The true pandemic we are facing
Image courtesy of Pixabay
In this troubling time of self-isolation and people buying industrial amounts of toilet paper for no reason at all, people are understandably scared about Coronavirus. However, there is a far more worrying development that I have observed recently that I feel poses an even greater threat. Electric scooters.
Anyone to have been on campus or pretty much any public space over the past few months will have seen these specimens parading around on their motorised children’s toys acting like they own the pavement, but instead looking like a mad 28-year-old tech millionaire from a low standard American TV show. Cruising at a leisurely pace that is fast enough to necessitate them swerving exuberantly around the slower people but not fast enough to justify spending £250 on the most ridiculous invention since those hoverboards which couldn’t be used outside.
I have often seen these marauding electric scooter users operating in packs, like lazy lions condemning the antelopes that don’t feel the need to look like a pillock in service of moving fractionally faster. There is something inherently intimidating about a group of people on these ridiculous contraptions, seeming to resemble some future militia group coming back from a time that is not far enough in the future for radical differences in technology to have been created, but enough for the more minor inconveniences of modern life to have been partially solved.
As something of a curmudgeon, I am prone to hating a lot of things like this. The normal scooter has always somewhat perplexed me, as it neither offered any significant increase in motion nor the rebellious lifestyle of the skateboard (a contraption which has its own image problem, namely the people who skate outside Co-op in the evenings). Adding a motor is indeed an improvement, but it is no less cumbersome than a bicycle and is an awful lot slower. The concept of adding an electric motor to a bike made sense, hills are tricky, even if it was a touch unnecessary. However, adding it to the scooter has made a largely useless vehicle into something that is more functional but overall, pretty pointless.
Do I think we need to do something about this epidemic? Probably not. Although, if we are all self-isolating at the moment, then may I suggest we quarantine all the electric scooter riders with each other with some form of councillor so they can work through this phase they are currently going through and also check if they still have the receipt. I imagine that two weeks or longer should be enough for them to realise that everyone hates them for riding them.
Views expressed in InQuire's satire articles are those only of the writer and InQuire does not endorse any of these opinions, this section is dedicated to entertainment purposes only. We use fictitious characters in our stories, except in regards to public figures being satirised directly.
