Behold! We are now living in "age of the Rachet"

                       The age of the ratchet is upon us

A rat is a rodent. A hatchet is a small axe-like contraption used for cutting. If you combine the two words, you get the word ‘rachet’ – which means rat-like behaviour (especially by women) which cuts deeply into society’s mores, and more so, morals.

Like the behaviour captured at Masaku by Pulse in the recently concluded ‘Masaku 7s’ rugby tournament which the NACADA nanny Mututho wants to ban for exhibiting behaviour worse than displayed at ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ (like he was there!). What he really means is that the behaviour was ‘rachet.’

But how did we get here, from the picnics at the Arboretum that we used to go for as teens to pain-in-the-rectum acts by young ‘uns that we could well call Orgy in the Outdoors?

And here, it is ironic that the ‘bad manners’ we now see at these outdoor events were actually spawned indoors, in the interior, multiple and multi-faceted yet integrated worlds of social media. Virtual reality spun out of control and re-enacted in the physical 3D world.

It is only ten years ago that a Harvard genius called Mark Zuckerberg was introducing something called ‘The Facebook’ to a few folks in the world, with the promise that ‘it’s free, and always will be.’

What he might not have foreseen was the way ‘Facebook,’ (having dropped the ponderous article ‘The’) would lead the world out of the ‘friend zone’ and free folks up to re-invent themselves (and this is how ‘rachets’ were born) in the Badlands of social media as ‘Badasses’, bimbos and b**ches (not to mention cyber-bullies and hate-speechers, a different topic).

Zuckerberg certainly did not foresee the other riders of the social media – Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, ‘WhatsApp’ (bought recently for a whopping Sh1.6 trillion shillings by Facebook) – that would locally make the Age of the Rachet a reality.

Here we have to say that if Vera Sidika is the stained/bleached ‘bad’ Cain of the Age of the Rachet, the ‘Eve’ who started the tin-gold rush for the cache of the rachet (‘being a socialite’) was one Huddah Monroe, through the displays of nude photos in certain Internet sites, and strategic ‘marketing’ through popular blogs that disseminate pictures of these rachet anatomies.

Pulse is not immune to pushing the ‘rachet’ agenda. We were the first of the mainstreamers, to claim the term, to run stories on one ‘Pendo’ and even created the ‘big ass’ culture (Sir Mix-A-lot’s ‘I like big butt’ is the soundtrack that should be running through your mind right now) through our cover of one Risper Faith (but she quickly was eclipsed by the biggest derriere of all time, Vera Sidika).

Vera literally ‘blew up’ because of being a video vixen in the Collo and P Unit music video of ‘Dendai,’ and from there, the die was cast. Rachet time!

Young lady Pulsers went wild, exhibiting ‘nudies’ of themselves on social media. Big-bottomed ladies took to wearing tight pants, and the rest of the ladies followed (birthday) suit.

You have heard of the expression ‘dressed to the nines’? Well, rachets undress to the undies. And they could climb the Andes for fifteen seconds of ‘fame.’ Actually, they would not.

The reality is that rachets display their gross manners and mannerisms as a short cut to the good life – the end desire being what Karl Marx called ‘false consciousness.’ What rachets want through their narcissistic behaviour and big hair is access to the big players in the celebrity industry, big businessmen looking for young twits to date (so they can be taken to Dubai for holiday) and big cars to drive – the lifestyle myth that the likes of V. Sidika display through their dubious (as in make believe Valhalla) interviews/lies and bleach on television shows, their ‘rachet’ thread of ballyhoo and baloney.

It is the millennial equivalent of the Victorian penny romances/ pot boilers of which writer Kate Flint said in 1994 were ‘scenes of old baronial houses, country roads, wealthy mansions, floral parks, old and stately trees, delicious glens, limpid streams, hunting expeditions, billiard rooms and continental pleasures. Rich titled men such as earls and knights, and beautiful women who spurned work, spoke snobbishly, and treated low life ignominiously.’

Replace this with fantasies of rent-paid-up apartments, countryside events like Sevens, fancies of BBQ in Karen, sex in the park (green lodgings), delicious glands ‘eaten and blown,’ non-limpid organs (Viagra), flesh ‘hunting’ expeditions, pool tables, continental holidays to S.A., rich guys reveries, and them being the ‘beautiful’ (bleached, big-butted, whatever) women who spurn work but are the ignoramuses and low lives, and what you have is ‘rachet world,’ both real, unreal, surreal.

Blame Miley Cyrus and throw in the twerking and tonguing, the non-stop selfies (and lately silly ‘groundies’ that may be a passing fad like ‘planking’) and the twisted world of the rachet is complete!

The laughable thing is many rachets are too silly to see what the eternal world of the Internet may do to their prospects of a partner or employment when in their later twenties, say in 2022. Yes, YOLO, but there is also the day after tomorrow – and it will look like a blue Monday for the rachet.

Radio presenter Ciru Muriuki (not to be mistaken with Ciku Muiruri) was recently accused by some rachets of being ‘envious’ when she disparaged their behaviour at the Sevens.

“What is there to be envious about being shagged in a car boot, or doggy style under a thorn tree in Ukambani?” Ciru responded.

To her and the rachets, I say, bury the hatchet.

But it is not events like the 7s that are to blame. Or the media. Poor parenting for sixteen years is what produces a seventeen year old rachet, with all the moral restraint of a mad kangaroo on marijuana.