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Made in Shoreditch

I also contribute a weekly column to Made in Shoreditch magazine called 'Old East End/New East End', where I look at the relationship between the East End of old and new, looking at the changes and the stalwarts in landscape, residents and culture, focussing on one street or district each week. You can find it here.

Viral

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Like a feral, rabid, uncontrollable species hellbent on permeating the human race, a craze of uber-catchy pop nasties are finding their way into our charts, bringing with them dance crazes and, shudder, that most mundane and decidedly tortuous of processes: 'office banter' (I cringe nearly as much at this term as I do when I see Micah Paris speaking about one of her new records on some sugar coated cunt fest such as The One Show on BBC1).

With all of the gimmicky, unfunny, everyone-can-laugh-at-this-as-it-appeals-to-the-lowest-common-denominator hogwash of Mr Blobby and ITV's Benidorm, these soon to be forgotten creations are inserting themselves into the orifices of the pop charts (never exactly a medium averse to infection by drivel) with unsurprising, yet nonetheless dismaying, ease.

How to look like a grade A bollock in public

No, I'm not talking about those bubblegum singalong boy/girl group numbers - they've been here for years and the odd one of those is good - or even those shoddy dance tracks made by Calvin Harris or David Guetta with Pitbull and some other jizz rag shouting incessantly over them. No, I'm talking about the viral YouTube sensation turned  pop smash. I'm talking particularly about 'Gangnam Style' and 'Harlem Shake'. Chart behemoths in their own right, having been stupid videos sent around the interweb by various pests.

It seems that it has become a given that a viral YouTube hit that has a catchy song on it and pseudo ironic dance moves will chart well. It also seems that it's a given that some fucktard will perform the moves in some piss-ridden nightclub full of 'rah' types to rapturous laughter from his ballsack friends, all the while being touted as some kind of messianic creature by various chinny strangers around him pointing, saying something like "Giles, fucking hell man, that dude over there's doing the 'Gangnam Style', what an absolute ledge, yeah" or something equally as inane and infuriating.

Humour in the digital age

There's no escape from these things. It's as if 28 Days Later is happening, only through the medium of utterly moronic sonic bollocks. The virals  are viral, but publically. What next? Where will all of this pop culture perpetuation end? Music videos of music videos? (Fuck, Blink 182, you utter twats!) Endlessly repeated monologues? (Shit, that's me... here). A popular music form devoted to being about popular music? (Bowie, you git!). My fucking head hurts. I think it's time I lay down and think nice thoughts, like picturing each one of those gimp-clad shits being force-fed ball-bearings the size of ornamental globes... up their arseholes. That's better. Now, off to YouTube. Surely there's a nice documentary about Ballard or The Crimean War or something that everybody's watching that I've not seen. Oh no. The most popular lists are full of this other inexpedient shite. Maybe I'll shove great spheres into various holes of my own. I'll kick off with a horse meatball into my gob. Everyone will be doing it soon.

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