“But of course that’s complete bullshit,” she goes.
“My traffic report?”
“No – what Mark Zuckerberg said. I mean, just because someone’s got different identities for when they’re on LinkedIn and when they’re on Facebook, doesn’t mean they lack integrity. It’s basically just like me acting differently when I’m at uni and when I’m at my nan’s – doesn’t mean I’m being sneaky or being two different people. It isn’t as if my nan wants to have a six-way convo about Deepika’s missing underwear problems.”
Next thing, Ramona’s telling me she reckons that either Mark Zuckerberg’s so bloody privileged that he ain’t never had to check himself in different social situations, or he’s just deliberately chatting shit cos it’s in Facebook’s interests for everyone to only have one identity and to always front the same way with everyone: “After all, he’ll make more billions for himself if he can sell 100 per cent of you to advertisers instead of just 30 per cent of you, right?”
Some draught from the doorway signal-boosts my sigh of relief. Like, how the fuck did I just dodge another truth bullet here? “Wait a sec,” I tell her. “So despite having that Mark Zuckerberg quote stuck up on your bedroom wall, you’re now saying it’s actually fine for someone to front with different IDs?”
“Well, yeh, otherwise how the hell else could people function? It’s like everyday code-switching. You choose which bit of yourself is the most appropriate bit for each situation. I tore that quote down from my wall because I realised it was just another case of another Silicon Valley squillionaire trying to base an entire philosophy of living on whatever will make more money for their tech company.” She tells me to think of all the shit we do cos we tell ourselves that the technology makes it possible when, in actual fact, we ain’t really doing it cos of the tech, we’re doing it cos that’s what’s best for the tech companies’ profits. Says this means we ain’t just like cavemen flexing the latest tools no more; we’re now flexing the business models of the companies that control the tools. “So, yeh, of course it’s fine to have different identities, Dillon. And it’s also okay not share everything about yourself.”
Check my smile as she says this.
“A person’s content is different because the app or platform or context is different, not because the person themself is different. Otherwise it’d be like saying that Dillon-the-student is a different person to Dillon-the-start-up-founder. Only thing that matters is that you’re all still Dillon – that there’s no other Dillon knocking around.”
14
DIDN’T ONLY ASK Google. Not cos I’m going for a more varied and balanced diet or something like as if to improve my bowel movements. It’s cos Google didn’t have an answer. Proper scoped everywhere – using different combos of different search tools, different search words, different search engines.
And obviously different search histories.
Always get me different results when logged on as Dhilan and Dylan and so on. Different search results, stories, ads – sometimes even different weather reports, even though all my IDs live in the same city.
This time, though, all three spellings of me got the exact same diddly-zero answers.
So now there’s just one place left to look.
Walk into a shop and walk out with some brand-new, top-of-the-range torch. Batteries and replacement bulbs included. Fuck knows why I bought it, though – ain’t like it’ll be dark.
Reason search results are custom-tailorised is cos they gotta narrow shit down somehow. Can’t just be hitting you back with every piece of fuckery on the internet containing your specific searched-for keywords – i.e. if they didn’t have some kinda filter/ slant/bias, there wouldn’t hardly be no point to them. Next thing, the search engine’s got more data on you than you could ever hold in your brain. Knows all your unknowns. Cuts through all your self-illusions – the stories you gotta tell yourself to boost your self-respect. The goal according to Google is for search engines to one day get so custom-tailorised and Jedi, they’ll be able to give you the correct, data-crunched answer to questions of a higher headfuck order, such as: “What uni should I go to?” “Should I even go to uni?” “Should I stay or should I administer a lethal dose?” Cut to a quote from Eric Schmidt, Google’s former executive chairman: “Most people don’t want Google to answer their questions … They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”
i.e. those two aged-out Botox men weren’t just fronting about this stuff. It’s time to start junking all the old-school jargon: ain’t about search engines no more – we’re talking badass prophesising prediction engines. In which the shit you’re searching for is also searching for you. But did any of this searching-the-minds-of-psychic-search-engines using different combos of different search words and IDs and search histories tell me anyshit about my dad being a journalist? Did it, fuck. Each combo just threw up a bunch of random square roots of irrelevance. People are only supposed to be invisible to search engines if their name or surname is some proper commonspread word – like “Who” or “What” or “Why”.
After that, I tried me a more direct approach: I foned home. Asked straight up whether my dad had ever been a journalist and, if so, how come I weren’t ever told about it? And more to the point of the story, why weren’t there no record of it anywhere on the internet?
“Dhilan? Is this some sort of a joke?”
“No. I just wanna know.”
Shoulda asked how everything was, of course. If things were getting better again or if things were again getting worse. Some diplomatic opening gambit to kick the chit-chat off. Shoulda offered to show up.
To demo Mum’s new diaphragm exercises and that mindfulness munching-and-swallowing technique.
To help them clear out all her emails and belongings – maybe play us one more round of Donate, Bin or Burn. Fun for all the family.
To make her some soup and hold the spoon like a lollipop to her polka-dot lips.
