We're All Doomed Ipswich (9.10.22) transcript

[alittledizzy]

Warning, if you accidentally clicked this: FULL SPOILERS for Dan's We're All Doomed tour! This is your chance to back out now.

Thank you to Jane for providing audio and to Cal and Keelin for help transcribing!



[Dan over speaker] hello and welcome to doomed radio. I’m your host DJ Dan here bringing you the soundtrack to the apocalypse here at the end of the world tour. I’m here with a very important message that photography, video, and audio recording is strictly prohibited so if you’ve got your phones out during the show someone that works at the theater will dropkick you and rob your device. We kindly ask for your cooperation. Now it’s time to drop some bangers. See you soon.

[plays dan’s diss track]
[plays tour playlist]

Dan singing:
Everything's fine, totally fine
I hop out of bed and brush my teeth
Make some toast or maybe muesli
Fine, everything's fine
[doorbell] Oh, who's that?
It's my neighbor Valerie - I love people!
Lookin' out the window while the tea is brewin'
The bees are a'buzzin and the pigeons are a'cooin
It must be a sign that nothing's out of line
Because everything is fine...
For you and you and you and you and you
And you and you and you and you-
[Dan. Daniel. Are you having another breakdown?]
Everything's fine, everything's fine!
La la la la la la la
[He's lost it.]
I love to sing-
[You're spiraling. How long has it been since you've spoke to your therapist?]
I'm fine.
[You have clinical depression.]
I'm going online! Hello, internet.
[Really?]
So much respect and intersectionality
[Bullshit]
All I see is rainbows-
[It's time to stop pretending. You're clearly in denial. The world is literally ending]
Yes, everything is swell, it's going terribly well
[There’s drought, there’s war,??? self destruct, the ocean's on fire, we are literally fuc-]
FINE, yes everything is fine
For you and you
[Dan, you have social anxiety and hate people.]
It's fine.
[Tigers are going extinct. Seagulls dying in oil on the beach.]
It's fine.
[Alexa is listening, plotting to kill you in your sleep. What are you going to do about the climate emergency?]
SHUT UP!
Everything's fine, totally fine
Everything's in perfect harmony
[*something*]
DANCE BREAK
It's fine, it's fine, it's fine fine fine
It's fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine

[Dan. Come on. The world has got problems. You have got problems. Everyone here can see that. *something* deal with issues. It might be uncomfortable, like that time you pretend to love boobs for twenty-eight years. The truth is always here in the back of your mind. Dan, you need to be honest. What do you really think?]

WE'RE ALL DOOMED.

Are you happy? We're totally screwed. We are facing the destruction of our planet. Society is being ripped apart, if we do not kill each other first we're going to get nuked or a giant meteor is going to obliterate us while we sleep. What is the point in making it through our pointless little lives if anything we do has any meaning? When there is no point, no reason, no bloody hope at all.

[Well, that was a bit dramatic.]
Seriously.
[When I said be honest, I didn’t mean go all the way in the other direction and have a total melt.]
You know what? I hate you.
[Well, I don't particularly like you either.]
I AM YOU.
[And that's why we're in therapy.]

It's okay. It's okay. Bring it back. Start small. Just be a normal guy, doing a normal show. Look - there's your audience. Why don't you say something to them? Ask how they're doing? Crack off some regional banter? Joke about the weather! No, not the weather, actually. It’s burning us all to death. Just say hello.

INTRO
HELLO, IPSWICH! Yes, I am Dan, I am doing a show. That’s why I’m here, that is what is happening. People of Ipswich, how are you tonight? [happy screams] Liars. Ooh, happy screaming. You can’t try that shit with me. I’ve got xray goggles for fear and anxiety, okay. That’s alright. I’m happy to go along with the lies. That’s why you’re all here, yeah? To leave our problems at the back of the doors and hope that at no point I leave a long enough silence for the intrusive thoughts in the back of your head to pop up and remind you of the one thing you’re trying not to think about right now.

