Area man can’t be in London, say social media analysts

An Area man’s alleged move to London has come under intense scrutiny this morning, after social media analyists exposed a dire lack of posts and uploads proving that it actually happened.

The 25-year-old editor of a popular satire website, who would fire us if we exposed his name, has apparently uploaded very little evidence of his move abroad, doing little to back up claims that he has been in the shiny and amazing city of London since September of last year.

“It’s disquieting and crazy, but the man has yet to upload more than one perfunctory selfie of himself in front of the Tower of London, or outside a classic red telephone box, or even a mere picture of his University,” said one social media analyst, Luke Sattweets.

“We all know I had a coffee this morning, because it got thirteen likes on Instagram," he said. "We all know I went to the Coldplay concert last October, because I posted about it every day and took those fifteen blurry videos from seat 798 in row Y. I just can’t say the same for this guy. Come on, ONE status about watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Get the fuck out of here.”

Pull the other one, dipshit.

And he’s not the only one.

“There are no pins. No check-ins. No cheesy tourist snaps outside the Tate Modern, no poses with waxen celebrities at Madame Toussauds, no clever angles making it look like he’s holding Big Ben in between his pinched fingertips,” said another analyst, Lycan Pohsts. “How can anyone believe you’ve have an incredibly life-changing experience if there are no photos of it, no track record on social media?”

He continued.

“How can I believe he is gallivanting around London if he hasn’t uploaded a grinning, thumbs-up selfie with a pint of lager and a packet of crisps in a traditional pub? How can we really trust that he has gone over without endless selfies of him struggling to sleep in the Boeing 757, arriving at the airport in a daze and flurry of activity? How can anyone prove he has undertaken this massive challenge without pictures of him at all the tourist hotspots Nelson’s Memorial to the National Gallery and buildings of parliament? He hasn’t even posted a picture of himself posing next to the Royal Guard making fun of their Beefeaters.”

And the public is furious.

“People lie on social media all the time; why wouldn’t he?” asked one man. “It’s highly, highly suspicious: photos like these would get DOZENS of likes and comments. It’s crazy: why would you pass up such an opportunity for digital validation?”

“No, I demand that he uploads proof of this fantastic, life-changing trip,” he stated bluntly. “Until I push air out my nose, click ‘like’, and then keep scrolling down an endless wall of memes and vapid listicles, I refuse to believe that he is actually having the time of his life in London.”

Opinion: Kids these days spending too much time outdoors

Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen is back once more, folks, with those blistering words of truth and power that move whole crowds to cheers and tears. This time, he’s stumbled upon a very disturbing modern trend that every parent should be very, very concerned about indeed.

Dear Readers, I think I’m finally getting old. This weekend, sitting at home with the curtains drawn so that the bright sun and rolling verdant pastures in front of the ocean by my summer house don’t cause a glare in my 24-inch plasma, I heard a strange, strange noise. Cracking the windows and looking – eugh – outside, I eventually managed to choke down my Gollum-esque sun-hissing long enough to see a truly shocking, disturbing sight.

Children going outside, making forts, playing games and climbing trees.

Seriously, WTF is this kak?

When I was a kid we never had such luxuries. We had to be content to sit indoors all day, staring for hours at a time at a flickering screen, our necks craning downwards into glowing screens. Hell, if I even so much as mentioned spending a few wasted minutes out in the sun and air, my parents would have given me the most massive hiding, or at least left a downvote on my Reddit post.

And yet those were special days. Who could ever forget the magic of getting your first 30 likes on one post? Which of us don’t warmly cherish all the lols and rofls we had with our family? These are the things that make childhood the magical period of innocence and wonder and reposting it is.

All this gambolling and frolicking can’t be good for you: in fact, I think it could be destroying this country’s morals. There is so much life happening in the palms of our hands, and there they all are: outside, breathing in pollen-heavy, insect-infested air in the garden. God, yesterday I had to confiscate their soccer ball and then send them to their rooms with the door locked and shades drawn just so they’d say a perfunctory ‘lol’ to the memes I posted on their walls.

Nature:  a truly revolting, dangerous wasteland brimming
with spiders, disease and all kinds of horrors.

How are you supposed to make friends without adding them online? We need to do something to stop this scourge on our children’s innocence and wonder before it kills it altogether. How will our children ever be able to cherish these special, magical moments without a selfie or status that gets 23 likes and 15 comments in just 15 minutes?

Worst yet are these insufferable books they’re constantly reading. You look up from your iPad at the dinner table and the little vacuous snots have it right on their lap – they can barely go two minutes without looking down at it. And it’s not even a goddamn Kindle; what could be so interesting about paper and ink anyway? It seems that every two seconds I’m telling my kids “geez, Frikkie and Johan Junior, put that bloody thing away”.

We need to take a stand: these balls and games and frolicking in the untouched splendour are creating a generation of hyper-active, anti-social-network loners who don’t even once take part in conversation with their friends and followers; and all the while their iPads and Gameboys and Playstation 4s and Facebook accounts gather dust, forgotten and unappreciated.

In fact, I could go one step further and say that these so-called “physical sports” are warping our kids’ brains and teaching them to be violent. Every day, after my daily stress-unwinding LAN session of ThroatSlit MurderKings 5 I sit back in creeping, overwhelming terror and think about how my kids might be outside, rugby tackling each other, stomping on each other’s’ fingers and hands in that “ruck” thing, or sitting in giant stadiums at school yelling blood-thirsty war-cries at another bunch of kids whose only difference is that they go to some other school.

I know that my own grandparents thought I was spending “too much blerrie time on that blerrie computer thing”, but this is obviously a totally different situation. If we do nothing, we stand to pay the worst price of all: we could end up with a generation of children who think that they should empathise and try to understand that their own children might have their own personal interests and passions that are vastly different to theirs.

Or – God forbid the thought – that they shouldn’t tell their kids to do something just because they did it for years on end. What kind of mad, insane world might that be?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like the hideous scourge of immigration, why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.