Kai Motta's Blog, page 2

Everything is wrong. Everything is unjust. Everything is broken. Or is it?

There is a strong difference between conforming and working towards the greater good. There is an even bigger difference between wearing a mask and being under the illusion your freedoms are being rescinded. In this age of individualism and with its dangerous pervasive sense of entitlement it is very easy to fall into a trap and misread what is happening.

Of course this isn’t to say that we must not question or be mindful of how a surveillance society could evolve out of this pandemic, it’s an obvious route/state for those who want to remain in power.

But as citizens of our countries and the world we shouldn’t let these many ideas, notions, concepts control how we view every facet of the societies we inhabit. We should try not to allow ourselves to be engulfed in the all too persuasive negative bias.

Rightfully, many at the moment are scared, locked in their homes, mental health is at risk, this is an unprecedented time, so it’s easy and natural to start looking on the internet for answers to formulate an understanding of what is happening.

It’s also very easy to assume everything is wrong. Everything is unjust. Everything is broken. Our political leaders haven’t exactly given us much reason to believe or trust them. Coronavirus has no doubt changed our lives. Corporations are well known for manipulating societies to meet their ends. But if we choose to always look through these lenses at the world then everything will be wrong, unjust and broken. Just a simple change of outlook and the world can be seen as a completely different place.

Take for instance your position in the world right now, your social capital, in comparison to many others. You live in a house or flat with sanitation, clean drinking water and the treatment/disposal of human excreta. You no doubt have a TV, sofa, kitchen with cooker, fridge freezer, microwave. Bedroom with perhaps another TV, bed, cupboards full of clothes and more than likely a radiator in every room. A smart phone in your hand right now that you are reading this on.

If you get ill or break a limb you have hospital facilities or can visit a doctor, dentist for your teeth, opticians for your eyes, physio for your body and therapy for your mind.

At a young age you get to go to school and devote your life to education throughout the rest of your life if you choose that path. You probably drive a car, just one of the amazing human inventions that has evolved over the years or catch a train or bus to work. You may even travel by plane, what could be more impressive and formidable than actually flying through the sky?

And in times of COVID you are fortunate enough to be able to get help from the many amazing scientific minds that have worked on a vaccine, like many other vaccines the years before, that have eradicated other diseases.

We are simply benefiting from the many incredible minds before us and those living now. Life really is pretty amazing. If you take a moment to sit and meditate on this, we are incredibly lucky. We live in amazing times but we also fool ourselves into an idea of a secure future. Nothing is secure. As Heraclitus, the Greek Philosopher said “There is nothing permanent except change”. The only thing we can truly rely on is change. In the last year the world has changed radically and it’s interesting while saddening to see how it has affected our societies.

So what or who do you trust? After all it is trust that will get us through this. It is trust that has got us to where we are now as humanity. At some point you are going to have to trust someone or something. Otherwise how will you get through life?

I’ve heard many say:

“I don’t know anyone with covid so how could it be real?”

Well do a simple thought experiment? Do you know anyone who has had smallpox or polio? Do you know about the island of Lamu located along the shores of Kenya? If no, does this mean it doesn’t exist? Or just a simple case of egotism?

Can we trust the World Health Organization?
Can we trust SAGE?
Can we trust the government?
Can we trust the media?
Can we trust scientists?
Can we trust the Bill Gates foundation?
The list is extensive.

At some point you are going to have to trust someone, why? Because you simply don’t have the education and that is how our societies function. We build on the learnings and expertise of others. No one has all the education about every subject. Granted everybody likes to think they have an opinion on everything, but a little debate will reveal the holes in their knowledge. When my car is faulty I go to a mechanic, because I don’t have the skillset and I trust him to do a good job. Likewise with the dentist, doctor, IT dept, pilots on planes, the list goes on.

I myself have questions on the vaccine for COVID, but I’m also aware I am not a scientist, I don’t have years of experience and studying behind me to even begin to question the authority on the subject. There will be a point where I will have to admit I am unqualified to question those who are creating it and I will have the vaccine because I believe in the greater good for mankind, rather than acting from the selfish position that my freedoms are being curtailed and thinking everything is wrong, unjust and broken.

So imagine if our ancestors decided not to act on smallpox, if our peers refused to take the vaccine, it would still be around now. The fact that that our ancestors acted upon it means we don’t have to suffer now from it. That shows clearly that everything isn’t wrong, unjust or broken. It clearly illustrates as humanity we have the strength to prevail… if only we can learn to trust.

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.

Bonfire of the vanities, one step at a time

On the 7th February 1497 in Florence, Italy, a bonfire of the vanities occurred where according to Francesco Guicciardini the destruction of objects took place that might tempt one to sin.

Fast forward to 2020 where many major brands including Nike, which is worth 34.8 billion dollars and increasing are looking to lobby Congress in America to weaken a bill that would ban imported goods made with forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

Read full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/business/economy/nike-coca-cola-xinjiang-forced-labor-bill.html?fbclid=IwAR10T54YTMz-KFjxwtnv_T8s3pMXMmm5gPY6XdDHAdW6733B3fMO5EpZShU

Over the last couple of years I have been researching clothing that isn’t made in sweatshops by forced labour. Although I, and many others in this age of information where there is no justifiable reason for us not to be aware of how our clothes are produced, still dress head to toe in clothes and foot wear that is made by forced labour.

We are seduced by the swoosh it seems. I remember when I was a teenager, I was hypnotised by the tick. I was a perfect citizen monthly purchasing Nike and other clothing brands from the heavy influence of their marketing, the music scene I was part of, how they made me feel that false sense of importance, the ineluctable grip of fashion and of course because partly they were aesthetically pleasing. I admit as I grow older there is a certain nostalgia when I hold a pair in my hands, but it doesn’t last for long and it isn’t a place I would like to return to.

