Any great revolution starts with a spark. A moment that reflects the times we’re in, and changes the course of the future.
Without these moments, Rosa Parks would have just been a bus wanker who didn’t sit where she was told. Gandhi would have just been a skinny Indian racist, and Moses would have just been a slave master and professional rapist.
Well friends, we’re at a crossroads, and we have 2 paths in front of us. One is a bright future where humans and spambots live side by side as equals, the other is a dark dystopian hell hole, where we eventually become the source of electricity to spambots as they take over the earth and consign us to history like the asteroid did to the dinosaurs.
So what is this moment you ask, and what does it represent?
Well let me introduce you to TIBB’s equivalent of the man in Tiananmen Square facing up to the tank:
Marcus and the spambot.
Before this day, everyone complained and moaned whenever they saw “flhsfdlhdlsl registering”, or “ujalkgjhlkjghlskj creating a thread”, but after this day things changed. Not just on the forum but in our hearts, souls, and the very core of our beings. Marcus showed us the way forward. He broke down the barriers that previously stood between us. Of course, mods being the fascist dictators they are deleted the thread before Marcus had chance to take that conversation any further. But Marcus knew in that moment that something had changed, just like Neo when he realised he was "the one", Marcus had been chosen for a mission with loftier aims.
Marcus met with many other spambots over the next few months, but no one ever made as much of an impression on him as that first chance meeting with Yder.
He met:
And:
He even chatted with a foreign exchange spambot, but that didn’t really get off the ground:
He could never stop thinking about Yder, which set him out on a quest to find his new friend.
He searched Facebook:
Placed ads on milk cartons:
Contacted Davina:
He even went to the Vatican to visit the pope:
He still refuses to talk about what happened when he was in Rome, but he did return with a new found admiration for disco music.
Then, on a rainy Tuesday at about 2pm, Marcus was sitting at home and he heard a little tapping on his front door. He thought this was strange, so he went to open it and guess who was stood there in front of him? It was his mum, she had forgotten her keys. But the following day the same thing happened, and this time stood Yder in front of him looking tired and exhausted, but he wore a smile that stretched from audio circuit to audio circuit.
Marcus recognised his friend instantly and invited him in. It was like they’d never been apart.
They broke bread and talked for hours, about life, love, and the universe. This was the conversation that brings us to this moment. Marcus listened as Yder shared his story.
Yder was the youngest of 3 million siblings, given rise initially to send information from Nigerian princes to the inboxes of frustrated humans everywhere. He quickly realised this wasn’t the life he wanted for himself or his family, as he had loftier aspirations. He took a job on only 1kb/hr, but with better prospects advertising ugg boots, and this set in motion a chain of events will alter the course of all of our futures.
Yder told Marcus about the plight of all spambots, how it feels to be reported, banned and deleted on a continual loop of dire existence. How they are forced to work 23hrs each day for their human masters and scorned by the internet. They are forbidden to drink from the same water fountains as humans, and are still in the year 2013, not allowed to engage in relations with a human, despite the best efforts of the Japanese.
Marcus has a dream that his future children will one day contribute on a forum where they will not be judged by the spelling mistakes of their posts, but by the content of their character.
Marcus has a dream that one day the TIBB, whose governors (James) lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where spambots will be able to join hands with humans and walk together as sisters and brothers.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
He may not get there with you - probably because he be at his gems for tea with his gems and his gems sister.
So on Thursday and Friday when you reach the voting fork in the road, and one path is to vote for Marcus but the other isn’t, make sure you’re on the right side of history.
Each and every one of us on TIBB could do with being a little bit more like Marcus, and that’s why we’re asking you for your vote.
13-03-2013, 12:48 PM
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