The Christoforge Column (24/07/16)

Why the Hate for Bojo?


I know MPs are now considered the Antichrist by a large number of the British population, but Boris Johnson now has to live guarded by police officers due to the threats he's been receiving in his front yard. Okay the man might not be the perfect politician, and you may disagree with the majority of his views, but actually threatening someone in their own home is disgusting behaviour. I understand a lot of people don't like the man, but instead of retaliating with plain barbarism you could be at least engaging in more civil methods of disagreement, like they quite hilariously did in the French Embassy. How about giving the new foreign secretary a chance to prove himself? Since when did politics become about threatening to kill people you don't agree with? This is the rationale in a country where we've recently witnessed the consequences when these feelings are taken too far, so why are people being encouraged to act like criminal scum? In all honesty I don't mind Boris; he's a really entertaining guy. How can you want to kill someone who destroys Japanese schoolchildren at rugby and call Hillary Clinton a 'sadistic nurse in a mental hospital'? As you can see this rambling oaf is the perfect choice for representing Britain on the global stage.

The Power of Social Media in Times of Turmoil

To anyone that says technology isn't becoming alarmingly powerful, and those people are usually the isolated eighty year olds who like to remember the good old days, just look at the recent military coup in Turkey as evidence to what simple innovations can achieve. The coup in Turkey was effectively quashed by 'Facetime' when the president pleaded with the masses in scenes that resembled a drunk monologue in a kebab shop that you frequently find on 'Snapchat'. However I'm incredibly grateful for this desperate plea. I don't want the cause of World War Three to be the Turkish military cocking around, and although the details of the coup are very fishy, we have the rise of handheld technology to thank for averting a disaster. This dependency on technology in times of great peril does have a big downside though. Now the irritating this is that technology is being used in these key world events as a social tool. It's now suddenly frowned upon if you are not evidently showing grief on social media by using one of the many hashtags that always arise in these situations. Even with such positive schemes like the one when Facebook allowed survivors of the Nepal earthquake to declare their safety, we still get people thousands of miles away from the actual tragedy stating they were safe just so they could gain a small modicum of attention. It's the same process with these endless hashtags that usually revolve around humanity collectively praying for the locale surrounding another heinous attack. People just use this hashtag as a way to show virtually no empathy in exchange for some social standing. I have nothing against people showing their support for victims, and in fact I do it as well, but it's now become this expectation that if #prayforsuchandsuch isn't trending then nobody cares about that tragedy, and that we are somehow all failures of empathetic human beings as a result. Nobody should be forced to care about events that don't affect them, so why the hell there is this growing trend that you must acknowledge tragedies is shocking to me, especially when people are using the expense of human life for their own selfish benefit.

Why Bother Catching Them All?

Once upon a time this subject would have been centred around teenage boys trying to catch girls. Not anymore, as now with the release of 'Pokemon Go' it's suddenly become a question of which teenage boy can catch the most Pokemon. This app has had a huge impact on popular culture that I always knew would happen, but just didn't expect the impact to be this massive. I get the appeal, I really do. I've always wanted to catch them all, and this is by far the realest incarnation the franchise has gone through in its long and iconic history. It's also incredibly fun to play despite every player I've seen constantly catching absolute shit, so I suppose we have to say 'fair play' to Nintendo for creating a perfect life simulator filled with crushing disappointments. I've seen these feelings of self loathing and abject failure over and over again as I work at a Pokemon Gym. I'm not the leader of the gym, I'm just a guy that works in a corner shop located near a ridiculously powerful gym that destroys everyone who walks past. However despite the joys of watching everyone else fail and walking through graveyards at the dead of night catching Pokemon over people's graves there is always this feeling at the back of my mind that I've grown up and this is just entirely pointless. It's the first time I've ever experienced this feeling as a gamer, but then I suppose this is the first time I've watched friends happily postpone trips to the pub so they can go for a walk with the speculative hope they might catch some decent Pokemon. You know it's a dark day when kids now need an excuse to get out and about, and maybe this idea is too good to be true. The game certainly has a lot of safety concerns attached to it, as some kids even ended up on a railway track to try and catch something that isn't total wank. It's even worse in Bosnia where you have to be careful not to step on a landmine if you want that Charizard you always dreamed of catching. Maybe instead humanity needed a brain training app that got kids to got out in public more. Call me bitter but this app is now more popular than Tinder. Now that is entertaining, and in a way has a very relevant purpose to your life. Admittedly that doesn't cater for under eighteens very well considering there not of legal age to download the app, and Pokemon Go is a game far more purposeful than me prestiging on 'Call of Duty', but I'm not sure I want video games to end up like this. I'm sorry I know it's unhealthy but I want to be glued to my television screen all day if I am going to be playing video games, which may piss off Jamie Oliver and Theresa May, but that's all part of the fringe culture of being a video game nerd.

A Quick Message on the Baton Rouge Shootings
#policelivesmatteryoufuckingterrorists

...And Finally, This Great Letter From The Times