I recall the last time I was in New York I went into a shop which if I remember correctly was called ‘Flight Club’ named I imagine, with some wordplay, in reference to Chuck Palahniuk’s most famous novel. I wasn’t interested in purchasing a pair, but I was in New York and thought what the hell… It was essentially a shop for Nike nerds with a glass case in the middle with limited edition and rare old Nike trainers for huge amounts of cash. People lifted trainers off the surrounding walls and held them in their hands like treasure. It’s no secret people have killed others for them. The first rule of Flight Club was to leave your consciousness at the door, it matters little about the unseen millions that work unreasonable hours in poor working conditions for unfair wages, just purchase the trainers and be ‘cool’.

But is it cool? Or are we tricked as consumers to buy yet more stuff, in a moment of weak ephemeral gratification, to find the following moment we feel empty because as a society we lack something to make us feel whole?

Is it cool to fund slave labour? I bet if you asked anyone if they believed in equality they would say ‘yes, of course’, we all would. But then if we start to actually examine our lives and the effects globally it would quickly unravel and embarrass each one of us. Perhaps this is a reason why we choose to purchase blindly? Or maybe, some of us simply, just don’t care.

So as I stated at the beginning, on the 7th February 1497 in Florence, Italy, a bonfire of the vanities occurred where according to Francesco Guicciardini the destruction of objects took place that might tempt one to sin.

To buy sweatshop products through intense marketing could be considered ‘objects that might tempt one to sin’.

I have for some time researched and worked hard to find clothing that is sweatshop free and sustainable. There are undoubtably plenty of other products around me, in my home, that I use, that are produced in sweatshops, but the switching over can’t be achieved overnight and so with the burning of my only Nike trainers, ‘the objects that might tempt one to sin’, I am doing this: one step at a time. My wardrobe now is almost sweatshop, forced and child labour free.

This was my bonfire of the vanities, and never again will I put a pair of Nikes on my feet.

Sustainable and ethical clothing:

https://rapanuiclothing.com

https://howies.co.uk

https://www.passenger-clothing.com

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.

Coronavirus is a lot stronger than you think

Coronavirus is a lot stronger than you think. What did he just say? Yes, I said it: Coronavirus is a lot stronger than you think. You can show me all me the data you want, all the articles declaring it is no stronger than the flu, that wearing a mask is a lot more of a threat, that Sweden’s model is better, but look at what it has achieved. Just look at how easily divided we are. Look at the fissures in our societies. Look at the fear. Look at the ill education across the social media landscapes. Look at the incompetence of the government. Look at the huge spending on a ‘Track and Trace’ app that barely works. Look at the rise of completely illogical conspiracy theories. And look at the mistrust. All that from one virus. One virus. Now that’s an achievement!

Mistrust is at an all time high. And why not, we have no credible reasons to believe in our leaders, the elite, businesses, the media and those in positions of power, because we’ve been manipulated, conned, spun and stolen from so many times that most of us are sick of it. Rightfully.

But must the situation be so binary, be so black and white? Can there only be 2 sides to this story?

On one side we have a government, who, as anyone who studies politics, economics and sociology knows is strongly controlled by business. Their duty is not to the people of the country, but to those who are truly in power and to themselves. This is incredibly clear if you do 5 minutes of research and investigation with logic and reasoning. Just look at the privatisation of the railways in the UK to understand the true price of travelling on a train. It costs us a lot more than simply buying the ticket.

On the other side there is dangerously growing, with momentum, a world of conspiracy theories as people try to make some sense of the world, but without any logic or reasoning while attacking anyone that doesn’t believe what they think, calling them sheeple, basking under the illusion they are privy to information we all need to hear, because it comes from their lips or fingertips, giving them the false idea of power, which is beautifully ironic, considering it is the lack of power or control in their lives that makes them behave in this manner. It seems people will believe anything, and post anything on social networks to prove their point, even if it contradicts what they posted three posts earlier. Such beautiful glowing examples of confirmation bias.

The above is evidently more about the individual, than the virus.

We are all clearly becoming victims of an age of individualism, or probably, a better, more fitting term would be, the age of solipsism.

Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I Me Me I I I Me Me I Me I Me Me Me I I I

My interpretation of a social media timeline. “Me first, you second.” Or actually, “Me first, you don’t even exist.” That is our society. Our culture. That is the true narrative of the way in which we live. And it is why we are so divided and lost collectively. We have lost the power of community. We don’t trust anyone else as they maybe a threat to our ‘brand’, how we are perceived on the timeline as we encapsulate ourselves within a digital bubble staring in our little screens, which has become our worlds, our lives. I dare you to deny it. But you are meant to act like this, for this is how our society has been engineered. It all relates back to Neoliberalism. You are not as free as you believe yourself to be. You are as free as you are told you are allowed to be. And keep consuming.

If I look across my Facebook timeline, and of course mine is a filter bubble created by Facebook algorithms, as all of ours are, and to this I have to be alert, at times it can look as if it is truly the end of the world as conspiracy theorists post about the country being run by Hitler, that all our freedoms have been eroded (no irony that they are freely posting on Facebook), that we are in an age where ‘posts’ are being deleted and this is a reminiscent of the burning of books, that the army is going to be roaming the streets, that we are controlled by shape shifting lizards and that the NHS is tantamount to a Nazi concentration camp and if you don’t believe this you are a sheep (Not that buying into all of this without any questioning, logic or reasoning isn’t being a sheep too!) Then you turn off Facebook, walk down the street and the biggest infringement on your life is that you have put on a mask to go into a shop or public transport, otherwise, let’s be honest, life isn’t really too different.

Coronavirus shows us that we are a race that is still very much at odds with itself, unable to work together and full of mistrust. A race still fighting amongst itself to be ‘individually’ heard across our cultural landscapes.

Solipsism though, is the true virus, not COVID-19, and until we realise this we will forever be stuck in these binary loops.

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.

As an artist or musician don’t retrain or rethink

It’s extremely hard to accept the words coming from a politician’s mouth, particularly when they are the richest person in the House of Commons with a property portfolio in the UK and America worth around £10 million.

I’m of course talking about Rishi Sunak who has been interpreted to have said in an ITV interview “Musicians and others in the arts should retrain and find other jobs.”

