Yesterday playing an imagination game with T, my character (Anthony) suggested to T’s character (Mr Rocket) that we go rock climbing. Mr Rocket was very enthusiastic and riffed on the idea….. but to my consternation we were then queueing for a ticket in order to climb the rock climbing wall. When did rock climbing become the rock climbing wall that we were going to buy a ticket for? Maybe Anthony and Mr Rocket could play a video game of climbing a rock climbing wall. Then we’ll know that we are truly lost in the matrix. The faux experience has replaced the real experience. Do we all feel safer? I’m starting to feel ripped off.
I’m *SO SICK* of the pre-packaged experience. Sorry folks, but being guided in a orderly fashion through your carefully constructed “experience” and then exiting via the gift shop is just so *boring*. I feel like running the wrong way and smashing up the gift shop. Of course I don’t. I’m very well behaved.
Everywhere you go now, there is a gift shop, where you can buy items that are identical to the items at the previous giftshop. Last year we went to the tree top walk in Walpole, and as you come down out of the forest canopy you exit via a ‘building sympathetic to the landscape’ where you can buy a Steve Parish calendar. Also available at your local post office.
Maybe I’m getting paranoid but in one just generation, the capitalist machine has become the “creator” of all these experiences that we “consume”, and subsequently our children will only know how to consume experiences but never to create them for themselves.
I was recently introduced to the Wii music game. I’m baffled. Is this a 21st century version of a corroborree? How have they got people to buy a game based on creating music utilising faux instruments while looking at the big screen? For the same price you could have a couple of second hand real instruments which could actually exit your home theatre. For free, you could make music with the instruments you already have. Come on folks, I can stamp my feet and play the spoons….. and I can also harmonise Kum Ba Yah. Or is that the point – that we would all feel too twee and nervous to try the real thing? Hmmm. I hereby refuse to be cowed by the fact that I “can’t sing” and participate in all social and community singing opportunities. If we all sing Kum Ba Yah loudly and often enough, maybe the matrix will shatter.
We are planning a trip around Australia. I have a really bad fear that I have been duped by “Tourism Australia” and that the vast untouched wilderness areas they pan around are actually meccas for people, “experiences” and souvenir shops – that have just been removed for the photo shoot. P has advised me that if I really want to get away from all that, then we’ll need to go to the desert. Sounds great.
