Tony, meet Bubba. He's your new cellmate

Richard Catto thinks I should be jailed.

He wrote this piece on his curiously titled Cape Town News blog which, basically, said that as I had created the spoof Thabo Mbeki Facebook page I should be thrown in jail.

I see that Mr Catto belongs to the Ronald Suresh Roberts school of debate — play the man, and not the ball. In his 213-word rant he managed to call me variously a moron, a disgrace, juvenile, a miscreant, a poephol and a fuckwit. For good measure he called me that last one twice and then, to really drive his point home, the clincher: “A big fat juicy cunt of a fuckwit”.

Gosh. And I’ve never even met the man. Imagine how he’d froth at the mouth if we ever did come face to face and he saw what an idiot I really am. We could have a battle of wits but as he’s only half-armed I’ll stick to a more factual response. Let me set the record straight on this whole Thabo Mbeki-spoof-Facebook-page thing (I know that I’ve explained this in various forums before so some of you may have seen all this -– apologies for repeating it but some of you are clearly slower than others. You know who you are. Or maybe you don’t, and that’s part of the problem.).

1. I created the spoof page using Paint Shop Pro. Yes, I logged on to Facebook and created a dummy page and then did a screen grab just so I could get the layout right, use the eyedropper to get the right colour matches and so on, but then I played with that template to create something that was, essentially, a JPG image of what a page might look like.

2. There are various clues as to its “fakeness” — the silly hat on Thabo Mbeki’s head, the conjuring up of various applications that simply don’t exist, using some creative licence by putting the elements where I wanted to on the page — like the “Pokes” on the Profile page and so on. No one in their right mind and vaguely familiar with Facebook would think for a second that it is attempting to steal Thabo Mbeki’s identity. It’s a spoof. And, while clearly in a different league, it is the kind of satire that others such as Zapiro, Tom Eaton and dozens of other fine journalists indulge in all the time to make a point.

3. I did point all this out to Mr Catto (note, Richard, how I am doing my best to remain civil, respectful and mature and use your name rather than refer to you by any of the host of adjectives that are currently swimming around my brain) but he chose to ignore that logic and focus instead on the part of the process where I created the dummy page. As the self-appointed Facebook police he has told me several times that the page is in violation of Facebook’s terms and conditions. “Lankester deliberately and callously disrespected Facebook’s terms and conditions” he sniffs on his blog. OMG — he’s probably right. And he should report it to Facebook and let it police its own site. To date, no one from Facebook has asked me to remove the dummy page, which is quite telling. Oh, and Richard … I think I have an overdue library book stuck in a box somewhere from my university days. Maybe you want to alert the authorities to my deliberate and callous disrespecting of the rules of the Grahamstown Public Library.

4. However, I saw the same article on IOL that Mr Catto did and decided that, since I wasn’t using the Thabo Mbeki page anyway and it had served its purpose, I should deactivate it. It wasn’t ever intended to be an ongoing “live” parody or spoof and, if Mbeki would rather people didn’t create spoof pages of him, then I’m cool with that. Also, it was cluttering up my inbox with friend requests. So I deactivated the page. It no longer exists.

5. Yes, by creating the page I violated Facebook’s terms and conditions. Facebook doesn’t seem to care, though, so why should Mr Catto? And let’s have a bit of a reality check here — my intent was not to steal Mbeki’s identity to perpetrate any kind of crime or fraud. My intent was to create a satirical piece of humour. Did I succeed? Possibly, and possibly not. Humour is a subjective thing. But Richard Catto seems to think I’ve committed a crime (he called it a “computer crime” in one of his comments on my blog) and now thinks I should be jailed. Oh wind your neck in, Catto. Reading between the lines of your rantings it is clear that someone, at some stage has pretended to be you online. While I find that a little surprising, you (and they, actually) have a fair dose of my sympathy. But fight real rather than imaginary battles and you’ll get a lot further in life. And possibly be a lot happier.

Anyone writing such a bile-drenched piece of vitriol must have some issues. I hope he gets help.

“Clearly, Lankester is a disrespectful bastard both of me and The President,” he writes. Richard — you have that half right. You try to figure out which half. I’m curious, though, if you hold respect for others in such high esteem, why would you sit and spew four-letter words at me when I haven’t done anything to you? I think you’re a little weird, to be honest. Actually no, scrap that — a lot weird. But hey, it takes all types and you’re entitled to be as weird as you like.

Being attacked by someone in this manner is a bit like being savaged by a comatose sheep, not really worth rising to. But in the Google age his attack on me will doubtlessly show up in search-engine results in the future, so it’s best to have some sort of response out there too.

Meanwhile, I must give Richard Catto credit for adopting the best strategy I’ve seen for avoiding identity theft. Become a total git and then no one will want to steal your identity. Genius.