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The New York/Dublin Portal is switched off after less than a week.

The livestream portal between New York City and Dublin demonstrates why we cannot have nice things.

The portal — which, let’s face it, is really just two giant webcams set up 5,111km from each other — was operating less than a week before people’s behaviour deteriorated.

It all began well enough. Curious people gathering to look at those from the other side of the world. There were waves, thumbs up and lots of smiles.

And then it all went downhill…

Blokes bent over and pulled down their pants.

Women bared their breasts.

One woman on the Dublin side was arrested after spending 20 minutes “grinding” her backside against the screen. All in the name of international kinship, obviously. Why hasn’t Antony Blinken tried that in Ukraine?

Some people took the opportunity to urinate, as you do.

Most people flipped each other the bird.

A bloke on the Irish side thought it would be funny to hold up vision on his iPhone of the 9/11 terror attacks, just to remind New Yorkers of the day 3,000 of them died. Classy.

Another used the screen to flash images of a swastika. How very 2024.

They should have called it the Trolls Portal.

Good Intentions

The stories weren’t all bad, of course. The portal made possible family reunions and, reportedly, even facilitated a few long distance romances.

Portal creator Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys said,

“Portals are an invitation to meet people above borders and differences and to experience our world as it really is — united and one.”

He said it would enable people to “embrace the beauty of global interconnectedness”, by which I don’t think he meant breasts, but hey, that’s where it ended up.

Officials on the Dublin side have now closed down the art installation until they can figure out a way to stop the inappropriate behaviour.

What does the social experiment say about human nature?

Fallen Nature

The great theologian Francis Schaffer once described humanity as a “glorious ruin”. I think the description is apt.

The glory of humanity is not hard to see.

The amazing technology. The waves. The smiles. The wonder. The innocent laughter.

But, of course, the tragic flaws in human nature are only ever barely beneath the surface.

The inappropriate behaviour, the hate, the self-destructive stupidity.

It took less than a week for a wonderful opportunity of global interconnectedness to descend into a lewd demonstration of global degeneracy.

Has anything in recent times better demonstrated the truth of that ancient Christian doctrine, The Fall, than the New York portal?

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report.

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