Rambling in the Spectatorship

Original absurd, satirical and funny fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Adams, and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO).

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The man had rocked in his chair for some time before he spoke. “It comes down to consumption,” he said. With his thumb, he then wiped a drop of liquid which had scaled the cup’s rim as if trying to flee. “Things consuming other things, I mean. We live in a state of perpetual consumption. Don’t you agree? Think of Europe long ago: the Celts in Britain, the Moors in Spain. Europe then was war, conquest, genocide. Nastier, larger, more well-armed cultures ate the not so. When the dust settled didn’t Europe broadcast this process globally? Isn’t it the case that local cultures everywhere were soon devoured, or are still being devoured? It’s true; I’ve seen it with my own eyeballs. I’ve seen it in East Arnhem Land, at an Aboriginal funeral. The ceremony lasted a week - an entire week. A man had invited me to sit so I sat. People sat in circles on the dusty road singing songs. Each circle was a different group, I was told. Each circle moved closer to the house to pay their respects. As I listened to the song rhythms, I lost track of time. Suddenly the sun was down. Men were glowing in the porch lights, dancing, their calves like pistons, springs. I was there later that week too, at the end. At the end they take the body to the water's edge. I watched the men load the dead on the tray of a Toyota ute. They wore American basketball jerseys made in China, while the women wore tie dye dresses, a remnant of the Makassan contact nearly three hundred years ago. When the body was loaded, the Japanese ute reversed, and the beeping sound rose above the singing and the instruments and the mourning. It pierced the ceremony, pierced time itself. For a moment I could see backwards to what this ceremony might have looked like five thousand years ago, but I could also see forward. Do you understand? Right around the bay, the Rio Tinto refinery lights burned. The refinery is where the red bauxite mined from the earth becomes alumina and is shipped to Canada to be smelted into aluminium: aluminium to make Toyota chassis; aluminium to make Coke cans. After the ceremony, I helped an elder down some stairs because he was in a wheelchair because his leg had been amputated because of diabetes, because of refined sugar, because of Coke Cola, because of the aluminium can, because of the smelting process, because of the refinery, because of the bauxite mined from his own land. Posters in the local shops warned of refined sugar, of diabetes. A talking carrot, commissioned by a faraway government and drawn by a faraway graphic design firm, was on the poster saying, ‘Eat me instead.’ Is it any wonder the words rang false? No. At the bottom of those stairs was a board meeting to discuss the refinery. The mining company was leaving and returning the land. But doesn’t that too seem like digestion, like the stomach: the land spewed back up, a puddle of oil plumage and residual poison and barren soil? Do you see what I’m saying, about the consumption process? Though, to call it a process is misleading because it’s eternal. Consumption is the state of things, our nature. The process never ends. Like a shark it can never stop. Do you not think it’s happening to us right now? Online I see videos of armed thieves being shot. I see dozens a week. I see carjackings gone wrong, armed road rage, doorstep death. I see fist-fights, people screaming. Men catching their wives cheating, reaction videos to men catching their wives cheating, abusive comments and death threats on men catching their wives cheating. Death threats - in text, sent instantly from anywhere, from space. Do you hear me: the threat of murder? I see men stalking women in CCTV blur. I see interviews with insane bystanders more cartoonish than The Simpsons. Do you ever catch yourself thinking this is some other place, like you awoke in a video game? I’m seeing heat-vision of a soldier diving on a grenade. There’s a white flash, then stillness. There’s a disagreement over whether he’s Russian or Ukrainian. People are either glad he’s dead or claiming it's fake, nothing else. I’m seeing a man shot in a sushi restaurant go limp. I’m alone in bed - another continent, different climate - learning through CCTV how bodies go limp. I’m learning that if a bullet hits a certain disc in the spine the legs will twitch, the body will go limp. The comments teach me that. In the comments they’re either glad he’s dead or claiming it's fake, nothing else. This - this is who we are now, and I’m not talking about the thief, the shooter, or the blown-up soldier, but those in the comments, those talking about it, discussing it, cheering and booing it on from the bleachers. Face-painted in the grandstand, that’s who we are. And if you listen, you can hear it. Listen, listen to the volume. Listen to the goal-line cheer. This is The Spectatorship: the love of volume, to value noise, to view noise as sacred. Speak, speak, speak. Post, post, post. Type, type, type. Yell, yell, yell. If God granteth thou a ‘platform’ then thou must use thine voice: to speak, to post, to type, to yell. It matters not when the noise-bringer is a hypocrite, a liar. Fly in thine private jet, holiday on thine superyacht - forgivable sins so long as thou remind-eth others that the environment is in peril. The noise, like some holy sacrifice, atones for the ill deeds. The words have physical properties. They are a carbon offset. If words are violence, then why can’t they also be your salvation? Of course: ignore the fact it is easier to shout ‘I love the war’ than it is to fight. Of course: ignore the fact that words too are a nice