📡 An Important Development in the Twobyfour Technological Front

- or: “I pressed something and now the screen is Portuguese.”
by Virgil Twobyfour

It has come to my attention, thanks to a number of increasingly frazzled tutorials delivered by Young Keith in the manner of a man trying to teach a goat to play Sudoku, that I am now the proud custodian of something called an Online Blog.

Now, I don’t know what that is, but it appears to involve me typing my thoughts into a little glowing box and sending them hurtling into the void, where people I’ve never met can read them, judge them, and occasionally leave comments like “🥴” and “bro what.” Keith assures me this is a good thing and refers to it as "building my digital presence."

For those who don’t know, Keith is my great-nephew, or possibly a time-travelling mechanic depending on who you ask. He has always been a dab hand with machines, having once built a functioning microwave out of an old trouser press and a badger-scarer. He now spends most of his time attempting to drag me into the 21st century by my ankles, bless him.

“You need to be more hands-on with your content, Unc,” he told me, while juggling three mobile devices and a slice of cold pizza. “People want authenticity. They want connection. They want reels, engagement, cross-platform analytics.”

I nodded solemnly and replied, “I want a biscuit,” which I thought was an entirely fair counterpoint.

Anyway, after several hours of me peering at buttons with the same expression I usually reserve for gas leaks or spiders wearing trousers, Keith declared that I was ready to “start contributing more directly.”

Reader, I am not.

So far, every attempt I’ve made to “log in” has resulted in something terrible happening. Either the laptop makes a noise like a dying kazoo and goes black, or I end up somewhere called “Settings” where the very fabric of reality appears adjustable if you click the wrong thing. Once I changed the font and accidentally ordered sixteen metres of linoleum.

What I have managed to do is accidentally open the “Feed,” which, to my horror, is not a quaint agricultural digest as I'd hoped, but rather a firehose of photographs of strangers’ lunches, their shirtless torsos, and a disturbing number of people standing in front of things they used to enjoy before they were ruined. I saw one woman standing in front of a hedge shouting “Not the same!!!” at it. Poor hedge.

Also: so many cats.
Cats in sinks, cats in hats, cats that look disappointed in you personally. One cat appeared to be attempting to summon a minor deity with its eyes. I respect that.

I told Keith I thought it all seemed a bit mad, and he said, “That's the algorithm.” I said, “It needs a lie-down.”

In any case, this is all to say: if you happen to encounter my Online Blog out there in the digital wilds, please treat it kindly. I will be attempting to upload my thoughts with the delicacy and precision of a man trying to frost a cake using only his elbows. It may not be swift. It may not be entirely comprehensible. It may contain odd line breaks, unplanned zoom-ins, or sudden references to 14th-century bog remedies. But it will be mine.

Or possibly Keith’s. I’m still not clear on the log-in.

Yours,
Trying to reboot something by blowing on it,
Virgil

P.S. If you see a photo of a cheese sandwich captioned “feeling cute might compost later” – that was me. I was trying to add a footnote