I wouldn’t do that to you guys! Come on, really. I’ll distract your mind, it’s fine. Fill the voice with noise. Blah blah blah, blah blah. Look, we’ve got some lights. Here’s a funky sound! Ooh, it’s a picture of a dog. Wow, listen. I’m making jokes. Airplane food, am I right? Clean up in aisle two. That’s what she said. There we go, all your problems are gone, death isn’t inevitable, and we are gonna have one good night!

Okay guys - this is serious. This is an affirmation. All of you here are just gonna have one good night. [audience screams] Hell yeah. Now I’m sure what you’re wondering is - if we’re here to have a good night, why am I doing a show called We’re All Doomed? Valid. Mainly I just thought it would be really funny to scare the shit out of people walking past the theater when they see this. *something*, Mamma Mia, Mary Poppins, We’re All Doomed?! [screams]

We have a poster. It’s very tacky and pleasant. That’s just a jump scare for people at the bus stop isn’t it? Who is this very extremely tall child wearing a sandwich board looking like a creepy preacher from a town central/extra in a Kanye music video. Hi, it me. The branding is mainly black, obviously, because I’m a fucking emo. I’m one of those people that only wears black. So philosophical and fashionable, yeah. More like a performative acceptance of the darkness in me, so I can procrastinate any kind of emotional feeling that might be required *something* you know what I’m saying. But I look cool, yeah?!

But to be fair. There is a pop of color in there, the accent of orange just for contrast. As so many of you so helpfully pointed out, it’s literally the Pornhub logo. [audience cheers] *something* But it is too late, okay. We’ve printed the merch, the posters are up, get over it, okay. Get over it. To be fair I think we could have had the tour sponsored by Grindr, that’s a missed opportunity. Could have had a themed segment where I react to strangely toxic men telling me that my facial structure is too effeminate. Reporting me for not sending him feet pics. Or reporting me for catfishing as Dan Howell - which has happened, by the way. People have tried to catfish using my pictures. Don’t know what they’re thinking, should I be Timothy Chalamet, Troye Sivan… no, no. I need someone believably sad, lonely, and horny: Dan Howell. They gotta be careful. I don’t know who they’re gonna get nibbling on that line, but some of these fuckers are crazy.

We’re All Doomed is not just for the memes on the screens, though. This is a tour that I felt I had to go on to get out of the house and out of my head. It’s a show about the thoughts that are lurking and swirling in my mind. I want to be honest with you guys, do that uncomfortable oversharing thing. I am not just here to talk about having a weird crush on Tony the Tiger, okay. What, you don’t see it? He could throw you across the room with those arms. And cover you in frosting, rwar.

If I did a show about all the reasons why I’m stressed at humanity’s doom, then all of my problems become your problems. You know how they say a problem shared is a problem halved? Well there’s like a thousand people here right now. Forget halving, I am decimating this bitch. Literally and now a tiny piece of my problem is inside all you. [audience reacts] Don’t act like that.

Now, the problem when all the world is such a dystopian nightmare is where to begin. But our mission for tonight, therefore, is to look at all the ways in which humanity might be irrevocably fucked. And who knows, maybe you will find something to be hopeful for the future. And if not, at least we will have had one good night before we all go up in flames!

Now where to start… hmm. Nature is dying, robot rebellion is coming, our phones are secretly filming us shit. You seem surprised by this. They’ve got you in 4k popping a squat and they don’t give a shit about it. Why don’t we start there? Let's talk about the screens.

SCREENS
Social media is 100% the downfall of humanity, and I say that as someone whose entire life relies on three apps. Not youtube, instagram, and facebook - onlyfans, facetuner, and *something.* While I heat my toast in the morning.

Every day when I wake up, I am terrified to reach over to my phone and see what things have been happening in the world. And thus… the doom scrolling begins. You know what doom scrolling is right? You sit back just a moment to look at your phone - then it’s FOURTEEN DAYS LATER. You lost your job, you smell like shit. All of your houseplants are dead. You go to scratch your leg, it’s not there. The cat ate it to avoid starvation. Our phones are literal black holes full of the worst things we can find. Terrible natural disasters and awful news about your favorite celebrity. Or the worst thing at all - that really annoying friend asking if you want to go for a coffee some time.

