Qualityland

by Marc-Uwe Kling

  “Digital products,” says Peter. “When you get me to complete your sentences I feel like a stupid schoolboy.”

  “Rightfully so, rightfully so. Thus, from that we can conclude even if it were only minimally worse, there would be no reason to use the second-best search engine. Winner takes it all. Loser gets nothing. In the digital economy, nobody needs the second-best product, the second-best provider, the second-best social network, the second-best shop, the second-best comedian, the second-best singer. It’s a superstar economy. Long live the superstar, fuck the rest.”

  The old man scratches his head.

  “Well. And that brings us back to you. Let’s get to the real topic of our little extra tutoring hour. Let’s get to…” He pauses dramatically, then makes a grand sweeping gesture: “Peter’s Problem!”

  He looks Peter directly in the eyes. “Do you know what your problem is? You’re not a superstar.”

  HOW TO UNDO THE PAST

  Night has fallen. John and Aisha are the only ones still slogging away at the election headquarters. During earlier campaigns, it was always important to Aisha to be the first at work in the mornings and the last to leave at night. But even with the best will in the world, there’s no way she can keep up with John. He works around the clock. Aisha’s head slips from her hand and slumps downward.

  “Here,” says John, handing her a cup of coffee. A full cup of coffee.

  Aisha looks up in exhaustion. It takes her a full five seconds to realize what’s just happened. Then she cries out in amazement: “Good God, you did it! You didn’t spill anything! Have you been training at night?”

  “The training was futile,” says John. “It was just a mental block I needed to free myself from.”

  “And how did you get rid of it?”

  “I located it and deleted it.”

  Aisha takes a sip of coffee. “Have you noticed Tony’s absence?” she asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Your vice has been absent a lot recently.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Lack of confidence.”

  “The rats are fleeing the sinking ship, John. The party is starting to leave us in the lurch. And I have to say, I don’t blame the bastards. The leaked recordings may have given us a small increase in popularity, but that won’t be enough. We should have approached this election campaign from a completely different angle. You know, I’ve never worked for a candidate who says such smart things as you do. And I’ve also never worked for one who has such catastrophic popularity ratings.”

  “Perhaps the two are causatively linked,” says John with a smile.

  “I’m afraid that might be the case.”

  “We still have a chance.”

  “In order to have a chance, we would have to undo the past.”

  “In a certain sense, I could do that.”

  “It’s too late, John. Too late,” says Aisha. “The comments are written, the videos are online. If people want to find out about you on What I Need, most of them will find that the first three to five search results are negative. That’s a catastrophe!”

  Her voice starts to tremble.

  “Aisha…” says John.

  “Behind those there are some positive reports,” says Aisha, “but most idiots only look at the first result. Only 6.4 percent of all voters have ever looked at an entry or read an article that wasn’t shown in the top five results.”

  “Aisha…” says John, trying once more to interject.

  “Most people don’t read a single article! They simply ask their digital assistant who they should vote for.”

  Her eyes moisten.

  “Aisha…”

  “God, I’m on the brink of tears. Can you believe that? And I haven’t cried since the first time I saw Bambi’s mother get shot. I’m sorry, John. It’s all my fault. Yours too, of course. But mainly mine. Cook, that right-wing arsehole, is going to win the election. And I don’t have any energy left, John. It’s best you find yourself another election campaign manager, and I’ll crawl off into some hole. I…”

  Suddenly, she hears music coming from somewhere. Aisha stops talking. John has stood up and is beginning to dance. He sings, “Aïcha, Aïcha, écoute-moi! Aïcha, Aïcha, t’en va pas!”

  Aisha laughs and sobs simultaneously. She wipes her eyes dry with her sleeve.

  “Aïcha, Aïcha, regarde-moi!” sings John. “Aïcha, Aïcha, réponds-moi!”

  He proffers his hand.

  “Unfortunately I can’t dance to save my life,” she says.

  “That doesn’t matter. Just make up a dance. You lead, I’ll follow.”

  Aisha stands up and begins to move to the music. John registers each of her movements and makes complementary steps. The song has reached the second verse.

  “What’s he singing, by the way?” asks Aisha.

  “Aïcha, Aïcha, listen to me!” sings John. “Aïcha, Aïcha, don’t leave!”

  Aisha smiles. She lets go of John and spins around. John spins too, with such precision that they come to face one another again simultaneously.

  “So then what should we do?” asks Aisha.

  “I could talk to the algorithms.”

  Aisha laughs bitterly.

  “Yes, exactly. That’ll do it. It’s good that you can still joke. My sense of humor has abandoned me.”

  “It wasn’t a joke,” says John. “I could talk to the algorithms.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I understand them, and they understand me.”

  Aisha kicks her left leg into the air, John simultaneously his right.

  “And what do you plan to talk to them about?”

  “I could perhaps convince them that the first five search results about me should always be positive.”

  “Do you know what you’ve just suggested?”

  “Nothing illegal,” says John. “What I Need is a private business and not bound to objectivity. One could even go further and claim that it’s naïve to believe the results could be in any way objective. They certainly aren’t now.”

