4 Jun 2011

The 100 million view curse.

100 million is a huge number. One couldn't possibly imagine 100 million people. It's more than the population of the UK, and we are packed in pretty tight here. Due to the ever increasing popularity of the internet, I've started seeing this number pop up on hit counters, particularly Youtube with its unfathomably large userbase. I have however noticed one thing in common with all the videos that have smashed the 100 million mark on Youtube - THEY ARE ALL FUCKING ATROCIOUS!. I don't just mean they are middle of the road, predictable, fashionable tat that comes and goes and doesn't really offer anything but cleverly marketed drivvel; I mean they are so nauseatingly, fantastically dire that just thinking about them evokes feelings of cold, empty, alienated depression akin to the feeling of losing a close friend to a terminal illness. If I were better with words, I could spend a lifetime describing the feeling I get when I see twice the population of the UK flock to something like this:


It really just makes me want to cry. Some people cry for the victims of earthquakes and tsunamis. I cry for the people who don't have the brainpower to see what is wrong with this. I cry for the artists, musicians and film makers who spend their lives barely getting noticed and I cry for the creators of this, who clearly have been possessed by the devil of shamelessness, fingered by the troll of desperation and dry fisted by the god of terrible ideas.


Someone has been able to quit their job on the strength of this shitstream of cunting abortion bile. Just consider that, the next time you're at your desk typing invoice numbers into a 15 year old computer, sat on a chair that served you up a fresh cocktail of IBS and piles, cold-calling helpless old ladies that don't even understand what your company sells, knowing that sneering twat of a boss is monitoring your calls so you can't even be honest and tell them it's a fucking scam. Just remember that one afternoon, some absolute twat with the most basic knowledge of animation and music thought they'd put together a video of farting babies singing in a bath, and was able to live comfortably without working. I'm not joking. 1 million hits with an ad can earn you a few grand, so 200 million hits with an ad and iTunes sales is going to set you on a merry journey to coinland. People get angry at Justin Bieber for being richer than they ever will be at 15 or however fucking old he is, well he's probably been doing that since the age of 2, pushed and pushed by a forceful dictator of a parent, and as a result has missed a proper childhood and will end up like Michael Jackson, a dead old weirdo. So forget him.

I've realised that the only other videos that I can find with over 100 million views are Bieber and that stupid Friday song (that was purposely made terrible to get people talking). So this post has petered out. I can't actually decide whether people really do have absolutely no taste and no idea how to spot when something is terrible, or it's just that a new level of terribleness has been invented (like post-terrible or terriblecore) and we're all just curious to find out how bad it could be. And it obviously works: Go Compare, Crazy Frog, Cillit Bang --all purposely marketed in the most horrifically awful way so that people would talk about them. There are laws and restrictions for use of explicit language, nudity and violence because some people get offended, how is this any different?

Edit: Here are some music videos that have smashed that 100 million boundary. Beiber has one at 0.6 BILLION hits, but I shan't post it. He doesn't even exist. Instead here are 3 song that sum up our generation of music buyers.







If anyone at any point in the future dares to look back at today's popular music scene with an appreciative nostalgic eye then I can't bare to imagine what new depths of shite we're heading for. I think we're due a music revolution, one without any money attached to it.