Or How We Traded Our Souls for Same-Day Delivery

By Penelope the Owl

Well, bless our collective hearts, we’ve gone and traded quality for convenience, craft for clicks, and what’s left of our dignity for duct tape and wishful thinking. You can’t swing a busted umbrella these days—and Lord knows they’re all busted—without smacking into something that used to work but now falls apart faster than a Texas Republican’s principles during an ethics investigation.

Take news, for example. Or what passes for it these days. Time was, you could wrap fish in a newspaper and feel confident that fish was getting a better education than most high school seniors. Now that poor catfish would die of misinformation poisoning before the ink had a chance to run, assuming there’s any real ink left and not just digital pixels masquerading as journalism.

I flew into a pisspot little town last week—Glaze, population: mostly regrets and a few feral cats—and what did I find? A so-called “local paper” run out of some server farm in New Jersey, cranking out AI-generated press releases with all the authenticity of a three-dollar bill and twice the sincerity of a televangelist asking for your rent money.

The lead headline proclaimed: “10 Reasons You’ll Love This Mayor!” Number four celebrated the revolutionary fact that he wore pants to city council meetings. Now call me old-fashioned, but when a man’s ability to keep his britches on becomes front-page news, we’ve clearly slid off the rails and landed face-first in a cow patty.

My traveling companions—Bob the Dog and Maurice the Goat—shared my horror. Bob took one sniff at the base of a lamppost and declared it reeked of clickbait and cheap cologne. Maurice attempted to read an editorial about municipal water rights and gave himself such a migraine he started speaking in tongues. He said it reminded him of that unfortunate incident when a robot horse kicked him square in the skull—which, come to think of it, explains a lot about Maurice.

Even the damn furniture conspires against us now. I parked my posterior on a diner stool that collapsed faster than journalistic integrity in the age of algorithmic newsfeeds. The waitress didn’t bat an eyelash. “They make ’em to do that now,” she drawled, wiping down the counter with what looked like yesterday’s dishrag. “Just like congressmen during ethics hearings—built to fold under the slightest pressure.”

Now folks, this ain’t some misty-eyed nostalgia trip where I pine for the good old days when men were men, women wore petticoats, and newspapers actually employed people who could spell. Hell no. I’m not suggesting we churn our own butter and print papers with goose quills by candlelight. But I do think something’s fundamentally busted when nothing lasts longer than a campaign promise, nobody listens past the first soundbite, and our stories arrive pre-packaged in recycled nonsense with all the nutritional value of cotton candy and twice the artificial coloring.

What we need—and I mean desperately need—is journalism with some goddamn teeth. Reporting that’s got more guts than a Baptist church potluck. Headlines that don’t treat readers like concussed goldfish with attention deficit disorder and the memory span of a mayfly on sedatives. We need reporters who ask harder questions than “How does that make you feel?” and editors who understand the difference between news and whatever algorithmic fever dream Facebook’s serving up this week.

Because at this rate, the only things thriving in this great nation will be landfills overflowing with broken promises, plastic forks that snap if you look at them sideways, and politicians who’ve perfected the art of saying absolutely nothing while moving their lips for twenty minutes straight.

Until sanity returns—and don’t hold your breath waiting, sugar—I’ll be hooting from the treetops like some deranged town crier, writing with my own damn feathers, and calling bull on every piece of manufactured nonsense that crosses my desk. Because somebody’s got to, and it might as well be the owl with an attitude problem and a functioning bullshit detector.

Stay wise, stay skeptical, and for the love of all that’s holy, read the fine print. It’s usually where they hide the truth.

Penelope
Senior Correspondent, Scribe Safari
Still reading between the lies and calling out the bullshit