I hadn’t planned to spend so much time on politics, religion and weight loss this week. In fact, I didn’t plan to do them at all, let alone at the same time. And then they came at me. Posts, comments, bills, a video of a twenty-year-old girl, a zebra to start the weekend, and finally an ad saying you can lose fifty pounds in two months without exercising. And somehow they all said the same thing: there’s something wrong with common sense.
Lili, God and the comments
I met Lili Pankotai this week, and I came across one of her videos . This video is a bit crude, a bit obscene, but at least it’s honest. Many people immediately jumped on her use of words:
“Swearing is not cool.”, “A sign of literacy is to speak with choice.” There may be truth in that. But it begs the question:
Why is it the style that bothers you so much, and why don’t you hear the content? Because sentences that come from within are not always born sterile polished. “Fucking up” is not an aesthetic gimmick. It is an experience that someone can say.
And if you don’t like the language, you have the right to criticise – but that doesn’t mean you can undo what someone is experiencing. Style is malleable. But honesty is a rarer currency these days.
“If you don’t have a high school diploma, shut up.” – someone wrote. Yes, maybe this is the right direction, maybe there would be no more posts like this. I wonder what this commenter would say if only those with a paper that they sat through their years in the bench could speak?
Then came another commenter: learn to speak first. You can only say obscene words, shame on you. You don’t even go to school I wish you to give back life as you deserve it. Do not take God’s name in vain”, and then the same person wrote the same thing in another post: “You faceless fucker, what the fuck are you barking at?”.
Let’s stop here for a moment. I have never heard of Jesus being the one who judged. But I have heard that it was He who sat down with the tax collector, the harlot, the brokenhearted. And he didn’t ask how well he spoke – but what he was carrying.
This is an adult woman’s comment on a video of a 20-year-old girl. And what’s even harder to digest: she ends it all by invoking God. But what kind of God is there in whose name such sentences can be written? What kind of Christianity is it where shaming, veiled curses and judgment are compatible with the Gospel?
Behind the comment lies a deep-rooted contradiction: to reject, on the grounds of faith, someone who sees the world differently. And in doing so, we are not setting an example – we are discouraging. For what does a twenty-year-old see in this?
– That Christianity is not about love, but about punishment.
– That faith in God is not an acceptance, but a weapon.
– That “holiness” begins where there is no more self-reflection – only judgment.
But I don’t think that’s what real Christianity is. Or if it is, it has lost its essence. The phrase “You shall not take God’s name in vain” really means “Shut up.” That’s not faith. It is Christian words – pagan intent.
It is becoming increasingly disturbing that there is always someone who wants to assert their own opinion under the guise of religion. For many, religiosity is a means, not an end.
As the reactions mount, at some point it is no longer about Lili. It’s about how community space has become the cheapest form of outlet for anger.
“Did you learn that in school, you little bastard?”, “You faceless fucker, what are you barking at?”, “You overzealous brain-dead.”, “You stop talking, stay on your ass.”
This is not an exchange of views. This is war. With grenades, hiding behind profile pictures, targeting identities.
And the saddest part?
That all it takes is a twenty-year-old girl who dares to speak out.
Péter Magyar and the law that is too precise
And then there was Péter Magyar, who – apparently – is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with, so they tabled a bill that surprisingly fits him perfectly. Not by name, of course. Just… for form.
And in response, he wrote off his fortune, his piano, and his Volvo… And the whole post somehow became like a cheekily loose counterpoint to an overcomplicated power move. It’s not a heroic story, more of a mirror. In a country where it’s no longer even a secret that the law is not always for the country, but sometimes against someone(s).
That reminds me:
– “Grandapaaa, let’s play something!”
– “Go outside, my child, look at the zebra. That is instructive enough.”
– “What can I learn from him?”
– “That if you’re rich enough, you can have anything in your garden. Except common sense.”
And in the meantime the world is reshaped
Trump is back in the White House, and in the meantime, he wants the Panama Canal back, he wants to buy Greenland, and he has even promised to join Canada. At first glance, it is hard to tell whether this is geopolitical strategy or the map obsession of a precocious child. But then I remember that Putin has already redrawn the borders in his mind. Perhaps there is no need to declare world war any more. Maybe it is, we just haven’t found his name yet.
The weight loss that’s too good to be true
This week I came across a Facebook ad (pictured) promising to lose 50 kilos in two months. Without exercise.
At first I laughed. Then I thought. Not on whether it was possible (hardly healthy, anyway), but on what kind of world we live in where such an ad has a market at all. That people – desperate, tired, driven by self-loathing – are willing to believe that their bodies will react like an Excel spreadsheet: minus a kilo (or two) every day except when it’s a ‘cheat day’.
It is absurd, it is instructive, and it is very familiar in the reality of the 21st century, where people want to lose weight, they don’t want to exercise, and they want someone to promise them that they will.
The scary thing is not the promise, but what the promise says about us. How tired we are of gradualism. That we’d rather risk gallstones, muscle loss or hormone disruption just to avoid seeing the mirror for another two months.
Losing weight is often an emotional issue, not a physical one. That’s why we click. We don’t want to lose pounds, we want to lose shame. Only the cost of that is never spelled out in the ad or the post.
Another question that came to my mind is what happens to us when not only credibility but also plausibility is no longer a condition? And who is responsible for the fact that such ads can be run?
For a while now, we have stopped thinking in terms of processes and started thinking in terms of solutions. Our bodies have also become instant projects that we want to manage in a “order today, lose weight tomorrow” style. And while we can’t even treat ourselves properly, there are those who know this about us and make a profit out of it. They are not the devil, they are just very good observers. They understand perfectly well that a quick fix is always more sellable than an honest mirror.
But if we put everything on the consumer – the responsibility to be informed, to be sober, to think critically – we will continue to build a world where you don’t need to prove it, just repeat it enough times to make it seem true.
“How to lose 50 kilos in 2 months without exercise” is not only misleading, it is a litmus test of where we are collectively in our relationship to body, performance and self-worth. Not a very bright place.
An old word has taken on a new meaning this week: law. It’s no longer about law and order, but about who is being targeted. I saw a girl speaking foully and people speaking much fouler in the name of God. I have seen politicians who only reach for a map when they want to draw something on it – preferably for themselves. It made me think how tired we have become of believing in slow things, in gradualism. And in ourselves. I even got to hear about a zebra to end the week. So no, I wasn’t bored. I just try to watch it without laughing, and I don’t always succeed. Meanwhile, I’ve become less and less aware of how to live well in this country, in this noise, with all these comments, laws, posts and zebras. But I think it’s become more important, as the world gets weirder and weirder, to ask myself from time to time: what does it mean to be human in the meantime? So that I don’t become what I condemn – so that when the world is cynical, angry or indifferent, I don’t react to it with the same cynicism, anger or indifference.
