George Orwell Tried to Warn Us, But We Clicked “Accept All Cookies” Instead
Somewhere in the great British beyond, George Orwell is staring at today’s news cycle like a man who invented the fire alarm and then watched everyone replace the batteries with Percy Pigs. He’s probably sitting there with a celestial copy of The Guardian, tutting loudly and muttering “I bloody well told you” whilst making a proper cup of tea.
The quote doing the rounds says the fastest way to ruin people is to mess with their sense of history. Not erase it dramatically with bonfires and Ministry officials. No, no. Just gently rearrange it. File it between “That Was Before Brexit” and “Things That Were Said Out of Context on Question Time.”
Turns out we didn’t need a dystopian regime. We just needed a Below the Line comments section on the Daily Mail website. And perhaps a government spokesperson saying “Let me be absolutely clear” before being absolutely unclear.
Yesterday Is Now Awaiting a Software Update
In the old days, history was rewritten by empires. Now it’s updated like the NHS app. Your past gets a notification.
“Your memory of the 2016 referendum is no longer supported. Please upgrade to the Revised Narrative Package. New features include: enhanced hindsight, contextual flexibility, and an improved ‘That’s not what Leave meant’ mode.”
Last week’s headline: An MP denies saying something. Video emerges from BBC Parliament of them saying exactly that thing. Supporters respond, “Yes, but that was before we understood the deeper context of the thing, which is now the opposite.” Historians are sitting at home in their cardigans whispering, “I did three years at Oxford for this?” Meanwhile, their PhDs are gathering dust next to untouched copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four from their A-Levels.
Orwell imagined ministries of truth. We got WhatsApp groups. And Facebook pages called “Britain First Facts (No Actual Facts Required).”
The Great Rebranding of Everything British
Companies do it too. A corporation dumps sewage in the Thames for 40 years, then announces it has “always been committed to environmental stewardship.” Always. Since the reign of Queen Victoria. There were Edwardians drinking ethically sourced water. Suffragettes had reusable flasks.
Their corporate website timeline goes:
1992: Founded
1993 to 2021: [This content is not available in your region due to GDPR]
2022: We care deeply 🌿
If Orwell were alive today, he wouldn’t write a novel. He’d just screenshot LinkedIn posts from CEOs in the City. The dystopia is already written, it’s just formatted as a carousel post about “authentic leadership” with a photo of someone in a hard hat at a building site they’ve never visited.
News, Now With the Memory of a Goldfish on the Central Line
Modern British headlines have the memory span of a goldfish trying to remember which stop is King’s Cross. And the attention span of someone scrolling through BBC iPlayer deciding what to watch.
“BREAKING: Expert Warns of Serious Risk to NHS”
Two days later: “Why Everyone Overreacted to a Perfectly Manageable Situation”
Three days later: “No One Could Have Predicted This Crisis”
We’ve entered an era where “previously” means “before this morning’s Today programme.” Where “longtime” means “since I started this tweet at Pret.” Where fact-checking means scrolling back three posts on Twitter (which everyone still refuses to call X).
There are people who’ve been wrong about the same topic for 15 straight years, yet introduce themselves on Newsnight as “longtime political observers.” Longtime observers of being catastrophically wrong. Professional students of getting it backwards. They should get an OBE for consistency at this point.
Orwell warned about erasing history. We replaced it with vibes. And a really confident bloke on a podcast who “did his own research” on YouTube.
Social Media, Where the Past Goes to Be Gaslit in British
You ever argue with someone on Twitter who says, “That never happened,” and you’re literally replying under the thread where it happened? It’s like watching someone deny the existence of their own terraced house whilst standing in the back garden having a fag.
Screenshots are now historical documents. Archaeologists of the future will dig up ancient British civilization and find not Roman pottery, but tweets that start with “Well actually, if you’d bothered to read the full thread…” They’ll classify us as the “Um, Sorry, But” civilization.
The scary part isn’t that lies exist. Lies have always existed—we invented parliamentary privilege, for goodness sake. The scary part is the speed. History used to be rewritten over decades. Now it’s patched overnight like a dodgy Transport for London app. “We’ve fixed the glitch where 2020 happened. Please restart your consciousness and tap your Oyster card.”
