Greetings My Graciously
Patient Syndicate Brethren,
We draw nearer to the
football, brothers. As you all well know, your friendly bookie must complete
his annual metaphysical musings on how the ridiculously fast pace of change
affects our already ridiculously ephemeral lives.
Take a moment to contemplate
how far the exponential growth of technology has carried us Semi-Evolved
Simians over the past sixteen years. The initial Syndicate debuted on a
Listserv for Chrissake! Virtually all university students—including this one—took
handwritten notes. Snazzy “Flip Phones” we’re only beginning to get outfitted
with shitty camera devices.
It would still be two years before Mark Zuckerberg
came up with the idea for what was originally termed “THE Facebook”. One could
only scroll through a few HUNDRED articles on a formally commercial website
known as “Wikipedia.com”. Google still competed with “Excite”, “Yahoo”, and “Metacrawler”
for prominence in a novel world of “public” internet search engines. Video
sharing/hosting services? Bwahahaahaha. Preposterous! Even the YouTube Founders
couldn’t figure out how to trade complex files.
Back in 2002 we were still
six years away from the debut of Smartphones, eight years removed from Tablet Computing,
ten years apart from Cloud Computing, and perhaps twelve years distant from the
inescapable reality that one must obtain all such gadgetry should one wish to live
a functional modern life. We’ve traversed the Event Horizon. No time for
Anomie. Adapt or die.
Your friendly neighborhood “Betting
Syndicate”—a project that still obstinately refuses to explicitly define itself
let alone take itself seriously—didn’t necessarily move to the Web reluctantly
in 2012. Your friendly bookie found it more pragmatic to throw the lines and
his accompanying ravings up on Blogspot rather than muck about with separate
e-mail lists and social media platforms. In addition to pragmatic streamlining
benefits, it happened to be very enjoyable to view the finished content even on
a low-optic webpage.
A perfectly acceptable amount of personal pride notwithstanding, the writings have always taken a brutally skeptical look at the vanity associated with the Social Media Age. For every small step this non-commercial and never-to-be-marketed enterprise has taken out of into more publically accessible arenas, there’s been honest self-satirical communication concerning its total lack of intentions. We’re merely friends. having fun. That’s all there is to it.
A perfectly acceptable amount of personal pride notwithstanding, the writings have always taken a brutally skeptical look at the vanity associated with the Social Media Age. For every small step this non-commercial and never-to-be-marketed enterprise has taken out of into more publically accessible arenas, there’s been honest self-satirical communication concerning its total lack of intentions. We’re merely friends. having fun. That’s all there is to it.
This year’s deliberately
selected “re-releases”, written in 2009 and 2010 respectively, demonstrate that
our societies trend toward narcissistic insanity was certainly not lost on this
chronicler. For those with the stamina, there’s reams more of it in two posts
preceding the 2014 tournament:
“Syndicate Re-Release: Living
in the Digital Age”
“WM 2014: 12 Years a
Syndicate”
FAQ #3 through FAQ #10 tell
you all you need to know, should you care to know. Commenting on the rise of Social
Media Platforms in a paper for his Undergraduate Intelligence Course back in
2004, your then 21-year-old bookie wrote the following:
“All of us will soon be
walking sources of OSINT [Open-Sourced-Intelligence], easily accessible and
discernable to those with the time, interest, and inclination to invest. Volunteering
our Data may constitute a Faustian Bargain of sorts in which our desire to
access a more perfect network leave our most valuable assets vulnerable.”
Prescient? In some respects.
It’s certainly no excuse for Snowden-like paranoia. To assume that others have
the time, interest, and inclination to invest is to assume an awful lot about
oneself. Zero chance I’ll let narcissism of that high an order stand in the way
of our Summer Fun, brothers.
That should just about take
care of this year’s activation. I remain
confident that this source of OSINT remains open only my dear friends who are cordially
invited…with the possible exception of whoever’s responsible for those puny
primitive sphearphishing attempts clearly emanating from a Russian source.
Almost as pathetic as this year’s Russian team. Christ! What the hemorrhaging
fuck are you guys doing following a bartender’s blog?!?
Let’s break out the old
disclaimer, first used in 2011:
All lines are calculated
personally by your friendly bookie Vicey….an eccentric Kraut who no amount of
data can fully explain. The correspondence that follows is, as always, crafted
with sincere amity for those who appreciate sharp wit and an extra spot of fun
in their day. Should you prefer solemnity, drama, and conflict… kindly return
to finding ethnically insensitive faults in forty-year-old comedy sketches.
Why not throw in our standard
Charlie Hebdo Graphic.
Strap in, mates. It’s FINALLY
time to talk football.
