A Day In The Virtual Life

Most organisms work like this: you put in sustenance at one end, waste products come out of the other, the difference being the energy which drives the organism.  Much (though not all) of the internet operates on the inverse principle.  The input is excrement, or to be more precise, advertising.  The output is wonderful – creativity, humanity, unexpected revelations, disturbing attitudes – well, sometimes excrement too, but we can scrape that off our shoes and just be careful not to step on that spot again, can’t we?  But, as long as you use a bit of your own energy to discriminate, which isn’t that hard, most of it is sustenance.  So it worries me a bit that this cornucopia is so flimsy.

It delights me, though, that the advertising is so precisely targeted, more and more, to my life, circumstances and desires.  To demonstrate this, here is a typical day in my life:

I have to get up early, to welcome the team who are going to install the new solar panels.  I’ve paid for these using my new special credit card for people with bad debts.  I check the mail.  My claim for mis-sold PPI insurance, minus 30%, has been acknowledged, which is great (especially as I never bought any), as I’ll be able to spend the money on life insurance so that my non-existent dependents don’t lose out.  After breakfast – coffee made with water boiled up in the new kettle – I clean up using the new vacuum cleaner, then put on my new designer sandals, strap on the new designer handbag and take the new baby buggy out for a walk.  I don’t quite know why I’ve got that, as I distinctly remember ticking the ‘no children’ box on the dating site.

In the afternoon, I’m a bit tired, so I relax playing with my new genuine replica Victorian abacus.  After dinner (spam fritters) I listen to my third CD of ‘Jerry Lee Lewis’s Greatest Hits’; and so to bed.  Tomorrow – another day, yet more dreams to be fulfilled.  Early start again, off to the villa in Zakynthos.