News Overkill | Berlin: Man entered office!

To make a stand against artificial intelligence, this text is being written under stark real-life conditions, of which AI, in its arrogant way, has absolutely no idea: While it lets its electrons zip unhindered through smoothly gliding conductive materials, while it is tirelessly fed with electricity, information, updates, and meta-updates – the undersigned sits in an open-plan office full of haphazardly stacked tables and empty boxes, hungry, tired, surrounded by colleagues loudly discussing cache folders. Devilish, harsh conditions!

But also toughening, steeling, efficiency-generating conditions that are capable of squeezing the utmost out of the signing, biologically generated intelligence; resistances and hardships from the loud, cramped, smelly, sun-shimmering 3D world that AI will never be able to comprehend. Or at least not before next week.

The text that has to be written in this murderous mill has no foreseeable course yet; all the more reason why it will begin with a startling, catchy line, the likes of which AI, in its dead, calculating, and calculated way, could not devise, something like: "All my life I've been running away from news." And off we go.

Trigger warning: If you continue reading here, you may encounter violent scenes, such as "a half-filled plastic cup flying against a monitor" and a chair being knocked over.

All my life, dear readers, dear listeners, I've been running away from the news. The very nature of the news is at odds with my own being. Because news is only news when it announces a rupture, a breakdown, a transformation, a collapse, or a breakdown. An abrupt, potentially catastrophic change in the world.

I'm not really interested in that sort of thing. I'm more interested in anti-news, things that actually work. Things that grow slowly. Things that gradually improve without every intermediate step having to be trumpeted. The good and healthy things in the world are never news. Because all good things happen slowly. That's why news has bad karma, like Snickers or porn.

This is how the bio-algorithm that generated this text works. This, dear readers, is how you should imagine the writer of these lines (and if you can, confirm that you are not a bot). In this tranquil being, beneath its headphones, in its cloud of Senegalese pop music, a need occasionally arises, when the noisy outside world forces it into heightened introspection, to communicate with its distant loved ones, to enter into an exchange with its bitterly missed kindred spirits.

So Typi opens his GMX app. GMX is supposed to be a typical email provider: you receive emails and send them. But fulfilling this basic function isn't enough for GMX. For whatever reason, it has decided to capture and hold the attention of its email users, and since GMX has to operate without porn and Snickers, news from my hometown of Berlin keeps popping up whenever I actually want to read emails from my girlfriend, or from all the literary juries who keep trying to shower me with their prizes. So, searching for a moment of meaning and reflection, I open my little secret email inbox. Let's see who's written me these sweet messages.

"Berlin: TV tower illuminated!" "Lichtenberg: Tram rammed by bicycle – property damage!" "Berlin: Arson attack on construction site thwarted!" "Berlin: People with machetes..." If you couldn't resist and clicked on something, you'll find the full text: "Berlin. A man went on a rampage in a Green Party office in Berlin-Kreuzberg." Good heavens, that's awful! "He entered the office on Tuesday evening," GMX continues, "and wanted to discuss climate change with six people present, according to the police." Trigger warning: If you continue reading here, you may encounter violent scenes, such as "a half-full plastic cup flying against a monitor," a chair being overturned, and even "several advertising displays being damaged."

The poor relatives! I had no idea. Berlin is merciless. Harsh. Cruel. It's the city that never rests, full of pomp, excess, and collisions. This city, it's one long news story.