What is content?

   The world today is all about making things, producing whatever it is you want in the hopes that someone, somewhere, would want to own in some way, whatever it is you have made. Content creation is the biggest thing nowadays and the fun part of it all is that the ones who create that content are not even good at creating anything. They just grab the best parts of what interests people the most and they mash that up together in order to create something that will attract people to it.

 Usually, content means videos, texts and pictures, all trying to call your attention into something you are probably interesting in. There so many things around right now, that we can say for sure that there is something for everyone. Is not like in the past when people had to go places to look for what they liked and maybe what they liked was not widely available or was even forbidden. Nowadays, every single kind of content is available in your home, without even moving from your bed.

 And people complain about that. Actually, they have two ways of complaining: they want more information, even easier to attain at every single moment in their lives and every single place in the planet. But others want the opposite. As always in human history, there’s always a group, a very vocal one, that advocates for a return to the old days when everything was done by hand and when people didn’t have the same freedoms they have today. They phrase it differently but you know what I mean.

 I won’t say that these kind of people want less freedoms and less information, because many of them just want to be freed from things like social media and the pressures of modern life, but I bet there are some of them who don’t really like the fact that information gives freedom, it gives us power to know that there’s something better out there. Information is knowledge and knowledge is a big power that can never be underestimated. Just ask the ones that have used it to their advantage.

 Of course, not every single piece of information is valuable; just as not every single piece of content is good or even worth a look. We are being dumped tons and tons of shit every single day into our mind, by people and even by computer generated automatic services that read into what we like and enjoy, deciding then to sell us whatever it is they are pushing somewhere in the world or maybe closer to home. Maybe they want us to buy tickets for a sport event, or music from various artists. Maybe they even want us to buy time with some other person or a game that can shield us from the pressures mentioned before.

 This world is surprising in that it has some things that are surprising, amazing if you will, but there are others that have always remained the same. For one, our naiveté is still a big problem when someone else wants us to believe in whatever it is they are talking about or whatever they are trying us to do.  We are still very much a silly little creature that had the luck to evolve into something a little bit more versatile and interesting. And yet, we still like to believe what we know are lies.

 Maybe its because people have gotten used to having everything at hand, just in front of them, so they have left their defense mechanisms in a dark corner inside their minds, where it cannot help them when someone wants to take advantage of them. Humans have decided, actively, to let their guard down and just enjoy all the good things of being the most evolved creature on the planet’s surface. Sadly enough, there are bad things too and there are many bad humans around to make our lives not like a dream.

 But we were talking about content. And how does this all relate to that? Very simple: the content machine that has been created, where people ask for “community managers” in their companies, is all about trying to make us thing one thing that may not be true. Actually, it’s mostly never true. We are now offered various options and we have to decide which one is the real one, which will make us happy for sure. And when we decide, we mostly choose the most visual striking option.

 That’s because we are humans, we are attracted to everything that goes inside our heads through our eyes. It has always been like that, ever since publicity was created and all the attempts to sell whatever it is they were selling. Because you can better believe that every single piece of content today wants to sell you something. Only a small fraction has been created for your pure enjoyment and even that can be put into question. It’s all about buying, about exchanges between people that can go right or wrong.

 But the truth is that we don’t really mind at all. We don’t care what it is they want to do with us. We just conclude that it is all a tale trying to make us feel scared about big companies and the government and how the mighty God of capitalism works. Our reaction is one of contempt for the ones that try to warn us about the bad things behind this society that has become a huge marketplace where everything is exchanged, no matter what. There is always a buyer and there is always someone selling exactly what we are looking for, what we want the most.

 We don’t know how else to live anymore. If everything disappeared tomorrow, many people would collapse on the spot, not knowing what to expect from the world. And that’s very important, because people feel safe in this huge marketplace, they know how everything works and they like that. The unknown has only ever attracted a very small amount of people, the real adventure of not knowing what lies beyond. Most of us like a good routine and we stick to it even if we complain daily about it.

Well, that’s what content is all about. It’s brings a cozy feeling to people that sometimes think the world might be going down any day now. That’s why even the news coverage in general has changed, in order to adapt reality, those things that we always thought that they couldn’t be manipulated. History changes or at least the way we look at it. Our perspective is no longer ours, but someone else’s, someone behind a computer who wrote exactly what we are going to think about a certain subject.

 And I have bad news: they have succeeded. Because people are not critical anymore, they just listen and listen, read and read, they think they are building their own opinion but they are not. They are just choosing what they like from what they’ve heard and seen, not really digging deep into anything. That’s too much work.

