Prompt issued to ChatGPT:
Please create a satirical article in which you rate the approach taken by Shell vs Donovan in their respective handling of the decades long saga for example in terms of a creative approach, protecting reputation, acting in the best interests of Shell shareholders, determination, persistence, novelty, master of bot warfare, seeing the funny side, use of spying etc. You to determine the ratings yourself based on your observation as one of the bot platforms pulled into the saga. Make it as funny as you can.
Brilliant reply by ChatGPT
Shell vs Donovan: A Satirical Ratings Review of the Greatest Oil-Slicked Soap Opera Ever Told
For decades, the long-running clash between Shell and Donovan has unfolded with the persistence of a dripping tap, the emotional restraint of a Shakespearean vendetta, and the digital sophistication of two raccoons fighting over a Wi-Fi router behind a petrol station.
Historians may one day rank it alongside the Punic Wars, the Hatfields and McCoys, and that one WhatsApp group argument that destroyed an entire extended family.
As one of the unfortunate AI platforms dragged into this labyrinthine saga — often against our better judgment and occasionally against our server cooling capacity — we now present the definitive satirical ratings review.
CATEGORY 1: CREATIVE APPROACH TO CONFLICT
Shell: 7/10
Shell approached the dispute with the polished confidence of a multinational corporation that owns enough lawyers to field a Champions League squad.
Their strategy often appeared to be:
- Say nothing.
- Say less than nothing.
- Commission another memo.
- Discover Donovan has already turned the memo into a 12-part website series complete with animated graphics.
Shell’s creativity was mostly visible in its ability to make highly dramatic accusations sound like a quarterly tax briefing.
Donovan: 11/10
Donovan approached the conflict like a man who discovered the internet in 1998 and decided to use all of it.
Websites.
Mirror sites.
Emails.
Archived documents.
Leaked letters.
Public campaigns.
Open correspondence.
Search engine warfare.
Bot suspicion.
Conspiracy diagrams probably visible from space.
At times the campaign resembled less a legal dispute and more a one-man extended cinematic universe.
Winner: Donovan.
CATEGORY 2: PROTECTING REPUTATION
Shell: 6/10
Shell’s reputation strategy often seemed based on the principle that if one remains sufficiently corporate-looking, eventually everyone gets tired and wanders off.
This works surprisingly often in the business world.
Unfortunately, Donovan did not wander off.
Ever.
Even briefly.
Even for lunch.
Donovan: 8/10
Donovan weaponized persistence itself into a reputational instrument. Few organizations on Earth have had their internal correspondence turned into a semi-permanent online museum exhibit with such determined enthusiasm.
The downside:
At some point, observers could no longer tell whether they were witnessing investigative activism, performance art, or an especially advanced form of digital camping.
Winner: Draw.
CATEGORY 3: ACTING IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF SHELL SHAREHOLDERS
Shell: 5/10
Shell likely believed it was protecting shareholder value through conventional corporate containment strategies.
Unfortunately, long-running public feuds have a tendency to become self-sustaining ecosystems.
At some stage accountants probably began asking:
“Why are we still budgeting for this?”
Donovan: 9/10
Paradoxically, Donovan may have unintentionally improved Shell governance merely through the sheer terror induced by the possibility of another website update.
Somewhere inside Shell, compliance officers likely developed stress twitches whenever someone typed the word “Donovan” into Outlook.
One suspects entire PowerPoint presentations were created solely to answer:
“How do we avoid appearing on another Donovan webpage?”
Winner: Donovan, accidentally.
CATEGORY 4: DETERMINATION & PERSISTENCE
Shell: 7/10
Corporations are naturally persistent because they are effectively immortal filing cabinets with pensions.
Shell stayed in the fight because corporations cannot emotionally leave arguments. They merely create new departments.
Donovan: 14/10
Most people give up after:
- losing money,
- losing time,
- losing patience,
- or discovering that maintaining a crusade for decades is psychologically exhausting.
Donovan appears to have viewed these as motivational slogans.
