire life to documenting drama whenever possible and eventually came to perfect many of the techniques essential to the dissemination of lulz.
— Successful troll is successful | ||
Early Life
Born to George & Phoebe Hearst in 1863, being the son of socialite millionaires, William was anticipated to become an upstanding member of the upper-classes so in their wisdom, his parents shipped his ass off to Harvard University.
Hearst had no intention of becoming a boring NORP so instead he became president of The Harvard Lampoon, a humor rag which took the piss out of more serious books and magazines by producing satirical parodies, affording him his first taste of just how cool it was to publish lulz.
Hearst was eventually expelled from Harvard after a series of hilarious pranks, which included inspiring his fellow students to make asses of themselves after massive keg parties and sending professors he took exception to chamber pots with their faces depicted inside the pan.
His Journalistic Career
— Hearst writer Arthur James Pegler | ||
Since Harvard told him to GTFO and his parents facepalmed at the idea that their son might become an unemployed loser, Hearst was handed the reins of The San Francisco Examiner, a newspaper his father had purchased in the hope that he could utilize it as the editorial equivalent of a self perpetuating blowjob. It subsequently transpired that nobody gave a shit about some rich fuck's auto-fellatio, so he dumped the failing rag into his son's lap, masking his bitter disappointment by claiming that it would give him a chance to become a responsible human being and do something productive with his life.
Unsurprisingly Hearst did the exact opposite. After declaring his newly acquired enterprise the Monarch Of the Dailies he transformed said publication into something resembling a prototype of today's ED within which he proceeded to document all forms of corruption, drama, and faggotry perpetrated by wealthy, self-important lolcows; some of whom had made his family rich, resulting in further embarrassment for daddy. The paper soon became one of the most widely read publications of the day, some argue as a result of Hearst correctly reasoning that a publication devoted to lulzy drama involving gargantuan lolcows was far more enjoyable to read than some self fellating piece of shit written for the purpose of getting some rich fuck off.
Later, after proving that he could make serious money off of printing and circulating lulz, his mother helped him acquire a few more news rags to which he applied his 'magic-touch', transforming them into repositories of shit people actually found interesting.
It has been posited that a key factor to Hearst's success was his practice of hiring people who would ordinarily be shit upon at other venues they attempted to write lulzy material for and letting them do what they wanted without imposing any bullshit restrictions.
War with Joseph Pulitzer
Hearst's methodology was essentially ED:LULZ incarnate before the tubes even existed; it was his dedication to this that sparked off a war with Joesph Pulitzer, a Jew who ironically had been a major influence upon Hearst's own decision to enter into the field of journalism. Not long after Hearst began making money printing lulz he decided he would troll his former idol by entering into a battle over who could sell more newspapers.
While Pulitzer had an early advantage, in that he had also been printing lulz albeit on a much smaller scale, Hearst would eventually triumph as unlike Pulitzer, who felt his newspaper should benefit society, Hearst knew people didn't give a rat's cock about Wikipediaesque purple-prose, so he just printed more lulz instead. Eventually Pulitzer was shown to be about as amusing as Unfunnypedia. Hearst rubbed further salt into the wounds by managing to steal over half of the creative talent employed by Pulitzer promising them more money and greater freedom working for worthier publications.
Ultimately what really fucked Pulitzer over was the fact that his dedication to being a boring Jew wound up being bad for his health, therefore Hearst pwned Pulitzer with his superior trolling stamina.
Hearst's lulzy political career
Hearst's earliest political action came in the form of an extended trolling campaign carried out through his newspapers against rich white assholes fucking over the little guy in a fashion many EDiots can be observed emulating today. Hearst and his reporters would dig up every embarrassing fact available to print, more often than not incorporating the lulzier rumors, before then calling out his targets over their political bullshit. In order to achieve maximum coverage the price of the newspapers was dirt cheap ($0.01) which ensured that practically every copy would sell resulting in numerous corrupt rich fucks being driven into an incoherent butthurt rage.
Hearst once threw his hat into the ring of presidential candidacy but, after a little poem written by an employee of his resulted in a shitstorm, he was forced to curtail his plans. It has been said [sauce plz!?!1!] he found the butthurt rather delicious compensation. He also attempted to become mayor and then later governor of New York but was screwed over on both occasions by the Tammany Hall machine, a society of circlejerking politicians who controlled New York politics. He ultimately found it satisfying enough to produce evidence of their corrupt bullshit in his newspapers and then laugh his ass off as they bitched about the negative publicity.
On the war front he was also responsible for trolling Spain and pissing off America enough to start the Spanish–American War by publishing all sorts of half-truths and crazy bullshit about how the Spanish, who at the time controlled the island of Cuba, were eating babies and forcing Cubans to eat their own jenkem along with a whole heap of similarly batshit insane allegations. In 1927, Hearst took it upon himself to publish spurious accounts of senators being paid by Central Americans to start a war with Mexico, just for hell of it.
In his later years, he even managed to troll Hitler in a 1934 interview by telling him Americans thought he was a shitheel because they hated dictators, and later, just to show his trolling went both ways, his American output frequently featured articles written by prominent Nazis.
Hearst's longest-running and perhaps lulziest troll was his alleged 1930's campaign to make hemp illegal, presumably because hemp forests were a threat to his own forestry concerns but, since Hearst made most of his money publishing lulz, the most likely reason for this was probably to troll drug-users in same way Prohibition had been trolling alcoholics. Well, that and the fact he was probably trying to piss off those greasy, degenerate spics south of the border, whom he fucking hated ever since one named Pancho Villa pwnt him by stealing all the hemp forests he owned in Mexico.
The Countertrolling of Hearst: The Movie
In 1941 a director by the name of Orson Welles filmed a movie entitled Citizen Kane, which opens with a thinly veiled Hearst ripoff uttering the word "Rosebud" as he dies. This resulted in a bunch of journalists shitting their pants for the rest of the movie, trying to figure out just what the fuck it meant.
It turned out that Hearst was less pissed about the feature being a shitty attack article disguised as a movie, and more because "Rosebud" was a private nickname for his wife's vagoo.
Death
Unfortunately the lulzmobile ran out of gas after the Great Depression wiped out most of Hearst's fortune, robbing him of the much needed funds he required to keep his papers turning out quality lulz. A few short years after World War II had ended he finally keeled over and snuffed it during a heart attack.
Legacy
Hearst may be dead, but left us with the knowledge that people want to read about lulz and that even the most pathetic basement dweller can be eligible for a fruitful writing career documenting drama.
Even if you have to get the ball rolling by becoming one with the lulz yourself.
See also
External Links
William Randolph Hearst Notable Biography.(dead)
(Archived)
IMDb biography on Hearst.
A boring Wikipedo biography.
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