THE YTIRALUGNIS

I'm kind of clever, kind of. I read about stuff that matters and I ponder it and comment about it, online usually as I find the interface of face to face a muddled and confusing place.

I'm currently worried about artificial intelligence and the impending Singularity. When it comes to artificial intelligence, the Singularity is the point when computers become more like humans only superior. It's quite concerning. Although, maybe, maybe, yeah maybe, I was thinking, we should be talking about things happening the other way around. We should be talking about the impending Ytiralugnis. That's what's really going to happen. The Ytiralugnis is the Singularity backwards, the point when humans become more like computers only inferior. When we all become the nodes of one great algorithmic consciousness. Led by the #s and validated by the 'likes'. 101001000011010001ing our nodey little heads off. All as one. Unified at last. A singular thing but in a perverse kind of reverse. All with opinions on opinions we are destined to have opinions on. Each of us will be a 'unique' series of takes on whatever is trending.

This is Lord Shiva as a search engine and us as anonymous voices emitting from the Cloud. We'll no longer be people but blogs and Twitter accounts and Facebook walls and apps and regular forum posters and viral uploads. We'll be multi-platform experiences. We'll all be part of one great family. Our surname will Dotcom. Our new family may be slightly dysfunctional, somewhat divided. The upper caste will be those with high hit counts. The lower caste the least hit. And newborns will be called noobs and the elderly will be sneeringly referred to as Commodore 64s. And when we die we'll be shipped off to a landfill in Ghana and stripped down for reusable parts and then incinerated on pyres by kids with emphysema, wearing homemade pollution filters, that never logged on in their lives.

The #Ytiralugnis – it's going to happen. It has happened. It's happening right now. Artificial Intelligence, it's making us kind of clever, kind of; reading about stuff that matters and pondering it and commenting about it online, finding the faceless interface a muddled and confusing place.

'DEAD BODIES and CARDBOARD'

All the poets decided to write poetry about the telly. They decided to write poems about the telly and keep them short. 'Keep the writing as short as fuckin possible lads,' decreed a leading laureate and a new movement in verse was born. The poets thought people might like their new stuff because it was a bit shit and empty and people love shit empty things.

Don't you though? You do. You do indeed you hopeless shower of...

.....aaannyway, the poets justified their efforts to no longer make an effort by citing Wolves by Louis MacNeice – where the poet chooses to no longer dwell on the ineffable and inevitable and instead joins the rest of humanity, hand in hand, in a circle of frivolity, protected against encroaching fear and infinite mystery.

Do you follow me? Are you still with me? I hope mentioning a poem didn't send you running back to TMZ, you cognitively subpar f...

...soooo, the poets wrote poems about what happened on TV and labelled them with hashtags and poetry became a big hit again. The poets were called the voices of their generation and they got on the covers of glossy magazines and were seen on the town with breast implantees and debonair industrialists. Dermot O'Leary wrote the introduction to a collection of their greatest works. It was called #Reality and here's the eponymous entry...

#Reality

LOL, did you see it?

It was on TV!

WTF happened, like.

I'm glad it wasn't me.

People loved the poems while they were reading them. Once they were finished reading them they forgot all about them. Instantly, in that wilfully anencephalic way that was de rigueur at the time. No memory whatsoever of ever having read ...'like whatever'. 

'Did I retweet that? I don't remember.'

Are you still reading? Good, stick with me now. I can't promise it'll be worth it but we'll get to the end soon enough.

Where was I? Oh yeah, after a while the cultural world became a kind of vapor that floated and faded over the graves of a generation that never testified to its times and left the future with no past to learn from. The only thing bequeathed to the future was footage of things once thought to have mattered but never did ...at all ...not even one tiny fucking bit.

To conclude...

...it was Bill Oddie's schizophrenic mother who said: 'television is all dead bodies and cardboard' and she was quite right. Schizophrenics find it hard to infer anything from the cadaverous pretence of the telly. All I see myself, when I turn the thing on, is false smiles, dead eyes and fake sets. All I see is dead bodies and cardboard.

#DeadBodiesAndCardboard

Dead Bodies and Cardboard

Tonight at 8pm

and straight after it,

once you're done tweeting about it,

you can switch channels

and watch Dead Bodies and Cardboard again.

Ok, we're done here. Return to your beloved telly.

#

I read an op-ed about a breaking international incident and agreed with it at once. With great haste, I found myself in total and utter concurrence. I instantly tweeted as much. I rapidly put a link on Facebook. There was no time to lose. Things were happening fast and I didn't want to get left behind. 'This fucker's trending like a boss', I said to myself.

I made up my mind before my mind even had a chance to make itself up. My parietal and frontal lobes hadn't even talked things over before I'd adopted an opinion. There was no time for deliberation. I wasn't about to miss out on this potentially historic multi-platform event. Things were rolling live. Click farms would be going into overdrive. Retweets would be ricocheting throughout the net for the entire afternoon and maybe into the early evening. The game was afoot and I'd picked my side. You have to be on one side or another side otherwise you're in no man's land and getting shot at by both sides. I fought bravely and amassed a few favourites and got a lot of 'likes' from people who agreed with me or thought they should agree with me or were worried they'd stand out if they didn't agree with me. I paraphrased Graham Linehan and tweeted it @stephenfry. I didn't get a 'reply'. Then the season premier of a new HBO show came on so I hashtagged the fuck out of that baby instead.

I'm a foodie. I'm an atheist. I'm a Dylanologist. In the future, when our descendants look in their history books for the typical person who bore witness to the end of civilisation, they'll see my selfie. Me in my beanie, a beardy, wearing a Livestrong wristband and swearing to #GetKony.

PINGBACK IN THE AFTERLIFE

Remember when the internet died? Remember that? The day it all went down and never got back up. You lot didn't know what to do with yourselves. You were all addicted to the internet. All of you. (I wasn't, I just liked it so much I used it all the time.) You lot didn't know what to do without your Facebook updates. You couldn't imagine how you'd get by with no one Twittering your hashtags or admiring your selfies.

Some of you started improvising, shouting out your Tweets to passersby. You opened the windows of your homes and roared out things like 'I watched the new Marvel comics movie last night and it sucked!' The nasty anonymous trolls amongst you improvised too, popping out from behind corners, wearing balaclavas and shouting things like 'I'm glad your family died in a fire'. The end of Chatroulette also meant the return of flashers to our public parks. Those guys didn't get many 'likes' I'll tell you that. Likes were now conveyed when somebody passed you on the street and roared something at you and you gave them a thumbs up before rapidly moving on without really engaging. When someone did force others to 'engage' they were usually met with the acronym TLDL (too long, didn't listen) but when someone was brief and to the point, saying something that didn't really have a point because what's the point in that, they got the post-internet version of a retweet - as in they'd roar something and cause a person who heard them to roar out exactly the same thing whilst pointing a finger at the person who roared it in the first place. A couple of long held Facebook traditions were also maintained with people saying they'd attend events they were invited to and then not attending them and people allowing others insight into their private lives in the post-Facebook way of leaving their keys out for others to gain access to their homes and have a look around - once the home had been specifically altered so all the right things were left lying about to make the home owner look tasteful, sophisticated, well-adjusted and all that kind of shit.

Oh, what a superficial bunch of sorry cun... Jesus, I almost typed that out loud?

Anyway, this continued for a while until everyone started to feel a bit silly and strangely empty. Remember that, when you started feeling a bit daft and redundant? Remember how it got to the stage where you lot didn't know what to say to each other or how to act around each other? Problem was that everyone eventually realised there was nothing to share or react to. You had to start instigating and you'd forgotten how to do that without the use of a modem. It was impossible to make things go viral. Al Qaeda and affiliates even stopped beheading infidels. There didn't seem to be a point if they couldn't upload it. People wandered the streets forlorn. It seemed a cold world without all the liking and sharing. The internet was gone and in its place was nothing. Nothing at all. There was just the sound of the wind and that's a scary distant sound that reminds you that the world keeps doing its own thing and you don't matter all that much. I find that notion comforting myself but I suppose that's just me.

So, that's it. Our over reliance on the web made culture tabula rasa. I suppose our generation will die out. We'll exit this life like socially awkward guests leaving a crap party. The future generations will have to create the cultural content of the future anew. I wonder what they'll come up with. I wonder will it just be the same kind of thing all over again. Is all the need for attention in our DNA? Anonymous internet trolling, is there a gene for that? We'll have to wait and see. Not that we'll be around to see it. I don't know though, maybe we'll get some kind of pingback in the afterlife.

