Covid-22
Catch 19
Hell is back and hopes you had an awful Christmas. One day, she will stamp her foot and insist she tested positive for a sore throat so can’t see a soul and must do what she likes in her own home (which will de drinking champagne during the Marseillaise and weeping as Claude Rains bins the Vichy Water.) However, while her mother lives no government can protect her from the days of misery.
Apparently lots of people are worried that this year will be just as bad as last year and the year before that but that’s because they’re not aware of Catch-19: the only way to test positive for Covid’22 is to test positive for Covid’22.
‘The science’ says the vaccines are effective so it strikes Hell as a rum do that it’s the anti-vaxxers who are blamed for not ‘trusting the vaccines’.
We live in a corporate world so Hell thinks this Substack needs a USP, a revamp, a whole new brand, it should be slick, it should be sexy, it should be everything you hate and more.
She is wondering if she start a new version of Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update - the Norm Macdonald version called Fake News Friday. It would go something like…
‘This week, in the real news, the President of France promised to “piss off” the unvaccinated. Meanwhile, in fake news, the unvaccinated pissed off the President of France by saying his wife was born a man and he cheated on her with a gay lover.’
It’ll take some work not least because you need to read it in the voice of an old sea dog.
Anyway, everyone send fact checked and debunked news from around the world, Hell could collate it with memes and we could all rofl. Does something like this exist already? You will tell me.
For now Hell leaves you with Hill’s latest piece for the Daily Mail. They are both suffering from insomnia that causes them to wake up at 2am in blind panic so if this is full of mistakes you will have to forgive us - we are very tired and need to go to bed now we are off out anti-psychotic meds.
Xoxo
The last time a man kissed me passionately he stopped to say he was very passionate about politics. ‘#MeToo!’ I cried, before asking him if he didn’t find it fascinating Americans were about to vote in a President with dementia.
Big mistake. Huge!
He looked at me as if I had just admitted I was pregnant with Donald Trump’s baby. For four years, I’d listened to political obsessives debate whether the leader of the free world was mad or merely insane. Yet when it came to vote in his successor in late 2020, no one questioned the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden. Why? Because in a woke world, you need to be Ms. Right-On to find Mr. Right.
The exception that proves this rule is actor turned activist Laurence Fox, who announced his engagement this week to Arabella Fleetwood Neagle, an active supporter of his anti-woke agenda.
But for the rest of the anti-lockdown lovelorn, the struggle is very real. I have torpedoed all chances of a date in the post-Covid era. Essentially, the only man alive who won’t judge me for reporting on illegal protests and questioning the efficacy of facemasks is Peter Hitchens and, alas, he’s taken.
The first thing any potential beau does when assessing your desirability these days is Google your name and - if he’s clever - run your profile photographs through its image search. Any cursory search of ‘Emily Hill’ brings up an ever lengthening list of outlandish opinion columns I’ve fired off, including ‘The real epidemic is one of stupidity!’ ‘I don’t believe her - because she’s lying’, and ‘How ironic that the deranged Twitterati think censoring Trump is democratic’.
When signing up to dating apps nowadays, no one has to state useful information for the purposes of love and marriage - such as romantic intentions, STIs or past criminal convictions - but you do have to fill out a profile stating your political persuasion and religious beliefs and get a badge if you’re vaccinated. Yesterday, on downloading Hinge, the first man who wanted to match with me announced he was Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim - in other words, so woke I have no idea how he sleeps. You would think the app would make you pick one faith. It doesn’t.
‘I’ve noticed older men, in particular, put that their interests include Black Lives Matter, environmentalism, and LGBTQIA,’ says one of my 40-something friends who is looking for love with an older man. ‘I’m pretty sure they didn’t know what any of that meant two years ago so when I find them writing it I wonder if they’re actually into it or think it will impress me because I’m younger.’
