Are You Really You?
and where have all the humans gone?
So I was in my favourite sweet shop in a toy town on the banks of a river this morning and one thing led to another and suddenly I’m talking about Elon Musk unveiling his new range in robots and then I’m having a conversation with someone about the books of David Icke and before I know it the Anunnaki have made an appearance, the owner of the shop kept confusing these with the Illuminati, someone else joined in the conversation saying it was impossible the pyramids were built by human beings and I couldn’t help but snort with laughter and point everyone in the direction of the Bimini Road, the Nazca Lines and how we’re all simply just another civilisation that has come behind many more than were here before us, and all I’d really come into the sweet shop for was a quarter of Cola Cubes, some Wine Gums and maybe some chocolate peanuts. The subject of aliens naturally followed and that’s when things turned weird. It seems that fellow humans, friends, passing acquaintances or just random strangers buying old fashioned sweets in a toy town on the banks of a river in middle England still aren’t ready for that conversation on aliens: that they’ve been here since time immemorial creating the very world we were all raised to believe was actually created by a man with a beard who liked taking Sunday’s off and the 21st century version of the aliens are the soulless, dead eyed freaks in expensive suits who lecture us from behind lecterns adorned with three letter mind control mantras on our Orwellian telescreens before disappearing like wraiths in the night and speaking in tongues with the devil during black magik (sic) rituals. Probably.
As we ambled along the river to feed the ducks and swans of Ironbridge, one of which entered into an angry exchange with an enthusiastic and playful English Springer Spaniel by the name of “Pepper”, I asked my beautiful son what he thought of the weirdo walking alongside him who believes that no more than 33% of the “world leaders” we see on our televisions could possibly pass a Turing Test and that they are in fact just devils in the red dress of The Matrix used to titillate us away from the demons in the 5th dimension that control them and everything that spews forth from their ugly mouths is an anti-human inversion of the world we all crave and, well, he looked at me like I was a piece of cheese and we instead laughed at the breakdown in relations between a swan by the name of Fred (although it might have been Mary) and a mad friendly dog called Pepper who turned his nose up at the hissing beast flapping loudly at him before diving into the river for the solidarity of its soul mate Mary (though of course, it may have been Fred). We’ll never know of course, not unless you’re an expert in the sexing of swans which isn’t to be confused with the sexting of swans which is of course impossible as swans don’t have mobile phone contracts but we seem to be drifting way off course here so I’ll ask you the pertinent question of the day:
Are you really you?
The reason I ask this particularly pointless question is as my son and I were returning from the contretemps between Pepper and Fred (although it may have been Mary but regardless you should have seen and heard the swan jumping and flapping and hissing at a silly dog with a soggy tennis ball in its mouth — what a joy that was!) I pointed out to the excitable young man in his The Shining t-shirt that, absent the ever present Sword of Damocles that is nuclear war with Russia, he’ll never experience a world without the internet and there must be an inbuilt mechanism in his generation to believe what they see and hear from those who scream and shout the loudest from the biggest platform. It was ever thus I hear you scream (my son was now looking at me like I was a piece of cheese again and only agreed with me presumably so I’d stop talking and buy him some fish and chips from the chip shop) and whilst this salt and vinegar tasting diversion is more than 75% true your screams would be nearly as accurate too. Sure we’ve had (largely men) shouting their proclamations from behind a podium for centuries but before the internet you had to seek these users of free speech out. Now it’s a daily popularity contest of vexatious vermin wherever you turn in The Matrix even if you try desperately to avoid this carnival of the bizarre and if you really are you, they are most certainly not what they appear to be, but are believed through propaganda and fear of what will replace them and no, I’m not talking 7 foot lizards from the 5th dimension but we all need the entertainment these days so why not? Turn it into a reality TV show. Sell it on pay per view for all I care. It’s just as realistic as the popularity contests you weirdos keep voting for.
My goodness that’s a dangerous tangent and I can only blame the tea I’ve been drinking today, or maybe it was the mushrooms I had for breakfast. Who’s to say? Anyway, so are you really you? Regardless of your answer and apologies for bursting your bubble, I don’t believe you. It’s what comes from reading books and living a life pre the internet Matrix and seeing so many historical lies now loudly proclaimed as facts on a daily basis. I know Jeremy is real as I’ve bought his sugary delights for over a decade now and he’s one of the kindest human beings you could ever meet. I know the David Icke fan is real as I shook his hand and whispered conspiratorial nothings to him in his ear which, in retrospect, probably scared the living piss out of his girlfriend. My beautiful son is real. He’s sat opposite me now as I drink too much tea and regret the volume of mushrooms I ate earlier. He’s wearing a different The Shining t-shirt today and is no doubt blissfully unaware that the man sat typing at this damned laptop doesn’t believe a single thing he sees on the internet despite saying on their recent riverside walk that he gets irrationally angry that the only interaction he has in the wizarding world of witchcraft that is the electrical Matrix internet is with AI created bots that have all the human warmth of a dead albatross. Are they “real”, these artificially intelligent bots? Are they as real as the walking, talking robots created by a man supposedly trying to save the world from depopulation by implanting microchips into people’s brains?
Damn tangent again. When will they ever cease? I guess the point I’m trying to make is that with age has come evermore introspection in a somewhat solitary existence that has replicated itself, and in all too real a fucking manner, within a digital system of make believe witchcraft I rail so heavily against. The real me, the angry human being forever one wrong turn away from bouncing a tennis ball in the house and living in room 237, has spawned his black swan online, and it’s not a pretty sight. Maybe it’s because I’ve just watched a film where the host eats itself by consuming its own creation of itself to the point of ugly distortion. Maybe that’s it, that, or the mushrooms.
When I started this ramble it was formulated within my tiny unreliable mind to be about you and, now that I’m not going to write that particular trip into the absurd I’ll be honest and say it was going to be a pointed finger jabbed in your direction that you’re not real or at least as real as those damned AI robots I keep either arguing with or just shouting at.
But you’re as real as I am.
I was also going to ask you the pointed question something along the lines of how can you or how do you believe anything online? How do you know the person who likes your Twitter posts or Instagram pictures is real and not just an AI agent of human death? Because that’s what AI is, a destroyer of humanity. But you’re not ready for that conversation and so perhaps it’s for the best that we don’t have it. Some of you are even cheering on and supporting our demise!
Bar coded humans. In a QR coded world.
Yes it’s lucky I’m not going to write about you after all. Those last two brief statements above are never going to win me any points in a popularity contest here, or in real life for that matter. A real life of giving swans human names as my black swan hisses at robots in a land of electrical make believe. Let’s get to the pictures section shall we before I start talking about mushrooms again?
Thanks for reading. For more half baked ideas and scrambled garbled gobbledygook from someone who eats far too many mushrooms and really should know better, here’s something I prepared earlier, largely whilst cooking breakfasts on lazy Sunday mornings:
"At the end of a Storm" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.