Not to sound like some depressing
melodramatic emotional teenager but recently I’ve been getting less and less
enthusiastic about growing up and assimilating into the ‘real world’ if you can
even call it that anymore.
Every day I turn on my computer and automatically visit my familiar virtual haunts. The sites I frequent the most are Facebook, BBC News, Reddit and Tumblr; they’re usually visited in this order.
Yet I don’t know why I do, I don’t really enjoy using any of these websites anymore. They just convince me that we’re heading towards a dystopian world similar to the one envisioned by Cormac Mcarthy in The Road… Well that’s how I feel today anyway.
I signed onto Facebook (which is a depressing enough statement in itself) and read some of the posts/links my ‘friends’ had posted. Whilst I’m not entirely certain of its integrity there was a link to an article about a law the Tories have allegedly implemented which allows the police to arrest people publically criticizing celebrities, members of government and the royal family. The article continued to suggest that the arrestees would be subject to mental health screenings and then possibly incarcerated. Like I said, I’m not sure if I believe this, as I’d not seen any other information/articles on this before and the article says the law was pasted ‘secretively’. Yet at the same time, my faith in the honesty of governments and the systems in place have never been lower and I don’t think I’ll see anything to convince me otherwise.
The other thing I saw linked on Facebook today was the confirmation that the rapper DMX would be boxing the alleged racially motivated teen murderer George Zimmerman, which of course inspired lots of rage induced remarks celebrating the potential murdering of Zimmerman. Whilst the Zimmerman case seems to be further proof about the level of corruption within the justice system, this wasn’t the cause of my dejection today. The fact that a company is able to capitalize on a fight between a celebrity and a much hated suspected murderer seems like a premise for some dystopian sci-fi fiction where a hoard of onlookers goad the celebrity into murdering the villain for their own sadistic pleasure like some kind of gladiator match. Admittedly my outlook it a bit of a jump from the relatively safe organized boxing event that it will be, but it’s not much of a jump!
Disheartened by my escapades on Facebook I decided to close the tab and scour the pages of Reddit instead. After scrolling through a few dozen pictures of memes, comics and cats I stumbled across some more depressing news that only encouraged my opinion that society is shit. An article about a man named Alfred Wright who was the victim of a hate crime. I read a couple of other articles around the incident to convince me that this is actually what happened but the fact that it did didn’t really surprise me. Wright, an African American, was a well-educated physical therapist living in Texas. After being missing for 18 days he was found with his throat cut, his ear removed and his teeth damaged. However the forensic pathologist put the death down to a drug overdose, forcing the family to seek out a coroner to confirm the obvious. It’s sickening how in 2014 there are professionals out there who seek to perpetuate racist stereotypes and are comfortable denying horrific attacks such as this one. What’s even more upsetting is the high probability that the perpetrators will never face any punishment, partly due to the little evidence but largely because of the corrupt and racist authorities.
After reading this I didn’t really feel like scrolling through some more miserable news so I decided to browse through tumblr, which is usually just impressive photos or art. However it wasn’t long before I stumbled across another gloomy piece of news.
A while back I signed a petition protesting against a coal mining company that planned to dump a large amount of seabed onto the great-barrier reef. Today I discovered the petition was useless, as the Australian government have approved this ‘dredging’. Despite this another petition has been launched which I urge you to sign http://www.savethereef.org.au/. Even though I sign these things to help in what little way I can I often feel that these attempts are futile, the bastards have already won, Capitalism reigns and the world is going down the shitter. Yet the people who actually put in the effort to conserve the natural world and make changes inspire me.
I’m getting sick with the majority of the Internet. It’s completely saturated with advertisements and fads. People get told how to think without even realizing it, we get monitored and exposed to irrelevant news about people we’ll never meet and end up thinking our possessions and popularity is paramount to our pursuit of happiness. Nothing is real anymore; people are happy viewing the entire world through their tiny screens, when the actual natural world get’s destroyed most of us won’t even notice.
On the other hand we wouldn’t be aware of half the atrocities without the Internet and people wouldn’t be able to sign petitions to stop these crimes against humanity… But does that even make a difference? How am I to know whether the petition is nothing more than an accumulation of digits on a screen, are they really doing anything? And does my awareness do anything for my wellbeing? Or does it just make me depressed about how shitty people can be?