way to dodge the draft. Of course: ignore the actions and their consequences entirely. This is everywhere. Are you familiar with Raytheon? They make ‘guided’ missiles. Well one of their missiles kissed a fully functioning MSF hospital in Yemen, killing eleven people. A fragment of another Raytheon munition was traced to a strike in Yemen that struck a family home. A five-year-old girl is alone in this world now, her five siblings and parents: dead. Well Raytheon - this arms manufacturer - boasts a pride banner and slogan: Pride is Power. Can you hear it? What about Philip Morris, the cigarette company? They have a decent ESG score. Their website’s sustainability page shows rolling footage of a thick, life-giving forest. ‘We can only achieve our purpose by embedding sustainability in all we do,’ they say. They sell cigarettes. They sell cancer, gangrene, hospital floods. Tell me, what’s more likely of the two companies: that they’re genuinely good corporate citizens with big hearts, or their words are a risk mitigation strategy, designed to help assure investors that their social licence to operate won’t be lost? Tell me. I know a guy who works at a consulting firm with no tangible product, not even a cigarette. How on earth do you market such a thing? I’ll tell you. His firm makes him share company content on LinkedIn stating how innovative the firm is; that’s how. One of his key performance indicators is sharing the content. If we say it enough, then it’s true. Talk is the job, noise the product. But now there’s so much noise the signal gets lost. I’m in bed watching a man get shot. I’m watching it on repeat. I’m slowing it down. I’m seeking other angles. I’m watching the thief with the gun spin like a twig snapped. He was facing the bald man, now he’s facing the girl. I’m watching the bald man draw his gun and shoot the thief in the back. The thief tries to flee but the bald man aims and shoots and the thief crashes in the doorway, leg-twitching, limp forever, as the girl screams but there’s no noise, just her face: a horror movie ghost, like she wasn’t a girl anymore and never would be again, like her and the dead had both entered a new world. I’m watching all that and feeling: nothing. To me it was just noise, one note in an ever-expanding orchestra pit. Well I ask you, what kind of person can do that? What kind of person can watch death on repeat? What kind of person can threaten death online? What kind of person can truly wish the worst for others? What kind of person can feel cold hate? Not me. I swear to you, not me. I swear to you I don’t know who that was that night, staring at that screen but it wasn’t me. I swear to you it was my hand and my eyes and my brain but it wasn’t me. I know me… I’m begging you: believe me. I am not this way. It’s like some monster had come along and chewed me up. Perhaps it’s still chewing and that’s why I’m so twisted. Do you believe me? Please, believe me. It’s not my fault. Look, look, look, as I said, it comes down to consumption. Imagine… Imagine this was a thousand years ago and we’re sitting on a corn field. The clouds high above are dancing. At first we see on the horizon a single man, a speck, then a dozen, then thousands, all armed. We know instantly it’s all over. Our language will soon be lost, our way of life destroyed, our rich rhythms drowned by reverse lights as our limbs rot, and our beliefs, etched on masonite panels, are hidden from view. We could point to this man in just rage and say: there, there is the great consumer; there is the mighty beast bringing smallpox and Christianity and Coca Cola and cluster bombs. But we can’t say that now because we can’t see him; there’s nowhere to point. But he’s there, I’m telling you. I know because if I died today and floated above the service and listened to my mother’s words, those words would not reflect me. Yes, they would reflect my actions, because it is our actions that touch the world, it is through our actions that we are knowable. But our actions are based on our beliefs and values, and mine have been chewed up and spat out. I now act like a different man. I have changed. I watch videos of death, see only death. I read of hate and fear, see only hate and fear. Listen, if a loved one from fifteen years ago was brought forward through time, they too would say that is not the same man you mourn. But they are all blind now because they too have changed, as has everyone. It’s like our hearts and minds and souls turned gangrenous and needed to be amputated. It’s like we’ve got these giant foam hands on, fingers pointing, and we’re inside a stadium cheering only death and destruction and hate and judgement, or saying it’s all fake, nothing else. It’s like we’ve been consumed. And nowhere, not on the mega screen or the boundary adverts, nor the walls of a church or the pillars of parliament house, are there any warnings. Nowhere are there posters of cartoon carrots telling us to avoid this culture’s poisons. Nowhere can a finger be pointed, or blame be laid. Why? Because we are consuming ourselves. But it’s not too late. Please believe me. Because last night I woke in pure fear and dread. The dead thief had entered my dreams. I saw his body go limp and the girl scream and the bald man cry and I felt it all then. I felt the terror, the anger, the tragedy, the helplessness. I shivered so forcefully I could not switch on the lights or get up. It was like I was on delay, like all this time reality had just been moving too quickly for me to comprehend. But my heart came back to me last night, and I don’t want to lose it again. I don’t want to forget this feeling. I don’t want to be distracted or placated or soothed because that isn’t me. Please, believe me. I’m not careless or carefree. I refuse to be carefree in a world that needs care.” 

