TikTok Addiction: The Youth Theſe Days ſpend too Much Tyme ſtaring at Clocks

Let's go back to being addicted to normal things, like war and turnipwine

Stop looking at that clock and start doing something useful, like obeying thy liege. (Henry Suso, Horloge de Sapience, Wikimedia Commons)

In recent years, clocks hath rapidly become the most popular tymekeeping devices in the Kingdom. E’erywhere one goes, one doth observe spellbound youth with their heads buried in a “tik-tok”, as the younglings refer to them.

But I worry for the sanctity of our younger generations. I do say: Clocks are a blight upon our children’s minds, and actions must be taken to ensure they spend far less tyme staring at these ticking contraptions.

When I was but a lad, all we had with which to tell tyme was the sun. Ye knew when it was sunrise, noon, and sunset, and that was it. Ye were ne’er early, ne’er late. Ye savoured the day for what it was without worrying whither ‘twas “two o’clock” or “half past Vespers” or some other such nonsense. Sure, a few people had hourglasses, but those were mostly for show. No one actually knew how to tell tyme with one.

Now, the Clockmakers’ Guild doth control every second of our precious tyme. One can hardly walk the streets without passing hordes of youth, their faces buried in clocks, their minds adrift in the throes of the hour hand, ever concerned with telling one another precisely what tyme it is. ‘Tis nothing short of an addiction. What ever happened to being addicted to normal things, like war, and turnipwine, and obnoxiously long pointy shoes?

This vile invention is poisoning our youth’s callow heads with down-to-the-second tymekeeping. Methinks a Royal Decree is needed, to ban clocks from our homes and city streets once and for all.

But even a Royal Embargo on clocks doth not go far enough. Nay, it ignores the deeper problem, which is the relentless efforts of the Clockmakers’ Guild to control and measure every second of our lives.

Getteth me not wrong: I’m not some kind of agéd anti-technology curmudgeon. I was an early adopter of the longbow, and I stay up-to-date on all the latest advancements in bloodletting.

But these clocks are something else entirely. I can hardly get my eleven daughters to come to the dinner table anymore, or plow the fields, or prance promiscuously throughst the village square in search of an affluent suitor whose betrothal will raise our family’s social standing. So beguiled are they by their clocks.

We shan’t be free until we take back control of our tyme from the clocks. (There’s also the fact that we and our descendants are all servile vassals of The King for eternity, but that is a different matter.) Mayhaps such an opportunity at salvation hath passed. “Tyme doth march on,” as the slogan of the Clockmaker’s Guild goes.

Alack, now it is tyme for me to put down my quill. For the clock hath just struck se’en, and I am running late.

Heard ‘round the Realm:

“Conditioner.”

-Sir Turquine, on how he gets his hair so shiny before a duel to the death in single combat

Never go into single combat without thy hair looking glossy and fresh. (N.C. Wyeth, Wikimedia Commons)