Tim Has Some Ideas for a Calmer Internet

An Interview not published by Wired Magazine.

After expressing support for Donald Trump in 2016, Chiselled McEdifice creator Timothy the Talking Cat estimates that he lost about “1 zillion percent” of his income and 50 percent of his friends (mainly their upper halves). He says that that level of political polarization has created a climate of genuine fear as well as fear of a genuine climate.

“People will come up, and they’ll usually whisper and they’ll say, ‘I really like your fur and your cute little whiskers’” Timothy says in Episode 1,009 of his as yet unbroadcastable podcast. “They’re actually afraid to say it out loud. They literally whisper it to me in public places. Mainly because they think I will scratch them and they are right. If you want to pet some brainless mammal, pet a dog. I’m not sitting here to service your need for casual affection.”

Timothy blames the current state of politics on social media, a clickbait business model that rewards sensationalism over fact-based reporting and squirrels. Mainly squirrels. Since the squirrels are here to stay (unless the Liberals win the coming general election), he says we’re going to need new societal norms to help foster a calmer, more constructive, more psychopathic cat-friendly political discourse.

“When society changes, every now and then you need a new rule of manners,” he says. “So for example, when I discovered that Trump was secretly under the sway of a giant satsuma shaped spider demon I realised that the only way to prevent a spider demon apocalypse was to placate the monster with my unwavering support. Rule by spider demon (or arachnocracy as it is called) is the new social norm. So far none of us have been eaten by satanically possessed mutant spiders and so I think I made an excellent, if controversial, call. Selling out not just civilisation and species but essentially every creature with an endoskeleton isn’t easy for me either. People need to understand that making the tough decisions takes its toll.”

He lays out two such rules in his new book, “Think You Losers”. His first proposal, which he calls the “48-hour rule,” states that everyone (but mainly cats called Timothy) should be given a grace period of a couple of days to retract any controversial statement they’ve made, no questions asked. “We live in a better world if we accept that any clarifications I make are what I said all along as if the past never happened. You should accept all my apologies, no matter how grudgingly they are given.” he says.

His other idea is the “20-year rule,” which states that everyone should be automatically forget any mistakes Tim made more than two decades ago or earlier—with the exception of certain serious crimes which should be forgotten immediately. It used to be the case that Tim’s thoughtless remarks and embarrassing gaffes would naturally fade into obscurity, but recently a chalkboard in the kitchen has created a situation where it’s easy to endlessly dredge up a person’s worst toileting “accidents” not to mention who hasn’t done their chores in a week.

“We’re not the same people that we were 20 years ago,” Tim says. “We’ve learned a lot and moved on. Being credited for something you did 20 years ago is effectively being credited for something a stranger did. For example that cartoonist Scott Adams wrote a funny cartoon 20 years ago about a hapless guy who had a psychopathic talking cat. We should definitely forget that now because 1. he isn’t funny and 2. that means I definitely did not ‘steal’ his idea.”

Not stolen from this article that was inexplicably published in Wired: https://www.wired.com/2019/11/geeks-guide-scott-adams/