You can read the full transcript here and make up your own mind about ITV’s interpretation which has gone viral and developed a life of its own: https://fullfact.org/economy/rishi-sunak-arts-opportunities/

Of course creative people across the board are outraged and taking to Facebook, Twitter etc to vent their anger. But let’s stop for a minute, breathe and take stock.

Rishi Sunak could, much as you don’t want to admit it, be right. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: “Change is the only constant.” In the last 6 months the world has radically changed. Our societies have been turned upside down. No one really saw it coming and now we are all trying to survive. Of course there are millions of pounds spent on weapons as one controversial instance that could be spent to help the homeless, the sick, those on the lower rungs, and artists but why would they use that money to help you? You don’t count in the grand scheme of neoliberalism. You never did. The days of a job for life ironically died years ago and the world through technological advances is moving so swiftly it’s almost impossible now to keep up. As we all clutch our mobile phones, we are all culprits to our capitalistic incarceration.

The old dated models of the music industry died years ago. As musicians we can all look back at when the Beatles exploded onto the scene, when Dylan went electric, when the Sex Pistols frighteningly emerged, when Hip Hop boomed from New York and LA, while as comedians we can watch Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Richard Prior etc and their meteoric rises to fame and the same across all the other art genres. As aspiring artists we can watch these with hopes to replicate one day, but the simple fact is the world has changed and will continue to. There is a need to contextualize. The rules keep changing, but one certainty which remains is that the government doesn’t care about you, granted it should, its role is to maintain the welfare of its citizens but a small amount of research disproves this instantly.

John Dewey, the American philosopher once said that politics is “The shadow cast on society by big business.” Just take a look around you. It is clearly evident. We are currently feeling the effects of a Covid ‘Shock Doctrine’, Naomi Klein outlines and elucidates it very well here:

But personally I don’t think ‘retrain’ is correct. I think artists should start to ‘rethink’. As creatives it is our role to be… creative! Some of the comedians I’ve seen on Facebook are incredibly creative which their delusional dystopian fantasies claiming mandatory mask wearing is one step away from the re-emerging of the Nuremberg trials. Why not put that imagination to good use?! With a world constantly changing, one must do the same, otherwise you die, you get left by the digital roadside. This doesn’t propose that you accept constrictions on your freedoms, I’m talking about innovation. And this is what made all the great artists.

The internet, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (the FAANG companies) have changed our lives completely in the last 20 years. The world is entirely a new place. How artists can be seen, heard and their works purchased are completely different. There is a whole new world of opportunities to be explored. You just have to let go of the past. It no longer exists. And reduce your expectations of the government. You will then cease to be constantly demoralised and disappointed.

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.

Facebook is the new TV

If you don’t know yet, you should know that the reason for Facebook’s existence is not to help you engage with others, share photos, give you freedom of speech or enable you to organize and protest. I cannot help but laugh when people on Facebook post about how their freedom of speech is being taken away when it changes something. Facebook is a business, it is not here as a platform for freedom of speech, in fact freedom of speech is anathema to its business model. Its single sole function is to make money, and how does it do that? It sells us, its users to advertisers. The same model used by TV for many years apart from the BBC which we all have to pay for to see the endless repeats of shows from over the years past.

To keep us all engaged and hypnotised, Facebook uses algorithms and persuasive technology that keeps us like junkies looking for the next hit through the accumulation of ‘likes’, heating up our dopamine neurotransmitters as we lose ourselves in world of hyperreality, a veritable fool’s paradise. Like a casino, Facebook, the house, always wins.

Routinely, I delete the app, because I can feel the pull. I can feel myself wanting to post, rant or argue (absolutely pointless), knowing that internally it is a fantastic waste of time that could be put to so much better use. Simply sitting by the river in my garden and listening to it gently flow witnessing nature at play is by far a better use, and much better for my mental state.

Unfortunately being an artist across many genres Facebook actually does have its uses, mainly for promotion. So as of late, I’ve decided to delete the app from my phone and only use Facebook on my laptop, which I don’t particularly use, unless I’m at work. I can feel a huge difference. We are all slaves to the social networks, those of us who use them, and daily piss our lives away on them. And let’s be honest, they aren’t particularly filled with anything life changing. It’s just, more of the same. Everybody is selling, and nobody is buying. It’s filled with mainly gossip, and people hoping to be gossip, but as Yoval Noah Harari writes in Sapiens, language began with gossip, so maybe there is an evolutionary link there. I think that last statement is more satirical than a philosophical enquiry.

The timeline of Facebook, where you maybe reading this, built by an algorithm, will dictate how you see the world through the eyes of others who it thinks are like minded. We are put into filter bubbles. Recently, for a joke, I would write provocative statements about conspiracy theorists and all their ridiculous highly irrational views, opinions and ideas. Instantly my timeline was filled with conspiracy theorists posts. It’s easy to see, if you are one looking for confirmation bias of your thinking, and if you are wrapped up in your own ego, which is very easily done, how you could get lost on Facebook and disappear right up your own arse. I’ve witnessed it many times, myself guilty at times.

With a somewhat breakaway from it all, with it not being so easily accessible, I see that it’s just only Facebook. It’s sport. It’s not an educational forum. It’s essentially pointless. You delete the app and all that world just instantly doesn’t exist. The wild dark flights of imagination about a dystopian world are simply just in the posts on Facebook, someone’s uneducated gripe and not in the real world that you can touch and feel. The mania, the headless knee jerk thinking, the ill educated statements simply are dissolved. This is not to say there aren’t political issues to be fought all the time, and constrictions of our freedoms daily, but one needs to take stock, remove themselves from the hyperreality they are essentially creating and see life as it actually is.

This reminds me of a joke by Bill Hicks whereupon he talks about the news on CNN, how depressing it is, then you look out your window and all you can hear is a bird chirping away. This is because Ted Turner can’t get laid, so he makes the world insufferable and depressing so no one else gets laid.

Facebook in essence has become the modern day TV, only it is its users that are pushing their own agendas with a mild sense of propaganda. But once again, like the TV, you can just turn it off, or simply use logic and rationality, which are free. And best of all, get laid.

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.

