Burlington-based Swirlington Telecom Inc. entered a bid Friday promising residents a complete and utter loss of faith in their elected officials at speeds well above one gigabit per second.
“We took a long, hard look at how this bidding process was slowly causing more and more Queen City residents to lose trust in their local officials and realized we could deliver those same results at much higher speeds,” said Swirlington Telecom CEO Ihav Noesperiens.
Noesperiens acknowledged that doing so would be no easy task.
“So far the debate has been as framed as ‘you either support the local option, or you literally helped rig the DNC against Bernie Sanders,’” he said. “We admit it’s going to be extremely difficult to effectively compete with that type of reductionist thinking, but we feel we’re well suited to handle the challenge of completely eroding people’s trust in City Hall.”
ST proposes using Burlington’s existing fiberoptic network to deliver a “swirl” of accusations against Burlington officials every time users go online.
“And we’re not talking about the same old ‘Developer Mayor’ stuff you’ve already heard a thousand times,” Noesperiens said. “We’re talking juicy accusations, like, councilors who say they quit their day job, but actually didn’t. Or maybe one about a city councilor drinking a $5,000 bottle of wine with a Wall Street executive while talking about kicking poor people in the shins.”
When asked if any of these accusations would have any basis in reality, Noesperiens replied that that wasn’t the point. “This isn’t about rational debate. It’s about sowing the seeds of mistrust within the community at breakneck speeds,” he said.
“Listen, any idiot can point out that this sale is part of a previous settlement to pay back Citibank for the fiber network they largely bankrolled so they don’t sue the shit out of Burlington … again,” Noesperiens said. “But that robs city officials of the opportunity to take turns throwing each other under the bus while trying to appeal to the city’s ‘Nuh Uh, I’m More Progressive Than You Are’ party.
“We just want to expedite the process of continually fanning the flames of distrust to help maintain a narrative that not getting your way literally means the end of Burlington civilization as you know it,” he continued. “We believe Swirlington Telecom has the technical expertise to do exactly that.”
Burlington City Council is expected to discuss the Swirlington Telecom proposal at their next meeting on Monday after a two to three hour period of accusing one another of concealing conflicts of interest.
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2017.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
Dang this bidder sounds too good to be true. Noesperiens speaks a language we certainly understand. This is an opportunity this city cannot pass on. They pass the first criteria of being local. But. Wait. Hold on. Crap… I just noticed the Inc. Sorry, we don’t like corporations here in Burlington.