The other day whilst walking with my business partner, the one who lovingly refers to me as the Internet’s “miscreant”, I happened by chance on a profound idea, it’d been hiding amongst the arbitrary tweets and haphazard business related thoughts. Where is your money, you sneaky little fuckers! If you’re in the business of selling “e-marketing” I expect you to be driving a smallish benz, puffing on a “stogey”, talking about your international travels and those annoying tales of your grudge purchases, likey your enormous French villa bla bla bla. You never seem to have such information for me! Why, are you saving for a rainier day? I know so many people looking for experts in “e” anything you should be making a killing! They happen to live in the east of Johannesburg, again I’m new to this place so forgive my generalizations, and from what I’ve heard require you to don a moniker like “frankie the electric wizard”and palm off small tablets to club goers, but at least you’d be earning your keep in this world not just screwing about pissing into the electronic gusts.

Take for instance Charl Norman, who has created what appears a covert dating site for particularly strange looking plastic people. He drives a smallish car, dates a model, eats the finest fast food money can buy and in spite of this his wealth in the “web 2.0″ industry appears to pale in comparison to say a parliamentarian who in her spare time dates a model, is driven about in a car we’ve paid for and dines on the most expensive meals hand delivered by our conniving tax men all the while operating at one hundredth of the mental capacity poor Mr Norman does.

Nevertheless my point is, you’re all far too broke. I’ve seen CraigN rummaging through bins to find his next feast, his sidekick, who bares a striking resemblance to him, getting the scraps as identical side kicks do. I’ve heard him howling about not being able to sleep at night fearing that his status as the electronic – reverend would be revoked and reassigned to lesser evangelists like the eccentric Feng Sushi from Fizzy.co.za. Craig, if I may interrupt your untimely demise, here is some advice, “you should spend more time at work and less time praying to the xbox for salvation. You should ensure that you keep hunting human prey with your camera to the bare minimum for it shall have detrimental effects on your health and wellbeing.”

I’ve heard rumours of blogger characters who are past the magical 23 year old barrier, Saulk watch yourself, who still live with their mothers. Think Will Farrel from the Wedding Crashers, you’re playing in that territory of creepiness. I assume you lot are who do live with your mommies are saving your pennies hoping to start the next counter intuitive blogging revolution or the niche social community for the 30 + bloggers who stay at home with their mothers. To which we all have to say Amen! Thank you purple barney buddha that you’re not getting outside to breed with any of the rest of the population, spreading your immiscible identities with those who are able to mix and network with the “real folk”.

Hell what’s worse is at the last 27 dinner I noticed Walter Pike sneaking off to the “loo” incessantly, only to catch him shuffling rather hurriedly off to the car park to syphon petrol out of what he screamed were the “noobs” motor vehicles.  I of course assumed that he was going through a “rough patch” and was merely taking from the rich to feed his poor dying steed. We are reminded in those profound moments that assumptions are indeed the mother of all fuck ups because instead of re – focusing the fuel’s intentions to his own car, he pulled out a hip flask and tipped the petrol into it. I startled by this desperation, called out “Walter its cool, Garsen is handing out free Tequila!” He turned, I flinched knowing he was ashamed of himself and tried to be the better man, “its cool Walt I wont tell anyone, this’ll be our little secret”. “Thank you Vincent, I’ve always trusted you.” We went back into Capellos, misty eyed. When one of the presenters candidly mentioned “we’re also cool by the way and have tattoos”, I leaned over to Walt gave him a knowing look and we each took a swig of the petrol to take the edge off of what we’d just heard.

So to end this little tale, I shall pose a few questions to the blogging community. What are you guys doing with your money, seriously? Are you spending it on transient luxuries like french soaps and foreign smelling bath oils? Are those of you still biding your time, developing the next big thing, hoping to re create the demonic facebook? Did you go and buy an MG with the insurance money you were supposed to utilize for a responsible family sedan only to be kneed in the knads with repair bills which never seem to end?

Tell me your secrets!!

Rob Stokes, founder and owner of online marketing company Quirk has something he wants to clear up. 

“For so many month I’ve been hearing rumours on the Internet that I am an evil genetically mutated super human with a vendetta against a short, cute little Asian man” said Stokes in an interview today. “I had no idea what anyone was talking about until I caught the show Heroes and I realised why I had this bad reputation.” 

BeatMagazine took the liberty to explore this issue further and found the following photographic evidence where the resemblance is quite uncanny:

Rob Stokes

Above: Fake Rob

As you can see, there is a distinct resemblance between Stokes and the character “Adam Munroe” in the popular TV Show.

“I’m literally losing business from this and I need to set the message straight. I’m not evil, in fact I’m a really jolly guy who just wants to promote a few websites online. I’ve never even been to Japan let alone feudal Japan and while I’m super smart I’m definitely not able to heal like this Munroe character is able to.” 

BeatMag is all about getting the truth out there and we just hope and pray that people listen to his impassioned plea’s and that Quirk can continue its growth.

Super blogger and officially “Cape Town’s favourite son”, Shaun Oakes has revealed that the character is in fact a “nom de plume” and more of a “social experiment”. 

Speaking from Polokwane, a repentant Jucinda Matabane admitted that it was all just “a big joke” and that she hoped that she hadn’t offended anyone with her thinly veiled jokes. “The truth is that I’ve never actually been to Cape Town and I don’t know anyone named Shaun” said Matabane. 

She also added that she “initially just wanted to keep herself busy while working on her university projects but it got so big that it made financial sense to keep the site and make the occasional post”. 

Matabane is the most apologetic to her legion of female fans who send her flowers, chocolate and underwear. “Being a B-cup myself, it was actually quite convenient getting all this underwear and I’ve never bought a bra in the past two years”.

When asked if she would take down the site Matabane revealed she would not as she makes more money from Adsense that she does in her daily job.

For us a BeatMag, reading our favourite blog, Shaun Oakes will never be the same again.

The real

Kneeling over her latest victims, who’d been torn into bite size pieces, she looked up to us and growled “that was numbers four and five on my fucking list”. “A..a…a..cool no problem Mandy, none at all..none at all”.

We’d arrived as Mandy had invited Beatmag for an interview and to help her construct one of her infamous lists. She scuttled toward us, still gorging on the souls of sub – editorial staff and lesser mortals she’d clearly had for second breakfast. Mandy a red – eyed, eight legged jargon – spinner was compiling a list of the “least influential bloggers in South Africa”. We were only too happy to help.

“Give me the first one” she said whilst crunching what appeared to be Simonb’s smallish skull. “Well, we thought about this one quite a bit, and we thought at number one Matthew Buckland”. Shaking her head displeased, she silently scribbled as we spoke of Matthew’s abysmal failures. I recounted my vision of Matthew dressed as a clown, his make up running down his tear-stained face, handing out balloons at Spur, crying “Cirque de so lame!”. Mandy nodded knowingly – she sipped on her iced G&T and beckoned “tell me more”, all the while peering over her glass at Saul. Her comments about his writing, flattering as they were, seemed to tell a story of a stronger more disturbing fascination with his forehead..”uh well, and there was this one time we saw Matthew desperately handing out his C.V at Sandton City, but that isn’t something we’d really want to publish on the internet, would it?” Mandy stared at me, I stared at the wall behind her, shaking.

Quickly interrupting the awkward moment, I muttered “what about this Duarte fellow?” Mandy probed, “who?” I wasn’t entirely sure, but replied nonetheless “Dave is the lesser known brother of the famous Jesse Duarte, you know the one man, she’s in the ANC and stuff. Anyway, I heard the other day that Dave, since watching ‘good will hunting’, lives under the stairwell of UCT’s marketing department, biding his time reciting Seth Godin’s lectures and scratching at his ever-growing hump.” “Yes, yes it is his social experiment, huddle mind, he huddles clinging to his Godin ideology and we simply don’t mind, and he doesn’t matter” muttered Mandy.

“More, give me more!” she grew more excited, and snuck ever closer to Saul. I retreated a little. “Well uh number three on the least most influential bloggers list is, you.” Saul looked at me, I looked at him, we spun around just as our guest blogger WoganMay arrived.

Rafiq The Guru Phillips

Bio adopted and adapted from Quirk.biz :

Legend has it that Rafiq Phillips was conceived of and in the interweb. This self appointed SEM Guru is the love child of Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It is said by his peer, that Rafiq has been the industry, in one way or another, long enough to understand that making sense says nothing about one’s character – but rather in his words “reveals the inner i and connects you to the wwworld around you”.