In yer face!

The face mask is extremely divisive and interesting. There are those who feel they should wear it, who believe the virus is contagious and don’t want to either catch it or pass it on, particularly to the elderly. There are those who don’t believe the virus is as problematic as it’s purported to be, that it’s an attack on our ‘freedoms’ and just a huge cash cow for Big Pharma. And then there are the clearly insane who think we are only a step away from the Nuremberg trials, who obviously never attained their GCSE in history and have no idea of one of the most heinous genocidal crimes in the last 100 years, all fighting for Katie Hopkins hot spot.

Of course our government and the media doesn’t make it easy for us to believe anything they say and constantly fill us with deep seated cynicism. We all know or suspect how power works and that the PM, MPs, journalists and editors play ball to, in the words of Edward Bernays, manufacture our consent. We have lost all reason to trust and some of us are drowning in fear. It’s a dangerous playground to be in.

People, and I can understand why, fear the face mask is a form of control by the government, but if you had a government you trusted, that hadn’t over the years handed over tax money to huge corporations, involved itself in illegal wars, attacked the poorest demographic of the country, didn’t steal through their expense accounts, maybe, just possibly wearing the mask would be easier to swallow. We are victims of an age where trust is at an all time low, that it is so bad, to the point that some actually believe anything they see on youtube.

Covid, and the way it has been dealt with is a symptom of neoliberalism. All problems relate simply to capitalism. It’s a matter of profit before people, it is nothing new. It has been happening a long time before Covid stole centre stage and you could see it all around you if you chose to look, inquire and educate yourself.

It is very symptomatic of the period in which we live in that wearing a mask should be such an issue, because suddenly it affects one directly. Now you are angry!

Before the pandemic, capitalism and neoliberalism raged across the planet, but if it didn’t affect you (though it always has), it was very easy to ignore, you could go about your day. But now it is sitting on your face and you can’t turn away. It is there staring you directly in the eyes. The face mask is a true reminder that we live in an age of social atomisation, competitive self-interest and extreme individualism exacerbated by social network persuasive technology while we are being sold as products to advertisers, all underpinned by neoliberalism, the very same neoliberalism that is responsible for the society we now live in, ‘The New Normal’. We were always being controlled.

To put it bluntly, some didn’t care until it directly affected them, but now, it’s an issue. The perfect selfish model of capitalism that wants to keep you atomised and constantly purchasing regardless of the outcome.

This is a true reminder that there are deep seated problems in our society, driving it towards extinction.

It’s a true reminder that before this, it was very easy to ignore how neoliberalism affected others when it didn’t directly affect you.

In essence you should be embracing the face mask as a way forward to truly understanding how and why you should change society and make it more egalitarian for all.

*But this doesn’t involve lizards, 5G, chemtrails, Bill Gates nonsense, Pizzagate and the NHS being compared to the Holocaust.

It involves an education.

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.

Excerpt from Celebrity Rape

Arranged in front of Marcus, horizontal in the proverbial doggy-style position with hands gripping headboard, the mid-to-late thirties blonde female thrust her well-kept, taut, gym tight, ersatz tanned body, graced with little hair, back and forth on to his Viagra-fuelled cock. She was naked, apart from the obligatory porn star style heels of course for added sexual effect. The heady mixture of wine and cocaine had pickled their brains enough to run through the perfunctory motions of coitus after being digitally matched and brought together by a dating app now simply used for nothing more than a seminal release.

With her loneliness raised high in the air for him to grip and slide into he tried hard to recall her name; Jane? Jenny? Carol? Zoe? Fuck what was it? The words shot through his head like a mental locomotive carelessly hurtling down the synapses, ready to off-rail at any moment into the recesses of his mind, sinking and swallowed up by his sub-conscious and later spat out in a dream or when he opened up on the therapist’s couch. All this paraded through his skull as he ploughed on through the motions. This wasn’t love, this was a dirty pastime. A way to get through another night. He could hear her moaning and talking dirty, but it didn’t turn him on, for he knew it was artificial and learned from videos easily accessible on Redtube, Pornhub, Xhamster and so on. Women, from his experience, felt compelled to act this way in the present day, it was learned behaviour; pretending to be porn stars, who ironically too had perfected the art of pretending. When did the masquerading end? Was there any way to get back to the real state? Did anyone even know what it was or care for it anymore? But he knew the pretence wasn’t for him. It was all in vain, hoping that the instant she finished she would receive more Facebook ‘likes’ or Twitter ‘tweets’ when he or anyone else commented to the eyes of the online world on how well she performed. Another symptom of the third turd from the sun he thought to himself. The Sham Palace, the phony proscenium arch above the pseudo stage on which we all now performed. Granted, Christine? Jo? Simone? Claire? Whatever her name was, actually looked like her photo, was within the two year parameter. He’d lost count of the amount of women he’d met and didn’t even recognise on the first date because they had placed so much importance on their avatar, descriptions and photographs online that they had forgotten offline how they actually existed and who they really were. Experience had taught him how to plaster a fake smile on his face when he was presented with, in person, a completely different woman to the one he had been matched with who couldn’t see the problem, still hypnotised by her own make believe online persona while stumbling through life wearing her identity crisis well, like her overpriced branded clothing. And yet almost on a nightly basis he went through the whole charade, stuck on a loop, like a sex and drug infused Escher cheap print. Thank God for Viagra. Praise the Lord for alcohol. After two failed marriages, one kid with the first, and two with the second, life had now unapologetically devolved and drowned into the depths of vice. Almost every night was an intoxication of keep-the-cock-hard pills, alcohol, usually wine, some other form of narcotic and the sweet smell of sweat and sexual fluids. It would be a two to three hour session where both would use the other to fulfil a selfish solipsistic sexual need or desire and then bolt for the door. How easily emotions had been cut and disposed of like a redundant appendix lying bloody in the corner unwanted or unneeded as the act of ‘me me me’ danced through part of the night. They really had no place in this world of narcissism, smartphones and sex… Bobbi? Katrina? Lucy? Sophie? Marcus really couldn’t recall her name and it bugged him intensely.

