It's starting to feel a lot like 1984

                                                      

So,  it's Christmas time, and we have all nearly finished our pressie shopping, and we are starting to prepare the annual Christmas Day feast that we have waited all year to eat. It's a wonderful time of the year, but for some of us, due to the jolly, jerking Bots in the Metacurse of Farce-book, it's starting to feel a lot like 1984!

Recently, a friend and I were lamenting the dismal state of holiday TV, and the fact that we would have to watch repeat romcoms from last century, two nights in a bloody row! I joked that I was going to watch the violent and highly entertaining, John Wick movie this Christmas. She agreed it was the better choice and laughed that we should kick the lead romcom actor out. Always one for a smart-arsey comeback, I suggested we choot him. Whereupon, I was issued an immediate restriction notice from the Metacurse.    The Suckerburger Bots had caught me in a joke.

I mean, of course I am not going to choot an actor as I don't own a weapon, and he lives in England. Well, he did. He has probably since gone into hiding, after reading my comment on my friend's (who shall remain anonymous) Farce-book post. Because I know that this famous actor is really using a fake profile, specifically so he can stalk my gorgeous friend who lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere, New Zealand. Will the Suckerburger Bots do anything about him? Of course not. They don't care what some dandy actor from a Land Farce Away does. Only thinking people with real opinions or, in my case, a violent sense of humour get restricted.

In the meantime, while I was "restricted" I thought I would be clever and use my back up account to further disrupt and incite carnage on the Metacurse, but that account had been restricted too, as a few days earlier I had suggested on a community noticeboard that a bomb be placed under a rather large and menacing spider that someone had found lurking in their home. Of course I meant insect bomb but who reads the well meaning suggestions of small town funny gals, like myself, on  community noticeboards from a small town in the middle of nowhere, New Zealand. Obviously Suckerburger Bots. This time I got pegged for terrorism.

* So the omniverse that created this little quiz and issued me with this entertaining and scarily truthful meme, is now maligning me for the very personality it only a few days prior, was chuckling at - go figure!

Which brings me to my original point. It feels like 1984, not the year, but the book written by that most esteemed gent, George Orwell, back in 1949. The timing of this classic piece can not go unmentioned, as it was published four years after the end of WW2, so a lot had been going on in the world. It was to be Orwell's ninth and final book; his swansong, if you like. If you haven't heard of it, go and get the book out of your library and read it or download it onto your kindle or reading device. George Orwell saw the future and warned us. We are, indeed, being watched. We are being censored. We are insidiously being told how to think, talk, act, eat, whatever.  Conspiracists, social commentators, politicians, Biblical theologians and the famous writer of Revelation, John the Baptist, foresaw this coming of an Age where some insidious and dark power was set to take over the world and all who walked upon it and said the "wrong" thing out loud or wrote in a metacurse post.

 We blame Farce-book, the Long Musk-rats, trumpeters, and greedy world governments. The judgmental, money grabbing Church appears to do more harm than good these days. But these institutions, social media conglomerates, power hungry men and, a few women, are merely pawns in the hands of maybe satan himself, or some secret super-power that has been fashioned after the evil prince of darkness himself. (And I don't mean Ozzy Osbourne, that loveable bat-eater and God-father of metal.)

There has always been censorship around words, both written, spoken or sung. But I don't think that conversation has ever become as perilous as what it is now. The freedom to be yourself is a scary business these days; where having a "chat" with someone has now become a rabbit warren beneath a field of hungry, carnivorous sheep. Tread carefully or not at all.                                                        Privacy and confidentiality is at all time low, as "information" and sub-standard reporting becomes the bitcoin that replaces truth. The internet as an information directory has now overridden legitimate research, as facts and truths are constantly twisted like soft taffy.

I don't know what the answer is to all this madness or what will become of us all in the days to come if we can't make spider-killing jokes. Do we need to be careful about what we say and who we say it to? In America, the land of the free and the brave, you have to be very brave to speak freely. In New Zealand, it is slowly becoming much the same. Watch your P's and Q's and all the other letters before and after them.

Perhaps we could go back to calling people on the phones that never leave our hands, or write letters on paper and post our news to a select handful of trusted and loved people. Our mental, spiritual and emotional stability is constantly eroded by all the fear mongering and disinformation that lands in our email and on our phones everyday. Newspapers seem safe again, for at least you can burn them if they become to obnoxious

But I do know that I need to be careful when I make jokes in the Metacurse or those Suckerburger bots will come after me, and restrict me from being myself, at least on their platform. The pen has always been mightier that the sword, the spoken word stronger and truer when coming from a good place.          I'm guess I'm not the first person in history nor will I ever be the last who has said, "You're not going to shut me up!" 

I rest my case...for now! ( I'm not resting anything - I'm just getting started!)

To be continued.... of course!