FUGGER ON TWITTER

Hey guys, I've been on Twitter for almost a month now. It's really good fun. Why don't you come and join the party? Everyone is on there being nearly funny like Jimmy Carr or almost intelligent like Warren Ellis. It's quick and it's brief and it allows you speak without saying anything, which is all the rage these days. It's just stuff really. Like, a kind of thing you do like.

Once, when I was a small boy, I climbed into a huge metal silo on a farm. It was completely empty and there was nothing in it but myself. Being a young fella, I took the opportunity to shout the word 'boobatits' really loud. The word echoed around the interior of the silo until the sound faded out leaving only this faint, emptyish, metallic ringing. Then I started laughing really hard and then the sound of my laughter ricocheted all over the place and kind of freaked me out so I fled in tears. Anyway, Twitter's a bit like that only Jimmy Carr and Warren Ellis are in the silo too and now Fugger, a.k.a. me, a.k.a. the people's blogger, is there as well.

So... FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER! TWITTER MY HASHTAG! FÜTTER MEIN EGO! FÜTTER MEIN EGO! FÜTTER MEIN EGO! FÜTTER MEIN EGO! ...that's a link to my Twitter account by the way and here's a bit of an old tune...

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART TWO: WORDS WITHOUT MEANING

In the future, everyone will continue to use words even though they will have forgotten their meaning. This will be thanks to innovations like Facebook and superficial people taking over culture and and things like that. It's already beginning to happen. People are using words without knowing what they really mean. Take the word 'awesome' for example. 'Awesome' used to refer to things that inspired a feeling of awe, like seeing an eighty tonne blue whale surface next to your boat or watching the aurora borealis streak and shimmer across the night sky. These days however, the word 'awesome' is employed as an expression of approval, often mild, as in:

Man: 'There's a two for one on bottles of ketchup in Lidl until the end of the week.'

Woman: 'Awesome.'

'Like' is another example. Instead of being something you feel, 'like' is now something you do. You do it on your computer. It just takes a fraction of a second. It's a thing you do to oblige others in the hopes that they will oblige you in return by 'liking' something of yours. It's a kind of conditional quid pro quo transaction. You contribute 'likes' and collect 'likes'. It's similar to philately, only less interesting. Liking things, on an emotional level, is no longer relevant. 'Liking' is now an activity. Everyone is gradually forgetting what it actually is to like something but no one has forgotten that it is important to be 'liked'.

Despite the excellence of the above examples, you still mightn't think that people have forgotten what some words mean. You mightn't have noticed because, despite having forgotten what certain words mean, people still remember the facial expressions and mannerisms that go with these words. Take 'happy' for example. 'Happy' has the smiley emoticon face. Likewise, 'angry' has a frowning emoticon. People use these emoticons when they are online and facially imitate them in the offline world. The protocol associated with certain words is retained but the actual meaning of them, the feeling of them, what they represent on an emotional or visceral level, is long gone.

Now that I've pointed it out, you'll notice this phenomenon more and more. You'll get that 'in the uncanny valley' sensation. It's the feeling you get when you see a creepy mannequin or android that is just about lifelike but not quite. Near human but inhuman. Seemingly alive but obviously dead. It looks happy. It looks sad. It smiles at you. There is something deeply chilling and repulsive about the attempted emulation. You'll get this same feeling when you notice people using words they no longer know the meaning of – a deeply chilling repulsion.

Has a psychopath ever told you that they love you? If this happened you would know that the psychopath does not love you. You would know that the psychopath just needs you for some reason and that is why the psychopath is claiming to love you. The psychopath says they love you in the hopes that you will love them back. Like anyone, the psychopath needs love but, unlike almost everyone, the psychopath cannot return the love. The psychopath does not want the love of someone the psychopath loves, no, the psychopath wants the love of someone the psychopath needs – so they can feel validated, or progress in some way, or survive, or maybe even destroy. The psychopath is an ego without real emotions. The psychopath knows the protocols but has no real idea what they represent. The psychopath is just making use of these things. The psychopath is leading the way. Don't forget to give the psychopath 'likes'. You should subscribe to the psychopath's channel. Why not follow the psychopath on Twitter @psychopath #pretending. 

