Rising Thumb

It seems a shame that the bulk of communication enacted by the young & coming takes place in increasingly impersonal domains, where anonymity and illiteracy have supplanted intimacy and empathy as the new perks of interaction. Newspapers, magazines and other printed text (you know, books and shit) have been around for yonks, but they were always tempered by the rigours of editing and public demand, and were never in themselves enough to do away with the old face-to-face. Certainly letters appear to be the forerunner, but they too were kept in check by the limitations of the postage service and its relative non-immediacy compared to the modern equivalents. Thus, for the first time in our history, art, journalism and social skills will cease to be the necessities of a prosperous world. No, civilisation hasn't quite slipped into the sea yet, but with the flaky cocksores of the SMS generation poised to take over at the click of the nursing home door, how far away can it be?

I fondly recall the days when the strength of an opponent's argument was directly proportional to the amount of spit that was on your face at the end of his speech. In those days, you really had to have balls; weak arguments would simply collapse in the face of a grimacing adversary. Consequently, a decent standard was maintained and all parties were the better for it. Comparable situations today don't have this benefit. Spared of having to stare directly into the eyes of their audience, people are free to let any thought that pops into their ugly, misshapen heads out into the world. No more can the inherent humanity of a mano-a-mano or womano-a-womano or mano-a-womano change your mind about spurting off on some vitriolic rant. Now the enemy is faceless, and any impulse can be instantly gratified.

We are in for a dismal future, my Bens. A time when published opinion no longer has to comply to editorial standards of journalistic excellence, where even the numbest what-I-had-for-breakfast loggers are legitimate. It will see the crumbling of the barrier between author and audience. Criticism will be supplanted by competition. The artist, the author, will no longer be revered. Onloggers, in their peculiarly mundane way, are bringing about the destruction of a cultural system that has been in place since we split off from the other apes; that of art as sacred; that of the artist as enlightened; that of the semi-colon. With their dangerous prorogation of DIY, they will undo culture itself and level out civilisation into a meaningless, communist spread of accessibility. I call an end to them all! But what can you do when the problem is compounded by market-savvy giants like Google™ offering a wide variety of services free of charge and allowing any fucker with a pair of fingers to prattle on endlessly about his horrible life, or lack thereof? The biggest of business thriving on the smallest of people. Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow — Guess what?, So I was doing this cheek, right?, Heeeeyyyyy. Oh, I can't look.