The video captured the man’s entire rant from a table against the cafe glass. There was something odd about his demeanour - the wild hair, bulging eyes - that told the group of friends to begin filming. The clip that went viral was the cut-down version, which excluded the man drinking coffee and tapping his foot and shivering.  

In the viral clip, the pimpled waiter stood tall and confused like an emu through the entire deranged ramble. At one point, he jotted something on his order pad, which led people in the comments to speculate what he had written. It became a gif: the kid scribbling as the crazed man waved his arms. People in offices (including Raytheon) now use the gif to make fun of their boss when they can’t explain what they want. 

The comments, however, were mostly focused on the rant’s content. Many claimed the man failed to understand how the ongoing dialogue of social issues does, in fact, play a vital role (perhaps the most vital). Others suggested the man trivialised marginalised groups' experience of colonialism by comparing them to middle-class, capitalist angst. Still others, also adept at missing the point, argued that arms manufacturers play an important role in national security. There were those who said people are free to smoke and others that crypto is great. Finally, there were those who combed the footage, traced the man’s lips, counted his laces, measured the angle of his arm waves… These select few soon flooded the comments, arguing the rant was entirely fabricated, a setup, a work of fiction.

Author’s commentary

I acknowledge the above was dense, so if you want to skip this part or return later there will be no hard feelings, nor any medium feelings, only flaccid feelings.

Thank you for reading my first attempt at a monologue, sub-genre: ‘rant’. In preparation for this piece, I broke the glass on my emergency milk crate, drank seventeen craft beers and stood on my street corner yelling at cars. That’s called ‘research’, so you know. 

I also watched an interview with Aaron Sorkin, the writer of Several Good Men, talking about Jack Nicholson’s famous courtroom monologue in Several Good Men. I can’t exactly recall the details (though I know Several Good Men by heart), but he essentially said a villain’s monologue is them ‘making their case to God why they should be allowed into Heaven.’ That idea helped me structure the rant to be less a lecture and more the protagonist’s desperate attempt to justify his own thoughts and worldview. 

The ending I owe to Thomas Pynchon. He has a great way of ending things. His endings often seem to be a snapshot of the story itself. I have been repeating in my head (and on the street corner), that ‘the end must be the thing,’ as in not a continuation but an expression. I originally had the crazed man become embarrassed after realising he had ranted at the young waiter. Turning the rant into a viral video, the waiter into a gif, the onlookers into cruel people who film strangers, and the social media world into those speculating on everything but what the man was trying to say (his intent) felt more aligned - more the thing. 

In terms of the rant’s content, this was informed by my respect for language and thought. I had written a long explanation for that statement, but I deleted it. The words seemed angry and counterproductive. Instead, I’ll recommend the essay Politics and the English Language by George Orwell for anyone who wants to understand how language is used to deceive, hide, signal, etc… As a quick example, Phillip Morris refers to the health consequences of smoking as ‘negative externalities’ instead of, say, ‘death’. That is deliberate and effective. In a world where language is used skilfully by nefarious foe, it is vital to have solid thinking skills to avoid being duped. Critical Thinking by The Foundation for Critical Thinking is a good place to start, particularly the nine ‘universal intellectual standards’. My long, second rant was mainly about today’s lack of depth of thought. My sense is we are in an age of unprecedented nonsense-speak yet we lack the ability and patience with each other to discuss the real issues hidden behind the bumper stickers. This is a shame because, to quote Colonel Jessup from Several Good Men, ‘You can handle the truth!’

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Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction and prose. Literary influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald. That’s all we have time for, folks.