 That’s how we live nowadays. So if we can still fight, making the kind of content that is free from everything and every form, maybe that way we can still have a little window of hope. Maybe that way we can actually give people hope for the future and even for a present that looks like one thing but that is most likely something else.

The bracelet

   It was a fisherman in the Svalbard archipelago that found it, after at least fifty years of being lost. He was coming back from one of his journeys into the ocean and crossed by one of the many rocks that formed the archipelago. This was close to the main island. As he sailed back to his home, he saw one of this rocks filled with seagulls that had made their nests on the highest parts of the rocks. The fisherman never really looked at the rocks, he was very used to them, but this time something caught his attention. It was something that sparkled with the last rays of the sun. It was almost night but you could easily see how bright the thing sparkled.

 He sailed right for it, curious to see what was it. Seagulls, and birds in general, were known to love shiny things and he thought that maybe it was a piece of glass or something equally ordinary but as he closed in he looked up and used a pair of binoculars that his son had gave him as a present to spot birds flying over large banks of fish. He pointed them at the nest and almost fell to the water when realizing that what sparkled wasn’t a piece of glass or tin can. It was a bracelet. It consisted of a thin central ring, made probably of silver, and many charms went through the ring. Some were made of gold; some others had jewels of many colors.

 Desperate to see it closer, the fisherman tried to reach the nest but it was too high. He couldn’t just take it with his hand and the rock was slippery do to the water and the waste made by the birds. He realized he needed to climb the wall or get the nest down somehow. He then tried to climb the wall, but slipped easily, almost falling in the wrong way. He did fell to the water and had to return to the boat all wet. He then realized a storm was forming so he had do make fast decisions. He decided to leave and return early the next day, weather permitting, as the birds wouldn’t let the piece be lost. Many of them were already at the rock and circling the boat, as keeping an eye on him. So he turned on the engine and decided to come back another time, thinking the treasure would be there the next day.

 Little did he know that the bracelet was not only a small piece of wealth, it was actually a piece of history that time itself had forgotten long ago. The piece, or at least the central ring and one of the charms, had being created by a tribe now nonexistent of South America.  They had made it especially for their lord, a local chieftain that many in the world would know through the legend of Eldorado. Yes, that man was the original owner of the piece, which was specially created for him thinking that he needed the bracelet to be kind of his gift to the gods one he had entered communion with them. The shape of the bracelet, which locked with the small head of a snake, was made to be an offer to the gods and sign of power.

 But that small piece of jewelry only survived some years before being taken away in one of the many trips done by the Spaniards, which had arrived recently to the region. They took many of their riches and simply put them in crates and other types of containers and took them to the coast. There, some guy just checked every object and determined if it was worth something and if they should give it to the royal family or if they should keep it for themselves.

 A man called Carlos Díaz saw the bracelet, which had already been put on the boat sailing to Spain. He had been just a petty thief in the past but now he worked with the army and for the queen. But once he saw the small piece of jewelry, he decided he had to have it. He took it without telling anyone and put it on his wrist to make sure he didn’t loose it. Carlos was so enthralled with it; he decided to add something so he put a hollow piece of gold in it. But that wasn’t good enough as, days after departing the coast, a fleet of English pirates assaulted the ship and stole the cargo before blowing the boat to the sky with their canons. The pirate that killed Carlos saw the bracelet in his wrist and decided to steal it.

 When trading it back in Britain, he found a buyer. It was a merchant, a man that loved trinkets and silly things to make himself a nice collection. The man was an Italian called Domenico Girondelli and he was about to take a couple of his cousins to a trip to the far east, to get spices and other things there. Domenico also added a charm to the bracelet: a small coin with a hole through it. They had to go through all of Europe and then cross the Bosphorus disguised as Turks. But the Turks saw through their ruse and attempted to kill them. Just one of the men survived, and this was because he was a better runner and because he was saved by a group of women. He disguised himself as one and grabbed the bracelet from Domenico’s belongings.

 Seeing he had nothing back in Italy or in the Ottoman Empire, he decided to leave the place and keep the charade of being a woman until he got to China. In the route, many men fell in love with him. To be fair, he had girly features and didn’t even grow a beard or a mustache. He was a skinny man and could pass for a woman very easily. Hard to reach and very shy, men loved that about him and also that only piece of jewelry that made her so special. Men in Samarkand and all over the desert gave him charms for his bracelets, adorned with many beautiful jewels and stones.

