Hey, hey, blog snorkellers mine, I’m back.
But no time to shoot the breeze, busy-busy, things to do, places to be, people to obey – you know how it is. Apologies for having been away, mind – but I’m afraid I got bored with social media, or it became somehow less important, and there really hasn’t been the motivation to put finger to keypad. I guess there actually IS a post right there – is it true that social media has lost its edge? I’m feeling that, somehow, it’s become less of a burning platform (oooh, look at me and the big management-speak vocabulary) and has somehow blended into the landscape. This could be a good thing – in that a few, otherwise perfectly sane, people will stop spinning around, flapping their hands and spewing resource into the void and will pick up their lives where they left off, to the greater good of their, and their functions, productivity – or it’s a bad thing in that the crass, lemming-like stupidity has actually become a social norm.
I should ponder the issue for a while.
Anyhoo – that ain’t what this is about. Some of my regular snorkellers (mwah-ha-ha-ha) will know that I’m not just a social media debunker, but also a sage and profound commentator on issues relating to the profession that we fondly call spin, some call a black art and others simply refer to as – PR.
And today’s reflection is on something that has been bothering me for – ooooh – all of 12 hours. What is it – I hear you pant breathlessly – and it is this. Chilean miners is what it is. What follows here may, I am afeard, be perceived to be of a rather dubious taste, so I’d advise those of a sensitive disposition to look away now.
Is it just me, right, or are there some questions to be answered around the – on the face of it – miraculous survival and rescue of the 33 hapless miners, stuck for 69 days, half a mile underground and brought back to the surface yesterday and the day before? Questions like:
- They’ve been in a hole for over two months. Why have they all got decent haircuts?
- Why didn’t they eat each other? (This isn’t – terribly – serious. Obviously.)
- How did they get all that stuff down to them – when the only communication/access, apparently, was through a sausage-sized hole?
- All the world’s bits were contained in this, weren’t they? One of the miners becomes a father, one is greeted by his mistress, another’s mistress and wife have a fight – this isn’t a real-life drama, this is a cross between Big Brother and Hollyoaks
- How come a video camera was STILL RUNNING as the last rescue worker left?
See where I’m going with this? There was no mining disaster. There were no miners trapped in a hole. There was no dramatic rescue attempt. It was a PR stunt – a fake for TV.
The only thing I’ve yet to work out is this – who, or what, stood to benefit? One of the politicians who was centre stage at the ‘rescue’? The Chilean Tourist Board?
Or was this the result of collusion between governments around the world to take our minds over the global economic hell that is about to engulf most of us?
Could be worse you know – you could be a Chilean miner stuck half a mile underground.
thewordmonger 