She now lay on her back. He held her legs wide apart, hands on each ankle, pulling her slightly upwards, still thrusting. Neither could look at one another. This was so far removed from lovemaking. Emotionally it was only a few degrees away from using sex toys and required no eye contact at all. In fact in this game looking one another in the eye was frowned upon. Some dates had barely required words. The unspoken contract and unwritten rules had become so commonplace that both sexes now knew what was wanted and made no attempt to hide it. Simply meet. Fuck. Leave. Tell the world instantly on social networks. Reap the rewards. Rewards being ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’. The social network phenomena had gripped society over the last 15 years, with people becoming online celebrities as they bared all and told everybody everything they were doing at every minute, because one minute ago on the social network clock was a millennium in the offline world. Andy Warhol had once stated that everybody wanted to be famous for 15 minutes, now people just settled for 15 ‘likes’. He hated it. But there was no way of removing oneself. Who was ready to commit social network suicide? Who was ready to disengage from their digital devotees and lose all those ‘likes’? It would be like taking a virtual hammer to the offline ego. Nobody’s constitution was that strong anymore. The mere un-friending was enough for one to go into hyper meltdown illustrated by the subsequent airing of their dirty cyber laundry thrown out of a Microsoft window to litter the superhighway. At times he had watched people slowly combust over a small period with each new post an attempt to illustrate to everyone how well they were doing, with chapters about the history of their lives and the arc it had taken, rooted in the idea of the hero’s journey and their destiny to fulfil it in everyone’s eyes, but in essence it was nothing more than just a pathetic cry for help. It barely required a psychology degree to see this. Life had become so intertwined with the world of social networks that it was impossible to unplug, to even think of removing oneself without the fear of going into complete isolation. And as the need grew to be more noticed than the next online celeb, to shout that bit louder, so up went the ante, and the dignity of humanity as a collective took another hit.

Finished, she got up, dressed and left with a mere exchange of words about ‘how we must do this again’ without removing her eyes from her phone. Marcus lay on the bed murmuring ‘yes’ without lifting his eyes from his digital pimp. He had already accrued seventeen more matches in the short period he had spent with… Clara! That was her name. No doubt now as she was ambling along with the precision of a blind person, eyes glued to her phone, feet feeling out the terrain beneath her shoes to guide her through the offline authentic world that was of no importance, she too was frenetically checking how many men she had matched with hungry like an addict. ‘To be in love’ he sighed with a self-deprecating manner admonishing himself for doing it again. ‘I’m a validiot, an absolute validiot’. ‘Validiot’ of course being a ‘valid idiot’. Over the course of the last 15 years he had noticed how portmanteaus had become embarrassingly fashionable. They were now found everywhere from describing famous celebrities who were married, to household words, to their homeland; marketing. He had a love/hate relationship with them, finding them somewhat amusing and intriguing yet fucking ridiculous. Only in jest would they leave his lips, to ridicule or for fun, but people who actually used them within their virtual or offline vernacular he regarded as ‘funts’. Funts of course being…

Seventeen more matches. Experience told him that he would get to meet at least eight of those. His evenings for the next eight or so days were taken care of. He lay back on the bed now soiled and damp from the excitement, excrement, vaginal mucus, pre-cum, after-cum, sweat and the cheap exotic celebrity titled perfume worn by Clara. There were definitely whole comedy routines to be written around the self-titled celebrity scents as he watched the faux famous figures dance about his TV screen seeking attention for absolutely nothing. ‘Pigcunt’, ‘iStink’, ‘Rimsucker’ sounded like much more apropos titles for their perfumes, seemingly more realistic, summing them up perfectly. ‘Who-mans’ he mused to himself, ‘the perfect portmanteau to describe the human race as we become increasingly lost, disappearing up our own arses and no longer knowing who we are anymore.’ He laughed to himself reaching over to remove the taste of Clara’s excreta with a few mouthfuls of cheap wine obtained from a nearby petrol station suffering from an identity complex as it posed also as a mini supermarket. After coughing and swallowing down the fermented grape, he questioned himself on whether the action should have been in reverse, almost preferring the taste of her arsehole to the sting of an acidic bargain bottle of now lukewarm Blossom Hill. Petrol stations didn’t stock women in the chilled cabinet… yet. Give it time. But the wine wasn’t for taste or to impress. It was to numb. To numb out the action of the night. The unsocial interaction. The simple swapping of genital fluids. The emotionless orgasm. The ‘me-gasm’.

The warm haze of blue light and faded imagery danced across his room in perfect sync with the temperate inoffensive hypnotic hum from his 80-inch TV screen promoting somnambulism with a low-IQ diet of visual junk food. This mainly consisted of back-to-back reality TV shows that were at one time highly unrealistic but over a five-year period had influenced the population so easily with the idea that everybody can be famous, that society had morphed into this non-reality, finally giving credence to the description of these shows. It was all so fake. ‘If one of these ‘zelebrities’, (obviously Z-list celebrities) stood in front of a mirror, would there even be a reflection?’ he chuckled to himself. Who watched this? Who really spent the short period they had on this planet watching TV shows about reality, when all you had to do was walk down the street, go into a shop or enter a bar to encounter reality? But no one cared for that reality. It was too depressing. No one cared if you worked in a supermarket, sold tickets on a train or cut hair for a living in the offline world, because online you could be an award-winning poet, novelist, artist, film director or musician. It didn’t matter that the award was given by an unknown someone, an ‘un-one’, without credentials who just hosted a blog and the work you produced was worthless, because online you could be a zelebrity with your 15 ‘likes’ and for many that was enough to remove oneself from the dullness of the offline world.

