CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As Australians wade through one of the most shocking news cycles of the last decade, the expectation for every living person to become either an expert or an activist now seems to be mandatory in Melbourne.
This new trend of needing to offer an opinion, uninformed or otherwise, on every single thing happening in the world is perhaps the most notable difference between the current 24-hour-news-cycle and the traditional media of yesteryear.
Nowadays, mailing a carefully considered and drafted letter-to-the-editor of your local newspaper is no longer good enough. Everyday citizens must play the role of proxy global diplomats, historians, and global socio-political academics.
Local Fitzroy cabinetmaker, Big Tez, has only recently learnt how to pay his taxes at 35.
He also only got his driver’s licence at 22 after 5 failed attempts.
He is just one of the many Melbourne residents who now has to choose between throwing away his iPhone and living a luddite lifestyle – or offering rambling, uninformed, and extremely passionate opinions about global events.
“I don’t know where the Middle East is” he says.
“I don’t even know where Alice Springs is”
“I grew up in a townhouse in Geelong West. I only moved to Melbourne because I heard there was a shortage of skills in furniture repair and fabricating”
“I didn’t know that would require me to know exactly what the fuck was going on in foreign places I’ve never visited and have never met anyone from”
However, Big Tez knows that his lack worldliness is no longer an excuse in this city, and he must begin posting, or at least reposting, extremely emotive and undercooked political stances that will only push him further into the minefield of political posturing.
“Guess I’ve gotta upskill on centuries worth of dispossession, oppression, land grabs, religious and ethnic tensions, colonialism, pop culture and politics, in every single country in the world”
“And then take all of that into account when delivering my correct opinion on what is happening in any one of these places”
“Either that, or risk having my business page bombarded with accusations that I am complicit in the suffering of innocent people”
“But I’m sure that will happen regardless if I get it wrong, which I definitely will, because no one has ever gotten this right for centuries”
However, Big Tez, like millions of other Australians who are now expected to know about things they don’t know about, realises he can only be safe from this vortex of competitive grief and language policing if he fucks off back to the industrial suburbs and stops consuming any media except professional sport.
“My main question is, how the fuck do all these other Melbourne randoms know about this shit? These people are just as white and middle class as me”
“Also, why doesn’t anyone talk about any of these issues in person?”