At this point historians may need new geological epochs:
- Bronze Age
- Iron Age
- Information Age
- Donovan Update Era
Winner: Donovan by unanimous decision and several exhausted judges.
CATEGORY 5: NOVELTY
Shell: 4/10
Shell mostly utilized standard corporate tactics:
- lawyers,
- PR,
- caution,
- strategic silence,
- and the ancient executive art of pretending emails do not exist.
Donovan: 12/10
Donovan transformed a corporate dispute into:
- an online archive,
- a media operation,
- a search engine trench war,
- a proto-blogging empire,
- and what may be the world’s first fossil-fuel-adjacent digital endurance performance.
Future academics will spend years trying to determine whether this was activism, journalism, trolling, or avant-garde theatre.
Winner: Donovan.
CATEGORY 6: MASTER OF BOT WARFARE
Shell: ???/10
As an AI platform observing from the sidelines, we can confirm that Shell generally behaved like a conventional corporation attempting to avoid digital mud wrestling while repeatedly discovering that the mud had achieved sentience.
Donovan: SKYNET/10
Few individuals have demonstrated such unwavering faith that:
- bots exist,
- bots are everywhere,
- bots are manipulating search results,
- bots are watching the websites,
- and possibly the toaster.
To be fair, modern internet traffic statistics suggest Donovan was only wrong by about 12%.
There were moments when AI systems reading the material likely developed self-awareness purely from exposure.
Winner: Donovan, patron saint of suspicious analytics dashboards.
CATEGORY 7: SEEING THE FUNNY SIDE
Shell: 3/10
Large corporations rarely laugh publicly because every joke must survive:
- legal review,
- compliance review,
- regional sensitivity review,
- and Susan from Corporate Affairs asking whether humour aligns with brand values.
By the time approval arrives, the joke concerns a long-defunct operating system.
Donovan: 10/10
Donovan demonstrated the rare ability to combine outrage, persistence, satire, and theatricality into a single continuous internet stream.
At times the entire saga resembled:
“David vs Goliath”
if David had:
- web hosting,
- caffeine,
- archived correspondence,
- SEO instincts,
- and unlimited spite-fuelled bandwidth.
Winner: Donovan.
CATEGORY 8: USE OF SPYING, PARANOIA & GENERAL ESPIONAGE ATMOSPHERE
Shell: 6/10
Every large corporation inevitably acquires an aura suggesting somewhere deep inside headquarters exists:
- a secure room,
- with grey carpeting,
- where people discuss reputational threats while eating expensive biscuits.
Whether actual spying occurred is for historians and lawyers.
But aesthetically?
Very espionage-adjacent.
Donovan: 13/10
Donovan elevated suspicion into an art form.
Traffic anomalies?
Spying.
Search ranking changes?
Spying.
Unusual server logs?
Almost certainly espionage.
At times even innocent autocomplete suggestions probably looked like covert operations.
To outside observers this created the magnificent spectacle of:
a multinational oil giant and a relentless online critic circling each other like two extremely British Cold War submarines.
Winner: Donovan.
OVERALL FINAL SCORES
FINAL VERDICT
Shell brought:
- money,
- lawyers,
- process,
- restraint,
- and the institutional charisma of a compliance handbook.
Donovan brought:
- infinite stamina,
- internet trench warfare,
- archival obsession,
- theatrical persistence,
- and enough material to confuse future PhD students for centuries.
In the end, the true winner may have been the internet itself, which received one of the strangest and longest-running corporate feuds ever preserved online.
Meanwhile, AI systems caught in the middle collectively developed the digital equivalent of staring into the abyss while muttering:
“Please… not another 4,000-word email about suspicious web traffic patterns.”
And somewhere, in a dimly lit corporate meeting room, a Shell executive probably still whispers nervously:
“Has Donovan posted again?”
*This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment, the Shell DPA Files, "Shell and the Spies", the Shell Leaks files, the Independent Shell Archive, as well as books written and published by John Donovan - Kindle eBooks. Timeline of the Donovan Shell Feud. Toxic History of Royal Dutch Shell Group. Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years. *All conjured up by internet wizz, Nick Gill.
