End of decade lists are often nothing but an exercise in papering over the cracks. Lost in a haze of nostalgia, they serve only to make us forget how tediously awful the past ten years have been by reminding us of the few things that were exceptional. It’s not as if anyone needs help recalling how ‘incredibly prescient’ The Strokes debut album was or how The Wire is a ‘profound gestation on racial antagonism in America’ . They’ve been up in our grill constantly for so long not even Fritzl’s babymother daughter could avoid them.
I know it’s easy to laugh and it’s easy to hate, and that it takes guts to be gentle and kind etc etc (thanks for the reminder, Sankey), but I’m pushing that aside for a moment. I’m letting my natural joie de vivre take a back seat. Because, for the sake of posterity, it’s worth remembering that this past decade actually stunk mostly of shit, trapped under the weight of mass egotism, selfishness and crippling anti-intellectualism. Here’s ten reminders of just that (like you could ever forget).
HARRY POTTER
Do you eat Dairy Lea Lunchables? Does your mum buy your clothes for you, drop you at school and tuck you in bed at night with a kiss for her “special little man”? Do you have to be in before it gets dark, but sometimes get to stay up and watch Have I Got News For You with your dad? No, because you’re an adult. So why the fuck are you reading Harry Potter?
In reading Harry Potter (probably while on public transport), you’re effectively advertising to the world that you have a mental age of 9 and, even more depressingly, that you’re proud of it. This retarded phenomena has been so pronounced throughout the noughties that the last ten years was a parade of vacantly beaming adultchildren regressing so far back through their childhood they were basically swimming in reverse up their dad’s urethra.
Stewart Lee got it right when he said that in reading every book ever published, you’re worse off than someone who has read nothing at all. Imagine then, if the only book you did read was about a boy wizard…
THE ‘BLOGOSPHERE’
Apparently, there are something like 70million blogs clogging up the internet right now. Less than 1% of those will have anything worth saying. Taking the “anyone can play guitar” didactic of punk and applying it to ‘journalism’ is a beautiful idea in theory. In reality, however, it resulted in seemingly endless rivers of shit characterised by misinformation, illiterate soundbite posturing and the same ideas repeated more often than Friends.
Because of the ‘blogosphere’, the noughties was not just about having nothing to say and saying it too loudly; it was saying nothing relentlessly until everyone believed it was true. And it’s to that we must give thanks for the creation of Lily Allen. You get what you deserve, I suppose. Fuck you, democracy.
‘INDIE’
Dear TopShop, Hollywood, Edith Bowman, Skins, Soccer AM, advertising agencies, Zac Braff, Peaches Geldof, The Fly,
Thank you for ruining music.
Sincerely,
UGG BOOTS
UGG boots may look like a normal shoe with downs syndrome, but they do serve one very important purpose: a warning sign. No matter how beautiful a girl may be, if she has these eye-hating deformaties wrapped around her shins, you know in an instant that she’s not for you because her idea of style equates to wearing something so hideous the people that make them named them after an abbreviation for ugly. You can’t say you weren’t warned.
Or as my friend puts it, they’re “cunt antennae”.
And how come everyone that wears them can only walk on the inside of their feet, so that the boot constantly looks like it’s melting? What’s with that? Is it disability chic? The only thing that could make them worse is if they were Australian. Oh, wait a minute…
PIERS MORGAN
Being called Piers and choosing to disguise a double barrel surname in order to seem like a ‘man of the people’ should be sufficient enough reason to detest the dude. But Piers is an ambitious cunt, slovenly and relentlessly draping himself across popular culture this last decade like a date rapist on a night out in Newcastle.
Undermining the notion of human decency, he’s somehow attained the status of ‘authority’ despite lacking a single ounce of morality, taste or decorum. When you are in charge of a newspaper predicated on the idea of a free press, not having ethics is kind of a big deal.
So disgusting is he, not only does he make Simon Cowell seem like he might be human, even Jeremy Clarkson is offended enough by him to smack the guy in the face three times. That’s the equivalent of murderers killing paedophiles in prison.
Click next page for 5 more noughties cultural abominations.