Yeah, that’s the worst thing. I would rather lose a hundred hectares of rainforest than spend an hour in Cafe Nero making small talk, staring into a latte wishing it would jump out of my cup and drown me. No - come up with an excuse. I’ll just say my grandma died. It works for everything, that’s a great excuse. The only problem is you can only use it once. Or twice for the other side of the family. Or more if you have a polyamorous lesbian grandma. Anyone here plan on becoming a polyamorous lesbian grandma? [audience cheers] Alright!

But for real, *something* we can’t look away from it. As humans we are naturally drawn toward the doom and gloom. It’s an evolutionary need to perceive every possible threat. Flight or fight, yeah? Or flight or curl up in a ball and *something* to death. *something* Social media companies know this. They know we want to see things that are terrible, so they feed us with an endless stream of bite-sized tragedy that are like anxiety hit tracks.

[something happening on the screen] Doom! Doom! Doom! Aww. Doom! Doom!

See what I’m talking about? It’s that easy. But it’s not just the bad things. I think it’s also the good things that make you feel terrible when you see status updates from your popular attractive friends living their best lives, ugh. Truly nothing is as insufferable as other people’s joy. They got engaged, they got promoted, they went on holiday and touched an elephant. They ran a marathon and they raised loads of money for charity. What a twat. Has anyone here run a marathon before? [audience laughs] Fuck. I found my people, okay.

You done exercise before? [No.] What was that - oh, you’re saying ‘um’ because you’re in a wheelchair, you have an excuse. I love the extremely confident ‘um’ from you there. We’re all desperately trying to turn our lives into content. I think instagram is just a horrible place filled with fake people trying to present these perfect lives. Some of us are just more secure in the knowledge of how insecure we are, and I think we should get credit for being honest with ourselves. Yeah - *something* No. Not in this house. Guys, we need a word for this.

But *sensually?* experiencing life around us has definitely taken a backseat to capturing it on camera. Even live events like this - the key word being live. I get it. You obviously want to take some kind of memory for posterity, but we’ve all been at a gig where there’s some guy in the front row holding up a fucking second generation ipad air *something* - GREG! Drop the fucking tablets *something* so I can see Dan outline his fashion statements.

Okay. But I get it, the urge is strong. That is why I asked you kindly to try and connect with me in this room tonight. Not physically, *something* obviously. I want you to connect with each other. Find each other after the show. Talk about the good time you had slash *something.* But if you don’t publicly post spoilers about the show just for the Australians that have to wait for 2023 for this shit *something* there’s not gonna be an Australian in 2023. It’s gonna be me doing this to a koala in a fallout shelter. However, just in case someone is secretly filming this on a spycam or perhaps streaming this to a contraband twitter space from a phone in their pocket now.

I have an announcement. Hi, and welcome to the *something* I’m your host Dan Howell and I’d like to confirm for the record, I’m a Tory. I’m actually straight. I have a six pack, a sixteen inch penis, and a tattoo of *Armie Hammer?* on my left butt cheek. Oh yeah. Armie Hammier. *something* The reverse Call Me By Your Name. That’s when you take a bite out of the peach then come in it. [audience boos] I thought I was allowed to express myself! Are you trying to bully me back into the closet? I see how it is.

Look. I think the internet is fucking amazing. It is a place where people can come together and find communities, they can share information, get representation that they wouldn’t get in real life. It saves lives. It saved mine. If I didn’t escape the bubble of my homophobic childhood I might not be here today. It’s the reason why we are all together in this room right now, and I think that that is awesome.

[audience cheers]

But on the other hand we’ve got guys filming themselves throwing milk on the floor in a shop - wow. And I hear fascism’s back in style, oh well. Play some Muse(?). Did you see what happened to Gabbie Hanna the other day? Girl potentially having a breakdown on TikTok and some guy turns up at her house to secretly film her because, I don’t know, banging content? Is this where we’re heading? Is this the future? This is what I’m afraid of, right? The internet just gives us all this power to make our lives amazing but it’s also drawing us toward doom and desperation and I’m afraid that if things keep going the way they are, we’re going to crash and burn.

