Good evening, ladies, gentlemen,
soldiers, hipsters, pseudo–intellectuals,
students, baristas,
green party affiliates,
(Laughter)
Steve. (Laughter)
Thank you so very much
for the warm welcome that I could only assume
that you would give me when I wrote this in advance.
(Laughter)
It is so very humbling
to be standing here before so many people I know nothing about.
(Laughter)
But statistics are helpful.
I know that at least one of you was probably called Steve.
I know that many of you are probably women.
(Laughter)
I know that the rest of you are likely to be men.
(Laughter)
I know that at least one of you voted for the current Prime Minister.
And if that one person was you,
I would keep very quiet about that here.
(Laughter)
You should not have come here today. (Laughter)
This is not a safe environment for you.
(Laughter)
I promise you.
(Laughter) (Applause)
And if you are that one person,
if you would quietly approach me after the event,
I'll get you out of here.
(Laughter)
But if you didn't vote for National, TEDx is a wonderful thing.
(Laughter)
It's a tremendous event where people of incredibly like-minds come together
to share what they believe to be profound and challenging thoughts.
And yet for some reason, everyone sits and nods in agreement.
(Laughter)
Audiences are treated to speaker after speaker,
or elevated individual,
who one after the other talk about things
that inspire other people to talk about things.
(Laughter)
There was a line about the sponsors here,
but it was suggested that I remove it.
(Laughter)
Bow to your corporate overlords, TEDx.
Know your place.
But as I was saying...
(Laughter)
As I was saying,
TEDx is a wonderful place where people of all races, colors, and creeds,
but mostly white people... (Laughter)
Come together to spread ideas.
I have an idea.
A 111 emergency loan line service.
Take that home with you today. (Laughter)
So we know what TEDx is, and that TEDx is great,
and we all feel quiet enlightened,
but why am I here?
(Laughter)
Why is Ben Uffindell standing before you on a beautifully decorated stage?
With beaming lights bearing down upon him,
and a timer in front of him
that's, quite honestly, freaking me out right now.
(Laughter)
It's going down faster than it should. I want that checked.
(Laughter)
What gives me the right?
I'm here today because in mid March of this year,
I started a website called The Civilian.
For those of you who read The Civilian, it needs no introduction,
because it already has one, on the side, on the "About Us" tab.
(Laughter)
If you haven't seen it, then you should click around more, live a little.
(Laughter)
But if you're not familiar with The Civilian,
let me briefly explain to you what it is.
The Civilian is a satirical newspaper,
much like its American counterpart, The Onion.
A satirical newspaper
is a newspaper that essentially conducts
an ongoing and elaborate parody of the news.
We run headlines such as
"An overpay debacle solved by restarting computer."
(Laughter)
And most recently,
"Nation struggles to masturbate the Len Brown Affair."
(Laughter) (Applause)
When I started writing The Civilian,
many people around me said to me:
"Ben, a lot of people are going to take these stories seriously."
(Laughter)
And at the time, I said to those people,
"No, no, that's ridiculous.
No sensibly thinking human being
could possibly ever mistake these for the truth."
And I've spent the last 7 months eating humble pie.
(Laughter)
One of the first articles that I ran on The Civilian was titled:
"North Korea threatens New Zealand with nuclear attack.
Nothing we can do, says Key."
(Laughter) (Applause)
And within hours,
it had spread to every corner of the internet you can imagine.
And everyone was panicked, and terrified.
And believed that they were about to face the imminent doom.
Seared into my memory forever
is the Twitter conversation between two teenage girls
who were absolutely mortified,
telling one another they loved each other,
and saying their goodbyes.
(Laughter)
Just this week, The Civilian published a story titled:
"Stewart Island to be renamed Harry Styles as a result of an online poll."
(Laughter)
And I have a collection of some 400 tweets
of excited One Direction fans from all around the globe...
(Laughter)
Who want to come to New Zealand,
to, as one girl put it, be on Harry Styles.
(Laughter) (Applause)
And as if that weren't enough,
and this is true,
the Dutch Wikipedia, presently, as of today,
lists the English name for Stewart Island as Harry Styles.
(Laughter) (Applause)
But perhaps more fascinating to me than people believing The Civilian,
is people who don't believe it,
or who realize what it really is,
but they're angry about it.
I get emails to the effect of "Why?!"
Why would you do this?
Why would you write something that's not true?
(Laughter)
And you may laugh, fair enough,
but I actually found this to be a rather poignant question,
and it's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
And God forbid, your laughter is pushing me over the time limit.
(Laughter)
But I know that when people book me for a TEDx talk,
they expect me to be funny.
It's fine. I mean, that's my job.
But I'd just like to take a moment, if I may,
to be very earnest about something,
and about what satire is to me.
One year ago...
I was working as an English tutor,
and I was teaching kids, you know, vital lessons,
like the very real connections
between Shakespeare's Othello and The Matrix.
(Laughter)
I didn't have the kind of platform that I have now.
But I did have a lot.
I had a life that I was very, very lucky to have.
And at the time, I didn't know it.
I wasn't in a very happy place.
And I didn't know it because...
I was too busy worrying about my future to appreciate what I had in the present.
And this year, I've gained a lot.
I'm here.
So, to me, that's a lot.
But I've lost a lot as well.
I've lost a lot of the things that last year I took for granted.
I've had a rough couple of months.
And...
And when you start to feel that way...
sometimes it's very easy to feel disconnected.
To isolate yourself, to feel separate.
And once upon a time, that would have been me.
But I'm lucky,
because I get to wake up every morning
and do something that is about making connections.
I get to piece together narratives in my own way,
I get to take events from the world around me
and put them into digestible narratives that people can consume.
And to me, that's not actually that different to what the news does.
The news just takes abstract facts and processes them
into consumable narratives, that we can all understand,
that we can relate to, and make us feel something.
And that's why I do what I do.
It helps me to feel connected,
and stay connected, and stay happy,
when things aren't always going my way.
Sometimes The Civilian, in its coverage, has treated some...
reasonably serious events
with not much seriousness.
It has, you know, found fun in some rather serious issues.
It has had fun in the midst of misery.
And to many, that might be insensitive,
and it might seem wrong.
And you could be right. It might be.
Sometimes, I feel a little bit bad myself.
But understand that it is not born out of just silly humor.
It is not born out of thoughtless derision.
It is born out of the belief, the idea,
that even in our worst moments, there is humor.
That even in the darkest places, there is light.
And that no matter what,
we can always and should always laugh.
Thank you, Christchurch. You've been very good to me.
(Applause)