But advertising your woke credentials to enhance your Casanova status is such a successful strategy now that ‘wokefishing’ has become a phenomenon. Essentially, single men dangle their progressive opinions (or at least the ones they claim to have) in the dating pool to reel in a partner. On Hinge, members have to fill out prompts for conversation-starters and within minutes I’d scrolled through potential matches with opening statements such as ‘I won’t shut up about how capitalism is to blame for everything’ and ‘Best travel story - I got deported from Cuba because I was photographing too much. Until that point, I’d thought it was a Communist utopia.’ One chap on Bumble listed his hobbies as “being open-minded”.’
Before the pandemic, I had thought I was left-wing because I felt Sweden had the right idea about politics and it was the most left-wing country in Europe. Post-2020, its insistence on preserving the civil liberties of its citizens and sticking to the pre-Covid science regarding how to approach a pandemic has left me more convinced by the Swedish model than ever - which makes me the sort of rabid, right-wing extremist no man wants to be seen dead with. Woke has taken over the world and anyone who won’t be woke - for whatever reason - must shut-up or become persona non grata.
Virtue-signalling conceals a multitude of sins (that’s why it’s so popular with hypocrites and liars) so I am convinced most of this woke posturing is bogus. Like many women, I have found myself accidentally dating men who hate our whole sex.
‘If a man declares he’s a feminist on his profile, what he means is he’ll ask for explicit verbal consent to everything he does to you - except when it comes to ghosting you.’ another single friend explains. ‘One of these men even wrote it in his bio, quite explicitly: “Feminist on the streets, misogynist in the sheets”. I shudder for girls who fall for that.’
Other woke terminology men include on their profiles refer to their interest in ‘polyamory’ and ‘open relationships’. Previously, this was known as ‘shagging’ and ‘cheating’, but these useful Anglo-Saxon words have been rebranded in the hopes they will appeal to anyone whose soul is dead.
‘What if I told you that I was into ethical non-monogamy?’ a typical lure will read from a man with long hair, wearing pink nail varnish who has his fishing tackle tucked into a pair of pants illustrated with a wolf’s head - as if that’s the best offer a girl’s ever going to get. Indeed the only practice the woke frown on - sexually speaking - is commitment. That is a conservative value and as unconscionable on Tinder as it would be on any other form of social media.
Once upon a time, falling in love and getting married meant you were off the market, but thanks to woke innovations there is no longer any safety in a wedding ring. There is even an app, called Feeld, specifically for so-called ‘ethical’ threesomes.
In her best-selling book Brotopia, about that land of the uber-woke Silicon Valley, author Emily Chang explains that inventors and investors in big tech ‘speak proudly about how they’re overturning traditions and paradigms in their private lives, just as they do in the technology world they rule.’
‘Like Julian Assange denouncing the nation-state, industry hotshots speak of these activities in a tone that is at once self-congratulatory and dismissive of criticism. They believe their entitlement to disrupt doesn’t stop at technology; it extends to society as well.’
Not all men here in Britain want to treat you like a human sex doll, obviously, but the ‘Never Kissed A Tory’ movement appears to have driven many actual Tories offline.
‘I need to steer clear of alumni of the woke madrassas Goldsmiths and SOAS,’ says one Brexiteer, who now sits around in rural pubs with a copy of The Spectator sticking out like a flurry of peacock feathers hoping to meet a lady. ‘My objection isn’t that woke people want to do good,’ he adds, and I agree with him. ‘They do, and that’s great. We all want to end racism and sexism. But they build whole personalities around being more woke than the next person and the last thing I want on a date is a recitation from the liturgy of post-colonial studies.’
The truth is that forming relationships on the basis solely of physical appearance or political leanings isn’t likely to result in love that lasts. Last October, one UK study found that couples who meet on dating apps are six times more likely to get divorced within the first three years of marriage.
At least they made it that far, I thought when I read that. If you’re not woke these days, you’re lucky to even get a first date. As for a second, well, it wasn’t to be for me and my passionate kisser. I still think Joe Biden’s senile and that means I’m still single.