Category: Language

I Woz ‘Ere

I recently clapped eyes on a piece of graffiti that took me back. For starters, I’m not sure graffiti is the popular art form it once was. It’s like seeing a cassette tape. I’m not a nostalgic person by nature, primarily because I was a perpetually confused and nervous child, so I have no longing to return to a simpler time. Childhood is only considered simple because adults assume children haven’t worked out that adults are full of shit and have no idea what they are doing. We all knew.

Still, the graffiti I saw was once popular. It was almost a meme before memes. It was so common as to be considered cliché.

I refer to the hastily scrawled statement, ‘I Woz ‘Ere.’ It rarely actually has the apostrophe to represent the missing H, but leaving it out made me feel uncomfortable. Funnily enough, when presented with woz and ‘ere, I never read it in a youthful slang way but instead with a West Country accent. As if the town was regularly invaded by farmers who wanted their presence to be known.

‘I woz ‘ere’ is an interesting one. I’d go so far as to say it’s incorrectly worded too. It’s got the wrong tense. I don’t think anyone really cares about being remembered. Not after they’ve left the area or indeed shuffled off. We are all fully aware that our lack of presence is of no consequence, especially to us, as we are usually more preoccupied with where we are. Unless we’re dead. In which case we have either ceased to exist or have ventured into another state of existence, in which case we have other more pressing things to worry about, like ghost snakes.  

This kind of graffiti doesn’t strike me as done for the sake of destruction either. There’s not any malice in it. There’s no artistic drive or political meaning. There’s no rebellion in it either.

Really, all a person is saying with that is, ‘I am here.’ I’m not certain they are necessarily saying it to anyone in particular. It’s just the act of doing solidifies the concept. It’s a reaffirming statement. I am here. I exist. I am a human, and I am here.

Maybe I just haven’t been looking for it and therefore am mistaken in the belief that ‘I Woz ‘Ere’ ever went away. It’s return, to me if no one else, indicates a turning point.

The need to reassure oneself that ‘I am here’ has never been more important. We live in a strange age where our humanity has been stripped away. It’s been a slow stripping, something that happens after every gym session when my body finally realises what the hell I’ve just done and can no longer move.

Arguably, it started with Facebook. Well, really it started with Myspace, but that at least taught people some basic HTML. Come to think of it, I think I’m eventually going to conclude it started with the advent of modern capitalism, as I am wont to do, but for the sake of not losing focus, let’s start with Facebook.

Facebook, ironically branded Social Media, allowed us to start living our lives a bit more digitally. It was a slow evolution, because it largely facilitated people meeting up in real life and then sharing the photographic evidence of the meet up, lest those who attended forgot they were there (which considering this was around the time I discovered I like drinking is entirely plausible). But then came camera phones, which ultimately led to more and more selfies, which led to a greater focus on the self. Which led to a gradual distortion as to what the self was. The selfie made it all external.

Anyway, I grew tired of Facebook quite quickly, and ditched the whole thing. I swiftly discovered I stopped being invited to things, with the excuse afterwards being ‘You aren’t on Facebook, so I couldn’t add you to the invite.’

I will accept that it’s entirely possible that I wasn’t invited because people didn’t want to invite me and, by not being on Facebook, I simply offered a handy excuse. I can picture people saying ‘Imagine if he was here, talking about the stripping away of humanity. It’s never that deep bro; you’re just autistic.’

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, being detached from Facebook meant I swiftly became detached from certain friends. Facebook boomed into the monster it is today. Instagram emerged. TikTok. All manner of attention hungry apps. People in their thousands, millions even, clutter the internet with content. With images of their apparent lives, with their thoughts, feelings and opinions. There’s so much of it all the time. People have rapidly become these nebulous entities on our screens. We have no real connection. They’ve become soundbites. They’ve become disposable.

Then there’s streaming. Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, they’re all working hard to pump content into our homes. All working hard with the food delivery apps of Just Eat and Uber Eats to ensure we stay in the confines of our homes.

Every so often, something decent slips through, but by and large it’s all slop. There are some ominous industry terms thrown about these days like content not being ‘Second Screen’ enough. Social media giants hired gambling experts to make their platforms as addictive as possible. Streaming giants on the other hand are hiring creatives who can produce shows that can be followed whilst ‘scrolling’.

So, we have social media sapping away at real relationships and streaming services commodifying art and entertainment in a bid to make it as uninspiring as possible.

Then there are dating apps. Romantic relationships commodified. Once upon a time, if someone said you could subscribe to a service that flashed some pictures in front of you and you chose the ones you liked in the hope of sleeping with them, you’d have thought they were part of a weird sex trafficking cult and erupted into violence.

Meeting people has become all the harder and all the more stripped from humanity. On the off chance that you ‘match’ you have the option to ‘unmatch’ at the touch of a button. I wonder how many times, before the advent of online dating, people just wordlessly abandoned an interaction because it wasn’t ticking all their boxes.