Rafiq has repeatedly popped up on our radar as somewhat of a playboy, Wogan May one of the lesser known stars of the online space had this to say about Rafiq : “when I was a small boy, all I wanted was a real name, a name which didn’t warrant severe beatings and bogwashings. A sturdy and masculine name like Rafiq would have been nice”. We all agreed with Wogan – and prodded him with a broom stick, until he cried. Wogan was clearly dismayed.

Symbion Putterman one of Rafiq’s most vocal fans, shook and wept when we jokingly offered her a chance to meet Rafiq, “my preciousssious” she snapped, as she hunched over and bobbed up and down with glee. We’d brought along a box set of Lord of the Rings (anime ed.) in case of emergency and we tossed it as far as we could from us, Symbion scratched at the air and ran after her prize. We just ran as quickly as we fucking could.

We managed to corner the rather rotund Rafiq whilst on his summer vacation in the Swiss Alps (see above). He was out of breath and had just emerged from his latest acquisition the iCocoon.

Rafiq Phillips, much to our bemusal, is a lively little four foot creature, which took us all by surprise as he seemed so much taller online. Although Charl Norman on many occasions had promised us of its visibility we did not see any signs of the small calcium deposits (Charl called the deposits horns) growing out of Rafiq’s skull. The steel forehead, which apparently “guarantees 100% wifi reception worldwide” was clearly visible but the horns definitely not.

Rafiq opted to respond to our questions via his twitter stream (which we’d assumed was a part of his digestive tract but were it appears wrong). Rafiq has since his disappearance opted to replace his vocal chords with a bluetooth speaker device connected to his “life-stream”.

B.M : “If you could meet one person on this earth who would it be”

@Rafiq : “I are 127.0.0.1 w00t w00t!”

B.M : “Okay…”

@Rafiq : “Would u base ur personal fundamentals on the same thing that makes bank of america sink?”

B.M : “Not really, no, would you base yours on what you’ve learnt at the Google creche”?

@Rafiq : “All bees r programmed do the same ‘dance’ on lemon blossoms with variations due2blossom age”

B.M : “Yes but what does that mean, care to explain?”

@Rafiq : “It means respecting those who understand the code and use it ethically not the code itself”

B.M : “So are you trying to say the world is simply just a body of code?”

@Rafiq : “i have an idea id like2share with u”

@Rafiq : “Getting an idea from inside ur head onto paper in english any1understands takes alotta thinking”

B.M : “Thanks Rafiq, that’s all we need, k bye”

@Rafiq : “Would we need a .gov in a society that was #open !!!”

@Rafiq : “Stop, drop, climb into SERPs, open up shop. Oh, no,thats how Web AddiCT(s); roll”

@Rafiq : “Stop, drop, climb into SERPs, open up shop. Oh, no,thats how Web AddiCT(s); roll”

@Rafiq : “Stop, drop, climb into SERPs, open up shop. Oh, no,thats how Web AddiCT(s); roll”

And so he chanted, on and on, we packed up our recording equipment, waited for him to walk away scratching his round little head, still chanting “Stop, drop, climb into SERPs, open up shop. Oh, no,thats how Web AddiCT(s); roll”…

No words, just a silent prayer to the almighty Yusuf, that our friend @Rafiq will be ok.

Transcripts of this interview can be found @ www.twitter.com/rafiq

One of Simonb's many alias's

Local Fring blogger, Simonb, has had to have his Muti login revoked due to what site owners describe as “excessive usage”.

Speaking to the media last night via Skype cast, Muti founder Neville Newey had the following to say: “At first everytime Simonb posted a link he suddenly got close to 4 extra votes for that post which obviously raised suspicion. When we investigated further we realised that most of his posts led to mail order Russian bride sites owned by none other than a mysterious ‘bSimon’.”

In a case that lasted months, the Muti authorities eventually put two and two together and made the Simonb link. “He had literally thousands of Muti accounts he used to vote his sites up with” said Muti chief of police, Justice Tsoness.

“Mr b’s countless logins have been revoked but unfortunately we might only have around 4 other people on the site now” said Newey.

In an exclusive phone call with Simonb last night, Beat Magazine got the following comment: “This is honestly not what it seems. In reality I was just trying to find Shebee a girlfriend… seriously!”

There you have it folks, straight from the horses mouth.