Farrukh Dhondy | Of Musk, Trump and Zuckerberg… and why I changed my mind about NY resolutions

It means the lover is besotted

If it’s stretched out like a string

It can easily get knotted

When love is just a wish

Or perhaps part of a dream

--And if it then becomes real

Will the reality redeem?”

From Please, Please Don’t Kick the Desis, by Bachchoo

I’ve never done New Year resolutions, because in my experience they are as brittle as eggs flung at politicians or their facilitators. This year I made an exception.

I read on my computer that Mark Suckerberg, he of Facelift and Instagranma, has decided to remove all inhibition to lies from his platforms, a process bureaucratically named “fact-checking”.

Suckerberg has, with this announcement, followed Elon Musk-rat, owner of and chief provocateur on the platform which was once Twitter, which he renamed X. My conjecture is/was that Musk-rat thought the word “Twitter” gives the impression of bird-song and carries the impression of equal insignificance, whereas “X” (Bold capitals please!) can stand for assertiveness, for x-ing opposing views and sometimes to disguise letters in four-letter-words to make them acceptable in print.

When he acquired Jitter he announced the free posts wouldn’t be subject to fact-checking for truth or propriety. That in his book (book?? X-ers don’t read, surely!) was censorship. He was the apostle of “free speech”.

Now Suckerberg has followed him, I can only imagine, to bum-suck Donald Trump.

Both Musk-rat -- a species which swallows anything -- and Suckerberg have touted their moves to allow anything on their platforms. Do we all know where that could lead?

The thought, gentle reader, was the trigger which sparked my non-resolution U-turn. I resolved never to write or read posts on X or Facelift or Instagranma.

I must admit, to avoid confusion, that I use Google and Safari and of course even contribute small amounts of money to Wikipedia, because these assist me in passing tedious hours in which I have in the past enquired of them whether hamburgers were invented in Hamburg and whether Frankfurters did in fact originate in Frankfurt. I didn’t need to ask if “Bombay Aloo” was invented in Bombay because I knew the answer already.

I shan’t give you, gentle reader, the info I got about hamburgers and frankfurters, but I can tell you that I once foxed and maybe confused Google by asking it (or must one call it “they” now?) what the connection between Sir Walter Raleigh and masala dosa was? Google was perplexed. (fd-One: AI-zero?)

The reason for my resolution should surely be evident. Musk-rat, twice daily at the least, posts a lot of reactionary, provocative, lying, self-centred bullshit at great length on X. I believe a couple of million intellectually-challenged individuals around the world access his contentions that Britain and parts of Europe are on the brink of, or even in the throes of, civil war.

These same millions read Musk-rat’s abuse of a conscientious, courageous and selfless British MP, Jess Philips, calling her a “rape genocide apologist”. Philips has, throughout her political career, championed women’s rights and assisted, as best can be done, the female victims of grooming gangs. No doubt some of Ratty’s “followers” will mark the infantile abusive post with “like” -- the word that American moronic teenagers use to punctuate their phrases -- interruptions for “like” drawing “like” ominous “like” breaths?

Rich-ratty, not the sharpest tool in the kit, doesn’t seem to have noted that his touted concern for female victims of grooming gangs is not quite consistent with allowing groomers, notorious for using the social media to achieve their criminal aims, onto his X platform unchecked -- all in the cause of what he labels “free speech”. Groomers, fraudsters, paedophiles, conspiracy theorists, hate provocateurs, deniers of life-saving science, maniacs who threaten the annexation to the US of Danish and Panamanian territory… all welcome to Muskovich X.

It should be quite clear to the world by now that platforms such as X allow thoughtless provocative musings and, far from offering a voice to the voiceless, act as echo-chambers for maliciousness. Of course, not all of it. Most of what passes on these platforms is harmless rubbish about what one ate for breakfast or where one visited with “selfie” photographs as proof. All parts of our human tales, told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Or, as my friend V.S. used to say, “a form of idleness”.

One exception to my resolution to avoid expressive platforms are indeed podcasts. I don’t listen to many, believe me, but I am confident that they don’t force themselves on people. One has to choose to listen and I choose to listen to the one called The Rest is History, presented by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Fascinating, whatever they pick on...

I first encountered Tom Holland through his books on the Achaemenid and Sassain empires of Persia. I admired him for correcting the Greek-led and European lying myths about the “heroism” of the suicidal Spartans at Thermopylae and charting the historical truth about Zoroastrian Persia.

Oh OK, perhaps another reason for my not banning podcasts is because I’ve been variously approached to read my English translations of Rumi and Hafiz as a podcast series and have even, perhaps incredibly, been invited to present episodes from my autobiography Fragments Against My Ruin as podcast episodes.

So long live podcasts -- vehicles of supreme creativity and … err…. free speech?