I’ve come across a disturbing trend in my usual grokking of the inter-spheres. As with everything I tend to report on, I need to have either read a great deal about it or be horrendously drunk in order to add my own special brand of commentary. In this particular instance I’m more from column a than column b, but a man can dream.
There seems to be a particular strain of eschatological fervour at the idea of the ‘end times’, particularly end times brought by an invisible carrier that targets the youthful and the strong. This particular form of influenza, known colloquially as ‘Swine flu’ induces what is known as a Cytokine Storm, which basically turns the strong immune systems of those it infects, against the host. Don’t worry if you’re a child or a member of the elder classes, do absolutely shit yourself and run screaming into the streets if you’re a relatively healthy youngun. Though, whilst it’s usually good to take advice from Randall Munroe, the idea of drinking constantly and never sleeping to destroy your immune system and thus duck the deft destruction of death, is one that maybe isn’t a long-term solution.
Regardless, I’ve begun to notice a particular type of onanistic joy that has built up around this influenza. That is one of absolute, honest-to-goodness assurance that you’re number has been passed over. This is some WW1 level bullshit. The kind of insane mentality that made men charge machine guns under the foolish and utterly idiotic misconception that their name was on a bullet and it had already been decided. You lived because you weren’t meant to die, etc. What fatuous piffle. I suppose these same idiots assume that the millions of children that die each year of malnourishment had foodstuffs, that, unfortunately, lacked their name?
Now, this isn’t going to be a polemic about the poor, starving, huddled masses yearning to breathe free etc etc, but rather an acknolwedgement of our own particular collective mortality. First, it goes without saying that the human race will carry on. We’re like goddamn cockroaches, we seem to evolve and mutate at a pace that is quite honestly, breathtaking. Our genome, as a whole will be perfectly safe. The problem is that some of us, we fucked masses, will be utterly fucko-mc-cunted. Yeah, that’s right. If this panic and frenzy and other such nonsense blows out of proportion to the point that we’re all dying in the streets, coughing up blood and fucking anything remotely porcine, then yeah, some of us, fellow internet travellers, are going to die in the streets. You brave and worthy motherfuckers will have your lives ended purely because some microscopic motherfucker wants to turn your cells into multiple billions of itself. Now that shit, clearly, is not cool.
It’s a fact commonly remarked upon that our generation (I.E, Gen Y, or Z, not those Gen X idiots who are all balding and now have no money) has not ever known the true face of evil. We cling to causes like Animal-Rights, or N’s Liberation, or “Socialism” because we feel that there’s something inherently fucked up about the world but our built-in pattern-recognition software is broken. We can’t identify the threats to ourselves, and we’re so caught up in a tide of pure moral relativism that we can’t find a common bond either towards an external threat or promoting unity amongst ourselves. This is a good thing. No race of people ever died from thinking too much or being too reasonable (Excluding the fuckers in Pompeii who thought ‘oh look at the pretty sky flames, I’ll wait around for a while’). We now, for better or for worse, have this unifying threat. Microscopic, efficient, mass-produced killing machines that we ourselves perpetuate. Web 2.0 meet Virus 2.0. It’s decentralised, unique, highly social, and above all else fits in with our modern-day lifestyles.
Yet the vast majority of us, like our twitter accounts, our facebook accounts, all manner of social media extrusions of the self, feel we’re individually too important to be silenced amongst the crowd of braying cattle. It’s obvious that only time will tell, but isn’t it oddly fitting that all those who welcome chaos, who welcome this plague against humanity, media beat up or not, assume that they will be standing afterwards to tell the story? The grotesque solipsism of our generation continues even into territory we’re categorically unwilling and too arrogant to understand.