Charlie Brooker

cymrococh · January 8, 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1984991,00.html

I read a magazine yesterday and suddenly truly understood in my bones that human civilisation will die screaming in our lifetime.

It happened on the toilet. I was reading a copy of the free magazine Sky send to all their subscribers. Visually inhaling crap at one end, rectally exhaling it at the other; my corporeal self a mere conduit for the elemental crapforce that binds the universe together. I have all the spirituality of a doorframe. This is as close as I get to a religious experience.

Anyway. The Sky magazine is one of those Heat-a-like graphical holocausts where every millimetre of the page is plastered with rowdy colours and exclamation marks that crane their necks to squeal at you. I say I was "reading" it, but in reality you don't "read" magazines like that. There is too much visual noise, so instead you simply "look at" them, having first disengaged your temporal lobe so you don't feel like you are being stabbed in the mind by an over-zealous Christmas lighting display. Even though that is precisely what is happening.

And I was dumbly gazing at the bit that tells you which films are coming up on the movie channels, when I noticed that at the bottom of each synopsis sat a group of tiny faces. Celebrity faces. Nestling at the end of the paragraph, like part of the typography, as though the editors had done some research and discovered their readers had devolved to the point where their brains can no longer parse text unless it is broken up with miniature photos of their famous imaginary friends grinning back at them. I slapped myself awake and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

Slowly it dawned on me: this was a rating system. I flipped back a few pages, and sure enough, there was the key: a brightly-coloured box full of little celebrity faces, accompanied by a brief description of what they stood for. "It's fast, easy, and practical," lied the subhead. This is what each face meant:

· Brad Pitt - "Eye Candy"

· Peter Kay - "Laugh Out Loud"

· Michael Jackson - "Thriller"

· Sarah Jessica Parker - "Get the Girls Round"

· Christopher Lee - "Scary"

· Victoria Beckham - "Star Spotting"

· Chico - "Guilty Pleasure"

· Ant and Dec - "Family Fun"

· Vicky Pollard - "Real-Life Shocker"

Sure, it would insult the intelligence of a cod. Under this system, Schindler's List = Vicky Pollard.

But I knew it was worse than that. I just didn't know why, not yet. So I looked at it again. Somewhere in my head, a camel's back splintered beneath a straw. And I understood: this is madness. Genuinely: this is madness. Concepts replaced by faces. Grinning faces. It is not evidence of "dumbing down". It is the disjointed thought process of madness. That this is even vaguely acceptable is the most dizzying madness of all.

I wanted to run into the street, without even pausing to wipe, and hurl myself, boggle-eyed, at passers-by, flapping the magazine around, screaming: "HELP! WE'VE LOST OUR MINDS! I HAVE PROOF! I HAVE PROOF."

But I didn't. I stayed put; pooing and afraid.

And I thought: Our leaders lie, and we know they have lied, and there is war in our name, and the world kicks and boils itself to death and we do nothing but stare into the tiny grinning faces of people we don't even know; faces that are, apparently, more "fast, easy and practical" than language itself.

I give us six years, tops.

Andy @ Allerton · January 8, 2007

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