Yesterday I tuned into Larry King (because my remote was broken) and I was surprised to see James Cameron on the show talking about the oil spill. This surprised me; James Cameron is not a marine biologist or an environmentalist, he's the guy who collects small golden statues of naked men. Having James Cameron talking about the oil spill is akin to having Chris Nolan give a speech on how to stop crime in a major metropolis.
"Did somebody say ‘big budget nightmare'? I swear I heard ‘big budget'…"But what really bothered me was what a negative spin they managed to put on the whole thing, using words like "irrecoverable," "disaster," and "ecosystem." This spill happened 90 days ago; if people really cared enough about the ocean they would get Will.I.Am and some white people to remix something.
Through this whole spill though, the one thought that kept going through my mind was, "Wow, BP Oil Executive is a great career path." They know how badly they've screwed up, but they don't really seem to mind. "Oh what's that, oil is gushing out of the ocean floor? Well then, let's get a real time feed of that on our site, it sounds like it could drive traffic!"
Let's be honest, if you were to become a super villain, there isn't a much better day job than "Oil Executive": it's lucrative, it's shady, and it deals with a substance whose viscosity and color match the blood that runs through your soulless shell. You go to your job, which consists of attending meetings and inspecting (not really, I guess) off-shore oil rigs during the day, and at night you do something super evil like build a cancer ray or work on developing Farmville for the iPhone. All you have to do is act concerned and feign compassion, and you're golden. BP posted a video a few weeks after the spill where one of the executives was standing on a rig, overlooking the mess, promising people that they were trying their hardest to clean it up.
The power that BP seems to have over people is admirable: so far they've blocked people from taking pictures, talking to the media, and walking the beaches. If that wasn't enough, BP has started to filter Google search terms for the spill and the company—a scary thought. In this day and age Google is supposed to be the mecca of knowledge, a tool that even a simpleton can use to learn guitar, find gossip, or build a bomb. BP is telling people what facts they can and can't find and since most people don't care enough about an issue to really research it, a simple Google search is considered a trusted source (if you read a Wikipedia article on it, it officially gives you a PhD on the topic). I can just imagine a Hank Scorpio-type character sitting in his Caribbean volcano-lair with a group of Russian men in fur coats surrounding him and a secret agent tied over a pool of laser sharks behind him while he talks to his PR lady…
BP Head: What's the problem.
Secretary: Well sir, public image is incredibly low. Information is starting to spread about this horrible problem.
BP Head: Information, you say?!?! Very well, get rid of it.
PR: Sir?
BP Head: You heard me! Clean out the interwebs.
Imagine if McDonald's could filter Google results so that when you searched "calories in a McMuffin" or "what is a filet of fish" you could get only company-approved results….
So yeah, there's some oil leaking and it's screwing up nature, but what you don't know is that it's all part of the master plan. It's been years in the making, but when the weather machine is finally built, BP can just get the wind to push all the oil out to sea and then zap it with lightning ‘til it goes away. That or create a Firecane and wipe out an island, either way.