Mizzy aka Bacari-Bronze O’Garro, the 18-year-old from Stoke Newington in London whose viral videos have earnt him several high-profile TV interviews (on BBC2’s Newsnight and by Piers Morgan) and the dubious support of the noxious Tate brothers (currently under house arrest in Romania suspected of being involved in organised crime and human trafficking), is the last person I want to be writing about.
I imagine, too, that he’s not someone that you wish to read about as you enjoy your Sunday in peace.
But we should consider this attention-seeking little git who steals dogs from old ladies, sidles up to women and asks if they ‘want to die’ and swaggers into strangers’ houses, terrifying their children and laughing at their discomfort and then posts the footage on social media.
He represents the absolute peak (or should that be darkest depths) of today’s cretinous online culture, a world of ever-decreasing moral values where, as he himself puts it: ‘Hate brings money, hate brings likes, hate brings views. It doesn’t matter, love or hate, it still brings views. It is just easier to do the hateful stuff.’
Mizzy aka Bacari-Bronze O’Garro (pictured), the 18-year-old from Stoke Newington in London whose viral videos have earnt him several high-profile TV interviews (on BBC2’s Newsnight and by Piers Morgan)
Those words – ‘easier to do the hateful stuff’ – chill me to the bone. Hate is this young man’s inspiration, his driver, his mantra, how he communicates. And guess what? The internet rewards him for it.
More hate, more clicks, more followers, more money. Forget love, forget kindness, forget basic humanity: that’s for sops.
Hate is where it’s at, hate is what pays. Gordon Gecko’s ‘greed is good’ may have defined my generation, but ‘hate is hot’ defines O’Garro’s.
In that respect, Piers Morgan was wrong when he called the kid a moron. Because, yes, his actions are moronic.
But this young man is not stupid. He understands the currency all too clearly. He knows what it takes to make himself famous, and maybe even rich, as a certain type of social media ‘influencer’. He’s spotted an opportunity and he’s pursuing it.
Even his mother (there is, of course, no father) is fed up with his activities. ‘I’ve had enough,’ she told the Daily Mail last week.
‘Even if he goes to the shop, he does his stupid little pranks. I don’t like what he’s doing – I’m not supporting him. He needs to find a job and sort himself out. That’s what he needs to do.’
Ah yes, a job. But what his mum doesn’t seem to understand is that as far as her son is concerned, what he’s doing is a job.
A career, even. Like countless others, he sees himself as a ‘content creator’. No doubt he aspires to be like all those internet sensations who have created lucrative income streams for themselves by prancing around their living rooms online, or ‘sharing’ their transformation journeys, or whatever other claptrap happens to catch people’s attention.
Some have actual talent: TikTok’s most followed person, for example, is the Senegalese/Italian Khaby Lame, who has amassed almost 160million followers for his gentle, silent mockery of pointless so-called internet ‘hacks’.
Others are more contentious. But the over-arching message is the same: money for nothing, clicks for free. Didn’t someone once write a song about that?
O’Garro is repulsive, beyond offensive, but he gets it. And he’s cunning. He knows how to play the system: the first thing he did when interviewed by Morgan was pull the race card, and he knows he can exploit the weakness of the police and courts to his advantage.
He understands how to weaponise his background, his upbringing, his ‘victimhood’ as the child of a single mother growing up on a council estate to game the system. He will happily bleed all those bleeding hearts dry.
And chances are it will work for him. How long before some woke professor of race theory pens a lengthy article for The Guardian telling us that O’Garro is some kind of latter-day Martin Luther King figure, exacting long-overdue reparations for slavery by breaking into the homes of privileged white middle-class professionals and terrorising them in the way white colonialists would have terrified his ancestors? You think I’m joking? I’m not.
It’s an uncomfortable truth, but there it is.
O’Garro is a blight of our own making, a product of our weak, damaged, directionless, over-indulged society; of a pop culture that rewards vulgarity and crude behaviour and tells young people: don’t bother studying hard, don’t worry about qualifications or exams or finding a profession or a trade.
Just act the fool on social media and soon you, too, could be on the front cover of a fashion magazine, or meeting your favourite footballer in the executive box, or preening your way up the red carpet at Cannes, dripping in designer clothes.
Either way, it sure beats working for a living.
Asylum seekers are protesting outside a three-star hotel in Pimlico, London, about its ‘inadequate toilets’.
Clearly they failed to do their research before coming here: Britain is famous for its terrible plumbing. Next they’ll be demanding decent dentistry.
Fed up hauling heavy bags from my local market (as part of my attempt to walk 10,000 steps a day), I bought a shopping bag on wheels.
It greatly amused my children who called me an ‘old lady’. But then my daughter (20) needed to take a pile of parcels to the post office – and guess whose ‘old lady’ trolley was suddenly very handy? She loves it so much she’s threatening to take it with her back to university.
Tres Jolie, non?
Angelina Jolie uses her celebrity to raise awareness of injustice and brutality. So how does she square this lofty stance with her decision to sell her share of Chateau Miraval, the vast vineyard estate in Provence she owned with Brad Pitt, to a Russian oligarch?
Or is it simply that when it comes to annoying her ex, Russia’s human rights record pales into insignificance?
How does Angelina Jolie (pictured) square this lofty stance with her decision to sell her share of Chateau Miraval, the vast vineyard estate in Provence she owned with Brad Pitt, to a Russian oligarch?
Setting Phillip Schofield aside, none of those associated with his reign at This Morning are covering themselves in glory.
From Eamonn Holmes to Dr Ranj Singh, they seem to want to make this wretched situation all about them.
The only person to show an ounce of dignity is the young man concerned, who has kept quiet.
I cannot fathom what’s to be gained from this protracted ‘score-settling’ (as the show’s editor, Martin Frizell, has described it).
It just makes the whole lot of them seem like a bunch of spoiled narcissists.
You won’t hear this on BBC
Labour MP Geraint Davies has been suspended over sexual harassment claims. Labour MP Geraint Davies has been suspended over sexual harassment claims. Labour MP Geraint Davies has been suspended over sexual harassment claims.
There! That should make up for the fact that, being a Labour MP, the BBC has deemed the story barely worthy of mention. Were he a Conservative, by contrast…
Bereft Succession fans may take solace from a real-life power tussle: British Vogue’s editor Edward Enninful has stepped down.
The rumour is that he and Anna ‘Nuclear’ Wintour didn’t see eye to eye. Either that or Conde Nast (or Nasty, as we used to call it) just got bored of his exhausting wokeness.
Fashion is not about that. It’s about flogging overpriced clothes to rich people with more money than sense. Having a social conscience is, if anything, an impediment.
Yes please to Rishi Sunak’s idea of an AI watchdog run on similar grounds to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
After a US military drone run by AI defied orders to abort its mission and instead eliminated the human controlling it (thankfully it was just a simulation), there has never been a more pressing issue. We need to control AI now – before it controls us.
My dog’s a real-life ghostbuster
Dr Michael Mosley has given a fascinating account of his wife’s sleep paralysis, which makes her ‘wake up’ during REM sleep and believe her bed is surrounded by ‘ghosts’.
I, too, have suffered this frightening condition. It began in my 20s, when I worked long and irregular hours. Your mind is awake, but your body is unresponsive, paralysed by the chemicals released to stop you thrashing around while unconscious.
After time, it gets less disturbing, but it’s never pleasant. Some years ago, I found a cure: my dog Muffin sleeping by my side. Again, proof that dogs are the solution to most problems.
DailyMail
