For those of you who don’t know, there is an internet meme called the Face Eating Leopard.
From a tweet by Adrian Bott (@cavalorn) in October 2015: “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
You see it used especially around people who voted for Trump – once, twice, thrice – and are now facing the deportation of a spouse. The subtext is ‘how could they be so stupid/selfish’ and ‘karma is a bitch’.
Let’s step back a bit. All through the 80s, 90s and so on, a certain type of comfortable asshole cheered while the state functionaries dished out violence – sometimes fast (Miners’ Strike) but usually “slow” (rule-changes, casualisation etc etc) to the lower orders, imposing so-called ‘market discipline’ on them. Comfortable professionals who didn’t make common cause with people who they considered their inferiors, never dreaming that they would ever be on the receiving end.
But let’s step back further than the ‘civilised’ West and current concerns for AI/LLMs taking jobs from nice responsible middle-class people. Let’s look at the climate, the ultimate leopard.
All through the 90s, 2000s, 2010s there were a whole bunch of people watching while others put their liberty and lives on the line over climate. Silly hippies, hysterical, get a job etc etc etc.
Why? Because they assumed that IF climate change was a thing then “we could adapt.” Adapt was code for “well, I have air-conditioning, and if you don’t you’re one of the poors, a loser who can’t keep up, who deserves what they get.”
All that time, they assumed that they were ‘safe’ – because they spoke English, were white, had a degree and a Proper Job, and some savings and all the rest of it. If the leopard was real, it would never eat THEIR face.
And here we are. The leopard is growling in the next room, scratching the door so loud it’s like that Edgar Allen Poe story about the Tell-tale Heart.
The leopard, akin to the beast we’ve been poking with a sharp stick, is hungry and the leopard really really does not care who he eats next.
If we wanted everything to stay the same, everything had to change. But people were too smug, too arrogant and complacent to see that, thinking the leopard would never develop a taste for white meat.
Well, it has. Nom nom nom.