"Who the hell is Yann Somou?"
Yann Somou, the self-proclaimed "moany prick of an author", is the anonymous ranter who thinks the world’s going to shit – and has the sweary, sarcastic receipts to prove it.
He is the author behind 127 Reasons Why You Are an Idiot – a sweary, sarcastic, hard-hitting collection of rants about everyday idiocy. His work calls out petty habits and selfishness that show how we’re all losing touch with our humanity, one floppy-fish handshake at a time.
Yann Somou = Anonymous
Yann Somou isn’t his real name – as you'd hopefully guessed by now, it’s an anagram of the word “anonymous.”
He writes this way for a reason. By staying unnamed, he takes the author out of the equation and leaves readers with no choice but to face the words themselves. No personality to idolise, no face to attack – just the ideas, bare and unfiltered.
As he puts it: “I want people to read my words and have no other option than to consider them for their merit, without the distraction of a real living person having actually said them.”
Why Yann Writes
“We’re all collectively treating each other worse than ever before. We talk to each other like dickheads. We drive like pricks. We treat money as the be-all and end-all,” Yann says.
He argues that this slow erosion of basic decency is evidence of something bigger – that we are losing touch with our humanity. And if that continues, “there’s no way in hell we’ll be able to work together long enough to resolve the catastrophic problems coming our way.”
Climate change, overpopulation, deforestation, pollution – the list of global crises is endless. But Yann insists none of them can be solved if we can’t manage the simple act of treating one another like human beings.
His hope is simple: if we can all make the first step of recognising the little ways we’ve stopped giving a shit about each other (hence 127 Reasons Why You Are An Idiot) – and start rectifying them by thinking kindness and compassion first – then maybe, just maybe, we stand a chance of keeping our humanity intact long enough to face what’s coming.
Why Yann Swears
Yann doesn’t [only] swear for shock value – he swears because it works.
Take dog owners who don’t pick up after their pets. The polite version is what you'd find on a lamppost and goes something like: “Please be responsible and dispose of your dog’s mess.”
Exactly. A prick is never going to listen to that.
Now here’s Yann’s version: “Pick it up, you dog-shit-leaving wanker.”
It’s blunt, it’s visual, and it’s impossible to dismiss. That’s the point. Swearing cuts through the noise and shows the genuine frustration behind the words. It might just be the most honest way to write about a world where we’re all slowly giving less of a shit – sometimes literally.
If you're bothered about it, Yann politely requests you fuck off and read the academic journal of science.
2020 and the Birth of Yann
The spark for Yann’s writing came in 2020 – “the shittiest of years” – as COVID-19 confined millions to their homes.
“As you can probably tell, there’s a tincy bit of anger in this book [127 Reasons Why You Are An Idiot]. This is due in no small part to conceiving the idea and starting to write during the shittiest of years, 2020, while COVID-19 kept us all locked up in our homes. I therefore consider this finished product a homage – or a fuck you – to one of the worst periods in our collective living memory.”
The contradictions of that year magnified everything he wanted to write about. People clapped for carers while hoarding toilet roll. They preached community spirit while telling people to fuck off for standing too close in Tesco. Politicians took the piss on a whole new level. The hypocrisies of lockdown made one thing clear: the world really was going to shit – and everyone was playing their part.
Not a Complete Wanker
For all the ranting, swearing and piss-taking, Yann is relatively sure he isn’t a complete wanker. For instance, he’s the first to admit that everything he writes is “just one person’s opinion”.
He hopes readers will take it all with a pinch of self-deprecation, a sense of humour, and hopefully even the awareness that everyone, including him, is guilty of idiocy from time to time.
That being said, he'd love it if you checked out the rest of his site!
