Friday, January 20, 2006

How technology has revolutionized drunken debating

There was a time as recent as a couple of years ago that chronically inebriated people didn't have a lot of say in geopolitical matters. What used to happen was when chronically inebriated people, who, for the sake of convenience, I'll call "drunks", used to meet together to discuss current affairs, pretty soon alcohol containers would make their appearance, would be cracked open and the discussion would be carried out accompanied by heavy drinking. The problem was that even if the political wisdom of the debaters exceeded that of the common man, once the increased blood alcohol level of the drunk began to derail his train of thought, he would be reduced to a babbling coot.

So old-time drinkbates would look something like this :

"The country did tremendously well during the BJP reign. I would give you concrete examples if I weren't so shitfaced."
"But what about everyone who is not a software engineer? Are they doing as well too? No. And the reason I know that is because ..... I can't remember, but I'm sure I had a darn good reason."
"It takes time for the money to trickle down. Trickling down is slow. Imagine a traffic jam. I forgot what I was gonna say."
"We need more investment in the rural sector. The Congress would do it. We need more investment in the rural sector. The Congress would do it."
"The Congress is just Sonia Gandhi's bitch. You know what?"
"Who?"
"What?"
"What were you saying?"
"Forget it."
"I need to pee."

But that was before blogging arose as the medium of choice for every average Joe to put his political opinions into writing. So now, during the short periods of sobriety that dot every political drunk's day, he is free to ruminate on the affairs of the day and write his thesis on them while he is still clear headed. And afterwards, when the coterie of drunks meets again for their debate, it goes like this :

"The country did tremendously well during the BJP reign. I wrote a post on my blog on this topic yesterday which illustrates that point extremely well. You should read it."
"But what about everyone who is not a software engineer? Are they doing as well too? No. Refer to my post from a couple of days ago where I make that point abundantly clear."
"It takes time for the economy to trickle down. Trickling is slow. For an apt analogy, visit my blog and read today's post."

And so on and so forth. And instead of getting bogged down in a morass of undelivered viewpoints and unemptied bladders, the debate continues on to its logical conclusion. In fact, this technique works so well that I used it in practice while I was in India and can attest to it's effectiveness. The only problem is, since there is no computer nearby to verify whether the debater actually has written a post of which he speaks so proudly, it is possible for fake debaters to enter the argument and do pretty well too. But I guess every technological innovation has it's loopholes.

2 comments:

Abi said...

Ha! Here I was, waiting for you to just rip into all the bloggers by saying their writing is so much like a drunken brawl. What we get, instead, is some meta-post about a drunken and self-referential meta-brawl.

Pssst. Too bad you chickened out.

BTW, you should see the post I wrote about the BJP regime yesterday. Rajnath Singh sucks! Big Time!

gawker said...

Hey abi
Yeah I think I sold out. But I will try and think up some blogger-disparaging stuff for you and make a post out of it since you insist.

Also I didn't find the post you mentioned. Did you delete it or something?