The Weekly Wit: Goodbye to All That

Farewell to clickbait; the slow death of veganism, and sad, sober young people.

Drug Store by Edward Hopper (1927)

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Welcome to the sixth edition of The Weekly Wit, a satirical review of news and culture.

Grouching Toward Utopia

As a professional, cheerful pessimist, whenever I hear the words, ‘It’s the future!’ I note down whatever this thing may be, then wait patiently for that thing to unravel.

The inevitable, world dominance of China? Nope. Demographic doom awaits. Driverless cars? Great, if you don’t mind spreading pedestrians across the pavement every trip.

What about smoke-free teens? The end of smoking? Half of teenagers are now addicted to the vape—a civilised crack pipe.

What happens when vaping is proven as hazardous as the cancer stick? Answer: half of the population will crave a good old cigarette. This means bars will once again permit smoking. We will smoke on buses and in cabs and on planes and on trains and in swimming pools and in gyms. Treadmills will have ashtrays. And there’s nothing the pious pink-lungs can do about it.

I digress.

This week, the future of journalism claimed its latest victim. VICE, the once-edgy hipster outfit, is no more. VICE joins BuzzFeed in what some call the ‘end of an era.’

Back in journalism school, VICE and BuzzFeed were the future. Apparently, the only way to feed information to a modern readership was to build a website resembling an epileptic fit. BuzzFeed’s apparent genius was its discovery that readers liked lists and really needed to know what type of avocado they might be.

For the blissfully unaware, BuzzFeed made ‘content’ king. What mattered was clicks and hits and going viral. What gets clicks and hits? What goes viral? Mindless drivel.

Without sympathy, BuzzFeed cheapened the journalism business. BuzzFeed’s nonsense creed encouraged many serious publications to commit suicide. Our culture suffered greatly under this tide of listicles and hokum.

Thankfully, BuzzFeed died when it did. To mourn the death of BuzzFeed is to mourn the departure of a particularly aggressive melanoma removed from one’s behind.

Like all good lemmings, BuzzFeed and VICE marched onward toward the future. The future was the bottom of a ravine.  

This very belief in The Future for its own sake is a symptom of our times.

Go into a restaurant. Sit down. Often, they’ll ask you to get your phone out and snap a QR code. You see, the old paper menu you could hold in your hands is outdated. This is the future! The menu. But behind a screen. Isn’t it advanced? Aren’t we slouching toward utopia?

In my journal, which is made from paper, I’ve written an extensive list of ‘Things They Say Are The Future.’ With my fountain pen, which takes ink, I’ve run sharp lines through both BuzzFeed and VICE.

What’s next for the last rites? The recent obsession with AI, probably.

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The Last Vegan

A man partial to drinking his own urine thinks his former veganism is ‘embarrassing’.

This week, the adventurer Bear Grylls revealed his former vegan evangelism has mutated into a new kind of evangelism: Bear eats only meat and organs now.