What if, one day, Jonathon just decided to stop all this nonsense.
Or is he too far down the rabbit hole?
Could he de-transition from being, well, himself?
What would that even look like?
Would it be worse or better?
Like Japanese knotweed, the animosity that Yaniv has seeded across a great swathe of Canada, and beyond, will likely never be fully eradicated.
Lets say though, for the sake of argument, that Justin Trudeau passes some piece of technology-augmented legislation that wipes all memory of Yaniv and his past transgressions from the collective memory. Suddenly he is a stranger to us - a morbidly obese Jon Pertwee-era, Worzel Gummidge lookalike, whose choice of outdoor attire is limited to whatever garnishes the racks of second-hand maternity dresses.
- We remain unaware of his inveterate noncery; that he habitually insinuates himself into the direct messages of underage girls, who he furnishes with lewd photographs and none too subtle pleas for sexual contact.
- The businesses that were closed down by his proactive brand of busybody racism are unknown to us.
- His inept, Dr Evil-level grifting, in pursuit of the magic figure of 30,000 dollars, have been memory holed.
- Those poor souls who gazed upon the image of what Yaniv claims to be his front hole ( a pustulent chasm, so foul you can smell it through the screen) no longer stare blankly ahead in thousand yard increments.
Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones no longer plays on a continuous loop in their heads. The world has been restored to a state of Eden and they are, once more, at peace.
In short Yaniv has a clean slate.
In the past there have been cows who have stepped away from the brink and who now lead functional lives. There are people who currently have active threads on these forums who would improve their lives immeasurably, if only they would simmer down a little and scale down their activity on social media. Yaniv is not one of these people. He is a man securely sewn into his cow costume, which has been bonded to his skin using special, insoluble adhesive. There has been wide speculation regarding the exact nature of his mental illness. Whatever the clinical definition might be, I think everybody would agree that it's getting worse, and that the associated anti-social behaviour is also escalating. Yaniv could remove himself to some far-flung corner of the world - a place that Coca Cola and sexually-deviant German backpackers have yet to penetrate - however he cannot out-waddle his own demons. The downward spiralling patterns of behaviour, that are given physical form by his poor impulse control, will ruin his life, along with the lives of those around him, wherever he goes.
There is a certain type of person, often called 'Moon flower' or 'Phaedra', who will gittishly claim, in-between choruses of
Fire Child Sing, that indigenous peoples possess a wisdom that is lost to those of us who forsook using every part of the Buffalo for a world of fancy indoor plumbing. While it is tempting to meet such claims with the standard "fuck off, Rousseau", I think that they might be onto something: A remote tribe who, up until first contact with Yaniv, had no word in their language for tampon, might deal with him more effectively than the Canadian legal system, by butchering his carcass and perhaps fashioning his ample sheets of skin into a large tent.
I wonder if Yaniv is able to grasp that he is the ultimate source of many of his problems. If you prodded and poked him into the cave of evil on Dagobah, where he was forced to swing his pink walking cane in the direction of a shadowy figure, who turned out to be his mirror image, would he be able to grasp the symbolic hint? Or would he accuse Yoda of sexual harassment and attempt to sue the ailing Jedi master for 30,000 galactic credits?