To polish the urn that contains her ashes while we figure out where to scatter her – all the years of false alarms and dry-run dress rehearsals and she ain’t never told me where she should be sprinkled.
To crush up her tablets and sprinkle them into her soup like the district nurse had shown me to.
To tell her that I love her or whatever. That I got 91 per cent in some multiple-choice test.
I breathed, bone-crushed the fone and said it again: “No, this ain’t a joke, Uncle, I just wanna know. There’s nothing on Google about him ever being a journalist – not that Google knows everything yet, but I also tried Bing and Yahoo! and Ask.com. I even tried Yandex and Baidu. Even tried Facebook and YouTube …” And when the line went dead as well, I tried calling back, but this time ain’t nobody bothered picking up.
When the line went dead instead.
When the line went dead as well.
When the line went dead, I tried calling back, but this time ain’t nobody bothered picking up.
Flick the switch to make sure my brand-new, randomly bought top-of-the-range torch actually works. Even though still dunno why I even need a torch. Even though I’ve already made sure. Torch or binoculars or magnifying glass? – who the hell decides that stuff? And, once again, turns out that today I ain’t lying when I fone home to say I’m sorry but I’ll be working late. And I ain’t lying when I fone Ramona to say I’m sorry but I’ll be working late. Eat my dinner in the queue to pay for it then pay for an empty sandwich wrapper and hop on the 59 bus. Because I cannot stop this shit. Cos how can you stop doing what you already done? Her fucking lipstick-stained surgical mask. Can’t even manage to miss my stop.
My co-workers call this shit “dungeon duty”. Other people call it the bunker. The project’s Project Manager prefers “The Client’s Offsite Site”. Whatever you call it, I’m the only data temp to go down there voluntarily, i.e. ain’t even asked permission. The Stockwell Deep-Level Shelter used to be this big-ass World War Two air-raid shelter. Wouldn’t recognise it for
shit from street level, though – just looks like some concrete public toilet. Big blank stare of a big steel door that opens before I can fat-finger the passcode on the touchscreen keypad. Ain’t no buttons to push for the lift – security guard’s already got it waiting for me. Tapping her left foot. Regulation rounded-toe work-boots. It’s a cage lift. Only way is down. First time I came here, I was with the Online Archive Project Manager and three fellow Project Inductees. But this place creeps her out so she gave some of us clearance to head down here by ourselves. One level beneath the sewers and the disused Tube stations.
Didn’t want to do it this way, of course. Didn’t wanna be so extra about it – just wanted to call it just browsing. Just pissing about in some searchbox. Like when you’re sitting on the shitter and you start randomly looking up the name of the actor who played the dog in some cartoon you watched when you was seven. Surely a magnifying glass should be for zooming in?
Lift hits the bottom and clicks into place like a plug being jacked in. This other security woman full-bodies the door open, then starts walking me through the tunnel. It’s one of two parallel tunnels connected crossbar-style by smaller tunnels. Steel-panelled walls – painted white, but with bright neon strip lighting making them look even more metal than if they’d just been left the colour of steel. Each section bolted together like some ribcage made of steel ridges. Smell of fresh paint job even though the paintwork is rusted and faded and blistered and ulcerated.
We press on through the tunnel. Strip lighting amping up like floodlights, motion-sensor style. Talk about wasted bucks on my deadweight torch. Ain’t passed a single other body, even. Other times I been down here, there at least been a couple of legal clerks. That woman who was singing to herself. That bloke who sold vintage pornos on eBay. We press on through the tunnel. Security guard now moaning about the weather being crap like as if we ain’t 120 feet underground. Looking like she dug the 120 feet all by herself – shoulders broader than daylight and arms that could probly carve out shortcuts with just a penknife for a pickaxe. Next, she comes out with some autoplay tour-guide routine that takes five whole minutes to get across two facts: turns out 8,000 people could be staying down here during a war, and there are seven other deep-level shelters like this beneath London.
But now it’s all for paperwork.
The mother of all storage facilities.
Also known as the largest filing cabinet in London.
“We’re not a storage facility,” the security woman says. “We’re an Information Management Facility.”
Jumbo shelving jutting out from the wall like we in some long-ass library. Mostly corporate documents – records, papers, dossiers, reports, notebooks, catalogues, back issues. Actual folders. Actual padlocks on actual files. Except they ain’t actually shelves, though – they’re bomb-shelter bunk beds. Minus the mattresses, so just the original metal bed frames. “During the war, six people could sleep on each of these,” goes the security woman. This is fact number three – the final fact of her guided tour. After that just the Robocop sound of her work-boots. The underground Tube trains above us.
“Dhilan, please son, let’s change the conversation. Why to spoil your birthday by talking about your father? Please – just for today – let’s don’t even mention the F-word.”
Okay – done and done, Mum.
And so you quit asking her questions about him.
“Didn’t you hear what I said yesterday? Can we, please, can we just talk about something else.”
And so you quit asking questions about him.
“I thought I told you last week: I don’t want to talk about that man.”
And so you quit asking questions about him.
Kept your head down.
Allow that fucked-up feeling when you weren’t sure if she was pissed at you or pissed at him.
