by Peter Löcke //
People make polite small talk when they first get a taste of society. The phenomenon is everywhere. Small talk at a spontaneous pub visit around the corner as well as at a champagne reception at a vernissage in better circles. There with a prior save-the-date invitation. I'm not kidding, there are even courses where you can learn how to make small talk for a fee. Reader tip if you want to save yourself the money: The groaning observation "Well, it's a weather today" always works as a can opener for a conversation. The phrase works regardless of the weather and all year round. After the weather and before really socially relevant topics such as soccer, the average Teuton asks the stranger "So, what do you do for a living?" I felt uncomfortable with this question for a long time. In the past, the reason was sometimes shame. In today's democratic times, it was fear. But at some point I made a virtue of my need. I became courageous and went on the humorous counter-offensive.
"I do in conspiracies. I'm a free-loader and a loafer."
Such an answer can lead to funny conversations. If the air smells of expensive perfume and not of sweat and beer, I decide to verbally upgrade my job title. After all, we live in Anglophile times.
"I am Chief Constructor of Conspiracy."
This answer has already impressed one or two well-off interlocutors. This has resulted in dialogs that are reminiscent of Loriot. Of course, my behavior is also borderline and unfair. After all, my counterpart usually doesn't know that he's in the middle of a real-life sketch. So it was more than fair that I had to swallow my own medicine at the weekend.
"I'm a private citizen."
My counterpart's casual reply left me speechless. The unknown man in his mid-thirties (!) was telling me indirectly in just three words: I have earned enough and no longer have to go to work. I can now use the money I've earned to enjoy the finer things in life. Being private is cool. Being retired or even unemployed is less so. So I was impressed. And then I got sad. I became sad because I was thinking about the private. I became sad because I realized that the topic is actually deadly serious.
Privacy here, public space there. These areas were once strictly separated. This separation has completely dissolved. The state is increasingly intrusive and patronizing in the most private spaces. But that is only one side of the coin. People are increasingly exposing their most intimate matters to the public in the marketplace. Willingly. Ready and willing. Exhibitionistically.
The phenomenon of Facebook and co. What's on the dinner table? What is the sexual fetish? If I want to, I can find out things from my (sharing) neighbor in my facebook that I wouldn't have confided in my diary in the past. Now I can renounce these digital striptease platforms out of self-protection, but not the real world. The annoyed woman in front of me at the supermarket checkout loudly explains to her boyfriend via smartphone that she is currently menstruating. Thank you for this information. My neighbor at the café also says loudly into his cell phone that he has been having problems with his bowel movements for some time. Who wants to know? Help! I grew up in times when I left the room as a matter of course if the call wasn't for me, but for my father.
Worse than private exhibitionism is the other way round, the state intrusions and encroachments into my private life. Here are just a few examples of the current political icebergs. People are thinking about how long I should be allowed to shower, hot or cold? Noted, Mr. Habeck. The police, I am reassured, do not immediately storm my apartment, as was the case in individual cases with Corona, because - scandal - there was one unrelated person too many in the room. That doesn't reassure me at all when I think of the new Whistleblower Protection Act, Mr. Freedom Minister Buschmann. In addition, they are trying to teach me a state gender language that an overwhelming majority of the population rejects in disgust. This is also a form of violence. It's not just the state. Why do the media and private companies increasingly address me on a childish emoji level? It's not just unpleasant and embarrassingly infantilizing. It's offensive. Stop!
If a police or municipal official should ever stand at my doorstep ... if he should address me as a friend, even though I don't want him to ... if he should ask to be let in because he wants to take my room temperature ... if he should hand me a questionnaire in which I have to fill out whether I am vaccinated or not, whether I smoke or not, whether I eat meat or not, whether I am already genderqueer or still speak German ... then I will address the official in a friendly manner when I answer.
"That's none of your fucking business. I'm a private citizen. Now please get out of here. I still have some conspiratorial work to do."
