India Alessandra

Sunsets.

It’s a gorgeous orangey pink. Bloody beautiful. The mere sight of it takes my breath away. But, that’s more to do with the fact I can barely draw oxygen into my lungs due to the packed train. 

It’s 5pm on Tuesday. Everyone is itching to get home. I’m staring out the window. A sole audience member for the show that the sky is putting on. Everyone is looking down at their screens. The sky could literally be on fire and they wouldn’t even notice. Maybe if I tweeted about it they would. They’d look up, snap a pic and upload for it everyone else looking down at their screens.

I want to scream at them. 

“LOOK UP!! YOU’RE ALL MISSING IT! THE INTERNET IS FAKE! THIS IS REAL.” 

They wouldn’t even notice. Or they’d film it and I’d go viral. Not sure what’s worse.

They are wired in and tuned out. These fancy phones are sucking the lives out of them – out of us. Life has officially become a passive experience. I used to not mind – everything looks better with a filter. 

I’m hungry for something different now. Something gritty. Something chaotic. Something real. That word has lost its meaning. The idea of being authentic on online is an oxymoron. 

I spend all day, alone, sitting in an empty bookshop. 

The yuppies come in here, snap an Insta pic and then leave. 

“It’s all online now. Joe got me Kindle for Christmas and it’s been fabulous. There like a million books on it and it weighs less than an iPad – Genius.” 

I feel like stabbing them. 

Nobody buys books anymore.

The truth feels cold and hard. It leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth. 

But, I can’t ignore it.

Print is dead.

And you’ve all killed it. 

Sitting alone and watching people walk past the store, devices in hand, has made a particular idea stick in my mind. 

Maybe print is dead in the ground, but it shouldn’t have gone so quietly. It could have kicked up a fuss, made a scene. Perhaps then we wouldn’t have mindlessly let it die. A papercut bleeding out to an agonising slow death. 

Print deserved better. And that shiny, arrogant wanker, digital fucking media, shouldn’t get away with a cold-blooded execution. 

And so, it was decided – I would avenge the unjust murder.

This simple idea has begun to spiral. 

I found myself awake at all hours of the night, obsessing over what would make print top dog. The answer was staring me in the face. 

I was gonna kill the internet.

~

An angry bookseller attempts to revive the medium of print by destroying the internet.