  “But it doesn’t fucking matter,” says Aisha. “That’s not the point!” She flings her arms in the air, and John imitates her.

  “I understand what you’re getting at,” he says. “But given that everyone gets different results anyway because of the search personalization, it’s practically impossible that the manipulation will be found out. Especially as no one besides me really understands how the algorithms work.”

  Aisha opens her mouth to say something, but John gets there first.

  “I could also ask the algorithms to always list a more negative report about me in the fourth or fifth position. There’s this study by Swedish academics showing that a single diverging result is enough to ensure people don’t doubt their integrity, even with those who are aware of the possibility of the rankings having been manipulated.”

  “John…”

  “I could even convince the algorithms to omit the manipulation with known Cook supporters who would be impossible to turn.”

  “John, nothing of what you’ve just said answers the question that really interests me.”

  She lets her upper body fall backward; John catches her skillfully.

  “And what question is that?”

  “Why in God’s name are you only telling me this now?” cries Aisha. “We could have saved ourselves the whole election campaign!”

  “Well, it might not be illegal, but it’s not exactly fair.”

  “Fair?” cries Aisha, and stops dancing. “Fair? Cook’s team doesn’t play fair either! They promise one thing to this voter and another thing to the other in their personalized adverts, not giving a crap that the promises contradict one another! But it’s a really laborious task to prove that, because each person only sees their own personalized results. Fair!” Aisha is completely worked up now. “This isn’t a ping-pong game with your friends, John! This is a goddamn election campaign fo
r the presidency of fucking QualityLand! Fair isn’t even a relevant category here!”

  “Well, if that’s the case, I’ve got another suggestion.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “In the past, experiments were often made on Everybody to send ‘Go Vote!’ messages to specified users on election day. Out of those who received this message, a significantly higher number went to vote than from the control group who didn’t receive the message. I could ask the algorithms to only send the prompt to people who are more likely to vote for me.”

  “The timing is perfect, John! Everyone will put the opinion shift—”

  “—down to the leak from the fundraising dinner,” completes John.

  Aisha smiles. “The damn rats will wish they’d stayed on board.”

  “But,” says John, “it won’t do the ship any harm to get shot of the damn rats.”

  Jennifer Aniston Poised for Big Comeback

  by Sandra Admin

  Amongst the ten most-watched films on Todo—“Everything for everyone!”—there are currently four old comedies starring Jennifer Aniston. How could this worldwide hype have come about? Those responsible at Todo have now explained that it was an unauthorized experiment by a programmer who wanted to find out how much power the algorithms have over viewers. That’s why he took what he considered to be the worst films in the world—old comedies starring Jennifer Aniston—and gave a recommendation algorithm the task of pushing these titles. So far, the hype doesn’t seem to have been affected by this revelation. Jennifer Aniston herself was even thawed out from her cryostasis and is currently filming a new comedy. Studio insiders report that it will be something romantic. But with plenty of laughs, too.

  Comments

  » BY DAVID FITNESS-TRAINER:

  How wonderful! I love Jennifer Aniston films! Does anyone know anything more about the plot?

  » BY JULIETTE AU-PAIR-GIRL:

  It’s about a woman who gets frozen and wakes up forty years later in the future, where she falls in love with the son of her first great love. But of course there are plenty of twists too! The working title is I Love Your Son!

  » BY MARIO SOCIAL-WORKER:

  Did you lot even read the article, you spastics? You would eat shit if someone put it in front of you.

  » BY DAVID FITNESS-TRAINER:

  @Mario Social-Worker. I’m sorry that things clearly aren’t going as well in your life as you’d like them to be, but that’s no reason to get verbally abusive, you stupid arsehole!

  » BY JULIETTE AU-PAIR-GIRL:

  @David Fitness-Trainer. Why don’t you just install a political correctness tool for all comments? This is how Mario Social-Worker’s commentary appears to me: “May I politely inquire as to whether you have understood the context of the above article in its entirety? According to my humble opinion the films aren’t very good, and I think people only watch them because they’re so frequently recommended by the algorithms. It is, of course, also a question of individual taste. I fully realize this.” I had to turn off the tool to be able to read what the sad wanker really wrote.

  » BY MELISSA SEX-WORKER:

  But the ones who are really to blame are the foreign criminals!

  A LITTLE GARDEN PARTY

  “Wasn’t your father planning to celebrate outside?” asks Denise, as she chooses her dress. Two days after their big fight, she has made up with Martyn. In the usual way. Martyn, who is still lying naked on the bed, says: “He called it ‘a little garden party.’”

  In false modesty, his father loves referring to the enormous parklands which surround his property as his little garden. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s raining today,” says Denise.

  Martyn swipes around on his QualityPad until the QualityWeather app opens. QualityWeather is one of the numerous companies that belong to his father.

  “No,” he says after a brief glance at the display. “It’s cloudy, but it won’t rain until tomorrow.”

  “But…” begins Denise.

  “You never believe me,” grumbles Martyn. He turns the QualityPad toward his wife.