[visual element]

Now perhaps the biggest danger of our social media addiction… Can you guess? Is data harvesting, okay! Because every single thing you do is being monitored. The likes, the dislikes, the friends, the transactions, the incognito tab - they know all of it okay. I want to give a shoutout to the FBI agent assigned to my internet. That guy has seen some shit. He needs therapy. But our privacy is all up for grabs, and to demonstrate this I am now going to grab a member of the audience and force them to show us their camera roll. [drumroll sound effects]

Why would I do that? Hell. What! No. But for real, l that is what every app is doing to all of us right now. [audience screams] Bunch of exhibitionists. When we think about privacy, we only really care about two things - our browser history being exposed and our nudes being leaked. But the truth is unless your password is the name of your dog, you’re probably fine. Anyone here have the name of their dog as their password? What’s your dog’s name? Percy? That is a short fucking password, okay. Oh, dear.

Privacy is really an issue for all of us, thinking about it. But the truth is that our news or searches for Sonic the Hedgehog mpreg gore are not very interesting. No offense. What they wanna know is every single boring thing you do. The posts you like, the ads you click on, the images you scroll by just for a second and think ‘hmm, I would.’ Don’t shame me, okay. You want to fight, don’t you. Okay, I see how it goes. But what is the evil end goal for all this data harvesting, you’re wondering? It’s just adverts. They just want to give us more personal adverts, how nice of them. It’s like digging through someone’s trash and then turning up at their front door like, ‘Hey, want some of this?’

I swear to god I only get adverts for things I literally just bought. I’ll be, I don’t know, buying some oranges so I don’t get scurvy because I don’t ever leave the house, and instagram will be like… hath thou considered this citrus? Bit late, mate. Why don’t you give me something that I need, like toilet roll. Ideally before I run out and have to start tearing pages out of my promo copy of Tom Daly’s autobiography. Do not make me put Tom Daly in my ass! Again. Legend.

In 2020, it was leaked that Facebook had a secret operation called Operation (?). That sounds nice, doesn’t it? They want to find out if their algorithm had learned to exploit our attraction to devices by deliberately putting (?) and political views together, and it absolutely was. And you know what they did when they found out facebook was doing it? NOTHING. Because when society is being ripped apart, you scroll past loads of ads. It’s great for business! And that might be scary, right. Because if the apps can control the content we see, they can control how we feel. Facebook makes you angry. Instagram makes you sad. Duolingo makes you horny. No? You might say… hornay. You don’t like that? Can anyone say horny in another language?

[audience interaction about saying horny]

This is scary, right? Thinking that the phones have this much control over our lives? WRONG. I think it’s a great thing. I would love for my life to be controlled by a machine. Or maybe I just crave domination, I don’t know. Life is hard. I don’t want to make these decisions. What t-shirt am I going to wear today, what bus do I have to catch to be on time, which pornhub category will I dive into and then feel deep shame about for several months? I do not want to make these decisions, okay. I just want an ad to be like Dan, wear a blue t-shirt for once. Get the 12 local bus and stop being (?). Dive into DILF tag for a good time.

Now, we’re not quite there yet. But one thing's for sure - we will all be replaced by robots one day. I have a couple of friends that are already halfway there. [Phil on screen] THey can do anything we can do. They can build cars, harvest crops, keep you on the phone to the bank for half an hour before I realize I’m just realize stupid. But surely there are some things that these AI programs can’t do? Mm, you’d be shocked. They’re replacing our pets with indestructible metal dogs. Have you seen that? What the fuuuuuck! Oh, don’t worry, they’re just for delivering items across terrain. Definitely not hunting down (?) in 2032 (?) with their metal snouts. If that dog humped your leg, you’d end up with third degree burns.