Sometimes I think the world would be better off without technology but other times I’m not so sure, either way I should do something with my awareness. I’m still not sure what I can do but I know what I won’t…
Which I guess is a start.
Every day I turn on my computer and automatically visit my familiar virtual haunts. The sites I frequent the most are Facebook, BBC News, Reddit and Tumblr; they’re usually visited in this order.
Yet I don’t know why I do, I don’t really enjoy using any of these websites anymore. They just convince me that we’re heading towards a dystopian world similar to the one envisioned by Cormac Mcarthy in The Road… Well that’s how I feel today anyway.
I signed onto Facebook (which is a depressing enough statement in itself) and read some of the posts/links my ‘friends’ had posted. Whilst I’m not entirely certain of its integrity there was a link to an article about a law the Tories have allegedly implemented which allows the police to arrest people publically criticizing celebrities, members of government and the royal family. The article continued to suggest that the arrestees would be subject to mental health screenings and then possibly incarcerated. Like I said, I’m not sure if I believe this, as I’d not seen any other information/articles on this before and the article says the law was pasted ‘secretively’. Yet at the same time, my faith in the honesty of governments and the systems in place have never been lower and I don’t think I’ll see anything to convince me otherwise.
The other thing I saw linked on Facebook today was the confirmation that the rapper DMX would be boxing the alleged racially motivated teen murderer George Zimmerman, which of course inspired lots of rage induced remarks celebrating the potential murdering of Zimmerman. Whilst the Zimmerman case seems to be further proof about the level of corruption within the justice system, this wasn’t the cause of my dejection today. The fact that a company is able to capitalize on a fight between a celebrity and a much hated suspected murderer seems like a premise for some dystopian sci-fi fiction where a hoard of onlookers goad the celebrity into murdering the villain for their own sadistic pleasure like some kind of gladiator match. Admittedly my outlook it a bit of a jump from the relatively safe organized boxing event that it will be, but it’s not much of a jump!
Disheartened by my escapades on Facebook I decided to close the tab and scour the pages of Reddit instead. After scrolling through a few dozen pictures of memes, comics and cats I stumbled across some more depressing news that only encouraged my opinion that society is shit. An article about a man named Alfred Wright who was the victim of a hate crime. I read a couple of other articles around the incident to convince me that this is actually what happened but the fact that it did didn’t really surprise me. Wright, an African American, was a well-educated physical therapist living in Texas. After being missing for 18 days he was found with his throat cut, his ear removed and his teeth damaged. However the forensic pathologist put the death down to a drug overdose, forcing the family to seek out a coroner to confirm the obvious. It’s sickening how in 2014 there are professionals out there who seek to perpetuate racist stereotypes and are comfortable denying horrific attacks such as this one. What’s even more upsetting is the high probability that the perpetrators will never face any punishment, partly due to the little evidence but largely because of the corrupt and racist authorities.
After reading this I didn’t really feel like scrolling through some more miserable news so I decided to browse through tumblr, which is usually just impressive photos or art. However it wasn’t long before I stumbled across another gloomy piece of news.
A while back I signed a petition protesting against a coal mining company that planned to dump a large amount of seabed onto the great-barrier reef. Today I discovered the petition was useless, as the Australian government have approved this ‘dredging’. Despite this another petition has been launched which I urge you to sign http://www.savethereef.org.au/. Even though I sign these things to help in what little way I can I often feel that these attempts are futile, the bastards have already won, Capitalism reigns and the world is going down the shitter. Yet the people who actually put in the effort to conserve the natural world and make changes inspire me.
I’m getting sick with the majority of the Internet. It’s completely saturated with advertisements and fads. People get told how to think without even realizing it, we get monitored and exposed to irrelevant news about people we’ll never meet and end up thinking our possessions and popularity is paramount to our pursuit of happiness. Nothing is real anymore; people are happy viewing the entire world through their tiny screens, when the actual natural world get’s destroyed most of us won’t even notice.
On the other hand we wouldn’t be aware of half the atrocities without the Internet and people wouldn’t be able to sign petitions to stop these crimes against humanity… But does that even make a difference? How am I to know whether the petition is nothing more than an accumulation of digits on a screen, are they really doing anything? And does my awareness do anything for my wellbeing? Or does it just make me depressed about how shitty people can be?
Sometimes I think the world would be better off without technology but other times I’m not so sure, either way I should do something with my awareness. I’m still not sure what I can do but I know what I won’t…
Which I guess is a start.
