As Caesarian Sunday passed into a hazy mess of a memory, the Daily Mail reacted with expected and inevitable indignation. "Two THOUSAND Cambridge students descend on city centre park for debauched day of drinking", the headline read. Large photos of retching revellers filled both their print and online edition, underscored by comments that attacked those students who had decided to spend their day in a drunken stupor.

We know why the Mail does it. It is a conservative paper, and a lover of institution and reservation, easily provoked by the sight of Cambridge students downing drinks and wading through a Jesus Green groaning under the weight of wine bottles. It suggests that students having fun only sullies the dignity of the University. Does the Mail hate Oxbridge? It is owned by Viscount Rothermere, whose best friends and close family will have attended. The paper is staffed and written by graduates from Oxbridge. Whenever the sun comes out, the paper always finds room for a panoramic picture of people punting, or the luscious grasses of the backs. No, they don’t hate Oxbridge. They are too personally involved. They are just fascinated by it, often a result of journalists’ fond memories of their time in these colleges.

But the students here, being a reasonable and natural lot, respond to the criticism as any reasonable people would. They say they don't like the Mail either, and call it remarkably witty names like the 'Daily Fail'. In countless student articles, Union debates and casual conversation, mocking the paper has become regular and routine. Often it seems that there is no easier way to wrangle a laugh or reach agreement than to criticise the way this paper angers, aggravates and deceives readers about Oxbridge.

“I wouldn't buy the Daily Mail because, despite having never read a page of it, I'm somehow still completely certain I'd never want to!” says Rachel from Peterhouse.

But seasoned Mail-maulers can go further than just being annoyed at the way it takes compromising photos and writes bitchy articles about Cambridge. They extend their criticism to the way it targets immigrants and a host of other groups. Many dislike its attitude towards women, for instance. They point to the leering attention the Mail pays to the physical appearance of women in the public eye rather than their achievements as an example of the paper's sexism. All the more bizarre, given the Mail’s unusually predominant female readership: it is “read by the wives of the people who run the country” according to Jim Hacker in Yes Minister. Since both women and immigrants are important demographics in any university, such stances often makes students dislike it even more.

“Reading the Daily Mail is like binge drinking” explained Amy from Trinity, citing “the compulsive desire for more, followed by feelings for guilt and self-loathing.”

The problem is though that students cannot stop reading it. We claim to dislike the paper and its journalism, but their trolling is just too tempting. In lectures, screens frequently flicker across to the Mail Online, while articles are shared on Facebook and talked about with endless enthusiasm. The Mail has managed to become both a source of glee and guilt. Last year, a browser tool had to be shut down because it allowed ashamed readers to browse the website without increasing its visitor numbers, such was the demand to escape the conflicting desires of reading it. When the Mail wrote about Caesarian Sunday, the conversation was a mix of annoyance at the article and a hushed pride at being papped. So not only do students subtly read the Mail, being featured within its pages is craved and silently sought after.

“The Mail Online is my biggest guilty pleasure” admits Robin from Trinity. “Kim Kardashian is the person in the world I’d most desire to see dead, yet their coverage of her just makes my day brighter.”

But perhaps we should stop feeling that students here are as targeted as some claim. Sure, the Mail turned up to photograph students getting drunk, but, if you take a proper, long look, you'll find the Daily Mail just trolls everyone. It criticises everything. Bankers, MPs, Muslims, Mumsnet, Christians, Camilla, people who online-shop on Christmas day, gay people, the Royal Family. They all get the same treatment. It even trolls its own writers, like when Samantha Brick wrote about how hard it is to be beautiful, and the paper accompanied the piece with pictures making her look as frumpy and flabby as possible. These people are trolls par excellence. The Daily Mail doesn’t discriminate. If you are anything or anyone, they will try and find a way to ruin your reputation.

But the thing is, you cannot hate the Mail for being a bad newspaper. Because it really isn’t one. It is more of a psychological phenomenon. And since it seems to hate everything, it must hate itself too. So if you hate it, then you’ll be agreeing with the Mail. And who wants to do that?