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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10 Responses
This article is wonderful . It makes me fantasize - the Chief Constructor of Conspiracy. Nobody knew BiBo in my day - and certainly not LiBo (Big Boss/Little Boss). Now CCC or CCoC and even better See Cock. My US boss was called Huhn in his surname and Tom in front of it. Really. Then he was just Chicken Tom. But still CEO. Disastrous with the Chicken Tom. But SeeCock as the abbreviation for the job description - simply out of this world. Even MoD (Master of Disaster) can't compete with that.
The contribution is and does so much good.
Thank you very much for this.
Yes, you have spoken from the heart.
I am so fed up with all this preaching and spreading of private sensitivities and the constant intrusion into my own private affairs that I prefer to stay in my private home and garden.
I no longer want to give my precious time to trivial conversations and superficial people.
incredibly heart and brain refreshing this, your column Mr. LöckeIncl. the Kommentare‼️
It reassures me at least a little that there are obviously still large numbers of people out and about who
"Thinking for yourself" not yet, conveniently,
used to haben‼️
hope is a rather tolerant Wesen‼️
... "privateer" is also someone who has been fired for doing nothing or even less and has to look for a new job without flaunting his ruined reputation...most people in their mid-thirties don't realize that the fried pigeons are currently flying a little higher...
Beautifully spoken! I always enjoy reading such linguistically playful texts. - I can think of a counter-example of direct address in the second person singular to cultivated slang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtsq3YKatwM&list=PLdIX2Nr5W_ZeSm6-XfXBQuAv0jQSikfcO&index=3&t=178s
Thanks for the contribution.
Mr. Löcke
Thank you for your comments, it's about how I feel, wonderfully described!
Renata wants to have sea to bathe in
OOH Mr. Löcke, very similar thoughts go through my head from time to time! Privateer sounds good, of course, if you can be one. I had to grin just now. I once did a job for a Munich or Italian fine paper company that has/had a branch in Unterhaching... In short, I was an area promoter for the east. My business card said "Senior Product Consultant", which I thought was really shit at the time. Not the job, the business card. Actually, I was just a door-to-door cleaner for advertising agencies, graphic designers, printers and production companies, to whom I wanted to make my fine printing papers appealing. But that's how you can present something. Well, anyway. These days I'm on sick leave. My last business card says sales consultant in the field, which anyone in their right mind will understand.
But let's turn to the private sector again. Haven't we all withdrawn so much that you could talk about it in general? I now only gather a small circle of trusted people around me, Corona has shattered some things, but I sometimes wonder who I was friends with. And in the meantime I'm also realizing that even the most convinced that Father State means everything well with us are slowly starting to wonder. Much to my edification. People have to figure it out for themselves. I wouldn't stand there rejoicing and say see, see, I told you so.
Just in case someone comes to haunt me and asks me stupid questions, I still have the club on the wall. Should it ever be used, then all is lost anyway, meaning there would be nothing left for me to fight for. We'll see how far they take it. Honestly, it wasn't even that shitty in the GDR. Compared to the stupidity you have to put up with here. Honecker, Mielke and co. were really just street thugs. Emilia Fester calls for voting rights for 2-year-olds.... Just one example... It's still quiet in the countryside, there's still water, electricity and enough to eat. But who knows how people will defend themselves when that is no longer the case.
Very nicely put in a nutshell: "People have to figure it out for themselves"! As a startled Willy-Brandt-Wessi, this was the most frightening and at the same time most important realization of recent years: people have to earn democracy, otherwise they haven't earned it. The Ossis, or rather those who rebelled in 1989, had actually earned it and must have been pretty frustrated, but perhaps not as shocked as I was. There are facades everywhere, beautifully recognizable in the language. "Solidarity" ... "Senior Product Klinkenputzer:in" ... "Nothing comes naturally" said Willy in his old age. He was right.
It was the same for me. It was just called "Senior Communication Officer". But then when the real senior stood in the doorway and started singing his praises - that the company couldn't survive without me - I saw the drawn dagger behind his back with my x-ray vision. Two years later, I was dead. Realization: Never trust an American businessman/politician or his vassal adepts.