  “Look. It won’t rain today.”

  “But just look out the window,” says Denise. “It’s raining right now.”

  Martyn looks out the window, then back at his QualityPad, then back out the window.

  “The rain must be some kind of mistake,” he says. “Because it’s not raining. That’s what QualityWeather says, anyway. And the QualityWeather forecasts are unbeatable, at least since the company began to adjust the weather to fit its forecasts where necessary.”

  “Seriously?” asks Denise.

  “Cloud seeding, it used to be called. Did you know that there was a state weather adjustment bureau in China even back at the turn of the century?”

  “Wasn’t China the country where everything was first invented?” asks Denise. She lowers the dress that she was about to put on. “Do we really have to go?” she asks. “Your father still scares me…”

  “Don’t start making a fuss.”

  In truth, Martyn understands. His father still scares him too.

  His father is something of a phenomenon. The fact that an unpleasant, tasteless, ugly, mean, stingy, greedy, horny, unpopular, unathletic, fat, stinking, spluttering, sweating, egocentric, humorless, uncultured, lying, disloyal, misogynistic, chauvinistic, racist, homophobic, sick old son of a bitch like Bob Chairman could be a Level 90 person was a mystery to all who weren’t familiar with his bank balance. When Martyn was little, it had occurred to one of his friends as they were watching Star Wars one afternoon that Martyn’s father bore a certain resemblance to Jabba the Hutt. After that, Martyn was never allowed to invite the friend back, although the thought itself had returned many times. Nonetheless, Martyn can’t stand it that Denise always refers to his father as Blob rather than Bob.

  When they arrive in Bob’s little garden, it’s no longer raining. The amorphous mass beneath a black hat that calls itself Martyn’s father is standing at the grill and turning over steaks. As he greets Denise, he uses the guise of father-in-law informality to grab her ass.

  “So she’s not good enough to be your son’s wife, but clearly she’ll do for a grope,” says Martyn.

  His father laughs. “You never did like letting me play with your toys, even when you were a little boy.”

  “Hello, Blob,” says Denise.

  Bob picks up a sausage from the edge of the grill, puts it in his mouth, pulls it out, pushes it in again. In, out. In, out. Then he bites off a piece.

  “You’ve been lucky with the weather,” says Martyn. “It was still raining half an hour ago.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it,” says his father. “There was an 8 percent risk that my little garden party could be a wash-out. That was too high for me. So I gave the order to make the clouds rain beforehand.”

  Bob turns to Denise. “Doll, why don’t you go over and join the other women? I have to talk politics with my son.”

  Denise is only too happy to obey this command. She finds the Blob repulsive. Bob pushes the rest of the sausage into his mouth.

  “What’s this mess you lot are causing there in the capital?” he asks his son, his mouth full. “A machine as president?”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” says Martyn, picking up a sausage from the middle of the grill and burning his fingers in the process. Nonetheless, he doesn’t want to show weakness by letting it drop again.

  His father laughs. “You never were the brightest. You know, while the power guzzler was making one gaffe after the other, I didn’t give a crap. But recently there’s been this astonishing comeback in the opinion polls.”

  “Yes, but who pays any attention to opinion polls?” says Martyn, in the knowledge that election researchers are the only sociologists in QualityLand whose prognoses turn out to be reliably incorrect.

  “If the electoral research institutes belonged to me, I would have long since started to adjust the results according to my own
prognoses,” says Bob with a laugh.

  Martyn smiles.

  Bob stops laughing abruptly. “Do you know how much I’ve donated to your party?” he asks sharply. “Almost as much as I’ve donated to Cook. And what do I get by way of thanks? Public ridicule! No, my boy. No.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The thing with the leak, that was planned! It wasn’t a leak. It was a trap.”

  Martyn tries to contradict him.

  “Be quiet,” growls his father. “So I’m supposed to play the bogeyman now, am I? The big evil capitalist. But that’s not going to happen, do you understand? There will be consequences.”

  “I really don’t think that they would have intentionally—”

  “Your little experiment has failed. It’s high time that you and your pals realize that. You ordered an administration machine and what you got was a revolution machine.”

  “I can’t say that I’m in agreement with everything John says, but—”

  “We can’t just stand by and watch,” says Bob. “We have to act. And now.”

  “So what’s your idea?” asks Martyn.

  “We have to talk to the resistance fighters. To the Machine Breakers.”

  “The nutjobs that bludgeon robots to death?” asks Martyn doubtfully.

  “They’re not all nutjobs,” says his father. “Some of them are very reasonable people. I’m about to introduce one of them to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Yes, one of the leaders is here at my little garden party.”

  “Excuse me? Aren’t they dangerous?”

  “Nonsense,” says Bob. “As long as you’re made of flesh and blood, you have nothing to fear from them.”

  “If I’m allowed to ask,” says Martyn, “you yourself employ as many robots as possible in your businesses. How is it possible that there are Machine Breakers here at your party?”

  “My dear boy, the big property owners used to have slaves working on their land. But they would never in their lives have come up with the idea of electing a slave as their president. We have to draw a line here.”