@SADFCE :'(

It's not about the conversation anymore but the flow. WINKY EMOTICON. In contemporary media what you say is one thing and that's fine but it's the current it gets caught up in that counts. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! Get a quick 'like' or 'unlike' and don't waste time continuing to get things wrong. TLDR! Communication isn't about communicating anymore. It's about dynamism. SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK OR LINKEDIN! It's not about contributing ideas but about contributing content. SMILEY FACE. Analysis is condensed into easy to digest flow portions that r so easily digestible that they r no longer analysis. #IMBECILES It no longer mattrs what you say. No evr listnd nywy. sO Just say stuff n join the cnvrsation. LOL! The idea that communication is about ideas is an outdatd idea. Communication is about promotion. FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER! It's not what is being said, it's who is saying it. SUBSCRIBE! Don't think, just click. LINK THIS! Interface your face and be a face interfacer! 53638468 FOLLOWRRS! Hey [0] frac *= [0] other frac. Face me linkbook! STEPHEN FRY! The valu in wht u say is in the links. The value in wgat yiu say is in the 'likes'. The currency of d web is the links. LINK LIKE LINK! Diversity of options in the flow. Flow the interface REDDIT and link to the faced @ like me on Twitter #RELATING Replace quality with stuff efficiently. Get a profile, get a life @INNOVATION#FKD Navigate the click flow and 'like' clear goal your synergy and void your headspace online bite size PWND. The valu ov tings a dgidm? NOW TRENDING! Jst dwnld d app and FTW! Facelink ur fcbk lnk lk! #GET KONY src= gt fllwrs + lk fcbk10100101010bt twttr. The new sensibility is the death o sense death to sense uplod new sense FACEBOOK MY LINKEDIN! Be prt of tHe clOud and DSTRY conviction + depth#join d noiz,come let us build ourselves a city, GOOGLE + 1 with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth@SoLoMo LMFAO CMFEO CMFEO CrynMFEO CrynMyFEO CrynMyFknEO CrynMyFknEyesO CrynMyFknEyesOut / @SADFCE :'(

THIS IS HUGE GUYS!!!

Seriously guys, this is huge. This shocking footage went viral yesterday – watch the video:

Needless to say it made the news...

Let's just take a look at what happened again so we can get our heads around what took place... And now let's hear about what happened from the family concerned...

Now, there's a lot to discuss here. I know your mind is racing. Has the child fully recovered? Should SeaWorld continue letting visitors feed the dolphins? Should there be a monument built to commemorate the event? Might this event be a fitting subject for a musical? Might the dolphin be a paedophile that was attempting to abduct the child? Should we place the dolphin on the paedophile register? How do you spell paedophile anyway? An bhfuil cead agam go dti an leithreas? Should we bomb the dolphins like we do the sand niggers?

'Um, Mom, I'm outta fish?' Those words will haunt me until the end of my days. Let's talk guys. How do you feel about this event? Twitter the hashtag on Facebook and text in your thoughts to the central death hub mind voider: @jimmysaviledolphinummomimouttafish#thisisworsethansyria#

Here is the shocking event again in HD:

What a world we live in ladies and gentlemen, ...what a world we live in.

DAMIEN HIRST TIME PORTALS

You should visit those new time portals Damien Hirst has installed in the Tate Modern (sponsored by Unilever). You just walk through and you end up in a different time in history. You can watch the events taking place around you and no one from the past even notices because of the perception filter. It's like you're invisible. He's clever that Hirst fella. I went to see the nazis because the queue for the dinosaurs was too long and I'd already seen JFK getting shot loads of times on telly. I have to tell you, the atrocities were terrible. Absolutely shocking. All I could do was stand there and watch. I would have twittered about it but the ushers made me turn off the iPhone. Anyway, I got the gist of all the horror after about fifteen minutes and returned to 2012 for a coffee and a slice of carrot cake (not bad, bit pricey). What I'd witnessed really made me think about human nature and death and that. I was thinking about it all during my coffee and carrot cake and I even got a poster in the shop. It had Hitler on it and all the jews and everything. I was going to put it up in the hall when I got home but it was a bit full on so I gave it to my brother as a present instead. 

'Look what I brought you back', I said.  

'Oh, right, . . .grand', he said. 

His place is a lot bigger than mine. I'm sure he'll find somewhere for it.