But what is safe? Human consciousness, art, love. No, none of those things! Love isn’t real. Love is just a toxic manipulative relationship where you need something from someone so you give them affection and the occasional disappointing orgasm. Unless it’s the love you have for your mother. Hopefully. But what about art? The creative reflection on life that separates us from the beats and the binary code? Are there any artists here? [audience cheers] ART IS ALREADY DEAD. A computer can do anything way better than you! Some of these AI art programs are a bit shit and you’re not quite redundant yet. I’m sure you all still have PTSD from that time I asked one to show Dan Howell experiencing happiness for the first time. Yes, (?). They say that the eyes are the window to the soul and my soul is an asshole.

I got access to the big boy Dall-E and I made this AI visualize my fantasies.

[section of AI images appearing on screen]

But hey - so maybe they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our art. Perhaps this is the last bastion right here. Human communication. We want to have connections with real people. We want to share stories, move each other emotionally, make jokes about depression and penises. And surely a robot could never replace this, right?

Well. I’d like to introduce you to someone.

[deep fake of Dan appears on screen]

Hi, Dan.

[deep fake: Hi, Dan.]

I’m so turned on right now. I commissioned a deep fake of myself to prove definitively that even I could be replaced or even subversed by a machine. He’s also running my onlyfans.

[If you want feet pics, that’s extra.]

This computer generated me can do all kinds of things I can’t do. He does exercise. You could juice an orange with those biceps. He can juggle. He’s really good at (?).

[I hate my job and my audience terrifies me.]

He’s also heterosexual.

[I am attracted to the form of breasts.]

He has an easier life than me. He’s everything I’m not. Outdoorsy. Active. Brave. Look at that. So realistic. I don't know how many of you noticed, but he actually did all the programming for this tour.

[I am so excited to go back on the road. I love living on a bus sharing one toilet between nine people.]

Hell, I could even be a deep fake right now. If (?). It’s a fucking joke. (?)

He can sound like me. He can look exactly like me. But he cannot replicate my mind, because I am a complex human consciousness made of real experiences and emotions.

[But Dan, your consciousness follows a simple formula.]

Sorry, what?

[Your writing is a simple formula, too. I might even say predictable.]

Okay, rude.

[Popular topic plus personal experience divided self-depricating relatability minus obvious sexual innuendo equals Dan’s content.]

It’s not that simple. I’m speaking from the heart, here.

[Did you know I’m socially awkward? Just kidding, it’s depression. Also, do you know I’m gay? I like penis.]

Okay, anyone can do an impression.

[Dan, I can even predict where the show is going and how it will end.]

Spoilers.

[I can even make the point of the show in a much more entertaining and profound way.]

No, no you can’t.

[At the end of the day, maybe all you can do is-]

*Dan speaks over the recording and ends it*

CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Now I'm sure you're thinking this is all sounding a bit tinfoil hats. "Ooh, Dan, the apps are controlling our minds. Alexa is secretly keeping a list of everybody that doesn't say thank you so she can ?? Dan! Aren't these just conspiracies?" Hell yes! And I love a conspiracy! Do you?

Well, I lied, I used to love conspiracies because, I don't know, conspiracies used to be funny. You'd hear about some bloke named Barry down the pub who knew the earth was flat and he had a mate that sailed to the edge and spill off the edge. And look he was obviously batshit and smelled like a salami but he wasn't hurting anyone! Apart from his liver and strange family. But! [laughs] I think all good conspiracies are simply stupid, epically unintelligent pieces of fun fiction that everybody can enjoy. Do you want to hear my favorite conspiracies? Here are my top three classic favorites.

Go.

Number one: Avril Lavigne ?? Classic. The story goes in 2006 Avril Lavigne died, presumably hit by a runaway skateboard or something, and her record label, desperate to keep making money from her touring, replaced her with a clone called Melissa! Now! You may think this is stupid, but can you tell the difference? Is this Avril or Melissa?

[shows something on screen] Ooh, what d'you think? [audience response] I like how you're like "I don't - fuck it - Melissa." This one? Oh, see now ?? What about this one?