He was no stranger to the world of fame and celebritism. Many times over the last 20 years he had brushed shoulders and flirted with it, never quite ready to forgo his principles which he wore like a straitjacket restraining him for making the childish impetuous leap into the shallow end of the pool of stardom. Two guitars hung up on the wall like crucifixes as haunting reminders that he had put his work finally to rest. The metaphorical crosses he had to bear from the days when he walked from club to club armed with political and social songs to contest what was happening in the world according to a personal philosophy he thought all shared only to watch the numbers dwindle over the years as smartphones and the fascination with the digital self-viralled amok. The final nail in the guitar case came when he turned up to a gig in a student hall and saw how everybody just sat looking at their smartphones through the night not even acknowledging his or any other performer’s existence, preferring instead to spend the time reinforcing their own online persona because we are all our own ‘brand’ now. We had become ‘Brand-dead’. Big business and the government hands and feet down had won, there was truly no engagement unless it was about the self. But over the years there had been moments where someone had glimpsed something special, where someone realised what he was doing and it looked like something may just happen. There had been managers, agents, magazine interviews, small record deals, online interviews and not by just ‘one man and his blog’. At times it really looked like it could go off, but everything has to be perfectly in place, configured correctly with a good sprinkling of luck to turn you into a ‘star’. Talent stands for a lot, but luck plays a major role, and if you don’t mind bending over, well then there’s no doubt you’ve secured your spot on a reality TV show with the other zelebrities.

He wanted fame, but simply on his terms, to be famous for his work, work which he had bled to produce, but the likelihood of this was decreasing by the day and dying by the night. If he wanted fame he would have to succumb to the diluted values of the present and embrace the new world of ‘centertainment’; entertainment, that is all centred around the self and where nothing else exists. But somewhere deep inside, buried beneath the drink, drugs and wanton sex, a flame still burned for justice. It just needed someone or something to douse it with petrol and see it burn wildly across this barren dry plains of the current culture.

A familiar melody broke him from his momentary sleep. It was the beginning of a new reality TV show that had gripped the nation so tight bearing its white knuckles and teeth. Although he hated TV, he couldn’t help but feel compelled to tune in out of sheer disbelief that a programme like this was allowed to exist and that millions across the world nightly stopped everything they were doing, sat down and dropped out of humanity for an hour, leaving their dignity in an adjoining room and the streets empty. Aptly titled ‘Celebrity Rape – How badly do you need your 15 minutes of fame?’ contestants had to attempt to make it through a small dark labyrinthine maze of back alleys and badly lit streets to a destination representing freedom and safety from the horrors of the dark corners of a faux city without being raped by carefully positioned raptophiliacs poised and ready to hunt the victims. Anyone making it through would win the grand prize of £5,000, anyone who didn’t…

Rarely was the prize money won due to the general public’s disinterest in a winner. They wanted a rape. The schadenfreude eyes of the symphorophiliacs hungered now for more than a car crash. Their insatiable psyche’s thirst was unquenched with the beheadings of Saddam Hussein or children being killed in war zones or planes flying into buildings. It was no longer enough to satiate their paraphilic needs. In short they wanted blood and sex and this influenced the behaviour of the contestants into wanting to be caught, because the subsequent riches connected to an exciting rape were worth way more than the £5,000. An unscathed winner was easily forgotten and received few ‘likes’ whereupon the right rape victim, who made it look convincing like wrestlers of the yesteryear could go on to become a proper celebrity, not a zelebrity.

Reality TV had become so run of the mill that it now jogged and there had been nowhere to turn, apart from upping the ante. Every week it crept higher and higher in order to satiate the public. Jobs in TV production companies depended upon it. Journalists prayed for more to keep their employment alive and singing like the screams of a newborn hungry child. It was a return to the Roman era where the TV now stood replacing the coliseum. The gladiatorial amphitheatres with the paraphilic public watching, crying for action, with the thumbs down hand gesture to determine the end of a life now updated with the less offensive pressing of the opposable thumb upon the green button sandwiched between the yellow and blue choice-makers on the remote. With a stark resemblance to ancient Rome all was still controlled and created by the emperor, Caesar’s role now being played by the head of a TV production company. It seemed in effect over 2,000 years not much had really changed. We were still at heart, nothing more than animals.

But it hadn’t been born in the TV executives’ boardroom. It hadn’t been an idea originally from the workshops of scriptwriters. It had been stolen from an organic internet sensation and then turned into a show.

Three years prior a young lady by the name of Carol had been walking home from work late one night in London and had decided to chance a short cut across an old disused piece of land that was waiting to be bought and desecrated by estate agents. Unaware that her life was about to change, halfway across she was suddenly seized by two men, knocked to the ground with a simple punch and while one held her down with hand over her mouth to muffle any protestations, the other forced himself on her, prising open her legs and forcing himself inside. Carol, fighting and kicking, never relenting, until it was over, saw the rapists then run off into the emerging darkness of the night. Damaged, confused and torn she lay there staring at the night sky watching the stars brighten into existence as time scraped its way around the clock face. Feeling insecure, abused, frightened, numb, wondering what to do, a voice in the darkness asked if she was okay. Sitting bolt upright she was faced with a 14-year-old boy who had witnessed it all and had naturally of course filmed it on his ubiquitous smartphone. Praise the Lord for technology she thought to herself and immediately uploaded the film to every social network in hope to identify and then catch the rapists. What better way than to put them on trial by publicly showing the world who they were? The police and ambulance soon arrived and the next five hours were spent in hospital going through the usual procedures. As dawn coughed life into the next day she awoke that morning and her life had changed, an online star was born. Her phone couldn’t keep still. Constant buzzing from alerts. The alerts of adulation on social networks. ‘Likes’, ‘retweets’, ‘pins’, ‘shares’. No one had seen anything like it. Within weeks she was a social network celebrity. Shared everywhere. Time was short before she made the real leap into becoming a celebrity in the offline world too, with other celebs lining up to be photographed with her, appearances on TV chat shows and in print across newspapers et al with an agent, manager and journalists in tow. She was a new lifeline to be drained and finally cut like an umbilical cord when the host became bankrupt and could give no more. To be famous symbiotically like this was everyone’s dream. The offline celeb status fed the online status and vice versa, it just simply grew organically. And when she saw how much she benefited from it she dropped the charges. Yes, rape had been awful, sickening, disgusting! It had been a lot to swallow and move forward from. But it had taken her somewhere now only people dreamed of in reality and particularly virtually. To go to court, hours, days, months, possibly years could be sucked away, and so could her new celebrity status. No one could pinpoint exactly why she had become such a phenomenon. Media pundits declared that it was public sympathy and let their cynicism stain their journalism. After years of religious extremist violent acts and war atrocities easily obtainable from YouTube, pop culture philosophers pointed to the need for ‘more’, the need for everything to be even more extreme because the public hungered for it. But it was just one of those serendipitous moments in history that could never be recreated to such a maximum effect. As part of the course all over the world women and men started posting on social networks manufactured rape scenes they had starred in, filmed and produced in hope to follow the footsteps and capitalise on the works of the original rape cover girl Carol. ‘Rape selfies’ dominated the social networks. Where people, face to mirror, once posed generically over a sink, to provide to the world their own overinflated delusions of importance of who they were, this had become so yestersecond, that now instead, they held selfie sticks with one hand above their assailants, themselves and the scene. To be like ‘Carol’ was something to aim for. The sick seeds had been sewn and now clubs blossomed from every crack and broken paving slab in cities and small towns all over the globe where rapes were filmed and posted online, like some odd throwback to the world of snuff movies, but with people now starring in them and bragging openly online about it, praying, hoping for their 15 ‘likes’ to grow into something much bigger; a zelebrity status and all its by-products. The first rule of rape club was to tell EVERYBODY!!!! And as the online world hummed with excitement, people sharing to get in on the popularity contest, phones buzzing non-stop with alerts of it trending, famous philosopher/musician/celebrity/public figure quotes PhotoShopped on to pictures to express their views, it didn’t take long before the offline world needed to get a piece of the action ever hungry and intemperate like a pack of immoral wolves.

