Een Noorse boekwinkel heeft een encyclopedie gemaakt die honderden artikelen bevat, woorden, dingen, plaatsen, mensen en emoties, die de eigenschap delen dat ze onGooglebaar zijn en in tegenspraak met conventionele waarheden.
Ik ben nieuwsgierig naar ‘the trait of being unGoogleable’.
Natuurlijk blijven dingen niet eeuwig unGoogleable, zoals blanco gebieden op een kaart niet eeuwig onbezocht blijven. Google doet me denken aan koning Middas, alles wat je in haar oren fluistert verandert op een dag in iets Googlebaars.
Hier het lemma van George Saunders.
Ventriloquist, a person inordinately fond of a puppet. This relation is often dysfunctional and may become abusive. This psychological condition may become so pronounced that the ‘ventriloquist’ will claim to be speaking for the puppet. The puppet will have no means of refuting this charge. – I’m not a puppet, I am an independent being! the puppet will say, and the ‘ventriloquist’ will, at that precise moment, move his mouth, just a little, so that it looks like he is trying and failing not to move his mouth at all, i.e., so that it appears that it is him, the ‘ventriloquist’ speaking, and not the puppet. No matter how much the puppet protests, the wily ‘ventriloquist’ will continue to claim credit. – He’s a liar! the puppet may cry. – It is me speaking, not him, and I do not need him to pull those strings in order to move my arms and legs, as I am right now, this moment, doing! And the crowd will roar with laughter. Only late at night, when the puppet (commonly and pejoratively referred to as ‘the dummy,’ by the ‘ventriloquist,’ as part of his ongoing attempt to maintain hegemony over the puppet via ritual humiliation) has been imprisoned inside his (or her) coffin-like holding apparatus, will the puppet be allowed to speak without the ‘ventriloquist’ claiming credit for it, because the ‘ventriloquist’ is up in the hotel bar, drinking away his shame at the outrage he is nightly committing. – I am me, the puppet may softly say. – I am me, no matter what. But there is no one to hear, except an elderly janitor – only too bad, the janitor is old and nearly deaf, and the puppet is speaking so very softly. – George Saunders
De encyclopedie negeert consensus in favour of subjective examination, ‘lighting words, people, places and concepts from new angles, just to see if they couldn’t mean something more or other than what they’d usually signified; to be messy, contradictory, wildly unpredictable’. – Cappelens Forslag, Bernt Ankersgt. 4, 0183 Oslo, Norway