[Liz Truss shows up on screen; audience laughs]

That's not Avril Lavigne, that's a fucking idiotic shell puppet that is an embarrassment to the country! [audience cheers]

Next conspiracy: chem trails! Yes, that's right, the naturally occurring streaks of water vapor that do come out of the back of every single plane. ?? it's piss tanks so we're all ?? are actually a cocktail of secret chemicals that are released to make the population stupid. Now, the only problem with this one is implying that the people that lose our luggage are being trusted with secret chemicals. You think RyanAir could successfully execute a bio-terrorist conspiracy? They can't execute a fucking frozen tikka masala. There you go, airplane food joke.

Next! It is: every TV game show is rigged. Obviously!? They can't be giving out max prize every single time, they have to save it for one episode a season. Who Wants To Be a Millionaire going a bit too well? How many atoms are there in all of space? Hmm! Oh what, you wanna ask the audience? Good luck, we've been pumping chem trails into the studio all day! We all know they get too close to 52k, secret hatch under the podium, swap out the card, go home with 50p. Well, The Chase ?? When they're looking for contestants they find thick people.

And those are my favorite conspiracies. They're great, right? The problem is that nowadays conspiracies are no longer being discussed in secret. Now teen tinfoilers are hitting the streets and taking action. I wanna know: whyyy are they so obsessed with the 5G towers? I need 5G, okay? I like fast Internet. I am not going back to 2006 watching porn on dial-up, sat in the kitchen, as the shaft of a penis slowly loads up the monitor of my mum's work PC, okay? No. We didn't need edging back then ?? Leave the 5G alone!

And these conspiracies they're not fun, they're dangerous. 'Cause yeah, 5G causes ?? And the freaking microchips in the vaccines. The queers are secretly going to overthrow society. And they're stupid, these conspiracies, they're like Trump toddlers knocked over a bowl of alphabet soup. I genuinely think that the people of Ipswich and not that came to the show just because it's the first one could come up with a better conspiracy theory that's more believable right now... It's time to play conspiracy theory madlibs!

CONSPIRACY THEORY MAD LIBS (**audience participation*)
Popstar- Harry Styles
Politician- Boris Johnson
Verb- cumming
Body Part- nipple
Household Object- whisk
Vegetable- eggplant

“Did you know that Harry Styles and Boris Johnson are secretly married? They consummated their marriage by coming on each other’s nipples and now they have two children called whisk and eggplant”

Song- bring me to life by evanescence
Adjective- moist
Animal- rat
Group of people- furries
“How are you feeling right now?”- horny

“If you listen to Bring Me To Life backwards there is a secret hidden message that the government is putting moist rat hormones in the furries in order to make them horny”

Make a noise- *fart noise*
Influencer- Phil Lester
Store- Primark
Zoo Animal- zebra
Children’s fictional character- Harry Potter

“There is a secret society called the *fart noise* and it’s run by Phil Lester. They meet every week in the basement of Primark. They meet to sacrifice zebras in order to appease their violent god, Harry Potter.”

Well, it's that easy to come up with a compelling conspiracy these days. And because of that it just feels like a lot of people that we know are - maybe not in a funny way, maybe in a concerning way - starting to go down the big conspiracy hole. And I think it is tempting to laugh at these people for just being stupid or label them as crazy, but I don't think that's fair, right? I don't think that they are necessarily evil. When people turn to conspiracies like this I think it's probably because they're depressed. Because society is fucked. People want something to hope for. They want to believe there's something more to life than just what we see every single day, so when they find out that there is a secret and now that they know the secret they are special and their help is needed to save the world, they just go all the way down then. Even if saving the world is screaming at confused ?? slipping hormones into the ?? turning teenagers queer. Ugh!

