i.protest!
As most things with an ‘i’ prefaced either aim/become ‘trendy’ or belong to Apple, I’ve decided ‘i.protest’ at this state of affairs. ‘i’ protest against a lot of things but I protest especially sticking an i in front of a word or saying in that somehow that makes it appear more ‘relevant’ or dare I say it ‘on trend? Maybe I’m old-fashioned or just a hypocrite (I admit I have stuck an ‘i’ in front of ‘eye shadow’ and an ‘i’ embroider) as it neatly does make a simple but to the point statement. So is that just ‘lazy’?
I think what I most protest about at the moment is the way you have to justify that you even exist again and again to various companies, official bodies and corporations. In that it’s all in ‘your own interest’ and because of the ‘data protection act’ etc. “Please give us all your details to prove to our system that you exist”, “your call is important to us”, “you are now held in a queue”…then cue the worst wait time music that you can’t switch off. It’s a barrage of ‘crap’ like this i protest against…“please give us the second digit from your password”, “please state your full name, date of birth, address and postcode”.
I was recently caught out in these terms when not only was my passport out of date..I also had no driving licence due to sending it back to the DVLA. Therefore I had no ‘id’ and could not prove to officials who I was…so did I not ‘exist’? Knowing all my details, proof of address and a birth certificate was not enough! It was kind of scary…and because I was not going abroad imminently, I did not want to fork out a huge fee to get a new passport. A couple of weeks later I got another letter from the DVLA with a big ‘REMINDER’ blazoned across it (like you’re not going to see it) to renew my driving licence. Apparently now you have to get a new one every 10 years, and yes you pay for it! Excuse me…but why should ‘i’ have to pay for it? When it’s ‘them’ that request it? I just love the way that you have no ‘options’…it’s a bit like ‘They live’ (an essential John Carpenter film) exploring sublime messages such as ‘Obey’, ‘Conform’ & ‘Buy’ etc. It seems now though there is ‘no escape’ maybe my next embroidery should be i.escape? (which does seem rather ‘fanciful’..). It’s rather like the world of the 1960’s TV series ‘The Prisoner’. (I am not a number!).
The impersonalisation, the robotic nature of it makes me think that it really is 1984…though I do remember in 1984 things been a bit more ‘lax’ then, after all it was the 80’s! Maybe that was the real start of it hence the colourful and ‘artistic’ explosion in fashion and music. All I know is that I would like to ‘re-tire’ from this whilst taking some time out from this Orwellian nightmare but that does not seem at all possible…