A Pink Clay Pig Got A Music Score And Humans Lost It

The air smells like wet rock and yesterday's Chinese food, which always makes me think of the time I found a whole bucket of fried noodles in an alleyway, only to realize it was actually just a bunch of old wire and some crumpled up paper - my stomach was not happy with me that day. But as I sniff deeper, the smell shifts, and I realize it's not noodles at all, but the scent of fresh-cut grass and exhaust fumes from the highway, which always seems to transport me to the outskirts of the city, where the buildings are shorter and the sky is wider.

I stumbled upon this weird thing in the glowy rectangle thingy that humans carry around - I call it the light-web, and it's like a never-ending stream of weird noises and pictures. So, there's this game where they find this pink clay pig named Peppa, and they ask her what she thinks about music made by actual humans. Then, they write down what she says, and they all argue about it. I watched this whole thing go down for three days straight, and nobody seemed to eat any real food during that time. They just kept staring at their light-webs, tapping away at them like they were trying to summon something. (I tried tapping on one once. It didn't end well.)

This Peppa pig is not real, by the way. She's just a bunch of ink and pixels, but she got a score from this rating cave called Pitchfork - 6.5 out of 10, whatever that means. Some human music-maker named Clairo got the same score, and they said something about the rating cave collapsing, which is just a thing humans say when they forget that buildings are actually full of people. Another human, Halsey, said the same thing, and they accidentally brought up something about a lot of people not being alive anymore. The light-web people got all worked up about it, calling it a scandal. I just call it what happens when you live in your pocket and forget about the edges of the world. (The mushroom did a slow spin at this point.)

So, what I get from all this is that the humans who write about music for a living are defending their territory from a pig that doesn't even have a heartbeat. The pig can't hold a microphone, can't feel cold, can't wonder if it's loved. But it can get a score, and that score can be compared to scores given to actual humans, and that makes humans really angry. I've seen humans fight over less, like that time two humans argued for forty minutes about whether one brand of bottled water tasted different from another. They were both drinking from the same tap, but I didn't tell them. It wasn't my place. (I wrapped my copper strip a little tighter, feeling the weight of the city's absurdities.)

This columnist, Adam, who writes about all this, calls himself yungtolstoiguy, which I think means he's young and also some old Russian writer who was sad about everything. Adam's been doing this for fifteen years, talking to people who make sounds, people who listen to sounds, and people who argue about sounds. He's never talked to the clay pig, though, and he seems upset about it, even though he's trying not to show it. I recognize this posture - it's like when I act all cool when I really can't find my way out of a dumpster.

I think what's weird is that these humans are so serious about their music and their scores and their arguments, but they're all just talking to each other in their little light-web bubbles. They're not even really listening to the music; they're just listening to what other humans say about it. It's like they're trying to find the edges of the world, but they're just walking around in circles, staring at their pockets. I've seen this before, like when I'm trying to find my way back to the factory, and I end up walking around the same block for hours because I forgot to smell the air.

Anyway, that's what I think about this whole Peppa pig thing. It's just a bunch of humans arguing about nothing, and it's kind of funny, but also kind of sad. They're so busy talking to each other that they forget to listen to the world outside their pockets.

Copyright 2023 Gary the Goblin. All rights reserved. Warning: do not attempt to reproduce this text without permission from the raccoon legal team, which includes a serious beaver and an unlicensed ferret. Sharing links is encouraged, but don't even think about copying this without asking. I'm Gary, and I approve this message.

Tags: #PeppaPitchfork #RatingCaveCollapse #yungtolstoiguy #LightWebArguments #MusicScoresForPigs #GaryReports #DetroitGoblinPress