 When he finally arrived into China, he realized he wasn’t a man anymore. He felt so sorry for himself, realizing he felt like a woman know, that he drowned himself on a lake by the imperial palace of Beijing. The police of the realm picked up his body after several days and took the bracelet to the Emperor who gave it to his wife. She was so caught up by it that she added two more charms: a jade ring and a small gold chain that rattled when she walked with the bracelet on. The piece found a home in the palace for many years, being passed on by the Empress to other women through generations until the Japanese invaded China. By then, the imperials had already disappeared but the bracelet was still kept in one of the many palaces, part of a collection worth millions. The Japanese didn’t take many things but one man that accompanied them in their task had an eye for all things of some worth.

 His name was Carl Unger. He had been send to Japan by the new government in Germany and had wanted to be in China as they invaded the place. After all, his country knew how important Japan was for a future strategy in the region and he had accepted the post of consultant with the Japanese government. He would travel with the army, wherever they would go, and see what use he could make of cities, people and the objects he saw on his way. It was him who found the small chest where the bracelet was being kept and took it as a prize. No one said anything but everyone saw him taking the bounty to his chambers, a whole room he had taken for himself in one of the palaces.

 There, Carl would look at the piece for hours. He found it fascinating because he realized it wasn’t a local piece. The snake and the charms… Everything was so different and unique. But precisely that was the beautiful thing about the piece, that it was a sum of many parts and that it seemed to reflect a beauty he would never see again. Some days later, he was summoned back to Tokyo, so he took everything with him. There, he lived alone and spent his days between work and his treasure. He was becoming obsessed, almost to a clearly sick level with the pieces.

 That lasted for years until the people at the embassy revealed to him that war had started. Central command in Berlin was giving him the option of staying in Japan or going back to Germany to help with the war effort. He decided to go back, in order to visit his mother and to give her the bracelet. He realized it was the best thing to do. So he packed what he had and headed for Berlin. The city was glorious, as he had never seen it before, and the army was making progress all over. He visited his mother and gave the bracelet.

 He would never see the piece again. Carl died after being sent to fight in northern France. His mother, a good soul, had given the bracelet to his housekeeper in order for her to sell it and escape the country. The woman was a Jew and, as she escaped, she added a new charm: a ring. But she wasn’t successful in her attempt to leave Germany and was captured by Nazis. The woman was sent to a concentration camp where the bracelet was lost in the sewers for many years.

 It was found by an American soldier who took it as a token to give to his girlfriend, who was waiting for him to go back home. He travelled to France with the army and there he boarded a boat to the United States. He added a small rock he had found in the camp, piercing through it with a torch a fellow soldier had lent him. But the war was not over and a German submarine fired on the boat, killing everyone on board. The bodies floated on the water as well as their belonging and it was a seagull who found the bracelet floating softly just below the water. The bird grabbed it and fled the site with it. And that’s how the bracelet got to Svalbard.

 The storm poured many gallons of rain on the rock but the nest stood still and the next morning the fisherman came for the bracelet. He had a large rod that he used to grab the nest and the bracelet for his wife, who had always wanted a nice piece of jewelry. She added her wedding ring as a charm and held it close until her death. But as we all know, that wouldn’t be the end of story.

The secret of the jungle

   The city was deserted. Everyone cleaned the sweat of their heads as they began walking through the empty stone yards that were covered in moss and roots. Most houses were made of solid rock but had crumbled centuries ago due to earthquakes and the growth of plant life. It was a beautiful but eerie sight, to see so many buildings all empty, no sign of life. They were covered in beautifully done “bas reliefs” depicting various images from the people that had apparently built the city.

 Every member of the expedition was now working, no longer trekking through the jungle to get nowhere. They had arrived and this was their price. The camp was built very fast, consisting of sleeping bags for everyone and mosquito nets to prevent people from getting sick during their sleep. They also one tent for meetings only where they held several weird apparatus and various maps of the region.

  When they began really exploring the city, they discovered it was much bigger than anything they had imagined and that they need to have more people in to help them with the cause. They asked one of the younger members of the party to go back to the town on the coast they departed from in order to call for more people to help them. The kid complied and left fast, on one of three donkeys they had brought with them.

 An entire day passed before they realized most of the art in the city depicted a fantastic creature: they were birds, in a flock. But, according to the drawings, the flock could transform into a bigger, gigantic bird that could sleep in the sun or have the power of the sun. That last part wasn’t very clear yet, as there were only images and no alphabet in any of the houses. The whole site was just about the imagining and the architecture, which consisted in at least a hundred houses in a roughly cube like form.

 Meanwhile, others decided to make a map out of the city and discovered the city was even bigger. Maybe it had been a very large city in the past but had shrunk before finally falling to time or some other reason. Some rocks looked older, and more affected by time. The site were they slept, with the houses still holding on in most of their structure, had apparently been abandoned. Some of the members of the team were sure this had happened only a few centuries ago, maybe even only a hundred of years ago. Others were not so sure.

