Felix revealed to be 64 monkeys in West Basement
Felix Newspaper announced its strict no artificial intelligence policy to protect the “integrity of journalism and its creatives” in a statement on Instagram last year. However, this week it has been revealed why the College newspaper felt no need to dabble in ChatGPT – they have an office of 64 monkeys on typewriters in West Basement.
Ex-Editor‑in‑Chief, Barbary Hilton‑Royce, told NegaFelix that “this operation has been going on for years. It started as a student’s PhD experiment to see how long it would take the monkeys to type out some classic literature, but then they started coming up with some really good material that just couldn’t be wasted for the monkeys’ sake.”
NegaFelix wanted to further understand the working conditions of the monkeys, so we requested Barnaby access to the side rooms of West Basement that previously no one had had access to. He passed us on to the Head of MoT (Monkeys on Typewriters) Operations, Feb Senton.
“Each of the monkeys has their own typewriter. The spider monkeys generally prefer Olivetti Lettera 32s as it’s a more lightweight machine, while the chimpanzees stick to the stable Olympia SM4. All of them refuse to use the Smith Corona Corsair series, because it’s a piece of shit. M-61 says it’s the worst print quality of any vintage machine he’s ever used.”
We asked Felix Treasurer, Emmanuel Frederick, if the monkeys get paid the London Living Wage, but he told us “We’ve tried to pay them, but they don’t really care for it. They all think money is a social construct, so we just give them unlimited katsu curry from Kokoro. They have unionised multiple times over social issues such as maternity leave and time off for mental health, though.” Negafelix noted that there was a poster in the office informing Felix members that they may no longer refer to the spider monkeys as “short-handed”.
“Keep the Cat Free” has been Felix’s slogan for 50 years now, but NegaFelix wondered if this sentiment extended to the monkeys on typewriters. NegaFelix attempted to interview some of the monkeys to get an inside perspective. One monkey, M-36, said “ksfjhksdjksgjh ejfb wkwbefkweb”, and M-22 followed up with “dldkhsdgndfks”, one particularly intelligent chimpanzee mentioned the constant disagreements over the thermostat setting between the gibbons and a gorilla. However, M-64 told us “Two households, both alike in dignity,” and while we wanted to hear this statement on the comparison between cat and monkey treatment in the office, Senton requested us to leave immediately as it had “finally happened”.
NegaFelix reached out to previous Catnip Editor, Juby Roy, who told us that the paper has been very reliant on the monkeys on typewriters method, oftentimes declining students to write at all. She told us “I had to resign as Catnip Editor because they wanted to just publish M-45's work under my own name, but when I refused, the committee just dug up some old tweets I had written to get me the sack, anyway.” We asked her if she thought the monkeys were better writers than the students and she responded “well, obviously, the standard of writing from an Imperial College student is abhorrent. The monkeys write all of the witty editorials. The horoscope monkey is looking into becoming a full-time psychic.” She informed us that every Sophia Prize winner was written by one of the monkeys and played off as human creativity.
The current Editor-in-Chief was too busy copyediting (outside in the rain) to be able to give a statement on the matter, as the monkeys on typewriters are unable to do this role, and artificial intelligence has been banned.
