Tom Bell Dot Net

1. Books with a “sneak preview” excerpt of another book by the same author at the end. Surely enjoying the book you’ve just read is advertisment enough for its author? Don’t waste my bookshelf space with paper trailers.
2. The studio or technology ident films which precede some films on DVD, and go on for way too long. The Pixar one is bad enough, but the THX one (which is often consecutive with Pixar) feels like it lasts for about 15 fucking minutes.
3. The “Fast Play” feature on Disney DVDs, the sole purpose of which is to delay the start of your film by showing you ads for other things instead.
4. Smug-as-fuck animated children’s film characters.
5. Trying to watch a film trailer on Youtube and having to watch adverts first. Essentially, watching adverts in order to earn the right to watch another advert.
6. The way that more and more services and organisations require hardcopy proof of address, at the same time as fewer and fewer provide it.
7. Packaging which is designed in such a way that you can’t use the last bit of the product.
8. The tendency among contemporary educational establishments to refer to “learners” instead of “students”. It has an insulting suggestion of passivity: these people aren’t doing anything active and difficult like studying, they are simply learning, floating around and absorbing information from the educational environment.
9. When something is described as being available “24/7/365”. Surely it should be either “24/7/52” or just “24/365”. Or, you know, “24/7” which already means exactly what you’re trying to say.
10. The word “staycation”, in the UK sense. Its original US meaning was a holiday which consists of a series of day trips from your own home. This is a particular phenomenon which warrants its own name, so regardless of the aesthetics of “staycation”, it was at least doing a useful job. But when imported to the UK by lazy, ill-informed journalists, it became simply “a holiday in the UK”. Not only does this not need its own word, it’s class snobbery to suggest that it does.
11. The term “boutique” as a synonym for small.
12. Cash machines which tell you to say how much money you want, “in multiples of £10”. I’d like 10 multiples of 10, please. Oh no, you’ve given me £10.
13. Gift shops. I’m outraged by the very concept of a gift shop. A shop that defines itself as containing nothing that anyone would ever buy for themselves. Because everything in it is shit.
14. Vapes. I find it un-fucking-believable that as a society – after having made significant progress in reducing smoking, and also while professing concern about plastic and electronic waste – we seem to have sleepwalked into allowing mass consumption of what are essentially plastic, electronic cigarettes targeted at children.
15. Ice cream with bits in it. Stuff that has no business being in ice cream, like raw dough and marshmallows and shit.
16. Bottle conditioned beers. Breweries, it’s your job to give me a finished product that I can enjoy at leisure. Not a dexterity challenge where if I fail, I make the beer undrinkable.
17. Millicano coffee. Mixing some ground coffee in with your instant coffee granules does NOT make a premium product. It makes instant coffee that still tastes shit, and now has a gritty sludge at the bottom.
18. Oxo cubes. Why are they the most popular brand? They’re shit. They’re mostly salt. The foil wrapping is impossible to get off. They get all over your fingers when you try to crumble them. They’re just bad. Stock pots are better. Making your own stock is easy too, and uses up food waste. Why are we still in thrall to Oxo’s foul droppings?
19. Pom Bears. Even people who are otherwise very concerned about ensuring their children eat healthily and avoid junk food seem to believe, for some unfathomable reason, that Pom Bears are a wholesome, nutritious snack. It’s weird, because what they obviously are is a hideous mixture of powdered starch, fat, salt and sugar. They’re no different to any other ultra-processed pseudo-crisps like Pringles, except they’re pressed into a cynical child-friendly shape.
20. Book jigsaws. If you don’t have children, you’ve probably been lucky enough not to come across this exemplar of an “innovative product” that is objectively worse than its predecessors in every way. It’s a book in which every page has a jigsaw puzzle embedded in it. Sounds cute, right? Wrong. The pieces are all thin cardboard, much thinner than normal jigsaws, and bend and break much more easily. The book’s story is invariably dogshit, a talentless hack job as flimsy as the jigsaw pieces. And the very worst thing about it is that because there’s no box for holding the pieces, you have to complete every jigsaw back into its page before you can put it away: an infuriating burden on your time which is the very last thing a parent needs.
21. Vauxhall indicator sticks. Despite the standard mechanism of indicator sticks which has been established for decades and allows a driver to intuitively use them on any car, some years ago Vauxhall decided that it would “innovate” a slightly different mechanism. With Vauxhall’s completely unnecessary redesign, the stick always returns to the middle, whether you’ve applied a partial or full indicate, meaning that there’s no visual or tactile feedback to tell you which you’ve done. Also, to manually cancel a full indicate, you have to apply a partial indicate in the opposite direction. But if you accidentally push too far, you’ll end up indicating that way instead. If you ever see a Vauxhall driver indicating erratically, now you know why.
22. The pointless “innovation” of concertina-joined Post-It notes. Just stop it, 3M Company. Post-Its work; don’t try to fix them. The traditional Post-It pad, all joined on one side, is perfect. Joined on alternating sides like concertina folds, they provide the exact same functionality, with one difference: if you try to pick up the pad, but fail to grasp the whole thing from both sides, it stretches out from the table like some kind of lame stationery prank. It’s a fallacy that customers always want more choice: in this case, we definitely don’t want the choice of a product which is nearly identical, but shitter in one specific way.
23. Graphene. If you live in Manchester, it seems to be a heresy to say anything against this wonder material. Everyone has to pretend that it’s going to be the foundation of a second industrial revolution, and that all of our futuristic sci-fi gadgets are going to be made out of flakes of graphite. In 2004, two researchers in Manchester touted a smudgy bit of sticky tape as the future of manufacturing. Since then, hundreds of millions of pounds have been poured into graphene research, including at a National Graphene Institute. 20 years later, there’s an 8,000+ word Wikipedia article on “Potential applications of graphene”, and yet still no actual applications. Excuse me if I don’t share the enthusiasm for what seems like the most over-hyped thing to come out of Manchester since Be Here Now.
24. Toilets lights which switch on with a motion sensor and off with a timer, but there’s no motion sensor in the cubicles, so you end up wiping your arse in the dark.
25. Air-dried towels. The ones you get given when you visit the house of someone who doesn’t tumble dry their towels, because they prefer you to experience what it would be like to zest your skin with a box grater.
26. The Dyson Airblade V, designed to blow water from your hands straight onto your crotch.
27. Dyson vacuum cleaners. Fragile, over-engineered gimmicky pieces of crap. Give me a trusty Henry any day.
28. The Dyson company in general, which represents the triumph of marketing over real engineering. They apply the same formula to everything they make: pretend it’s an amazing, innovative product by loading it with complicated, useless plastic crap that’ll break the first time it’s used.
29. James Dyson, the tax-dodging arch-cunt who inexplicably made billions of pounds from selling flimsy, disappointing vacuum cleaners. And then sold us all the ultimate broken product – Brexit – before off-shoring his company to Singapore. And then, because these gilded pricks can never imagine that they could just shut the fuck up and we’d all get along fine without their great wisdom and influence, he had to pop up again to support Truss and Kwarteng’s economy-trashing mini-budget.
30. Alan Sugar, and his self-aggrandisement as a business guru, even though he’s basically a mediocre businessman who got lucky in the property boom. I don’t mind either that he’s a property magnate or that his other businesses failed. What I do mind is that presents himself as a paragon of business success, to the extent of being ennobled and appointed as a business advisor by the Brown government.

