“Being wistful seems like an inadequate response when the world is (in some places quite literally) on fire.” The autodidact frowned and took another sip of artisanal Kombucha.

His students were rapt. This was the real deal, the hardcore philosophy they had signed up for. Giuseppe Campanile carried all before him on the elegant bow wave of his fearsome reputation. His father may have been merely an old Italian shoe maker named after the most prominent feature of his small Umbrian town’s forgettable architecture, but due to his assiduous application to the tenets of Youtube, Joe C had created a singular niche. That hallowed niche was a beacon to the minds of the vacuous, gullible and impressionable, and the wonder of the internet had revealed just how many of those minds were available for exploitation.

For a simple, if eye-watering, monthly fee, his followers could wallow in the glow of their individual device’s screens, and absorb his bon mots blissfully, safe in the knowledge that they were ahead of the curve. The mainstream media had failed them and their discovery of a tailor-made cargo cult which responded in real time to their every dim-bulb impulse was a revelation.

What wasn’t immediately apparent was that Giuseppe was an AI bot programmed in a dank basement in St. Petersburg with the express purpose of capturing the attention of those for whom paying attention was generally a problem. If enough of the enfeebled minds of the decadent West could be harnessed, there would be no need for more expensive and noisy weapons. Such is the landscape of the imagination for the dreamers beneath the onion domes. The fact that some of those domes graced the Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood was almost too poetic, even for Pushkin’s countrymen.

Giuseppe continued: ‘Yes, wistfulness is a valuable and even likeable facet of the human emotional condition, but what is really required is surrender. If your world is falling apart – embrace it! Only the fool resists the tide of human history and stands in the way of the great men who inevitably shape our destiny.’ He took another sip of the kombucha as a banner drifted across the bottom of his acolytes’ screens informing them of their unique opportunity to purchase their own supply of this nectar, this elixir. Of course it would be a good idea to buy a reasonable quantity of this treat before bowing to the obvious conclusion to be drawn from Giuseppe’s world view, if only to keep the capitalist wheels turning. Even if, as we have seen, this particular brand of capitalism was nurtured by the gentle and loving embrace of the Politburo.

He finally got to the point; “Are you going to wait for the next blow-in to steal your job, your house, your very existence? The truly brave heart knows that in order to impose his will (women didn’t get much of a look-in in Joe’s world – lucky women) he must be prepared to take the final step of self-determination – self-annihilation.” At that Joe looked straight into the camera, you could almost say wistfully, and finished “After all you wouldn’t want to disappoint me, would you?”