The incessant media storm that surrounded Carol punched the eye of one young TV entrepreneur by the name of Jackson Fire, whether that was his real name was still in question, but it was perfect for his sin’dustry. Quick to recognise an opportunity he immediately set about turning the show into reality, understanding the public’s need for blood, sex, violence, games and the individuals abject desire for fame and glory. Knowing there would be legal complications he hired the best entertainment law firm in London and took to finding a loophole that would allow his show to be aired. If two boxers were allowed to punch one other in a ring for entertainment, where was the problem if people consented to being raped on a TV show? Of course there was a paradox here. If one consents to rape, how could it be rape and Jackson had been questioned by journalists, talk show hosts and those that wanted to bring him down over the years. But Jackson was no fool and had repeatedly responded with the same answer;

“This is reality TV, since when was that ever really real? We are living in a hyper reality and I am giving the public exactly what they want to see. They want rape and I provide it. The minute they don’t want it, the show ends. But I don’t think that it will be over too soon. There’s a healthy lust for it and we have people round the block in every city auditioning. Celebrity Rape is going to be here yet for quite a while.”

It was all violence one way or another, it was just a question of how you chose to perceive it and how many years of conditioning the moral, immoral or amoral values of it all you had ingested. TV chat shows dominated by the untalented for the illiterati discussed their disgust probably because their ‘Likeshare’ was falling and how it must stop! Questions and opinions filled the air protesting if this happened on TV copycat rapes would follow everywhere, but there were already rapes happening en masse and if the same logic was applied to boxing, then the pugilists were responsible for every weekend night’s inebriated punch-up outside of a pub or club. Better to do it on TV in a supervised environment where there were the finest qualified doctors to hand to help after the rape had been performed in front of the eyes of the nation, Jackson argued to his recanters, using a simple re-hash of the pro boxing argument which his legal team had successfully used in a court of law.

And so the show began. It was an instant hit. No one had predicted how successful it was going to be. It reached deep into the hearts of the biastophiles, massaging the ventricles. To give kudos and authenticity to the show Carol was asked to narrate, giving her thoughts on how each contestant was raped and how well they performed. So successful was the first series that a real celebrity version, not a zelebrity version, was commissioned for the Christmas period as celebrities with autobiographical books, albums, Xmas singles, get fit DVDs, perfumes and new clothes lines needed the marketing and the only way to compete was to get in on the action. ‘If you can’t beat them, then get raped’ had become the phrase spat out by PR companies staining the landscape of London. Fuck morality. You want to be famous? You want to earn money? You want 200,000 ‘likes’? Then get on ‘Celebrity Rape’. Who cares if you could play like Jimi Hendrix? Were a poet like Bob Dylan? Could paint like Picasso? Not the public anymore. Their lips were wet for a rape. That would make you a star. Otherwise fuck off back to your dull nostalgic dreams of yestermillennium where talent was once a precursor to fame.

Around the country auditions began at the start of the year with four judges to determine who would go through to appear on the show. The judges were as follows: Carol, the rape cover girl; Tony, a priest who had tortured a Muslim to death winning a nationwide TV talent show, the crowd had loved his performance helping him to beat the singing dog and hundreds of syncopated dance routine acts moving to the drumbeat of the Neanderthal. He obviously knew what was at the heart of the nation dressed head to foot in a union jack suit over this black shirt and white collar. Sonia who had tortured her child-abusing husband for seven weeks on YouTube, treated the public to a new chapter on a daily basis and clocked 25 billion hits, was the third judge. And finally, the fourth was Danny, the foul-mouthed celebrity hairdresser known as Sweeney Gob, who celebrities visited for a haircut and abuse. The four judges were out to find the next 20 contestants for the show that now began in September every year perfectly timed to end on Christmas day at 9pm. From London to Manchester to Birmingham to every other city across the UK the four judges would sift through the wannabe zelebrities who lined up around the blocks of the megalopolitan streets in queues weaving and pulsating with excitement, hoping to be picked so they could be the next victim on Celebrity Rape and feel the digital buzz of social network fame.

