Does The Internet Have A Phillip Schofield Filter?

Yesterday was a bad day for reasons I can't really go into. Things happened to somebody very close to me but they're not my grievances to air. All I can say is: kids, if you're watching, don't believe anybody who tells you that life is fair and that hard work is rewarded. It took me far too many years to learn this hard lesson. In fact, if I could rewind my life and give my young self some good advice, it would be this:

Be shrewd and calculating in everything you do. Play the system. Remember that it's not what you know, it's who you know. Be devious and deceitful if you can get away with it. The rest of the time simply keep your mouth shut. Never express an honest opinion. Opinions can come back to hurt you later. Never devote yourself to being good at your work. Push for promotion even if that means hurting the people around you. There are no friends in business. There are just competitors. Keep on the good side of the people above you and make sure that they owe you favours. People beneath you are simply beneath you. Treat them accordingly. Life rewards you if you're a cruel bastard. Knowledge is worth nothing unless you can use it to harm a competitor. Above all know that the only thing that is worth anything is power. Seek power and wield is ruthlessly. And should the people at the top ever realise that you're bad at your job, a cruel and bitter tyrant, make sure you have enough dirt on them that they can only get rid of you by paying you off generously.

Hmm... That sounds depressing cynical but it's genuinely how I see the world. I know I'm not the only one who sees it that way. All the talk in the newspapers about the state of the economy, our hospitals, schools, universities, prisons, police departments, legal system... All of it is meaningless waffle. The truth is that we have a system that widely promotes fools over people good at their job. The system rewards failures. It rewards people who are shrewd enough to play the system. The result is a system that fails us on every front.

I guess that's why I've worked hard to keep myself out of that environment. Despite my cynicism, I'm an idealist but I wouldn't last ten minutes. Mine would be flesh that simply snarls up the gears for a few moments before spitting me out. I don't know how other people do it. Everywhere I look, it seems that witless sycophants persevere. People of quality, depth or personality are made abject; the system shaming them into silence.

For example, I see this morning that the deeply cretinous Phillip Schofield has been mouthing off again. Is there any greater symbol of the national mediocrity than Schofield? Singularly without a talent other than his personability, he is a smiling shill of a human being. He's merely the bland filler between advertising opportunities. I'd consider it a shameful way to live a life; creating nothing other than opportunities for corporations to exert control over the masses. Take, for example, the way he's been defending 'This Morning' after viewers complained about the feature they did about S&M a few weeks ago.

“Obviously I’m not saying the bondage is going to save anyone’s life but what we did was reflect on what everyone else was doing or talking about at the time.

“Everyone went to see the movie and if you look at the stuff we had on there, it was very innocent stuff and also spectacularly when the item had finished the things we had were all sold out in moments.

“So behind those closed, outraged doors of middle England, what they were secretly doing was going to buy this stuff online.”

He's right, of course, except for a couple of very slight flaws in his argument.

1. Not everybody was doing or talking about it at the time. The way he talks about this is truly staggering. He's portraying it as though they were covering a sudden fad for a new type of biscuit. What he's talking about is sadomasochistic sex being heavily marketed by companies who cared about nothing other than making money. Just because a horrible film based on an equally horrible novel is made, doesn't not mean that everybody is our there sticking butt plugs up each other's arseholes. If you want to do that, then that's fine. Just don't be so hypocritical about it.


2. Not everyone went to see the movie. I never want to see the movie. If you want to watch porn, you should be more honest about it and watch something properly erotic. Not something that hints at something you're too uptight to genuinely look at.


3. Nipple clamps are innocent stuff only if the same is true of any other S&M sex toy.


4. Just because you advertised products on one of the nation's main TV channels, to an audience of millions, many of whom are illiterate dopes with more money than sense, it's obvious that whatever shit you're selling would be sold out in moments. It's not proof of your moral righteousness. It's simply the business of large numbers.


5. I'm not of middle England. I wasn't secretly buying this stuff online. I thought the show was vile.

Sigh. I give up. Sometimes it's not worth arguing. The world is beyond reason. One blog doesn't make any difference compared to the hundreds of millions spent in advertising stupidity to the world.