1. Excessive, tacky Christmas lights. I’m fucking fed up with this shit now. A few years ago, it was still ironically amusing when a few sporadic eccentrics would fill their lawns with enough wattage to be seen from space. Now every street has one of these cunts, and it’s getting fucking tiresome. “It’s just a bit of fun!” No, it’s not. It’s an eyesore. Your neighbours hate you. And the waste of electricity alone is obscene. Climate change is destroying the planet: conspicuous over-consumption of energy should be villified, not celebrated. “It’s Christmassy!” No, it’s not. A wreath on the door is Christmassy. Flashing lights, illuminated inflatables, a robotic Santa waving his arm: it looks like fucking Vegas. Or rather, it looks like you were aiming for Vegas, and what you actually achieved was redneck brothel. “I’m raising money for charity!” Oh right, you spend thousands of pounds on decorations, and then expect ME to make a donation? How about you fuck off? I hope you short a circuit and burn to a crisp.
2. Multi-coloured, flashing Christmas lights. Pay attention next time you see a Christmas scene in a film or advert. One designed by a professional designer. I guarantee you, there will be no coloured or flashing lights. Contrary to the belief of tasteless suburban idiots, what ACTUALLY looks Christmassy is steady, warm white lights. Not flashing, not every colour in the rainbow. At a push, I can even forgive red and green lights: they still look shit, but at least I can see where you’re coming from. But fucking BLUE lights? When the fuck did blue become a Christmas colour?
3. Makers and sellers of novelty gifts. You know you’re making a load of shit, and you know it’s all going to be thrown away. You might as well dump it all straight into landfill, and simply steal the money from our well-meaning but clueless grandparents. As far as I’m concerned, you’re morally equivalent to OAP-targeting phone scammers. Or worse: at least their business model is less polluting.
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INDIA SPECIAL EDITION

