Igonikon Jack By TDS in TDS's Diary Tue Feb 15, 2011 at 01:19:32 AM EST Tags: (all tags)
	For those who have got the shakes because of withdrawal, may I draw your attention to Igonikon Jack over at the Daily Telegraph? Been at it for easily a decade, on a quest (it would seem) to comment on every Daily Telegraph story in a unique long-winded and heavy on the carriage return style. I say unique, but his writing style reminds me of someone we all know, as does the reaction he provokes: "...our mouse wheels are wearing out scrolling past your poorly formatted drivel". However, a la our own version, he seems to have gone a bit meta over the years and these days most of his commentary consists of discussion of his interests in commenting. I think he has also been banned a few times, hence the current monicker: 22Igonikon2

Similar to K5's champion, seems to be under the delusion that his activities are sanctioned and indeed encouraged (invited?) by the newspaper and an adoring public and that this renders him a freelance correspondent. Recent IgJack (as he is known to his fans) commentary has discussed the difficulties of reconciling his full-time work with his heavy Telegraph commenting schedule.  A feeling many a Macbook Pro owner sitting late into the night at Denny's will no doubt empathise with. Import status updates from IgJack are also to be found within his 'PS' content (occasionally one may be directed to several other articles to piece together his more sophisticated thoughts) along with a description of his new comment auditing system which includes both a 'Redline' monitoring list pending further exposure of the miscreant as a "PB" (IgJack's own terminology: Pedestrian Blogger) should they fail to apologise. A few years back, the DT's most vacuous official scribe (and one-time HHD suspect) did indeed investigate: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/bryonygordon/3685691/The_mystery_of_Igonikon_J ack/ http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/bryonygordon/3685681/Igonikon_Jack_strikes_bac k/ Others too have pondered the mystery: http://www.thefullwiki.org/Igonikon_Jack http://my.opera.com/robot_tourist/blog/2008/01/19/igonikon-jack Some say he is a bot, some wonder if he is some sort of 'Ghost in the shell' style evolution of consciousness out in the net, but apparently he is an American from Baton Rouge. I don't discount the bot hypothesis entirely, IgJack's territory is the comment article, one can imagine quite an impressive bot that mines the article for sufficient context to then reproduce at the start of the comment. Maybe trane could make an assessment. He has a Facebook page as well. Perhaps if we find ourselves permanently deprived of our leading content generator, Modus could lead a delegation to try and sign up this chap? I concede it is a bit like Liverpool trying to replace  Fernando Torres with Andy Carroll but you have to keep going.

Related Links

http://blo gs.telegraph.co.uk/news/bryonygordon/3685691/The_mystery_of_Igonikon_J ack/ http://blo gs.telegraph.co.uk/news/bryonygordon/3685681/Igonikon_Jack_strikes_bac k/ http://www .thefullwiki.org/Igonikon_Jack http://my. opera.com/robot_tourist/blog/2008/01/19/igonikon-jack TDS's Diary