Laughter of the Damned

Aurini did an experiment with Tinder, which leaves him laughing to avoid crying.

I have done a similar experiment with Tinder. In Thailand. Yes, Thai girls use tinder. EVERY place in the world uses Tinder.

Thailand is so full of attention-whores that my contact (a Thai teacher) mentioned that they are bummed because they are now only the #2 place in the world for self-shots on Instagram. Thailand is rife with credentialism gone mad. You'd better have at least High School if you want to have the slightest hope of getting even the most menial of jobs - university preferred (7/11 cashier). There is such a glut of people.

I wonder how much of them is basically bum-fluff.

That said though, the Thai people that I've met have invariably been polite, happy, and smiling. There is very much a "she'll be right" make-do attitude here. And I've been here for Songkran: the Thai New Year, which is basically a three-day country-wide water-fight. Sitting in the back of a ute with a large plastic cup, two large barrels of water, and throwing it at everyone and anyone is a flat-out blast.

Poor Aurini.

Yes indeed, laugh uproariously as you cry inside at the dehumanising of yourself. All those around you are similarly laughing, inside crying. In a world when sending the following to your Tinder match:

sit on my face

And even:

8=======D~~~~~~~~

Is considered normal, acceptable, expected – instead of creepy and fucked up. A world where you have to deliberately misspell, not use punctuation, contract everything, bend the girl over and use her in every orifice like the most degraded of whores.

This? This is normal?

Listen closer to the laughing. Is it laughing? Or really staccato, choked screaming at the horror of what we have done to our souls? It is our pain trying to escape, yet we won’t let it. We cannot be seen to reveal that much of our inner self. That primal scream must be choked off at the source, transformed into the laughter of the damned.

Peace my brother. Peace, and enjoy the decline.

This world is so steeped in poison. Harlan Ellison once wrote a short story titled: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. I must laugh also, the laughter of the damned. I choose to silence my scream.