Don't trust anything I read in the media? But you're in the media, so how can I trust you and oh my head has exploded.
I have my finger so firmly on the pulse of modern life that I will be tweeting it’s demise ironically before the first carrier pigeon is devoured. Because of my inherent wisdom and up-to-dateness I was already aware that the “Girl quits her job using photos and a DryErase board” story was a fake before most people had heard of it. Yep, I’m cooler than you. Either that or I’ve got too much time on my hands, you choose.
So some little chaps somewhere in America decided to see how quickly they could make something go viral and create an internet meme at the same time. I’m still at a loss to understand how people make a living out of this kind of thing, but good luck to them anyway. They seem to have succeeded, it certainly went viral very quickly, and there’s every indication that it might become some kind of meme. It might even go down in history as the shortest lived hoax ever created, so soon was it discovered that it almost doesn’t qualify as a hoax at all, except that there are probably thousands of people just receiving it and believing it this morning, so it probably lives on. Maybe it’s the shortest-lived hoax-that-some-discovered-wasn’t-a-hoax-before-others-had-discovered-the-hoax? Maybe, as a colleague pointed out, they’ll be outdone tomorrow by a meme that goes viral, is exposed to be an elaborate hoax, the hoax goes viral, then someone discovers that it wasn’t a hoax at all, but was in fact real so it is, in fact, the quickest non-hoax ever to be discovered as a hoax that goes viral then goes viral again because it wasn’t a hoax at all. I think I’m going to be sick.
So whilst the Internet slowly masturbates itself to blindness, I’m left pondering all this and wondering if it matters at all. It probably doesn’t, but the photo above (nicked from Techcrunch) is interesting, because it has a point. There is plenty of stuff that is fake on the Internet and in the media in general. But the Internet and the Media are also, increasingly where we get the majority of our information. Newspapers and TV occasionally set themselves up as points of authority in an Internet-enabled world gone mad: you may not be able to believe everything you read in Wikipedia, but the print media is founded on sound journalistic principles. Of course, that turns out to be bollocks too, because journalists use the Internet more than anyone. So where is authority, where does truth lie?
No, really, I’m asking because I haven’t got a clue. It might be fun to dupe news organisations, and maybe it will make them more rigorous long-term (or more Internet-savvy at least), and a healthy dose of scepticism and critical analysis is very important, but essentially what we’re now saying is that nobody can be trusted. Even the trustworthy can’t be trusted because the untrustworthy might have tricked them so what they’re being trustworthy about might just be a big hoax.
We’ve only got ourselves to blame, and it’ll all end in tears, you can trust me on that.
Jeremy Clarkson is a hero of mine. There are those of us in this wonderful land we call Great Britain that would like to see that lanky, tousle-headed chap take the keys to Number 10 Downing Street, and I’ll tell you why. He’s a man who truly believes in, and defends, that basic right of all mankind: the right to be free. The right to go about your everyday business without the interference of do-gooders telling you what to drive and how fast to drive it, telling you you can’t call women birds or make humorous references to golliwogs, but most of all Jeremy Clarkson is not afraid to say what everyone’s secretly thinking but is too afraid to say out loud for fear of incurring the wrath of the “PC Brigade”. That thing that Clarkson is not afraid to say is this: it’s time to do away with Health & Safety. I tell you, no one piece of legislation has done more to damage British business than Health & Safety. There was a glorious age in this country when your average working man wasn’t afraid to go down a coal mine and get his hands dirty for 12 hours a day in order to earn the money to just about be able to feed his family. Now of course all the Health & Safety regulations have made coal mining in this country completely uncompetitive. Granted it’s true that before H&S regulations hundreds of men died in the coal mines every week, and thousands more were seriously injured, and it’s also true that most mines on mainland Europe were modernised and introduced basic Health & Safety requirements long before the UK, and as a result actually turned out to be far more efficient and completely out-competed the out-dated, dangerous, inefficient working practices still maintained by the mine-owning gentry in this country; but still, think where we could have been if the government hadn’t started interfering and “protecting” the “rights” of those blokes who risked their lives to supply the country with fuel!!
No, argue all you like, but the simple fact is, and what nobody other than Clarkson and a few other courageous Sun and Daily Mail readers are willing to stand up and say is: we need to abolish Health & Safety. History shows us that people do just fine without Health & Safety legislation. Industrial accidents have always happened and always will, there’s absolutely no reason to examine the causes and try and prevent them in future, that’s bad for business and bad for the country.
Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister, that’s what I say. Someone not afraid to stand up for the freedom of the average working man (so long as that freedom doesn’t include the freedom to work in a safe environment, drive on safe roads, live in a safe home, send his kids to a safe school and so on and so forth). What the PC Brigade doesn’t understand is that a man is born free, free to do whatever he likes, whenever he likes to whoever he likes without fear of consequences. That’s the kind of world Clarkson envisions, and that’s the kind of world I want to live in.
Follow me on Twitter
Recent Comments