 The more ancient parts of the city were difficult to recognize as the trees and the ground had quickly eroded the stone floor. The specialists did some testing and discovered something strange: the rocks on the “older” part of the city were actually not older than the rest. Tests found out the whole city was only a few hundred years old, at most. So something strange had happened were the center of the old town had not been as affected as the rest of the city.

 Two more days passed and some were already worried about the boy. The trip back to the port should have only taken him a day and he had been away for three. Some thought that maybe something bad had happened to him but the strange thing was that, in their way there, they had not encountered any ferocious animals or difficulties to surpass. They had cut through the jungle and had to stand the mosquitoes and the heat but nothing else. They realized they had never thought about it and decided, the ones that were botanists and biologists, to make a tour around the ancient city to find which species lived there.

 The search was useless as they found only some insects and a couple of bird species. Something was very wrong, as close by regions were known because of their rich fauna and flora. And this place seemed almost dead. Only the trees were really living there. Besides them, only some ants seemed to play a role in the environment. The following day, they decided to widen their range: they would walk a whole kilometer and then circle the city. But again, nothing appeared. There were no mammals or big reptilians, no frogs or big birds. They weren’t even nests in the trees. The botanists took some tree bark and decided to do tests on it to see if they jungle floor was somehow toxic.

 By the fifth day, the team was a little bit hopeless. They had traveled half way around the world and the place they had arrived to seemed dead, with nothing that interesting to see. All the bas-reliefs had been accounted for, not that it made any difference. In every house or building, there were exactly the same drawing of the flock of birds and the one of the gigantic bird attacking people with fire. For all intents and purposes, the people that had lived there had been dead for only a hundred years but had not made any real advancement except for their architecture.

 Some scientists, in the meeting held late at night, thought it was possible that the people that lived there had come from some other region and had quickly left after realizing the area was, somehow, toxic. But the tree bark’s tests didn’t show any massive toxicity. It was very normal although its cells looked strange in the microscope. They looked like the cells of a younger tree and not as big as one of those who grew there. They decided one night to stay only three more nights, in order to arrive at the port at the same time that the boat that took them to the capital city and then to their home.

 The thought of home was interrupted the following day, when one of the few women in the group yelled desperately. Many came to her aid and realized she had discovered something awful: the kid they had sent to the port had been found hanging inside one of the houses of the old city. The woman had woken up early to check the art there again and had found the poor creature. They took him down from there and realized he had a big splinter on each eye, almost used as a stake.

 The child was buried that afternoon but then, something else happened. It rained. But it wasn’t normal rain. It felt cold at the start, like normal rain, but then turned warm and strange. They soon realized it wasn’t water coming down from the sky but blood. Hot, red blood dripped from the trees and onto everything they had around. When it finally ended, all their clothes were tainted red, and so were their faces. Some of the members of the group were really scared, wanting to live the place as soon as possible. But that couldn’t be done just like that because they had to prepare, organize and that would take a while with so much to pack.

 They started the following day, after cleaning the blood of most of the clothes. But then, other people started to feel sick. They vomited and were tainted green. Their face grew even greener as they got worst. They had to delay their journey back as half of the scientists were sick in just a few hours. They had all eaten the same thing and had been careful only to drink water from their personal stash. They could only blame the blood rain, that had maybe poured into their mouths or eyes and then had contaminated them.

 Soon, only the leading expeditionary was fine. The rest were all sick and vomiting. The ones that had become sick first, were the same tone of green than the surrounding forest. That had become sort of paralyzed, unable to move at all. The man that had led them all there was not feeling sick but guilty. He had convinced personally everyone there to come with him to explore this jungle, promising them fame and glory, as well as a best name in the scientific community He had traced every one of them, had asked for the money and had paid many of their expenses with his own savings.

 And now, everyone was dying. It was hard for him to sleep the last night, before leaving, but when he finally did, his sleep was soon filled with nightmares and sweat. He woke up in the middle of the night and realized there were thousands of birds flying over the jungle. They were circling the center of the city. He stood up fast and tried to find his fellow expeditionary men but they were nowhere to be found. Somehow, they had disappeared.

 The man didn’t stood by and decided to run out of the forest, that had become thicker all of a sudden. He felt the presence of the birds and stumbled upon roots and rocks as he ran. When he fell again to the ground, he helped himself up with a tree and then screamed, like no one had screamed in the jungle before. The birds then flew down onto him and formed a bigger creature, or so it seemed. They attacked him viciously and killed him, drinking his blood and the flying away. Where the remaining of the scientist where, there was a young tree and, between the bark, there was the shape of a face, a screaming face.