The Never-Ending Puppet Story

[Exi5tentialist]

It thought I’d tell you about this puppet show I came across. It’s got dozens of puppets in it. There are a maybe two or three puppeteers, but in a way even they are puppets, being appointed by the big guy – the one who made the rules and runs the show and pronounces on what the puppets should do. He chooses only those puppeteers who he knows will do his bidding.

By and large, the puppets do what the puppeteers want, but every now and again one of them becomes tired of being controlled, and starts expressing independent thoughts and ideas of their own.

There are several techniques for dealing with this. One is for the puppeteers to start making the other puppets turn on the disruptive one. This is fairly easy: the puppeteer just needs to tweak his controls this way or that once or twice and the puppets under his control magically start behaving the way he wants – by rounding on the out-of-control puppet, usually in the big guy’s slightly disguised voice. If the gang shows any sign of weakness the puppeteer just drops into the show personally, just to remind everyone how what should be said and who needs to be controlled a bit more. It usually does the trick.

The big guy manages to stay in the background most of the time. There was one time when one of the more wayward puppets read the rules the big guy had written and started trying to use them to let the puppets as a group get more control. But that led to a bout of frenzied puppeteering, and the big guy and his puppeteers managed to turn the out-of-control puppet into a pariah. Just to be on the safe side, the big guy re-wrote the rules, to make it clear to everyone that he was absolutely, totally and utterly in control of the whole show.

And so it goes on. Nowadays it’s pretty much the same as it always was, but with no possibility of liberation. By and large the show is vile and mainly consists of nasty jokes celebrating rape culture, apologetics for various kinds of sexual abuse, a bit of fun to enjoy the western dominance over islam, and lots of pretty pointless remarks about not very much at all. Every now and then the puppets reassure themselves how right-on they are by making rude remarks about Donald Trump or the British Conservative Party, but by and large they are mostly pretty compliant with the asshole culture the big guy always wanted. Obviously the puppets mainly don’t believe or know that they are just pawns in the big guy’s game – they genuinely feel they have autonomy.

Maybe they do. But how autonomous can they be, really, when they’ve been chosen for their innate obedience? For their lack of resistance to having their strings pulled? Perhaps they quite like it, really, being the last puppets standing, when all the independent ones have walked away.

[rachelbean]

Happy Easter

[pErvinalia]

Perhaps the out of control puppet really is just a fuckwit.

[Rum]

paranoidpuppet.jpg (37.53 KiB) Viewed 2660 times

[Brian Peacock]

[laklak]

Goodness gracious, did somebody get up on the wrong side of the bed?

It's Easter, dude, kick back and have a brew and a bowl. You'll feel much better, I promise. Better living through chemistry and all that.

[piscator]

You goddamn hippies with no grooming standards are ruinin' this country.

[JimC]

Exi, I still have no idea why the fuck you want to post on a forum you clearly hate, and whose members by and large return the sentiment. Perhaps you have a forlorn hope of reforming us?

[Exi5tentialist]

I do it to enjoy your lovely personality, Jim. I've had a crush on you since I first came across one of your masterful posts.

No other reason.

[Brian Peacock]

[

[pErvinalia]

Exi, I still have no idea why the fuck you want to post on a forum you clearly hate, and whose members by and large return the sentiment.

We actually love him, Jim. But your puppet strings are too strong for us to fight against!

[JimC]

For exi, it's more a case of puppetry of the penis...

[Brian Peacock]

[devogue]

[laklak]

oooooo noooo! I don't want to wrestle they python again!