I really enjoyed my trip around India. This special edition of the Hate List does not represent my overall opinion of the country and its people. For a balanced view, it should be read in conjunction with my Highlights of India blog post.

1. People loudly belching in the street.
2. People loudly hacking up phlegm and spitting it out in the street.
3. People chewing paan and spitting it out in the street.
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1. Progress bars which reach the end, and then spend an indeterminately long time paused on 100% before finally completing the task.
2. When someone, on a training course for example, lists sources of information, and one of them is “the internet”. You might as well say, “reading”. The internet is not a source. The internet is a means of communicating with innumerable sources.
3. “Free” wifi spots which you have to register with to use. I don’t need any more username and password combinations in my life, certainly not for some random wifi hotspot I’ll never use again.
4. The word “webinar”.
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(Originally published on 1st August, 2012)

1. Trying to spread chilled butter on cold toast.
2. The inexplicable fluff you get in an old jar of instant coffee granules.
3. Pillows which are too thick, so that while one isn’t thick enough on its own, two are way too thick.
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(Originally published on 5th September, 2010)

1. Most Haunted. I hate the fact that a successful prime-time programme has been made out of a premise little more convincing than your average YouTube compilation of “floating orbs” (ie. flashlit raindrops). And the fact that the analysis is on a similar level to YouTube comments. I hate the fact that for all the spiritualists, mediums, “parapsychologists” and other spurious experts featured on the programme, not one sceptic is interviewed to point out that nocturnal creaking in an old house can have a perfectly natural explanation. I hate the fact that no-one ever acknowledges or even mentions the possibility of mundane physical phenomena, tricks of perception and imagination, mass hysteria, or plain old deception by the “experts” profiting from the show. And even more than I hate Derek Acorah, who is a shameless fraud and liar, but at least knows what he’s doing, I hate the heifer-eyed credulous moron, Yvette Fielding.
2. Uri Geller, an unashamed, unrepentant fraud. Look into his eyes, and you will see a cold, empty vacuum. They are the eyes of a man who has lived by lies all his life, and who knows that his entire career, fame and fortune are built on nothing but foul deceit. He is a common scam-artist with pretensions of grandeur, a corrupt, dishonest little worm, and we shouldn’t stand for him any longer. Ignore him. Encourage everyone you know to ignore him. Don’t watch any programmes with him on, don’t buy any magazines with him in, boycott him until his snivelling little lies no longer get him any money or attention. In the name of truth, and the good of society, he must be crushed without mercy.
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(Originally published on 3rd October, 2010)

IT SPECIAL EDITION

Co-authored by Tom Bell and Wam Silliams

1. People who don’t know the difference between Google and the internet, so that if you ask them to go to apple.com, they will go to Google and type in “apple.com”.
2. People who don’t know that you can press Return to submit a form, and are hopeless on the mouse, so that after typing in “apple.com”, they will slowly remove their hand from the keyboard, timidly grip the mouse, and slowly move it over to the “Search” button. Hit Return, you mouthbreathing simpletons!
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(Originally published on 13th April, 2008)

