I don’t mean to say ‘don’t answer that’ as a joke, like the answer would somehow be difficult to hear, it was an entirely serious suggestion. An order, really. It would really slow this entry down to a standstill were I to pause now to open it up for reader’s suggestions. It’s pretty much the definition of a rhetorical question, see? I’m not actually expecting you to answer, merely just asking it for dramatic effect. Do you see? Good.
Do we even have private lives anymore? In the crusty old days of the early 21st century, we were given the choice of whether we wanted to share all of our personal details and cherished moments. It used to be that it was only if you chose to download Facebook or Myspace or Friendster or Habbo or Flickr or Ribblegrink or ConsciousCoupling or SideGrindr that you consented to sharing your details online. Sure, many people would object to having to livestream ‘OMG! Toughest Poo EVER!!’, but the fact is it was my choice and I completely understood what I was signing up for.
Now though, the very act if existing in 2018 is only made possible by the existence and authority of so many digital companies- some social networks, some good old fashioned squillion dollar multinationals- that we can’t do anything without passing over at least a little bit of personal information about ourselves. My alarm clock today only agreed to shut itself off after I told it what my make of television was, my toothbrush refused to uncoil its stubble until I spent four minutes telling it what credit card companies I’d heard of, I wasn’t allowed to boil my kettle until I confessed what income bracket I was in, my left shoe wouldn’t tie until I linked the right one to at least four social media accounts, and my door would only open if I connected to it on LinkedIn. And this has all in the last hour since I got out of bed at 2:30! I managed to avoid signing up to Facebook until 2015, but after seeing so many ‘sign in with Facebook’ buttons on every site I tried to access I just got lazy and decided to let Facebook tell every site imaginable my details instead of me spending a whole 24 seconds entering them myself.
We have to stop talking about ‘The Internet’ like it’s a distinct and separate thing, a place somehow separate to everything else. We need to stop talking about ‘The Internet’ in the same way we talk about that time I wet my pants ‘at the zoo’ or that time I wet my pants ‘at Kew Gardens’ or that time I wet my pants ‘at the UN National Assembly’. Also, we need to stop talking about the times I wet my pants, can we not talk about your day for a change??
‘The Internet’ is no longer this curious and hidden alternative to reality used only by weirdos to secretly find what other depraved people near them also believe that Star Wars was never really that fucking good in the first place*. ‘The Internet’ is now just ‘Everything’. It has no unique facets or distinctive characteristics, it’s just ‘The World’.
We hear a lot about how we’re losing a lot of our privacy in the modern world, how Cambridge Analytica and Facebook are combining (with possible help from Vladamir Putin) to erase all semblances of the private life that human’s have cherished so for thousands of years.
Now, this album’s called ‘Sleep Well Beast’, and although I used to consider myself an insomniac, I actually sleep far better now ever since I was prescribed…
No. No, that’s really dull.
Beast. Beast. Beastbeastbeastbeast. Beast.
The Beast of Bodwin Moor! We all know about the Beast of Bodwin Moor, don’t we? Yeah, definitely, a keenly observed reference point that, aye? I may be about to blow your tiny minds, but did you know that actually the Beast of Bodwin Moor
Probably… probably doesn’t exist. If you suggested it did you would be laughed out of the dinner party in which you are reciting the anecdotes by all surrounding scientists. They will derisively reject your claims due to many factors such as the improbably large numbers necessary to maintain a breeding population and because climate and food supply issues would make such purported creatures’ survival in reported habitats unlikely. I mean of course it doesn’t exist. No ‘beast’ has ever existed: from the one on the Bodmin Moor, to those Fantastic ones that people are looking to find, to Adebayo Akinfenwa, to The Beast from the East that we heard so much about recently. Did you ever see this mythical ‘beast’?? No, of course you didn’t, probably because the bad weather ‘coincidentally’ happening at the same time made it difficult to so see much of anything recently.
I’ve just been thinking (see above): remember those Paris attacks back in November 2015? They were horrid, weren’t they? I think we can all agree that The Eagles of Death Metal are at best a ‘serviceable’ act, but I don’t think there’s a form of entertainment on Earth that 89 people should be slaughtered just for attending (apart from, of course, [INSERT YOUR OWN JOKE HERE, THEN HAVE SOME FUCKING RESPECT]). 130 people were murdered* in total, which I think we can all agree is far too many.
