The Global Scramble for Ben Arbuckle: How One Man’s Silence Became the Loudest Weapon on Earth
Ben Arbuckle Is the Quietest Man on Earth—and That Terrifies Us All
by Dave’s Locker International Desk
Geneva—For a planet that never stops talking, the sudden appearance of a man who refuses to is, frankly, an act of war. Meet Ben Arbuckle, 42, American passport, no fixed address, and—according to the only leaked Interpol file—a decibel output lower than a Trappist monk on barbiturates. While the rest of us broadcast our breakfast burritos to 3.8 billion strangers, Arbuckle has achieved the geopolitically subversive feat of saying absolutely nothing since 2019.
Which is why every intelligence service from Mossad to the Vatican’s Swiss Guard has opened a file marked “Arbuckle, B.—Silence Asset?” The French call it le vide stratégique; the Russians, молчаливый ядерный вариант. Rough translation: a weaponised quiet that makes the rest of our yap look like a liability.
How did one softly breathing Midwesterner become the Schrodinger’s cat of soft power? Start with the numbers. In the past twelve months, global data traffic grew 28%; podcast uploads alone could fill the Library of Alexandria every 48 hours. Meanwhile, Arbuckle’s cumulative audio footprint is 0.0 seconds. That negative space is now tradable: the Zurich Futures Exchange quietly launched the “ARBSIL Index” last quarter, letting hedge funds short conversational inflation. When Arbuckle coughed in a Ljubljana bus station—his first involuntary sound in four years—Nasdaq hiccupped 0.3%.
The Chinese have noticed. State media ran a 2,000-word editorial praising his “heroic restraint against decadent logorrhea.” Within days, Beijing announced the “Arbuckle Initiative,” a nationwide program encouraging citizens to shut up for one hour daily. Productivity jumped 1.7%; divorce filings dropped 9%. The irony, of course, is that Arbuckle isn’t even aware he’s become a role model. He was last seen in Tangier boarding a cargo freighter bound for Montevideo, nodding politely at the captain’s weather report and saying—well, you know.
Europe tried to weaponise him next. The EU floated a proposal to station Arbuckle at Brussels press briefings; his mere presence, they argued, would shame MEPs into 30-second sound bites instead of 30-minute rants. The plan collapsed when Arbuckle slipped across the Bosporus on a Bulgarian coal barge, presumably drawn by the siren song of cheaper kebabs and fewer questions.
Meanwhile, the Americans want him back—badly. The Pentagon has budgeted $12 million for “Project HUSH,” a black-ops campaign to reverse-engineer Arbuckle’s silence for battlefield use. Imagine a stealth platoon that communicates exclusively by eyebrow semaphore. Sources say DARPA’s already testing noise-cancelling helmets that replicate his “ambient aura,” but early trials left soldiers too existentially calm to pull triggers. Congress may classify inner peace as a munition.
The United Nations, never missing a chance to draft a resolution nobody will read, convened an emergency session on “The Right to Silence as a Human Right.” Delegates spoke for nine hours straight before noticing Arbuckle in the gallery, gently asleep. The motion passed unanimously; the world’s translators went on strike, having nothing to translate.
Of course, there are cynics—this is Dave’s Locker, after all—who insist the whole phenomenon is just another commodity. They point to the cottage industry of Arbuckle merch: limited-edition earplugs in Zurich, artisanal “Quietude Retreats” in Bali, and—because late capitalism can monetise anything—NFTs of his blank voice messages. Sales topped $40 million last month, sound optional.
But the deeper dread is existential. In an era when every silence is filled with push notifications, Arbuckle reminds us that quiet isn’t emptiness; it’s potential energy. Every second he doesn’t speak is a referendum on our compulsion to fill the void with hot takes and cold wars. And that, dear reader, is why the planet’s most powerful governments are chasing a man whose only crime is breathing slower than the news cycle.
So if you see a polite, unremarkable fellow at the far end of the bar nursing a single beer for three hours, lips sealed, eyes amused, do the decent thing: buy him another round and then, for the love of geopolitical stability, shut up. The world depends on it.