1. People who read their phone numbers out loud and break them down into the wrong groups of numbers, eg. “072 814 67 89 4”, leaving you mentally floundering. How hard is it to read the code followed by two trigrams?
2. Posh crisps, particularly ones which try to make the flavour sound gourmet when really it’s just cheese and onion. The worst I’ve seen so far is “mature cheddar and lyonnaise shallots”.
3. Anything which advertises itself as containing “Ylang Ylang”. Or anyone who has ever uttered the phrase “Ylang Ylang”.
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(Originally published on 2nd May, 2005)

1. Student-produced magazines which use 47 different fonts.
2. The 15 people out of a million who buy products from email spammers, providing them profit and incentive to continue spamming. These people must be rounded up, stripped naked, and released into a forest. I will then enter the forest, armed with a variety of assault weaponry, and the Games will begin.
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(Originally published on 29th April, 2003)

1. Use of the phrase ‘I could care less’, which is a stunning example of people simply repeating something they’ve heard without spending even a fraction of a second considering what the words actually mean.
2. The US pronunciation of ‘croissant’, i.e. ‘cruh-SONT’.
3. The way Americans profess to love cheese, while the only cheeses available in the country are rubbery, tasteless versions of cheddar and ‘Swiss’.
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(Originally published on 25th July, 2002)

1. The word ‘beastiality’. As if ‘bestiality’ just means any sex, and one has to pun it with the word ‘beast’ to talk about animal sex. Look, you etymologically-challenged fuckwits, ‘bestiality’ comes from the Latin ‘bestia’ meaning ‘beast’. Which leads to my next hate…
2. Puns between two words which come from exactly the same root, like ‘beastiality’ above, or ‘terror-riffic’.
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(Originally published on 25th October, 2001)

1. Someone who will buy a round and then keep reminding everyone all night that they did, as if we should feel guilty, or give that person special treatment.
2. Charges for toilets. I really object to being asked to pay for something that I could do against the wall outside. Exactly what service am I getting for my money? None. The wall it is, then.
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(Originally published on 6th September, 2000)

1. Charlie Dimmock. It’s a shaming reflection on men in general that this woman has reached such a level of fame and success, simply by not wearing a bra. The fact is that she’s actually profoundly unattractive, yet she enjoys a huge popular celebrity status which can only be attributed to her poor, saggy, unkempt breasts.
2. Richard Whiteley. I can’t believe this man has escaped my lists so far. Countdown is turned into string of bumbling discourse and awkward silences by a man who is simply an incompetent presenter.
3. The coccix. If I were leading an advanced biotech research team investigating human gene manipulation, my first priority would be to get rid of this little bastard.
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(Originally published in 1999 or 2000)

1. Ex-“New” Labour spin-doctor Derek Draper: an unbelievably pretentious, hypocritical, self-important, right-wing tosser. On Question Time once he said that smoking should be banned outright, and when asked if he’d ever tried it, uttered the words, “I’ve never touched a cigarette in my life. I’ve tried a cannabis cigarette.”
2. People who say that because A is so much better than B, you can’t compare them. That IS a comparison.
3. People who say “y’know” (especially the culturally-subnormal American types on talk shows) If we did know, then haven’t you just wasted your time saying it?
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(Originally published between 1997 and 1999)

1. The sort of widespread ignorance of computers and the internet which was endemic in the late 90s, and resulted in incidents such as a Ford TV ad which ended with, “E-mail us at www.ford.com”. Unfortunately, if you look up Senator Ted Stevens you’ll find that such ignorance is still widespread, especially among exactly those people in charge of regulating the internet.
2. When a written document is shown in a film or TV programme, and you don’t know whether it’s important to the plot to read it or not. Then you try to anyway, but only catch a bit of it, and spend the next ten minutes of the film worrying that you missed something crucial.
3. People who think the only way to type a capital letter on a computer is to press Caps Lock, press the letter and take Caps Lock off again.
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