“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
Rapturous scenes of delight and ecstasy not seen since the 1979 visit of John Paul II were expressed across Ireland today as citizens witnessed the explosion of an emergency-chartered passenger jet returning from Dubai, carrying the worst of indigenous sub-humanity: influencers, drug peddlers, porta-potties, gangsters, pimps, smugglers, money launderers, whores, skunk pussies, dopers, junkies, GAA yokels… sick, venal. Cllr Billy Fitzbollocks chimed in with these sentiments of his hero Travis Bickle, stating, finally: “A real rain has come and will wash all this scum off the streets.
“If these traitorous pricks who turned their back on goddess Ériu think their charred remains can come waltzing back to the dereliction capital of Ireland, Arklow (spared by Iranian rockets out of pity) they have another thing coming! And St Gabriel’s Cemetery is already packed to capacity with dead constituents, so they may find somewhere else to die — no room at the inn here. To the survivors, we have already stocked up with useless arseholes also, and have the dole queues to prove it. I know my fellow ratepayers are rightly angry that valuable taxpayer’s money is being spent bringing these outcasts home, and personally I would have given them the €800 to stay there instead, the cunts,” stated a fiery Fixtbollocks.
Early reports indicate the flight was just moments away from landing safely, but a lethal concoction of hairspray fumes, creatine, exploding breast and lip-filler implants and ingested cocaine parcels ultimately ignited by masses of hot air from general influencer bullshit, unleashed an almighty inferno, killing the most infidels of the latest Gulf conflict so far. The recently installed Ayatollah has declared the terrible accident a military victory for the Islamic Republic and mankind in general. News platforms are still struggling to verify if images of the deceased are AI creations or if the perished always appeared that soulless and drained of all humanity.
The high-pitched, agonising screams of the last moments of the dearly departed could be heard on the flight recorder, aptly in tune with the beautiful strings of flight-cabin music, Wagner’s Das Rheingold – Entry of the Gods into Valhalla.
There was outrage amongst many arseholes that this sensitive material had already been leaked online, but the mother of victim Chantelle O’Ridely said it’s “how her daughter would want to have been remembered — monetising every undignified moment of her pointlessly superficial existence for public consumption and precious ad-click revenue.” Proceeds will be donated to Drugs Mule, Money Launderers, and Tax Dodgers Anonymous. Gofundme link to follow.
“If you successfully thing-ify yourself, then other people will begin to believe you are a thing and will throw all kinds of hard objects at you, sure that you will not bleed. And then you have to conjure up even more revealing forms of self-exposure—up to and including having a full-blown nervous breakdown in your bedroom with the webcam rolling. Don’t come for me, these influencers seem to be pleading to their fans-turned-foes, I’m wounded—can’t you see that I’m bleeding here? Forgetting that the pack loves blood and there is nothing bloodier than performative trauma.”
Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein
With embarrassingly nationalist, parochial and blinkered domestic media depicting this biblical mass exodus of culturally and geopolitically ignorant “once we are alright, Jack” Oirish housewives as if they are like the remaining shell-shocked protagonists of The Deer Hunter, John Byrne, who had up until now spent every waking hour of his entire existence slating all things Republic of Ireland online from his former plastic citadel home in the desert, actually shit himself and cried for his Ma at the sign of the first rocket.
“Well, an entirely fabricated plastic state was always where I dreamed of living as a child, even before much of it existed. My daily routine there consisted of Patrick Bateman levels of narcissistic self-care and looksmaxxing, as I laugh at the poor unfortunates whose broken backs this slave hellhole is built upon. At least I’m not one of those poor fuckers I would always laugh at en-route to the air conditioned gym, but now that the sandal is on the other foot, and I am also a desperate and trapped migrant in this oasis of debauchery, I consider myself equally oppressed and ready to lead them out of the desert like a pasty-skinned Moses. Sure, weren’t us Irish slaves once ourselves — I know all about it, so don’t lecture me!” said Byrne.
“We give out endlessly about back home but then bend over backwards to recreate an even cringier, performative version of it over here as everyone fakes ‘havin’ de craic’ and Two Johnnies-levels of contrived hilarity. Drunken Christy Moore ballad nights behind foreboding compound walls and ‘hungry for de ball’ GAA rivalry on unquenchable pitches, as Nepalese construction workers drop dead like gnat flies from scaffolding I aim at within the distance of a puck of my sliotar. Me trust-fund daddy is funding most of this adventure, but you won’t see me mention this on the socials, as it would only shatter the illusion of my wafer-thin, veneered high-roller life to the losers back home.”
“Successful influencers in the wellness and fitness worlds—the people who make fortunes from selling idealized versions of themselves and the idea that you, too, can attain nirvana through a project of perpetual self-improvement—are a perfect fit with far-right economic libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, who also fetishize the individual as the only relevant social actor. In neither worldview is there any mention of collective solutions or structural changes that would make a healthy life possible for all.
Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein
Now living in exile in his spiritual homeland of Queensland, Australia, radical cleric Mohammed Al-Matisi was devastated upon hearing the news of his spiritual leader’s death. Al-Matisi, who was ostracised from the Arklow Islamic community over 15 years ago over his outspoken views on how commercial-sounding the second Pussycat Dolls album was which created a schism amongst his sect not seen since the Protestant Reformation. His most recent return under the cover of darkness saw him shunning even his closest friends completely in favour of his fellow faction members.
“Even before I was born I was always a fan of the Iranian Revolution, and subsequently as a child my favourite WWF wrestler was the Iron Sheik — to date the only Iranian-born champion in WWE history, having won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship in 1983,” the imam roared whilst banging his fist on the table.
“I was busy berating the missus for putting on Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, the weakest of the trilogy I think you’ll agree, when I felt a great disturbance in Islam, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. It was a feeling I had not sensed since Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi died, and sure enough, when I opened my digital edition of the Wicklow People, I saw a great mentor of mine, the Ayatollah, had been martyred. Even after all these years abroad, it’s still my favourite publication, as no matter what fuckin’ happens in global affairs, they will somehow ingeniously link it back to Arklow in one degree of separation. I remember a Doyle fella took a shit in the World Trade Centre once, and there he was on the front page the week those symbols built of brutal Western imperialism so gloriously fell.”
These influencers gaze at us through the camera’s lens with so much heart-bursting love that it’s easy to forget that what they are actually looking at is their own faces on their phones—their digital doubles—as they coach us all to reach for our own best selves, our body doubles, in the never-ending house of mirrors
Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein
