(Read Time: 1 Nespresso Peppermint Pinwheel Coffee (deelishl!) and a bowl of fat free Greek Yogurt and Granola)
Dear ‘Internet’, I hate you.
Now, that’s a solid affirmation and admission from an ageing, middle aged man in lycra (though right now not wearing Lycra as I’m on the train home from what must be, the capital of capitalism – London). And I apologise up front, this is starting grumpy, and becoming increasingly grumpy in the middle, and undoubtedly as grumpy as I get towards the end. Excited? You should be.
I am a dinosaur on a bike, and I am rapidly becoming everything that many thought people in their 50’s were when I was a kid. I actually think my parents were actually pretty good at embracing the future and different things, and yes, they didn’t buy me a games console, but I genuinely thank them for that. I see nothing in ‘gaming’ that interests me, and nor do I see that it benefits society in any way shape or form, and fear that it is purely educating people (and crucially kids) how to burn time, not leave the house, while demonstrating the types of violence and other behaviours that most of us don’t even want to think about, never mind participate in, even if only in a virtual way. When ‘a great way to spend a day’ involves sitting in your under-crackers with the curtains closed, talking to fellow virtual mercenaries, who you’ll never ever meet face to face (or worse still watching video’s of other people playing them, WTAF!) and forget to consume anything more meaningful than Pepsi, Pringles and pizza, I really do feel as relevant to the modern world as a Brontosaurus on a bike.
Clearly my sweeping judgement of the ‘gamers’ is just that, sweeping… and I know some people who are ‘gamers’, and they’ve spent time with me outdoors, and are apparently quite normal, so perhaps I need to be less judgemental about some, but certainly not all.
The power of some of these games is quite incredible, and deep down, I do understand why people get so entwined in, and perhaps completely addicted to them. The visuals are so powerful and engaging and it is increasingly hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not. It’s not like playing Space Invaders in an absolutely 2d world with 16 colours to choose from. I will confess, I did use to spend time (I’m not saying how much as it was a long time ago, and I genuinely can’t remember) playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. You know I’m a geek, so no surprise there. But the latest screen shots of this revived ‘game’ are incredible, and perhaps will allow Concorde to live on in many ways. I do find it odd though when I see videos of ‘plane crashes’ that have been created on flight simulator and touted as real, why would anyone do that? I just don’t understand. Combining this video quality and the ambition to create completely nonsensical fakery’s also brings a perhaps niche, but also sad necessity of 2025 – BBC Verify. I get the reason for it. Artificial Intelligence and vulnerability (nee gullibility) are a powerful combination, and we’d probably be right to question everything we see through the screen of our phone, laptop, desktop and even TV. I remember a time when a newspaper or the News at Six on the gogglebox were our sources of truth. Now we have to debate whether the source of truth is telling the truth? and perhaps even more disturbingly, why is it lying to me in the first place? Is there any real motive? Is it that we all love uncomfortable drama more than relatively stable and comfortable reality? Or is it because no-one really care’s about reality any more? And to that end, is what I see through my window even the real world any more? I’m not sure… it’s just becoming one of a myriad of portals to a world that I scarcely recognise.
Clearly there’s many sources of ‘Fake News’… but the worst, the absolute worst of all – the Velociraptor of the media – has to be the Influencers. Foreign government interference is one thing, and if some light touch abuse of the truth on social media means less bombs and guns, there’s probably something to be said for that type of warfare. But Influencers… they are such inspiration to the youth as to how to live your life and what your life could be like, if only you were as amazing as me. And you can be, you just need to buy the products that I buy and go to the places that I go and you’ll feel as wonderful as me, and look as wonderful as me. Get stuffed! Behind your facade, I bet that you’re as miserable and lonely, and perhaps more plastic than anyone. No one can live in such a superficial world and take real joy and pleasure from what you’re doing, I do not buy it. Speaking of buying things, I do hope you’re declaring your freebie’s as Benefit in Kind! Rachel from Accounts could have done something about this in her latest tragic budget (that’s for another time), but this would be far too easy. Not only will ‘not all tax be paid’, but these pariahs are creating a generation of kids, who will become adults, who genuinely believe that they need, deserve and should have everything, right now. Think Veruca Salt, think several hundred millions of them globally – glued to and admiring the crap that these influencers create. My god!! It’s just not the way the world should work… life should be about internal reflection and ambition, not external review, acquisition and validation. It’s utter nonsense, and another example of how social media will destroy society! There’s thousands of these ‘influencers’ there to ‘inspire us’ into a state of depression and debt because, and I am sorry about this, not everyone can have what you have or look like you. And nor should they want to!
I grew up at a time when Everything didn’t matter, nevermind having it Now – the 1990’s. Some might say that ‘nothing mattered’, and I am sure to my adolescent brain that was fairly spot on, though perhaps the MAMIL’s (I know Lycra was reserved for Aerobics at that time, but go with it) of that time were avidly worried about volatile inflation, enormous interest rates and the instability of the Middle East creating World War 3 (not much really changes in that department). It’s interesting though, in that people worry about interest rates and inflation today, especially those who want Everything, Now. Memories are short, and in the 90’s the average (THE AVERAGE) interest rate was 7%, with inflation ranging from 2 to 10%. There was clearly a lot to be worried about, but fortunately Tony Blair landed at the end of the 1990’s to save Great Britain from itself, and all was good again (LOL). But all of that aside, the 90s were just better. They were real, tangible, where the most important things were real, earned and you got what you deserved – not a virtual entitlement, and Everything, Now.
I am increasingly convinced that ‘Progress’ is not progress. And I also believe that I have firm proof that this is the case, in the form of mobile telephones, and I don’t think this will go where you’re expecting. You’re thinking I am going to talk about Nokia’s and ‘Snake’ and when having a mobile contract that had unlimited text messages blew my mind, and yes, that was amazing, but this observation is far more fundamental, and goes back to my first 3G phone… it was a wonderful flip phone, a Sony, and I was very excited by it’s double screen (one big one inside, but a little screen on the outside so you could screen your calls – nice!). I was also very excited about how it would use the 3G network to show the ‘internet’ on it. What? The Internet on a phone? you’re kidding!!! But it did… and it was impressive. 3G, at that time, worked brilliantly. I could watch football highlights, music videos and even make telephone calls and send messages. But that all changed when 4G arrived, and then bizarrely all the capability and capacity that 3G had disappeared and it didn’t work as well as it did before, even on the equipment that it worked perfectly well on before. Because phones connectivity to the internet was now a thing, and a really important thing when email became more important than Royal Mail, I had to upgrade my phone and move to 4G. 4G was then brilliant, and it worked really well on the marketeers dream, the iPhone that my Sony was superseded by. However, while it worked really well, I think this was only working about as well as the 3G had when it landed… which 4G then did perfectly well, right up until 5G landed. And the same cycle begins again! My iPhone 16, all several hundreds of pounds of it (5x more than my first laptop) is now utterly useless unless it’s connected to ‘5 bars’ of 5G or a solid WiFi connection. Without one of those connections, I can’t even make a telephone call, or send a text message, nevermind connect to my banking app, my work email, crapchat, faceache or tw@er… and yet, I remember when 3G brought me the world. Progress isn’t progress, it’s all marketing fluff designed to make you spend more on tech you don’t need, to avoid the fear of obsolescence, while becoming increasingly dependent on it and then spending even more! You see. QED!
And while we’re here and in the groove of MAGMA (Middle Aged Grumpy Man’s Anger), let’s talk about the abject misery that is experienced when ‘there’s no WiFi’.
I use the train frequently and I am still gobsmacked how utterly rubbish the train companies WiFi connections are. Advertising free WiFi should come with an asterisk, to denote ‘*- when it works’. I travel to London a lot on the train and have now given up on connecting… and this is all the better for me, as I can look out of the window and see the joys of the British countryside… fields, animals, wind turbines, solar panels covering the beautiful fields, and fly tipping. It really is a privilege. But there is worse we can face still when it comes to WiFI… when the home connection fails for any period of time! It really is a doomsday of a new and truly epic proportion! Vlad can chuck his now nuclear powered nukes at us (who knew they were a thing until 4 weeks ago!), but nothing will compare to the breakdown in society that would occur if he destroyed the nations household / home WiFi. He doesn’t have to kill anyone, the kids losing their mind, because they can’t play MineBlox or TwoWeeks, or watch hours of mindless crap on JunkTube shorts, will do it all for him. But that’s if the kids can find the parents to kill them, as I suspect most of the parents will be hiding in the pub, somewhere that crap WiFi has been tolerated, nee celebrated for years – and rightly so.
And all of this influencing, gaming and WiFi’ing means we need more centres to process and handle all of this data, which means we need more power, which means we need more wind turbines and solar farms, which means we’ll have less fields, so there’ll be no food to eat and we’ll all have to live off imported Pepsi, Pringles and pizza forever. It’s not all bad news though, the Gamers will be happy, and providing the ‘Influenced’ don’t want any food with any real nutritional value, I am sure they will be delighted to have all of the Artificial Intelligence they will ever need.
I paint a bleak outlook, and I apologise if that upsets you.
But, I genuinely believe the outlook is this bleak. I wouldn’t want to be 18 today, and certainly wouldn’t want to be 18 months old today… at our current rate of Progress, what’s left of this place when they’re my age is not going to be worth having…
…the price we’re going to pay for having Everything, Now.
The Gabbling MAMIL 