A Chance to Be Offended

There are times when it seems that there is nothing to be said. Although, there are many who will not let that stop them. In fact, saying something about nothing in particular, and at great length, especially if one is being paid by the word in the MSM, seems a skill worth honing, if only to annoy other people.

For, it is a fact universally acknowledged that people take great delight in taking offence at what other people write, think, say or merely muse upon. Therefore, if you can come up with something, especially something new, that people have not had a chance to be offended by yet, then you are doing a great service to the nation, even – in these days of the Wibbly-Wobbly Web – the whole world, or at least that part of it not totally entranced by pictures of cute kittens.

Annoying people, merely by writing a few chosen words is a talent little appreciated, or not as appreciated as it ought to be. For we all enjoy – often far more than we’d like to admit, even to ourselves – the deep profound joy of being shocked, outraged and offended. In fact, there are some people that are quite possibly addicted to the pleasures of outrage and displeasure that they seem capable of being outraged by almost anything, no matter how slight or insignificant, each minor slight a mainline hit to the outrage centre.

However, outrage seems to work in a way opposite to that of most other drugs because as time goes on the addict seems to be outraged by less and less, a bigger hit from a smaller dose, so that those in the terminal stages of perpetual outrage can get their high from even the most desultory flippancy and trivial aside.

Such is the potency of the illness that in its terminal stages outrage can be produced merely by ‘looking at me a bit funny’, and other similar trivialities. This suggests an area of untapped possibilities. Forget solar power, wind, power, wave power, just think how many light bulbs ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ could keep going just by being upset by someone swearing on TV, or the number of towns that could be powered by the latest in political mendacity or celebrity malfeasance. The terminally-outraged could become the new power terminals, and – for once – religions could actually live up to their claim of bringing light to the world, merely through wiring up their terminally-aggrieved zealots and fundamentalists to the national grid whenever they start to get miffed about some imagined slight to their imaginary friends.