Why We Are Not Responsible
for the Decline of Western Civilization  My friends, your Editor has had an epiphany while working today. (Quiet in the back.) I know what is causing the decline of Western Civilisation. It's something Marshall McLuhan said. Back in the Sixties, the prescient Canadian said, 'The medium is the message.' He wasn't talking about spooky people with Ouija boards. He meant that the form of our communication tends to control the content. Boy, has the internet proven him right. And we're in trouble.
In order to make money on the internet, you have to get people to click on your 'content'. The more outrageous the content, the more mouseclicks, and the more money you make from the adverts. Guess what? The bigger the lie, the more it gets read. Wonder if that affected Brexit? Or a certain presidential election? This is a problem.
h2g2 doesn't make as much advert money as, say, sites with pictures of two-headed cows. Not that we wouldn't gladly publish a two-headed cow picture if a h2g2er took it, mind you, or even photoshopped it. But anything we make up is more or less clearly labelled, 'We made this up.' We're peer reviewed, well researched, and moderate in our discourse – although we're witty, knowledgeable, and generally fun to be around. Sigh. Can we compete with the verbal equivalent of World Wrestling?
We can try!
In these Post pages, you are guaranteed to find things that are true, interesting, and possibly useful to you. You will find humour and snark, but it will not be passed off as the latest breathtaking revelation from on high. You will also notice that the comment sections are conspicuously lacking in slanging matches. In short: we, the weirdos of the internet, have become the grownups in the chatroom. So be it! We will take up the gauntlet! We will save civilisation! If the Irish could do it, so we can we. How hard could it be?
End of rant.
Now, what have we this week? Some absolutely guaranteed real bighorn sheep. No, they weren't in Paris Hilton's living room. They're out in nature, where they belong. Awix's film? In the cinema, documented. Your Editor personally chased this down. I first suspected this review of being Fake News – I mean, who would bother making a film like this? Looked like clickbait to me. Then, alas, I googled the title. It's on a screen about two miles from the US branch of the Post Office, groan. (Reviews at church this morning were mixed. Kids liked it, adults mostly found it too long.) We do fact-check, see? Galaxy Babe's space review? Amazing, but all true. Read it here. The NaJo excerpts? Real writing by real people. Okay, we should warn you that Paulh completely made up that squirrel story. It's fiction. If we sent it to the Breitbart News, Zarquon knows what they'd make of it. But we trust you to distinguish the facts in this publication. You can do your own research in the Rye and Battle Observer, and sort fact from fiction in the Gheorgheniplexes.
Oh, a word about Casanova: he's sort of reliable. I mean, he really existed, and he really wrote this book review in his memoirs. But he was known to stretch the truth a bit. Kind of like certain politicians. So take him with a grain of salt. Call it 'for entertainment purposes only'.
If you send us more Stuff, we will publish it, as long as we can sort out the truth content between us. We may live in a 'post-truth' society, but brother, we know a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is southerly. In other words, we demand a decent mixture of truth and what's out there. Long live salutary insanity! Stay warm and safe out there, and Noli illegitimi carborundum!
PS Editorial Admission: That second photo has been slightly photoshopped to protect Hoggett privacy.
Dmitri Gheorgheni
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