Moving up in life

Everything seems to want to upgrade. Your girlfriend probably wants to upgrade to a better guy; you probably want to upgrade to a better girl; your friend wants to upgrade to a better job; his boss wants to upgrade to a higher salary; the boss's wife wants to upgrade to a bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger cock, the works; and their daughter wants to upgrade to a better smartphone.

Heck, even the smartphone wants to upgrade to the newer version of its software. That little device, which just about fits in your pocket nowadays, is a needy bitch. It'll blink, vibrate, ring, ping, and even do the SOS shingle to get your attention. And bloody hell will it remind you minute, after minute, after minute, that it is time for a software upgrade.

Icecream sandwich, KitKat, Oreo, Snickers, M&Ms, goodness knows what sweet treats the folks at Google name their operating systems after. It's reached 9.0? I lost track after they popped the Jelly Bean. That's how long it's been. The Apple fanboys will tell you they are running on IOS 5674 or who knows what. But, I've got a question. What are the coding lads at these companies up to?

What shenanigans are they planning by offering upgrade after upgrade? Fair enough, they say the battery lives will be better, RAM management and yada yada will improve, and the porn you watch on your little screens will look more lifelike (really?). However, however, there's a little conspiracy theory I have which might not be a conspiracy theory.  

You know the feeling you get you're the last person to know something? As if everyone around you notices the elephant in the room, but you're deluding yourself into thinking you're 'The Boy Who Lived'? I think software updates are a front used by mobile-phone manufacturers to intrude deeper into our lives, make themselves more indispensable to our puny existence.

They already know where we live. They know where we work, who we fuck, who fucks us over, what we eat, and what eats us deep down inside. And with every 'upgrade', we're happily giving them a warmer welcome to make us their prostitutes. The pizza ad that popped up on your screen is because you liked a random Facebook page with Photoshopped images of a slice of Italy.

The photo may conjure in your mind images of a wood-fired oven in one of Sicily's cosiest pizzerias. Good going, but highly unlikely. The poor fellow who raced across the city to deliver it to you has probably taken a bite out of your little slice of Italy. You didn't bother to tip him, did you? Well, he needs an upgrade too. I know, I know, the app in your phone handles it all. Fuck etiquettes, anyway.

Coming back to software upgrades, they have become the bone of contention in Op-Ed columns. The blokes go to great lengths to tell you how the 17.4.3.2.2 or some upgrade makes your phone start three attoseconds quicker than it did before. Impressed? You will be, especially when you see the tech monkeys fighting over who upgraded first to the new version. The excitement, boy isn't it palpable!

The software upgrade craze has honestly faded. In fact, I'd even say this piece is about two years too late. But the rate at which we're headed towards a spondylitis epidemic, we need to have our back. Get the joke? Get it? Get it? Remember Terminator? The movie projected a bleak future with humans being dominated by androids and machines. Well, the machines are here. and 2029 isn't far away. Where the fuck is John Connor? And stop quarrelling over that software update, pussies!