Al Byrne
People are stupid. Unendingly, gruesomely stupid, like a lobotomised, shaved badger – every last one of us a fetid, gormless lump of uselessness.
I apologise for the crass generalisation there, but really, it needed to be said. And really, I should have said it in big bold letters: a collection of blithe, oblivious pixels, squatted thoughtlessly right there on your screen, taunting the entire laughable idea of your pointless existence. A person is just a massive stockpile of meat and sweat, given two arms and an ugly face, granted the ability to totter around meaninglessly by the aimless dalliances of evolution, and cursed to be forever incapable of anything resembling intelligent thought in large groups. People are stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.
Need proof? Just look at the reaction stirred up by the apparently questionable decisions on ITV’s documentary on the collapse of western civiliastion, The X Factor, recently. A pair of talentless pipsqueaks (John and Edward, referred to by idiots as “Jedward”) get picked to stay in the competition over some faceless identi-voiced drone (Lucie, a.k.a SINGER MODULE 5.7) and entire nation guffed themselves silly in indignation. It was front page news. Once more for effect: two walking, talking lumps of asbestos were made into front page news by your collective splutterings. People are stupid.
Let’s be very clear: I don’t give a flaming monkey’s ballsack about who wins or loses or wets themselves after an errant firework explodes in their face on X Factor – anytime I watch it, I end up having to amuse myself by imagining each contestant being picked off by a determined, well-hidden sniper. (Or, at the very least, amusing myself by participating in a grim, Twitter-wide bollocking of the show.) But I did find myself laughing at the people complaining about slipping standards on the show – that it used to be decided on talent rather than carefully-judged marketing potential as assessed by a collection of devastatingly sterile judges, combined with the passing whims of the unwashed and unthinking masses.
Please. The day Shayne Ward – winner of series two – is the most talented anything in a series is the day Satan’s arsehole ruptures open and envelopes the earth in a colossal fecal tsunami.
Oh, sure, Leona Lewis is talented – she can do a convincing impersonation of Mariah Carey molesting some octaves, if that’s what you’re into – but don’t kid yourself into thinking she won because she has elastic vocal cords. She won solely because that was where the money was – because that’s what people were paying to see. Same as people are paying to see Jedward (honestly, a little piece of me dies every time I say that). It’s a circus freak show, and Jedward are the freakiest of the freaky – and people are always looking to be freaked out for some cheap entertainment. (As evidenced by the continued presence of Cheryl Cole, or as she’s known in the freak show industry, “The Prettiest Girl With The Ugliest Voice”. It’s like there’s a wormhole in her windpipe that every word has to go through, becoming mangled and strained along the way. It’s genuinely distressing.)
I’m not saying anything most people don’t already know, I realise. We’re all painfully aware that The X Factor is just an easy way for Simon Cowell to line his pockets with the money of berks, and for Louis Walsh to take his sleazy used car salesman act to TV once or twice a week, and for Dannii Minogue to work through her interminable inferiority complex. It’s an easy way for ITV to get incredi-normous ratings every weekend – y’know, by alternately embarrassing and exploiting members of the public – and it keeps about four thousand pyrotechnics engineers and editing suite workers in paid employment. We’re all in on the joke, to some extent, even if it’s on us.
So can we drop the outrage and get on with laughing about it? If Jedward end up winning this series – and let’s face it, chances are they will, given that the current “judges’ favourite” has all the charisma of a blank sheet of A4 paper – let’s all just laugh and laugh until our eyes fall out. We’ll add it onto the list of the omens of the coming rapture and get on with our lives, until next series, when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse audition, singing fucking “Bleeding Love”. We’d have to be pretty stupid not to vote for them, right?
We’re doomed.
