People will tell you that 2016 was the worst year ever… EVER. At least the mindset of the worst being behind us puts us in a better mood for the year ahead (remember the women’s March? That was so good people couldn’t even wait until March, they had to do it in January). But 2016 was the worst? Really? Remember like, polio and stuff? No, neither do I, I hadn’t been born yet, that’s how far away we are from it now, my whole brilliant life so far, plus more. Remember when Hitler? Or before we evolved the need for cool sunglasses? Let’s get some perspective guys, especially if your cool sunglasses have prescription lenses.
I’m not going to give you the whole ‘let’s give Trump a chance’ spiel because that’s what got the city of Troy in trouble with that big wooden horse. ‘Hey I know it’s from the Greeks, but let’s give it a chance, maybe it’s full of money and wishes.’ Just that we need to dial it back sometimes on the hyperbole. Otherwise we’re no better than him. Him who has ‘the best words. Everyone knows it.’
Remember when BBC News 24 launched, and everyone was panicking that either there was actually much more news than we realised, or that the channel would struggle to fill the time? I don’t think that helped. That constant need to fill a void, be it dead air or head space, then migrated to the click-bait articles of the Internet, making us all believe that we cared about the net worth of Charles M. Schultz, or what that kid from Jerry Maguire looks like now (he’s ripped). Luckily we’re moving past that to an extent, and if you don’t believe me, check out the Facebook group ‘Stop Clickbait’, or look for any meme or joke that ends ‘you won’t believe what happens next’, such as the unimaginative, derivative title of this blog. We are becoming savvy consumers of media, gradually more able to discern real from fake, and fake from ‘alternative’. More and more people are, in the parlance of our times, ‘woke’.
The closest I came to buying in to apocalyptic media hype was leading up to the activation of the Large Hadron Collider, during which time everyone was told that the machine would be used to recreate the conditions of The Big Bang, leading to a possibility that they would create a black hole, which would of course swallow us all up.
Feel free to cast your mind back to recall whether this did in fact occur, and then whether any of the news outlets reporting this seemed to do so with any level of authority or knowledge on the subject. It puts me in mind of the time I was stopped by a Jehovah’s Witness in the street as a teenager. I explained my beliefs, what I thought happens after death etc. She asked how I thought the universe got here then? I suggested The Big Bang. She replied, ‘Yes but, if we had a Big Bang now… we’d all die wouldn’t we?’ I had to admit, as irrelevant a question as that was, she had me. We would all die. All of a sudden she had me thinking about physics, when all I’d been planning to do that day was go to my A Level Physics lesson, which I was now late for.
As it turns out, the peeps at the LHC were trying to recreate conditions very similar to those immediately after the Big Bang, in terms of pressure, temperature etc. They were not trying to create a new universe, so apologies to those people that think everything’s so fucked at the moment that we may as well try.
Oh yeah, and remember the whole 2012 Mayan prophecy thing? Turns out they just stopped their calendar, not that the world would necessarily end. At least we got a terrible Roland Emmerich movie out of it, wherein John Cusack tries to escape a planet-wide apocalypse by driving away in a car. Oh yeah, and remember the time I convinced myself I had a brain tumour while at work? Turns out I’d just had one more coffee than usual which gave me a headache and fast-tracked me to Anxietyville. I would’t recommend you visit Anxietyville by the way; all paving is crazy paving, all warts are worry-warts and all the road signs just direct you to ‘bed’ even though no-one sleeps. And not in a cool New York way. In a less cool heart-palpitations way. Oh and everyone watches Gogglebox or something. Satire.
One thing that confuses me is the idea that everything is worthy of comment. Nothing is above reproach of course, or irreverence, but why talk about something as inconsequential as Trump’s hairstyle or whether or not the kid from Jerry Maguire is ripped (again, he is), when we should be discussing the actual things Trump does, and the actual things the kid from Jerry Maguire is doing now (according to Wikipedia, he was in a movie called Loserville last year. Looking ripped probably).
Scientists are not trying to destroy the world, which Mayans did not predict, and they are not acting under the orders of President Trump. He hates science. What he really cares about is fashion. I mean just look at that hair.
Next time on the Bandwagon, a full retrospective on the career of Jonathan Lipnicki, aka the kid from Jerry Maguire. Spoiler alert, he works out a lot.
Tim Goodings' Bandwagon 
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