But the truth is there is no great conspiracy. There is no illuminati. There's no lizard people or secret government. It is just capitalism, working as intended. [dramatic choir music plays]

CAPITALISM
Anyhow, concept: Perhaps literal billionaires could pay just a bit more tax and some people wouldn't have to be homeless? [audience cheers] Crazy commie thinking! If you wanna think like that you are gonna be licking raw concrete off the floor of a freezing Gulag whilst polishing a giant golden statue of Jeremy Corbyn! Okay? Oh god, no. That is what my granddad says to me every single Christmas, and this is a stupid thing, right? Not a hard thing but ?? [audience laughs] Oh dear. ??

The thing is when you look at any mainstream political party in the first world, no one is proposing a revolution. You've got all these crazy billionaire defense squads that are so scared to change anything when in reality no one is trying to turn this into Soviet Russia - just Denmark, okay? Same shit, same problems, just ever so slightly less horrifically evil, but nooo this is a crazy radical plot to give people marginally better public transport. [sound effect]

I personally, no matter what might happen to my crazy (plan or) career, will ever not feel financially stressed, because I have somehow ended up financially supporting my own family. Even if they haven’t always emotionally supported me. I once came home from school crying and told my mum that someone called me gay. She misheard me, thought I said "fat" and suggested I might cycle to youth theater on Saturdays. Yikes!

So I cannot look to anyone to bail me out if I fuck up. If I am on the stage like this where I say something horrible and I get sued - have I done that so far? [audience responds] What was it, was it the granddad thing? ?? I might be forced to move back to my homophobic hometown and that is not an option for me, okay?

Now, millennials, if you want some advice ?? That if you want to pay off your student loans, you just have to cancel your Netflix subscription, guys. If you want to pay off the average student loan of about 46,000 pounds you only need to cancel Netflix for 416 years. Which as it happens was the exact length of the latest Stranger Things season. Those episodes were thicc as fuck. ??

It is hard to visualize the scale of ?? the world when it is just these big numbers, so I have come up with an inappropriately whimsical metaphor: bubbles. But for this I’m going to need some help so welcome to the stage my unpaid intern, Bubbly Ben.

[something happening on stage]

Alright, you ready for this shit? Here we go. I will blow one bubble to represent the average UK salary. Do you know what it is? Any guesses? Depressing fact: 24,600 pounds. Here we go.

Fuck! ?? Whoops.

What about doctors, huh? How many bubbles do they deserve to get comparatively, do you know what their salary is? I like that you actually went quiet there. Well done, smartypants. It’s their job to literally keep us alive even if we swallow superglue, Phil Lester.

What was the UK’s most desired profession - you’re fucking right! Being a youtuber. Depressing. Now, your mileage might vary depending on success and shamelessly. But according to Forbes in 2020, Logan Paul made 18 million pounds. [audience reacts] Yay, Youtube! Filming dead bodies! Wow. What the fuck am I doing on an eighty day world tour talking about depression? I could just get punched by KSI and ??.

The big dog himself - Mr. Jeffery Bezos, the richest man on Earth. Now Jeff has frequently paid zero on annual federal income tax. In fact on his taxes in 2011 he claimed tax credits of $4,000 for his kids. I’m sure he needed it. But now after a few tough years for everybody, Jeff’s net worth is a cool 160b dollars. Release the bubbles!

Don’t worry, they don’t stain. Probably. We’ll find out.

The reality is that going by this shit bubble analogy, I’d have to release over 530,000 bubbles to accurately represent the amount of Smaug-like hoarding taking place here. So we are all told to be angry about that guy taking our bubble or that guy taking five while Jeff here is sat on a fucking bubble bath of warehouse workers tears, scrubbing his back with the spines of books that are suspiciously cheaper than ??

You may be thinking - Amazon’s convenient, they have everything! True. But you don’t get to number one just by being good. You need some smart business decisions like making your delivery drivers piss in bottles so they keep working longer. Did you like my bubble gun by the way? Got it off Amazon. Oh sorry I didn’t find any organic farm to shop local suppliers of bubble guns in my local area, no. And this is it guys - we live in a society! And until the government forces businesses to play nice, nothing is gonna change. So hey, if you’re an elderly political that isn’t gonna live long enough to see the suffering, starvation, and inevitable revolution, who gives a fuck, right? Keep your foot on the pedal and with a little luck you’ll leave it to your fucked up kids to inherit your empire of a desolate planet.

