The internet is a kind of time capsule in which nobody bothers to read the date or time stamp of its contents. The current generation has no idea what it is like to live offline. There are stories, images, and the like that have shelf lives that would make Twinkies and the McDonalds fries stuck in your car seat cushions tip their caps, if they wore caps. Occasionally, someone will share a story on social media, with the commensurate outrage, that has already made the rounds a time or seven. “Attila the Hun crossed the Danube again! Please pray for our friends in the Balkans.” And before the virtual ink dries, someone will politicize it. “Everybody knew he had his nefarious sights set on Constantinople. I tell you one thing, those liberal snowflakes in the Byzantine Empire better start building a wall!” And so it goes.
That’s the thing about the ‘web. Back in the day, we’d know exactly when something happened, because the periodical we were perusing would have a date on it. If it was TV, we would also know immediately. Can you imagine a coworker coming in tomorrow asking if we watched the moon landing last night? What I’m getting at is context matters. The ones of people reading my posts as they drop will have an understanding of the culture on which I’m opining. So if you are reading this well beyond 2019, I hope that the events to which I will refer will have long since been forgotten; if not, they better be classified as capital crimes, and I’d like to see stoning as the means of administering justice, by golly.
We now live in an age where people open and lick or spit into food or beverage containers in grocery stores. I’m not naive enough to think that this has never happened. I’m sure that juvenile delinquency, frat pledges, or really lame gang initiations have at some point incorporated this type of thing. What I find astounding is the willingness of the perpetrators to seek publicity for their abhorrent, nay satanic behavior. Where is the honor among thieves, to loosely borrow a truism? Now this might be an alien concept to those of you Instagram influencers reading this, as if, so I’ll proceed slowly. When we, I mean theoretical people, would do something we (theoretically speaking) knew was illegal, or at the very least wrong, WE WOULD TRY OUR BEST TO MAKE SURE NOBODY WAS WATCHING! Crazy, I know. So now, either people don’t care, or maybe as unsettling, their ability to discern right from wrong left the building with Elvis. How’s that for a timely reference? I’m hoping that the list of things we couldn’t imagine people doing will eventually be populated with unimaginably positive items. A man can dream. Until then, I’m resigned to realize that knuckleheads will keep doing knuckleheaded stuff, and we will continue shaking our heads ruefully.
Not doing what is wrong, either in public or private, is not an unworthy goal. But is that enough, and should that be a satisfactory aspiration?
(Click “Stand On Firmer Ground” for a deeper look into The List Keeps Getting Longer)
Stand On Firmer Ground