I can make you hate (49 page)

Just as rubberised assassins represent a tiny proportion of women, these idiotic pebbledicks represent a tiny proportion of men. The trouble for the games industry is that on some level it believes it has to pander to these monumental bellwastes. It doesn’t, and it’ll only gain widespread acceptance when it learns to ignore them. In thirty years, it’s scarcely improved on
Ms.
Pac-Man
.
Time to push forward.

A curious sensation swept over me the other day when I was idly flipping through TV channels and found myself accidentally striding brain-first into an episode of MTV’s
Geordie Shore.
If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a ‘structured reality’ programme in which a gaggle of unbelievable idiots are stuck in a fancy house and intermittently hosed down with alcohol.

I use the term ‘unbelievable idiots’ for good reason. I don’t believe they exist. For one thing, their level of idiocy is hard to accept on a human level. There’s a reason the show isn’t called
Cleverclogs Corner
. You’d have more chance of decent conversation if you sewed a larynx into a lamb shank and asked if it’d seen any good films lately. They communicate using facial expressions and farts, with the occasional howl of rage thrown in for good measure. Even when attempting to mate.

I say ‘attempting to mate’. I mean ‘thumping away at each other’s goolies like a builder grimly trying to knock a hole in a wall before lunch’. Since
Geordie Shore
is broadcast on television, where graphic footage of penetrative sex is only permitted in an educational context (or when Ofcom isn’t looking), the camera stands back a bit for these interludes. There are a lot of shuddering duvets: sex is depicted beneath-the-covers, in a locked-off wide shot, night-vision style, just like a wildlife programme about rutting bison, but less romantic.

But let’s not judge them by the content of their character. Let’s judge them by the colour of their skin, which is terracotta. Mostly. Apart from the pale ones.

The way they look is the second unbelievable thing about them. Not all of them; most of them are sort of normal. But one or two of the men look … well they don’t look real, put it that way. They’ve got sculpted physiques, sculpted hairdos, sculpted eyebrows, and as far as I can tell, no skin pores. They’re like characters from the Japanese fighting game
Tekken
– which, if you’re not familiar with it, is not noted for a documentary-style slavish adherence to realism.

The most unsettling of the Geordies is a man called James, who looks precisely like a terrifying vinyl sex-doll version of Ricky Gervais. Or possibly a CGI Manga impersonation of a young Ed Balls. I’ve been to Newcastle. There’s no way James is from Newcastle. He’s from space. Deep space. My guess would be he’s actually some form of sentient synthetic meat that crudely disguises itself as other life forms, but only to an accuracy of about 23 per cent. He’s awesomely creepy to behold. Seriously, if James popped up on the comms screen of the USS
Enterprise
,
Captain Kirk would shit his own guts out. And that’s the sort of behaviour that can undermine a leader’s authority.

As I watched, I suddenly realized that this reality contestant ‘look’ – the strangely meticulous hair, the overdone tan, the teeth, the eyebrows – this is what we’ll be laughing at in thirty years’ time. Just as people still insist on finding seventies sideburns or eighties ‘big hair’ hilarious, so the fancy-dress partygoers of the future will be staggering drunkenly down the high street looking like a cross between Peter Andre and a sexually ambiguous robot.

Ah, you say, but we already laugh at that look now. And you’re right, we do. But try telling that to your offspring, thirty years from now. They’ll assume it was all taken sincerely at the time, like those seventies sideburns were.

What’s more, they’ll think
everyone
looked like that. There won’t be any photos or videos around to prove otherwise. Ah, you say a second time, but we film and photograph every waking moment of our lives! And once more, you’re on to something. But nothing we film and shoot now will be compatible with whatever holographic hand widgets we’ll be using in the future. And the quality will seem appalling. Think of the first phone you ever got with a built-in camera. Still got all those pictures, have you?

Of course not: the quality is appalling. Some of those pixels are the size of your fist. And, besides, you lost them years ago. That phone’s probably in a drawer somewhere, surrounded by defunct chargers and a hole punch you used a grand total of once.

What I’m saying is the inmates of
Geordie Shore, The Only Way is Essex
and
Made in Chelsea
represent our generation’s ‘time capsule’ for the future. That’s how the people of 2042 will think we look, spoke and behaved.

Which is a shame because they’re not supposed to be
representative
. They’re supposed to be different from ‘normal people’. They’re walking caricatured receptacles for spite. Their job is to make absolutely everyone who tunes in hate them. Instantly hate them. Hate them so much they can’t take their eyes off them.

Those plucked eyebrows make it 5 per cent faster to form a grudge, which makes James something of a genius. Turns out you
can
polish a turd.

People no longer simply aspire to be famous. They aspire to be hated. ‘Authorised media hate figure’ is now a valid career. Which brings me to the curious sensation I mentioned at the start. I realised that maybe we need these people. Maybe we’re all so angry and disappointed and bewildered, we need a free bunch of people to look down on and despise: they’re a handy vessel. This is a noble public duty they’re carrying out. They’re our stress balls. Our punchbags. Our ballbags.

Face facts: if it wasn’t for the cast of
Geordie Shore
and countless others like them, you’d be killing your neighbours with your bare hands.

Not that you care, dear reader, but thanks are due to the following human beings:

For the words in this book: Tim Lusher and Malik Meer at the
Guardian
, Jo Unwin at Conville and Walsh, and Julian Loose at Faber and Faber.

For co-writing my
10 O’Clock Live /2011 Wipe
pieces: Ben Caudell, Alan Connor, Shaun Pye, Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris.

For sorting out all manner of bibble: Annabel Jones at Zeppotron.

For putting up with me
the whole bloody time
: my wife, Konnie.