Version 3.2.1 of Reality has removed several previously acknowledged facts for performance reasons. Your timeline may experience temporary truth delays, similar to Northern Rail services.
The Politician’s Time Machine (Now Departing from Westminster)
British politicians have mastered Orwell’s nightmare with a weak smile and a poppy pin they forgot to remove in July. They’ve weaponized amnesia and called it “cabinet collective responsibility.”
Speech in 2022: “I will categorically never support this policy.”
Speech in 2024: “I have consistently championed this policy since day one.”
Reporter: “But here’s the clip from BBC Parliament.”
Response: “That clip is being taken out of the larger arc of my evolving position on the matter, which, if I may say, represents a nuanced understanding of the complex geopolitical landscape.”
Evolving position. That’s not political philosophy. That’s yoga. It’s parliamentary Pilates. Flexibility training for your manifesto pledges.
Somehow, the past is always wrong, and the present version of them has always been right. It’s less time travel and more time laundering through a shell company in the Caymans. They’re not U-turning, they’re “responding to new evidence.” Like a positive lateral flow test.
Corporations, Influencers, and the Witness Protection Programme for Dodgy Takes
British influencers are the speedrun champions of historical revision. They’re doing it in real-time, with ring lights and discount codes for protein powder they definitely don’t use.
2019: “This juice cleanse changed my life, babes.”
2020: “I can’t believe I promoted that toxic diet culture.”
2021: “New wellness plan, same life-changing results, hun.”
2022: “Diets are a patriarchal construct, buy my £89 meal plan.”
Their old posts vanish like Boris Johnson at a party inquiry. Historians call this “The Great Deletion.” PR agencies call it “reputation management.” Same thing, different invoice from a Shoreditch consultancy.
Orwell feared governments controlling the past. He didn’t anticipate a 22-year-old from Essex with a ring light doing it between sponsored posts for teeth-whitening kits. “Hiya guys, let’s talk about memory holes! But first, use code ORWELL15 for 15% off at ASOS…”
What the British Funny People Are Saying
“We don’t need time machines. We just need a Number 10 press briefing,” said David Mitchell.
“History is written by the winners. Now it’s edited by whoever still has the Twitter password and hasn’t been suspended,” said Frankie Boyle.
“I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, but apparently I’m meant to have a fully formed opinion on the Northern Ireland Protocol,” said Katherine Ryan.
“The problem with political memory is that it’s like my memory—completely unreliable and usually wrong about dates,” said James Acaster.
So What Now, Then?
Here’s the cheerful twist, innit. Orwell’s quote works both ways. If history can be blurred, it can also be remembered. Screenshots, BBC archives, old copies of The Times, that one auntie who remembers everything and will absolutely bring it up at Sunday roast. God bless that auntie. She’s doing the Lord’s work with her Nokia that still has all the old texts.
The truth is stubborn. It keeps showing up like an uninvited party guest who knows where the Marks & Spencer nibbles are. It RSVP’d “no” but came anyway with receipts, a bottle of Prosecco from Tesco, and a very strong opinion about Brexit.
So yes, today’s headlines are a carnival funhouse version of memory. Mirrors stretched, shrunk, flipped—like trying to navigate the House of Mirrors at Blackpool Pleasure Beach after six pints. But every now and then, someone finds the original photo and says, “Oi, this is what actually happened.” Someone pulls out the receipts. Someone scrolls all the way back. Someone says “I remember this differently because I wrote it down in my diary after watching Channel 4 News.”
And for a brief, shining moment, Orwell nods approvingly from the great library in the sky, then probably mutters, “I wrote Animal Farm for this?” Then he sighs, adjusts his spectacles, and goes back to watching us speedrun his warnings like we’re binge-watching Line of Duty before they take it off iPlayer.
Disclaimer
This satirical piece is a collaborative effort between the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Any resemblance to real ministries of truth, corporate memory holes, or disappearing tweets is purely coincidental, historically flexible, and subject to future revision pending a public inquiry.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
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