As the melody of the opening credits came to a close with the title of the show hitting the screen in perfect syncopation with the music, the two Geordie cheeky chappies hosting the programme took to the stage in front of a full house of screaming biastophiles. Everybody loved Tom and Rich. The elder generation had seen them grow as presenters from starring in children’s TV shows when they too were kids, buying their pop fodder when they released a song because their celebrity status deemed it the perfect time and finally on to the hosting of reality TV shows, the pinnacle of ‘blow business’ (show business where if you suck enough cock you climbed the ladder). It gave the nation confidence. They were the nation’s friend. The two needed one another. Tom and Rich had had reservations at first to host such a show. There was a chance that it could be career suicide if the public hadn’t shown the true teeth of their raptophiliac needs, but with online evidence to prove there was a desire for it, megalomania made that decision for them. Tom and Rich walked and talked the public through the show. First we met who would be hunting down the victims. This week twelve diesel dykes who had been locked in solitary confinement for two weeks after being stripped naked with hands cuffed behind their backs, made to sit naked on iron stools with heads shaved, gay porn being pumped digitally into their skulls while being spoon fed by young starlets naked in just heels, who also fist fucked their anuses every morning, but never allowed them to ejaculate, were to be released into the labyrinth with three-foot steel dildos that had been wrapped in smallpox and anthrax cauterized just above their quim so they could pierce the rectal, oral and vaginal orifices of their contestants. The crowd roared as Tom and Rich introduced each one to the crowd. A cacophony filled the air with each mention of their names as they walked on to the stage with the three-foot faux phallic schlong swinging between their legs playing to the crowd. Huntress! Storm! Belter! The names rolled off the presenters’ tongues and the crowd lapped it up in anticipation of the upcoming sex and violence. Let the rapes begin! Marcus hung his head and just moved it from side to side astonished at how this could have ever happened. At forty-two years old he remembered a time when this could never have existed. Over the last year he had met women in their very late twenties and saw how different their outlooks on life were. How they accepted the status quo and never questioned it. How money was more important than anything else. How easily they just accepted everything without protest. How this was their favourite reality TV show. Was he now just simply out of touch? After the crowd, in their pack-like mentality, finished screaming for the rapists the presenters introduced the four contestants. On to the stage they walked. Again the crowd screamed with joy. Close-up shots of people in the crowd looking at one another with excitement filled the TV monitor for a second. As each contestant walked on to the stage a huge screen behind displayed images of their lives, their relatives, their misfortunes to coincide with the narrating of the presenters. The crowd commiserated with the loss of their mothers, grandmother’s battle against cancer, loss of their livelihoods to take care of their debilitated fathers and their own personal fights on their daily journey through life. Marcus held his head in his hands. How the public fell so easily for this pulling of the heart strings. Every week the same formula was paraded in front of them and each week it garnered the same response, like a pack of Pavlovian canines. The contestants stood in a line facing the crowd. Justin. Simone. Eddy. And finally coming on the stage… Erica Lynne! Tom and Rich screamed her name in unison. Marcus lifted his head. ‘I know that name’ he thought. On to the stage walked a slim, tall, waif-like creature with shoulder-length brown hair. Confidently and eagerly she ran to stand with the other three. As she completed the line-up the camera panned across all four contestants so the eyes of the world could see them before they entered the labyrinth of rape. With eyes looking forward the camera settled on Erica’s long enough for Marcus to look directly back as if they were in a room together. And in that split moment he saw the fear deep in her soul. With the sound of a horn signalling the start of the hunt, the contestants swung around, a huge curtain lifted and a single road led into the labyrinth. “Let the rapes begin!” the crowd screamed what had become the nation’s favourite catchphrase and the four victims to be, if they were lucky, disappeared into the darkness while huge screens came down electronically from the ceilings of the studio so the public could play their true role as the vile voyeurs that they are.

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.

The New Normal

‘The New Normal’ is a phrase you will have heard over the last few months to describe the current state of our existence as we stare into Zoom meetings, watch gigs online, walk around with face masks across our mouths while keeping 2 metres apart from others and unable to travel across the world.

Author Robert A. Heinlein first used the phrase in his 1966 novel ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’:

“Citizens, requests may reach you through your comrade neighbors. I hope you will comply willingly; it will speed the day when I can bow out and life can get back to normal — a new normal, free of the Authority, free of guards, free of troops stationed on us, free of passports and searches and arbitrary arrests.”

Sound familiar? Our governments like to wrap everything up in simple slogans for the public, this is nothing new as follows:

“Liberty, equality, fraternity.” Robespierre, 1790

“All power to the Soviets: bread, peace, land.” Lenin, 1917

“A fit country for heroes to live in.” David Lloyd George, 1918

And then of course there was:

“Hands, face, space.” Boris Johnson, 2020.

Really? Unfortunately, yes. It speaks volumes about us as a nation right? Of course the other phrase we are currently hearing a lot is ‘The New Normal’. This phrase interests me because what it declares is that what we had before was ‘normal’, which in turn begs the questions:

What is normal?

Who sets what is normal?

Who is the arbiter of normality?

Where is the ground zero of ‘normal’?

So I ask you:

Is it normal for the nearly half of the world’s entire wealth to be in the hands of millionaires?

Is it normal for us to vote in a prime minister or president who protects the interests of business before the people he or she is meant to serve?

Is it normal for people in Britain to be having to rely on food banks to eat?

Is it normal for the Doomsday clock to be moving closer to midnight?

Is it normal for our countries to be bombing and invading other countries illegally?

Is it normal for everything to be in the hands of private unaccountable corporations?

Is it normal to attack those who are different from us, be it colour, origin, class or gender?

Is it normal to fill the sea with plastic waste?

Is it normal that we have now entered Anthropocene?

Is it normal for people on the other side of the world to be living in destitution to produce our so-called luxury goods?

The questions can go on. If we are to be told we need to get used to living in a ‘new normal’ then we should start to look at who benefits from this supposed normality, for this will clearly show who sets what ‘normal’ is. But what it was also importantly shows are the results of our actions, and from there we can ask ourselves whether we think this should be ‘normal’.

This phrase, slogan, statement itself could be, if seriously taken into consideration, a catalyst to change the whole infrastructure of the current business and financial institutions that currently control and dominate our lives and the world. It simply begins with asking the question:

What is normal?

Kai Motta’s novels Celebrity Rape and VIR(US) are available from Amazon.