And then a couple of years after that – or maybe even a couple of years before: “Because I don’t want to see that man when I look at you, Dhilan. When the time comes for me to look at you for the final time, I want to see you, not that man.”
Kept your head down and trimmed your eyebrows and your knuckle hair to cut back any resemblance.
And then a year or so later or a year or so earlier: “Don’t you want me to die in peace? If you don’t want me to die in peace then bloody just leave me to bloody die alone.”
Two-thirds of the way along the first tunnel, the metal bed-frames-cum-shelves are spaced even more further apart. Inside one of the spaces, this cast-iron table and a green plastic chair – aka the offsite office for the newspaper’s Online Archive Project. Boxes of back issues I need are all lying on the lower bunks. Security woman prying as we open them up: “I thought you were all finished with the papers from 2001? I’m sure one of your colleagues said you’d put that whole decade up on the internet.”
I tell her we’d found a batch of stories from 2001 that were full of scanning mistakes. “So what I’m gonna do is set up my laptop here, check the scans against the original papers, then type up all the corrections.”
“I have a scanner at home. It never makes mistakes.” Her eyes staying locked on me – though ain’t no telling if she’s wise to my bullshit or just making convo. I tell her how it ain’t so easy to scan an old newspaper – you can usually get a good image of each page, either from the original newspaper itself or from the microfilm version of it, but sometimes there’s smudged newsprint or warped microfilm.
Seems this ain’t enough for her. Usually when I wanna be left alone, I just start dropping some dial-tone dullness. But today I go with geekery. Tell her how a proper online archive has gotta allow readers to search for specific keywords, names, phrases. You can’t do that with just a scanned image of the words – you gotta break shit down, apply some Optical Character Recognition Software so that a computer can read it and search it. Every block of text becoming a searchable index of itself.
The security woman doesn’t back off or get bored, though. Just side-eyes like she’s getting sus. So what I do next is I step up with some proper desperate mansplaining to pretend like I’m legit. Tell her that it ain’t like digitising a book: if you scan a book, all the words look roughly the same – same size, same font – which makes it piss-easy for software and computers to trawl the text for a specific searched-for keyword. But the words in newspapers get printed in different sizes, styles and fonts – captions and headlines and that. Different kinds of articles, different kinds of page layouts with different kinds of shit going on. You can get special software specifically for digitising newspapers that can figure out where one kind of story or layout ends and another begins. But, again, even the slickest software can make mistakes when there’s creases and smudges and other fingertip-related fuck-ups. When that happens, the digital version of the story can get all mashed up. Worst case: a reader searching for some specific keyword might end up downloading not just the text of a story but also the small print of some random competition the story was printed next to.
“That’s interesting,” she says instead of goes. My laptop long ago set up and started up on the cast-iron table. “Could I find all these stories just by searching on Google or do I have to search on your newspaper’s website? I mean, does every single story appear on Google?”
I duck the question. Change tactics. Try spooking her out with some spiel about search engines being more like prediction engines – how it’s more like trying to search the mind of a psychic.
“A psychic, you say? I once went to see one of those – my brother recommended him to me and I—”
“Well, actually, it’s more like searching the mind of a psychic while they’re mindreading a clairvoyant while she’s reading her crystal ball.”
“Well, excuse me for showing an interest in your work.”
After she’s gone, I wanna call her back. Carry on chatting or someshit. Maybe she was just one of them people who gets proper interested in stuff? And I didn’t even tell her the most interesting thing about digitisin
g stories: that she’s probly done it herself without even realising it. You know how sometimes when a website wants to check that you’re a human and not some spam bot, it asks you to type in the letters of some murky or smudged or scrambled-up word? Some of those words are actually taken from printed newspaper stories that the scanning software couldn’t read – and so they basically draft you in to help them digitise it. No shitting – this crowd-sourced project is how hundreds of thousands of random everyday people have helped digitise decades of back issues in just a couple months, tops. Each story becoming an index of itself. Each publication becoming an archive of itself. Each person building an archive of themselves every time they click or swipe or like or type some search query.
Didn’t take you long to just grow the fuck out of asking your mum random stuff about your dad. What the hell difference would knowing his exam grades make? Anycase, everyone’s parents got divorced. Done and done, no big drama, no big deal at all. Ain’t even like your mum and dad had some big-ass soap-opera bust-up or nothing – they just did that gradual growing-apart thing. End of convo, no biggie, done and done and logout. Only reason other people like getting all deep and drama-queen about their dads is cos nobody knows much about their dad – not even those people you read about who still got two whole parents. And, anyway, besides, ain’t like you needed some father figure. Your own dumbfuck Homer Simpson. Ain’t nobody needs no male role model when their mum’s been popping anti-oestrogen pills since her son was in Year Four. And, anyway, lots of fathers failed their families and fucked off – or more like got told to fuck off for being wife-beaters or gamblers or alcoholics or cheaters or workaholics or just plain old useless losers. And before fathers started fucking off, they used to go and die someplace. On a battlefield. In a dockyard. Down a mineshaft. Even if they weren’t from up north. Even if there weren’t no war.
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