Culpable Responsibility

You've all seen the newscasts. The ones with hordes of frothing, bearded men, waving burning flags, burning effigies, and just about anything else that's flammable. We in the west have done some injustice, percieved or otherwise, and everyone is out setting fire to things and chanting "Death to America" or something. And up to a point, you can dismissively get away with some level of believing that they're actually crazy. It's a popular view that we hold. They're just angry people, and we've done nothing wrong.

Less popular is the notion that we, somehow, somewhere along the line, might have actually done something to hack these guys off. But before we get too political, lets stop. Forget the evils of Capitalism, or discussions on Culutral Imperialism or overlly agressive laser-guided foreign policy. I postulate that the problem arises not from these diffuse and politically charged topics, but entirely from really bad Reality TV shows.

I was subjected to Wife Swap USA on Saturday, and basically it was back to back hours of prime Al Qaeda recruitment film. By the time we got halfway through the second episode, the only thing on my mind was how quickly I'd be able to get my hands on tonnes of high explosives and completely level the protagonists houses. There are few things more rage inducing than annoying people on Reality TV shows.

"After a particularly agitating episode of 'My Super Sweet 16', people demand vengeance on Kirsty and her doting rich parents."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are many, many, many people in this world who have unwittingly purportated this level of carnage. From 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding', though 'Wifeswap', 'Come Dine with Me' and all the way to horrors like 'My Super Sweet...' 'Britain's Got Strictly Come X Factor On Ice', 'Tool Academy' and 'The Only Way is Essex', television has descended into a mire of shameless self promotion by ego crazed narcassists desperate to degrade themselves before millions. Some channels are dedicated to it. Almost the entire Channel 4 schedual is a monument to intellectual suicide and conclusively proves that the world will end on the 21st of December 2012.

At the forefront of this catestropic cultural meltdown and leading us boldly towards the promised apocalypse are shows that are simply dedicated to keeping pointless organ-horders famous to remind us all about how meaningless we really are. Even watching people like Jordan or Carol Thatcher gobble down Kangaroo testicals in a rat infested jungle is not enough to make me like the show or feel any less like a waste of meat. I mean, one of those people is famous for breast implants, and the other is famous for being the daughter of the most evil sociopathic robo-politician to ever plague humanity. They keep up their profile by eating cockroaches. It's enough to make you scream 'How pointless is my life?' from the top of Northbridge flyover, which offers about four seconds and three hundred feet of sweet release onto the paving stones below.

The largest problem facing any sane person attempting to watch television is that it never seems to end. Currently featured shows include 'Keeping Up with the Kardashian's', which could be mistaken as a documentary chronicling the polt evolution of Star Trek aliens, but instead is committed to following rich people around as they trample everyone under their feet.'Katie' is a show entirely about Katie Price, is enough to make anyone with more than two braincells hang themselves with their own intestines. The most recent one forcing its way onto my television is 'Riches to Rags'.

Riches to Rags follows Lily Allen on 'the highs, and tragic lows' of opening up a fashion shop selling overpriced detritus to starry eyed women so abused by television they've gotten Stockholm Syndrome and can only express unholy adulation at being offered the chance to exchange their money for random tat. It shows thrilling shots of the celebrity becoming stressed, squeezing out a few tears and declaring 'I never knew it would be so hard!', which only reinforces the massive void between TV and real life.

So maybe that's the biggest problem with Reality TV. It isn't real. At least, you can hope it isn't real, and close your eyes and pretend there are not people in the world like them. It's called the 'Hawthrone effect' in sociology but is probably better known as the 'Bastard effect' to you and me. Subjects modify their behaviour since they know they are being observed and studied. In other words, they become dickheads, people who've had all their personality and intellect emptied out of them like a Halloween pumpkin by a souless media ice-cream scoop.

So there we go, culpable responsibility. Collectively, we are to blame for this nightmare earth we've created. The next time you see anyone kick off about society, don't dismiss them as crazy psychopaths straight away. Instead, sit down, turn on the television, and see if after ten minutes of watching a pregnant Kerry Katona complain about being fat, you don't want to go out and drown the world in fire.