Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category
Society’s Soulless
7th April 2008 | 6:08
Express yourself! Make a WeeMee, a Wii Mii, a Zwinky! Personalise your MySpace with trashy colour schemes and music that “defines” you. The more you put on, the sexier you are. Spray more, get more. What does your toilet say about you?
I’m sorry, but what the fuck is this? At what point in our sorry history did culture become something you bought rather than created? 1776? I’m sick of the society which defines self-expression as a combination of pre-sets and friendship as the acceptance of an e-invitation. It was as I walked home from Uni one day that it struck me; for all of society’s shallowness, the depth in which it wallows in its own vapidity is infinite. Words could never express just how vacuous and insignificant our lives have become. Worse, we try and fill our existential cavities with the stories of other, equally insignificant lives, as if the holes will overlap, magically producing meaning from shared worthlessness. Sitting outside WHSmiths eating my McSoulless, I suppress the urge to throw my burger at anyone leaving with a copy of Closer or Hello – though, if I succumbed, at least they’d have an actual problem of their own to worry and gossip about. Increasingly, via celebrity “culture” and 30-second ad slots, we’re fed our thoughts and wants; encouraged to express ourselves via mass-produced cartoon faces, ringtones, fragrances and clothes, when in reality we no longer have anything to express. You are what you eat, and we’re all regurgitating society’s capitalist faeces.
This bugs me because people aren’t genetically cultureless, yet there’s a clear divide between those who enjoy and create the Arts (rah rah) and those who read The Sun (tits hurrah). Something terrible happens in the economic trashcan that mutates innocent children into chavs and criminals, the result of familial breakdown, poor education and a Netto health that snowballs and manifests through generations. Children to whom “field trip” is a literal term, used to concrete football pitches. Disparity emerges between the faces and the faceless, until each becomes the drug for the other; mutually defining, overlapping holes. A smiling woman proudly stands next to the open boot of her car. Her family’s happy this Christmas because Asda gave her a 2 for 1 on crates of hard, legal drugs, enticing us to blow away our consciousness in a sad attempt at enjoying life in these dirty, overpopulated cities, tumours on the face of the world, interconnected via a latice of concrete veins that transport the cancerous cells, slowly killing the only mother we ever had. High streets and local radio stations; identikit logos for identikit counties. The same people in the same places, talking about the same sports in the same pubs, drinking the same beer to wash away the same lives. Talentless graffiti by pathetic punks yearning to make their mark on the world: “AJ”, “Max 06″, “Infinite”. Splintered pavement suffers the wrath of a suffocating Earth, splintered communities suffer the wrath of a suffocating populous, deprived of pride, culture and self-respect. Congratulations.
First published in the January 2007 edition of Impact
