Why don’t you blog about politics? – asked me Sebastian.
Well, I said, I guess, I’m not informed enough. Or, maybe, I’m not interested enough. I, basically, don’t even know what it is. Usually it’s all charts and stats, and numbers and it all either happens somewhere else and has nothing to do with me or completely unverifiable and feels like a big scam. I’m a bit lost when I read all these stories about Syria or China, or economic growth, or riots. I have not the slightest idea what really happens in those faraway places and what all those numbers and funny words may really mean. Even if I blog about my own personal life I have barely enough information to make heads or tails of it. How would I know the truth about some guy on the other side of the planet who tried to steal a handful of cheap cigars and was shot and killed by another guy in uniform?
Who cares about the truth? – said Sebastian. Are you interested in traffic to your blog?
Well, I said. Of course, I am interested.
Then forget the truth. You can’t know the truth. It is impossible. Do you know what Bonini paradox is?
No, I said.
Bonini paradox, said Sebastian, states that any model of reality is either too complicated to be a model or too simple to be real. It means, basically, that you can’t know the truth, this way or another. The truth is just too complicated for people to really know it. Either we don’t have enough information to know the entire truth or, if we do have that much, we won’t be able to unscramble all the information we have in such manner as to comprehend the reality. Either way we, essentially, end up barking up the wrong tree. But the good news is that no one cares much about the truth. Or, better to say, we all know the truth all too well to really care much about it. Bonini paradox or not, most of us have enough common sense to tell the true from the false and to know what happens here or there without actually knowing all the details. We don’t need all the explanations. We just, you know, know. Because things happen and we know how they generally are. Take Jimmy Savile: the first time you saw his face had you any doubts the man was a super creep? This is why it doesn’t make any sense to blog about the truth: everyone knows it. You see? The truth is not only impossible to blog about, it doesn’t make any sense to blog about the truth. This is why we blog about politics. And if you blog about politics, you don’t need any truth. What you really need is a good story. You need a villain and you need a victim and if you have a good villain and a good victim you’re all set. Take a child and take a monster and you have a good story. Doesn’t matter if it happens or not in this boring real life: if your writing is any good it will, sooner or later. Take an innocent child who just went out for a walk with his friend and take a bloodthirsty trigger-happy maniac and make them chase each other and kill each other, and you’ll have all the attention you crave. Take people and take recession, or global warming, or whatever disaster you’re able to come up with and make them chase and kill each other. If your story is outrageous enough you’ll have traffic beyond your wildest dreams. It must be savage and it must be dreadful, sickening, disgraceful, atrocious and intolerable but it shouldn’t be much different from what others are writing about at the moment, otherwise they won’t notice you at all. An innocent child with his eyes wide open went out of his house in the broad daylight to listen to the birds singing, to watch the clouds in the sky and to dream his dreams of happy life and wonderful future and was killed by a lonely psychopath, a robot without emotions, a maniac on the prowl. This is how I blog about such things. Seven thousands unique visitors a day and nine thousand views. How about that?
I know a better story, I said. Bloodthirsty mutant aliens abduct babies in the broad daylight right out of unattended prams and badly supervised nurseries, molest them in wild orgies, kill them without mercy, drink their blood for breakfast and sell their tiny little organs to the obnoxious rich people who gradually become immortal through this trade. How about that?
You seem to have a real knack for it, said Sebastian begrudgingly. Tag it ‘immigration’ and you may even have riots in the less thriving parts of our country. And you know, he said, if you have riots you have something to blog about for years to come.
Aes leve 