People are reduced to profiles. They’re to be judged on a handful of photos and half-a-dozen words.

Then couple the fact that the digital world of the internet is driven almost solely by division. So many sites just want clicks. They want eyeballs on page so they can sell that sweet sweet advertising space. The easiest way to get this is to generate conflict.

Everyone is reduced to labels in all their hollow glory. Millennials, Gen-Z, Boomers, Liberals, Conservatives, MAGA, Alt-right, clinical sounding words devoid of any real meaning.

We’re all told what our labels are and then we’re pitted against each other. We must fight to the last and give no quarter. Those with different labels to us are not human. None of us are. We’re consumers. And we consume slop.

To pay for all this slop and a place to live as we lap it up, we work at screens, tap-tapping away. We have to work endlessly to keep the economy afloat. We work at screens, tap-tapping away.  The emptiest of all the words deified to point of being the be all and end all of all things.

Is the content nourishing? Does it make us feel? Is there anything left behind the profiles?

Every so often, it’s healthy to remind ourselves that we are here.

Well, that got out of hand.  

On Phrases

As Western society marches towards fascism, which can only lead to a more intolerant and violent world that undoes any progress made over the last few decades, I think it’s only appropriate that I talk about phrases that annoy me.

I have often been told I am too literal a person. This may be the reason I tend to avoid ‘phrases’. They annoy me. All to often they make no sense. Even quotable lines, under any scrutiny, fall apart and can be discarded to the ‘nonsense’ pile; a pile that grows ever larger, threatening to cause a landslide of nonsense, burying the village of ‘Over-stretched Metaphor’.

My theory is, once you reach a certain age, you can spout any old bollocks and claim it’s an oft used expression. ‘It takes a strong swimmer to measure a whale.’  That’s one I’ll be telling my grandkids.

Anyway, a particular memory stands out in my mind. I recall sitting in a maths class attempting to make sense of ‘the scientific calculator’. Upon getting the wrong answer to a question I said, ‘This calculator is broken!’

To which the maths teacher said, ‘It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.’ This is possibly the most ridiculous statement ever uttered. I’d say it’s the mark of a good craftsman who can cast an eye over his tools and say, ‘Well this isn’t going to work. That saw’s blunt. Ever tried cutting wood with a blunt saw? You’ll be there for ages, and it won’t be a smooth cut. Either sharpen your saw or get a new one.’

The phrase should be, ‘It’s a poor craftsman who, upon seeing his tools aren’t fit for purpose, says, ‘I’ll give it a go anyway, because I’m so good it doesn’t matter that my chisel doesn’t have a handle.’’

One my nan used to say was, ‘You’d laugh to see a pudding roll.’  The phrase suggests that I’d laugh at anything. The problem is, it suggests that seeing a pudding flop about of its own accord isn’t innately amusing. If I was stood in a forest clearing and saw a Swiss Roll tumble on by, I probably would have a little chuckle.

A president once said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ And, by and large, everyone thought, ‘that’s well good. What a clever man.’ Realistically, the crowd should have responded, ‘No, that’s not how democracy works you idiot!’

He claimed to know how to run a nation, and then put himself forward for position of nation runner, asking people to vote for him. The contract there is, the people would vote for him, allowing him to be nation runner, and in turn, he’d run it in their favour. If after voting for him, the voters have to then ask what they can do for their country, what was the point in that whole election bollocks?

Then there’s, ‘The only thing needed for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.’ This is dangerously close to victim blaming. Good people have their own lives to live. They can’t constantly be on the lookout with a big stick for evil doers. Why don’t evil people just stop being evil? Could a serial killer stand up in court and say, ‘yes I did assault, brutally murder and then dismember several people, but the point your missing is that good people didn’t do anything!’

Having said that, my brain is so shit that I was once brought low by a friend telling me that the pineapple was once seen as a symbol of wealth and status, which is why the pineapple is featured in a lot of architecture, and then they said, ‘For example, there is a pineapple on the roof of St Paul’s.’

‘An actual pineapple?’ said I

‘Yeah, an actual pineapple!’ They were giddy with enthusiasm.

‘Does that mean it’s someone’s job to change it like once a week?’ I enquired innocently

They responded to my question with another question. ‘What?’ said they.

‘Like, the pineapple would rot and attract pests. Also, wouldn’t it just fall off? Like if there’s a strong wind or something. How many tourists do you think have been taken out over the years by falling fruit?’

My friend looked at me for some time before repeating, ‘What?’

‘The pineapple on the roof!’

‘No, when I said, “an actual pineapple” I didn’t mean an actual pineapple!’  

Which just goes to show people abuse language, so it’s no wonder phrases are stupid. Phrases can be forgiven for being nonsensical when people don’t mean the words that they say, despite the very specific meanings of said words.

There’s just no hope for anyone.

Buy this book if you like.