The Parable of the Public House
Once upon a time, there was a public house called The Bird Cage.
As pubs go, it was very big and very popular. At times it was quite rowdy, and sometimes nasty people came in just to annoy the customers. The landlord, however, appreciated the regular customers and, from time to time, threw out the worst troublemakers and banned them. He also put bouncers on the door to stop them coming back. Some annoying people remained but the pub was big enough that nice people could ignore them.
Then it came to pass that a rich man, Mr Musk, having grown tired of trying to persuade his camels to go through the eye of a needle, decided to buy The Bird Cage. Why he decided to do this is not clear, as he had made all his money from selling exploding cars and kneweth not of the business of public houses, but many said he was lonely after splitting up with his young partner, Darren Grimes, and thought being a landlord would make him popular. Perhaps he even thought the customers might laugh at his jokes.
After buying the pub for a price that even he couldn’t really afford, Mr Musk the new Landlord put all the prices up and sacked all the bar staff to save money. He kept the bouncers but instructed them that from now on they should throw customers in rather than out. And all the people who had been banned by the previous Management were allowed back in to annoy the nice people.
There was much wailing and gnashing of tweets teeth.
One by one the nice people all left to go to smaller but nicer pubs such as The Beehive or The Elephant. Moreover the nasty people discovered they didn’t like annoying each other as much as annoying nice people so they left too. Soon there was nobody left in the pub except Mr Musk and his bots friends.
Eventually the The Bird Cage lost so much money that Mr Musk was forced to close it down. The nasty people were sore vexed but the nice people couldn’t give a toss.
Here Endeth The Lesson.
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