LIKE IS THE NEW LOVE

Men and women used to need love but we’re no longer so needy. Now ‘likes’ will do. We send each other encouraging little ‘likes’ over our communication devices and it is enough to get us by. Send me a ‘like’ for Valentine’s Day. Over. Declare your ‘like’ for me. Over. Here I am! Over. Here I am! Over. Do you read me? Over. Do you read my blog? Over. I’m ‘friending’ you now. Over. Do you read me? Over. Do you read my Twitters? Over. ‘Friend’ me back. Over. You didn’t ‘friend’ me. Over. You didn’t ‘like’ me. Over. I’m 'unfriending' you now. Over. I’m ‘unliking’ you now. Over.

Oh well, tis better to have ‘liked’ and lost than never to have ‘liked’ at all.
Over and out!

GOD IS ON TWITTER

I see God is on Twitter. Here are a few of the best twats he posted:

# Bit bored today. Made a few clouds. One was in the shape of a roast chicken. LOL!. Twitter account: @GOD about 20 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Can't get that cute human I made a few decades ago out of my head. Who am I kidding, she doesn't know I exist. Saw her reading Dawkins. LOL!. Twitter account: @GOD about 19 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Jesus is still in a strop. It's the whole forsaken thing. He emailed me that awful Larkin poem. WHATEVUUR! Twitter account: @GOD about 18 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Might give it another go with Mary. Hate the haughty way she acts when she beats me at Connect 4 though. Nah, ain't going to work out. Twitter account: @GOD about 12 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Allah keeps sending me links to that Loose Change documentary. I'm unconvinced. Twitter account: @GOD about 9 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Thinking of having a giant ant attack France. Just to see the look on everyone's faces. LMFAO! Twitter account: @GOD about 7 days ago via Divine Intervention

# That Pope fella is fairly camp isn't he? Twitter account: @GOD about 5 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Hit on a few hot nuns earlier. 'But we don't love you in that way Lord' they said! Shouldn't have appeared in the form of a cloud. LOL! Twitter account: @GOD about 4 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Everyone worships the Market these days. I mean, come on. The Market can't even do any magic tricks like transubstantiation or all the cool shit I do DAILY! Twitter account: @GOD about 3 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Watching you humans from above yesterday. Me Almighty, it's depressing. Like a Ken Loach movie. Twitter account: @GOD about 2 days ago via Divine Intervention

# Sick of pasta. Twitter account: @GOD about 2 days ago via Divine Intervention

# The cute human got drunk on cooking sherry last night. She put on roller skates, went out on the back patio and fell on her ass. Like her even more now. Twitter account: @GOD about 1 day ago via Divine Intervention

# Another cloud making day today. Made one in the shape of Snoopy and another like PacMan. No one noticed. Twitter account: @GOD about 2 hours ago via Divine Intervention

So, there you are. He actually seems quite ordinary in a supreme being kind of way.
ALSO!!!
NEW CRAP MAN!. . .click it!

Twit

Boy, this Twitter business really is all the rage. It's brief and breezy but also informative. My favourite Twit (someone who uses Twitter) is this guy:

http://twitter.com/alanrantwell

He likes to tell it like it is, which is a very popular pastime these days with just about everyone.

I'm too lazy to go to the bother of signing up to a Twitter account so I think I'll give it a go here instead. OK, here goes...

-Woke up! Not asleep any more, GREAT!

-Grapefruit, a slice of toast and coffee, Mark and the gang on Ireland A.M. giving it socks. Class act.

-Barack and Michelle Obama are another class act. It's about time black America turned its back on the whole crotch grabbing, underpants hitched above the trousers thing.

-Can't find my left shoe??? Running late!

-The moaners are at it again on Duffy, moaning about hospital A and E closures. Hey, what about the sacrifices the private sector have made guys? Cop on!

-Bought bread. Batch loaf.

-Think the radiator in the front room needs to be bled. Better hop to it.

-Some people have a very romantic view of gypsies but not me, I think they're dangerous.

-I'm looking at my car. Just gazing really. She's a beauty.

-Lone backpackers beware, I will kill again.

-I have just consumed a human heart.

-I think Tubridy will do a great job on The Late Late. He's both personable and inquisitive.

-Note to self: remove body parts from bath. Smeeeeeeelllllllyyyyy! LMFAO!

...Wow, the hype is right, Twittering really is fun. I might do it again sometime, if I could be arsed.