We thought it was a good thing it existed. It makes our lives easier, enables lightning-fast information transmission and publication, and opens up space for the communication of individual opinions. By now we know, alas, not so good. Gyöngyi Kiss's article from the website of the Protected Society Foundation.
"What is approaching the country is brutal... according to the state of emergency, an alert has been issued for ten counties... the country is divided in two... a long-seen and unpleasant guest will arrive on Sunday..." - my smartphone beeps with scary messages. I am sitting in a barely heated room affected by the energy crisis and tremblingly waiting for the approaching hours. We might collide with a swarm of meteorites, or the huge mountain black ash tree in the middle of the garden will be uprooted by its hurricane, but no. Clicking on the many ominous headlines, I only find out that the long-awaited rain will arrive in our region, with some wind, of course, because what else would blow the moisture-bringing clouds over us. In addition, the November fog descends on the landscape. I see the forest contentedly absorbing the blessed moisture, the drizzle littering the ground with fresh, edible mushrooms, the leaves are rustling, nature is preparing for winter, after all, there is snow in All Saints.
"We are guided by treacherous fear and not deceptive hope," Attila József wrote in his poem "My Homeland" eighty-six years ago. There is no other way now, except as if we were in fifth gear. Today, everyone is taught to be afraid from morning to night. Scary-looking ghosts modeled after pumpkins have moved into kindergartens, the Internet is saturated with frightening toys, horror movies are playing in cinemas, blood is flowing in television reports, and now even the news feed that pours upon us every minute is full of brutal headlines.
"Here is the shocking announcement about the dangers of rice". A new research has announced devastating news: the world's most popular side dish, rice, can be harmful to health; excessive consumption of refined grains is as bad for the heart as too much sugar. Well, even though this food plays a decisive role in the nutrition of an entire continent, it is true that most of the people living there do not have the opportunity to eat excessively.
This is also charming: "The wild chestnut tree of the Botanic Garden in Vácrátót hides a terrible secret". If you click on the hissing article, it turns out that during wartime, a pistol got stuck on one of its branches, and the wise plant grew around it and disposed of the killing tool over many, many years. It was old, rotted and the rusty carbine rolled out of it during cutting.
Let's increase the effect: "The photographer took a creepy picture, you won't guess what it depicts." A Lithuanian artist, Eugenijus Kavaliauskas, captured a super-close image of an ant's face. According to the article, the five-fold magnified image under the microscope is recommended only for the nervous. The red eyes, angry facial expression, and fangs could also belong to the main villain of a horror movie.
It is likely that after viewing this picture, most people will not be able to look at ants in the same way as before. Here's the bottom line, such a title and statement is clicked by even my kind of hardened, cautious beauty to untangle the terrible claim, the younger ones are horrified at the distortion of the technology, and because of the likes, they don't have time to take a look at it live in the spring marching, steadfast, diligent little animals.
We click here, we click there, while time passes, it runs out, there is less time left to think. There is also a lot of noise, in which it is harder to hear the alarm bell of common sense, even though it is really needed now. The whole army of Huhogók arranges day and night to make us afraid, but not of what we should really be afraid of. Vigilantes tell us every day that our world is under attack, that we are all on the verge of collapse, but who cares, and anyway, it can't happen to us. Our days are spent in a clicking bubble, the tyranny of the world wide web covers everything, keeping us captive to the intellectual trash pouring in on us. The bottom absorbs the value and the tinsel glitters on top. This is how a pork belly advertisement can be placed above the coverage of the funeral of the beloved actress Venczel Vera, or this is how the most dramatic chorus of Verdi's Funeral Mass can underline the images of a boot advertisement about the Day of Wrath.
The cover operation was a professional job. As a stunned girl, Europe even feels good in the embracing arms and does not even hear the voices of those in whom the instinct to live still flickers.
Even though the World Government is already lurking under the gardens, Ursula bin Laden (copyright by Zoltán Hegyi, my favorite publicist) gives an impassioned presentation about European values, and the members of her team do not even notice that the moral pedestal, the order, has long been there. It's only mild autumn, but thanks to the energy crisis, we're about to freeze, and if we survive this winter, we can say we've defeated evil. The Master Plan looks back at us, winks and rolls, giggling, like a golem into the pit of realization.
Well, this is brutal, not the rain, the falling leaves, the descending fog. Just don't forget to click the start button, when we can watch the final destruction of our European culture and life on television with a fragrant morning coffee.
Source: Protected Society Foundation
Author: Gyöngyi Kiss
(Cover image: technokrata.hu)
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