The longest-running slappers union in the town, the Slappers Legion of Arklow Gee (SLAG), voiced concerns that it would suffer age discrimination by management of the latest nightclub offering due to open this bank holiday weekend. The chairwoman of SLAG Chantelle O Ridely fears the potential emergence of an apartheid state involving two tribes of dystopian ‘likes’-obsessed naval gazing narcissists, with the upstart young Turks of the childless and carefree Instagram Hunzo Gen Zers on one side and the clapped out, sprog-laden, if they were a horse they would shoot them now Millenial/Gen Xers on the other.
“Like back in my day, I had de pick of the fellas from de Tunnel and, later, de Cube, I can tell ya, I clocked the places in a few weeks and this was before de dating apps on the smartphones. It took serious effort and finesse to bag a paralytically drunk and horny lad face down in the blood-soaked sawdust at the end of the night. Now dese new bitches stand around with all de apps and all the filters on the phone, and it’s like shooting cocks in a barrel,” opined Chantelle. “It’s just not a level shagging field anymore and, besides, me Turkish botch job botox death mask starts to shrivel after midnight! I’m just about hangin on here still usin a 15 year old, AI-altered picture of meself as me Facebook profiler!”
Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari
New nightclub proprietor Ben Parkinsons unequivocally stated that all ages, shapes and sizes will be welcomed at his new establishment: “Well, all the young ones now are comin’ in absolutely coked up to the gills and don’t put down the smartphones long enough to actually consume any alcohol so we arent gettin much change out of them. As the great Susan Sontag once uttered way back in 1975, “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”
Instead, we are actively targeting the 40 + over-the-hill cohort cos tear-stained gin and vodka sales are where it’s at baby! Two for one Bombay Sapphire before 11 and the only proof of age required is tits around the ankles and a copy (physical or phone picture) from their local GP of an unhealthy prescription medicine addiction. A free soundproofed creche facility will also be provided at the rear of the premises for all those neglected and unwanted little party pooper Cadens and Yasmines to tag along. Crimecall will also be displayed on the big screen for the little tots so they see Daddy at least once a year.
Father File will be supervising the dance and also screening the age of entrants with a quick grope and a feel: “I have decades of experience in the field and I haven’t got an underage boy or girl wrong yet and if ye don’t believe me then I have the criminal record to prove it!”
“When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears.” But we aren’t transcending to something higher, just less ourselves. And a flattened, reduced version of ourselves is easier to confuse with a flattened, reduced version of someone else.”
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein
