‘We sit here surrounded by diamonds and artistic glory while the world outside is falling apart. If your voice can move millions and you choose not to use it for those who have no voice, then you are not creating change—you are creating noise.’ – attributed to various celebrities, including: Rowan Atkinson, Barbra Streisand, Jon Bon Jovi, Pink, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Tom Jones, Celine Dion, Kevin Costner, Stevie Nicks, and others (according to social media; none confirmed)
Apparently when the world-loved comic supposedly made this speech at a Los Angles gala in December last year, he was surrounded by stars and focused on Mr Mark Zuckerberg. ‘The room fell into complete silence. Film executives and invited guests sat motionless, struck by the weight of his words.’
In reality, he didn’t say any of it, but then neither did the multitude of celebrities to who social media has attributed these words.
Apparently this post originated in Vietnam (revealed by a page transparency tab). As published, it was full of homoglyphs – symbols which are a handy tool for getting around AI detection.
The whole thing is fake which kind of makes it appropriate for the silly season that’s been in full swing for a while. We’ve navigated the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the Baftas and now, the Oscars are speeding towards us this Sunday. Once again, glamour-clad luvvies will pout and pose on the red carpet (some may even smile, but no guarantees), pat each other on the back, give speeches covering more acceptable topics, including thanking everyone from their mother, agent and partner to their kindergarten teacher and the kind server at Blockbuster who inspired them with the movies they recommended back in the day.
I think we can guarantee that, while the sentiments of the fabricated speech might be welcome, they are unlikely to feature anywhere in Hollywood this spring.
I’ve been thinking about this piece of fiction because it supposedly ended (at least, in someone’s imagination) with the words, ‘If you have more than you need, it no longer belongs only to you. Your responsibility is to lift up those who are still beneath you.’
There was no elaboration of what or who that means but it got me thinking.
Monday is bin day here in this part of Cape Town. That means that the streets are busy from early in the morning, not with refuse trucks but numerous guys with trolleys. Shopping carts from various supermarkets are employed by men (mostly, but not exclusively), who go through the rubbish looking for anything they can sell: plastic bottles, cans, cardboard etc, and any food that’s still edible. A combination of poverty and high unemployment plus a dearth of employable skills means that reclaiming items to sell can provide an income, albeit a small and precarious one.
One website I found suggests that 60,000–90,000 people are employed to check bins across South Africa, earning R2,900/month (just over £130 at the current exchange rate). Those figures are five years old.
Last week, I passed and greeted several of these workers as I walked around the residential streets in one of Cape Town’s suburbs, trying to rehabilitate my ankle. Some push plastic shopping carts, one gentleman had an old metal one that was barely functioning on three wheels and looked as though it had passed some of it’s life in a river . He was singing as he sorted. Another man manoeuvred a trolley similar to the flat bed designs available at wholesalers and garden centres; a lady struggled with a variety of bin liners which all looked heavy; another man had hoisted his clear plastic sack onto his shoulders.
I wondered how they manage, all competing in the same streets according to the day of the week, and how many operate within each suburb and province. Recycling is not mainstream here but these workers glean what they can to make way in a country where unemployment figures are eye-watering.
Someone recently asked me if I was disturbed by the inequality here. ‘Why,’ I wanted to ask, ‘aren’t you?’ With beggars at traffic lights, hawkers and chancers, and the miles of townships visible from the highways, not so far from leafy streets of huge detached houses, you can’t not notice inequality here. Whether you’re 100 meters, 100 miles or 10,000 miles away, the poverty still exists and if it doesn’t bother us, maybe we’re listening to too much ‘noise’ or watching too many award shows. Distance is immaterial.
Change is never comfortable and while no individual can solve such big issues, we can’t afford to ignore them either. Even if none of those celebrities gave the quoted fictional speech, someone somewhere put the words together. And they weren’t wrong.
[Images courtesy of Pixabay and my own]
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