Shrinking Penis, Greta and Carbon Footprint of The Internet
Dr. Shanna H. Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, New York, in her new book “Countdown: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race” has claimed that pollution and unhealthy lifestyle practices are causing various degrees of reproductive health issues. Both the genders are affected, an average woman getting less fertile while in men it’s a shrinking penis and low sperm count. A large number of babies are being born with small penises. The book tries to establish a link between erectile dysfunction and pollution as well.
The findings of the book were quoted by Greta Thunberg, who tweeted “See you at the next climate strike”, followed by a smiley. Netizens were in praise of the newly turned 18 year old activist. She had cracked the joke about penises that earned her the sobriquet “Best Sniper on the internet”.
Jokes are funny and should be respected as freedom of speech. Penis jokes are the new wife jokes. Greta wants the world to participate in a climate strike because of shrinking penises. People who have been ignoring her call for the strike would all of a sudden be bothered by shrinking penises and would flock to the climate strike. Of the many problems that climatic change leads to, a shrinking penis, of mostly unborn babies who are assumed to have smaller penis than the previous generation are at risk.
Lets dive deeper, why is the penis tweet not funny? Because of all the functions a penis does, its primary role that it has to perform daily is urination, which has got nothing to do with the size of the penis . A smaller penis is equally capable of penetrative sexual intercouse. Then why should men worry about shrinking penises?
Because, some women define manhood by the size of the penis that penetrates them. A smaller penis would directly imply lesser manhood. Men will do anything and everything to save themselves from the accusations of being a lesser man. What else could the shrinking penis depict! It will trigger the fear of rejection by women. But I wonder if going to the climate strike can guarantee an increase in penis size?
Jokes about sexuality are terrible across both the genders. They are derogatory anyways. A joke about a woman with smaller boobs is equally derogatory and misogynistic but jokes around sexual organs of men is not misandry! Lee Hurst, the famous english comedian had his twitter account suspended a week ago when he posted a joke about Greta Thunberg. He had posted “As soon as Greta discovers cock, she will stop complaining about the single use plastic it’s wrapped in”.
The joke was rude and insensitive since it targeted Greta personally. The joke was called sexist and misogynist but when Greta posts a penis joke, that doesn’t make her sexist, rather that makes her a cool lady with a sense of humour! Twitter can’t block Greta, neither can the world stop laughing at the cruel joke.
A strike is an awareness tool and not a solution to climate change. Liberal activists across the world believe that protests are the change while the real change comes from action, rather than mere protest. Greta tweets so much about climate change but I wonder if she is aware about the carbon footprint of the internet. An average google search produces around 0.2gm of CO2, while as for Raffii Krikorian, a developer at Twitter, each tweet consumes around 0.02gm of CO2 emissions. The world produces 8000 tweets every second. An average youtube video produces 0.0017g of CO2 per second. The sniper climate guardian would better understand that by going to school and learning science rather than just laugh at penis, over tweets can add to the cause she claims to fight for.
The timing of the tweet regarding the book is questionable as well. Does anyone remember the toolkit case and Greta! The possibility of the tweet being an outcome of a PR strategy cannot be ruled out. The book is credited for being the world’s longest titled book. A three-line long book name definitely adds to the intention of building records around the book. The choice of headlines such as “Human Penises are shrinking because of pollution, warns scientist” for a book that focuses on both the genders seems a deliberate PR stunt that delivered what was needed out of it.