[sound effects]

CLIMATE CRISIS
Of all the problems in our human society - the doom scrolling, the inequality, there is something truly terrifying on the horizon: climate change.

Yes, the boss level of all pain and misery, and it is truly the ultimate existential threat and yet our problem is half the people just don’t think it’s real or simply don’t give a shit. And yeah, I get it, change is scary, okay. I totally lost my shit when they changed the font on the twitter app.

This is arguably almost as serious as that. But some of these climate deniers, they have spent their whole lives driving land rovers, eating twelve steaks a day, just throwing beer cans out the window and now some short Swedish girl pops up on the tv and calls them evil? This is a violent paradigm shift. It’s like when people tell me to stop sexualizing cereal mascots - I will not do it. No, no. The Sugar Puffs monster can demolish my bussy. I’m revealing myself.

Now, I’m pretty green, personally. Maybe because I don’t go outside. Turns out ?? use of heat occasionally. I’m basically vegan which means sometimes when I’m sad I have a milk chocolate and then cry thinking about the cows. Which makes me sad so I have another chocolate. It’s a vicious cycle. A delicious, vicious cycle. Also I might have had sushi once but it was on my birthday. I didn’t eat the sushi, I thought about it, okay!

Yet again I am literally on a global tour right now. My mission to save my soul and give you all one good night might as well be flying a burnt out car into Greta’s driveway, and yet the rub is just one hundred companies are responsible for seventy one percent of all global emissions. And that just means our individual actions pale in comparison to a handful of corporations and their shareholders. We’ve got all the guilt about this stuff while they’re just a bunch of comic book villains demolishing rain forests and setting the ocean on fire and embedding immortal microplastics in every single living being.

Some people are gonna be in for a shock when the system comes crashing down. And hey, where are we even gonna live when half the earth is a scorched desert? If only we knew who to call.

[sound effects, something on screen introducing next section]

DENIAL
My name is Dean Niall, realtor to the dying stars and today I am here to let you in on the secret up side of the current ecological collapse which is - serious savings! Are you a young person that’s afraid to get a property line because the boomers are a bunch of money grubbing bastards? Booo! Well, feast your eyes on what they left behind.

[visual heavy segment where he advertises property during the apocalypse]

So is this it? Is this our fate, hmm? I think it is kinda terrifying to feel like we have no control over our future, so maybe I can lift the mood of the room by reminding you all that at literally any moment the sun could burn and in seven minutes all life on earth would go up in a blazing ball of molting plasma, yay!

Alright! Now you feel better, don’t you? Your problems seem so insignificant because they are insignificant. It could be anything! A fuck off rock coming from outer space, alien inviasion (although lets be honest, I’d probably like a cheeky probe), the bees having colony collapse disorder. If the bees disappear we’ve got four years until all life on earth shrivels and dies. Now that’s a stinger. It could be anything. A black hole could just get shit out of space from the solar system and we would instantly turn to string! At any moment. Like now! Are you ready? Have you got your affairs in order? Have you cleaned your browsing history so your family doesn’t find your smut stash. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter! Have you prepared? Prepared to be string? Cool. In the face of such unimaginable cosmic horror, there is truly no hope at all.

You know I thought that talking about these problems would make me feel better, that’s kind of the point. But I’ve got to be honest, we are boned. I thought that doing this tour would uh, be a kind of ??, give me something to look forward to.?? But there is nothing to look forward to but the inevitable end. What’s the point of even trying? You know what, I should just have just eaten the goddamn sushi. I should just post feet pics and get more followers. I should have sold all of your data to china, cryptocurrency. I should have bought the deep fake for meet and greet. I could have posted every conspiracy I have on facebook. I should have done this tour on a private jet, crashed Harry Styles house, put the whole thing on a fucking ?? ipad. [words get increasibly buried under a heavy bass]

BREAK FOR INTERMISSION