This week I’d like to address a few recent examples that demonstrate the slow but steady downfall of Western culture and civilisation. But I’ll begin with a story about a wonderful puppy, Valerie, a pint-sized sausage dog that went missing in 2023 after escaping from her pen during a camping trip on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of Adelaide. After five stressful days searching for Valerie, her owners, Josh Fishlock and Georgia Gardner gave up. They were devastated. Recently, a local Facebook group reported that the dog had been seen living wild alone on the island for over five hundred days. Georgia and Josh are preparing for the 13-hour journey to pick her up as of this writing. It’s a heartwarming story perfect for a Disney interpretation – though I still don’t know whether the dog identifies as transgender since I have yet to interview her.

Contrast this to Lil Golo’s heroic exploits. Unless you are permanently online or have taken a wrong turn when idly surfing the internet late at night, you’ve probably never heard of this guy. Golo is a death-defying internet legend among a select few. His name is synonymous with daft pointless stunts on YouTube. The Tongan-born Australian rapper is a modern-day Johnny Knoxville, complete with wraparound shades and random tattoos. The kind of man that laughs at danger, and it would seem, the concept of personal safety. As a challenge, he decided to run through 100 strips of duct tape Sellotaped to playground equipment. After accomplishing this, he decided to go to 1,000. The first attempt caused a concussion. Never mind, nil desperandum. He’s got Aussie grit flowing through him. In what was a testament to the fact that a tremendous amount of confidence might not always be a good thing, Golo ploughed head-first into the barrier. He was hospitalised and recently appeared on a podcast wearing a neck brace. The video has been viewed 15 million times.

These two radically different examples illustrate the yin and yang of the internet. Like the force of a Jedi, the internet can be used for both good and evil. Due to the combination of kind-hearted locals and social media, a grieving couple was reunited with their beloved dog. On the other hand, you may watch a young Australian man breaking his neck. It has democratised kindness while amplifying stupidity.

Isn’t the fate of Golo’s antics just a microcosm of the internet itself? The instantaneous transfer of data is perhaps one of civilisation’s greatest accomplishments. It promised a new era of global human connection, allowing us to share knowledge, realise our full potential, challenge elite power, and broaden our domains of influence. Instead, we chose to send each other lewd or embarrassing photos while using the rest to insult strangers, send death threats to people we’d never met, or share billions of cat videos. The cynical among us will argue this is why we can’t have nice things.

A lot of this rests with our obsession with fame. According to psychologist Jean Twenge we are experiencing a ‘narcissism epidemic’ as a result of our obsession with fame and celebrity. She cites a startling statistic: 51 per cent of 18-to-25-year-olds said that becoming famous was a major life goal – almost five times more important than finding spiritual peace.

Technology changes behaviour. Not necessarily in a positive way. The emergence of the camera phone led to the creation of selfies. We used to take photographs to preserve memories of other people and idyllic settings. Now, no image is special unless it features your face. By 2019, Google revealed that users of their Android devices snapped 93 million selfies a day. We live vicariously through online interactions and for the admiration of others. In this case, followers and subscribers.

Validation from others, combined with the dopamine rush from likes and retweets has driven people to remote areas to get that one-of-a-kind selfie. Unfortunately, it is rapidly depleting the DNA from life’s gene pool. According to data, a record number of Australians are dying from selfie-related causes. The majority of them are accidental falls from cliffs.

The Japanese will not tolerate such nonsense. People making stupid dancing videos on the subway have irritated locals so much that they have begun to bar foreigners from their establishments. In Fujikawaguchiko, they have erected a barrier to block the view of Mount Fuji following endless complaints about influencers.

The internet has enabled people to become viral sensations overnight for doing something completely pointless and degrading. It gave rise to the ‘micro-celebrity’, a term coined by Theresa Senft to describe how people use various digital strategies to gain popularity. Micro-celebrities are often social media influencers who believe that having an army of followers makes them famous.

There was no better example of this than in the recent Sam Jones case. A US ‘outdoor enthusiast’, Jones accomplished the impossible by pissing off the entire country and uniting both sides of the Australian government when she filmed herself snatching a baby wombat from its mother. In a now-deleted video to her 92,000 Instagram followers, she says ‘I caught a baby wombat!’ The infant marsupial is heard making distressing sounds as its mother follows the woman up the road. A man can be heard laughing and saying, ‘Look at the mother, it’s chasing after her!’

This childish desire for attention is one part of modern culture that I despise. It is motivated by main character syndrome, a narcissistic, solipsistic conviction that in any event, you are the main character in your life’s story, and everyone else is secondary – existing only as content fodder to inflate your rampaging ego.

The cult of celebrity is dying. In its place, however, lies a new version of fame – the micro-celebrity in all its transient and interconnected superficial glory. Unplug yourself from the matrix. Go outside and touch the grass.