“Heat.”
“Grazia.”
“Nuts.”
“Hmm… Zoo.”
“Nuts and Zoo, man! Now that is the axis of wanking.”
“Oh, Nando’s!”
“Mac D’s!”
“Classy.”
“Let me tell you something, yeah, when you wake up in the morning and you’ve got like a massive hang-over, there is nothing better than a good egg McMuffin.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that.”
“Kill or cure, innit.”
“Come on, we’re off track here.”
“Eastenders.”
“LOST.”
“Dr Who.”
“Who cares, it’s a kid’s show.”
“It’s not a kid’s show.”
“It is.”
“The Sopranos.”
“Already finished.”
“We’re talking about things that have ended prematurely because of this mess. Come on, Jops, if you want to play, get it right.”
“YouTube.”
“Facebook.”
“Oh shit! MySpace!”
“Amazon?”
“Now you’re on it.”
Very strange to think it is just 10 years since Dead Set came out — now currently on Netflix. I loved that miniseries at the time and giving it a re-watch now, in a post-Black Mirror world is enough to make anyone long for that simpler time.
Dead Set‘s premise is sort of ingenious, in that way that most Black Mirror episodes are, stretched out over a sort of jarringly paced five-episode miniseries. The novelty was electrifying at the time. Perhaps less so now, since Brooker has come to corner the niche of outrageously meta and politically satirical SF.
Watching it now, it’s strange to see just how much has changed and how dated this scene in particular, quoted above, now is.
RIP Nuts and Zoo, bastions of turn-of-the-decade Lad culture. No one misses you, but it’s incredible to think about the ease with which you were replaced by little more than the basic functionality of Facebook’s share button. (The likes of Grazia, it seems, will always have a place on newsagents’ shelves.)
All of the online references, of course, with the exception of MySpace, have continued to grow from strength to strength. If the world did end tomorrow, I can’t imagine anyone would say they were over too soon. In fact, LOST looms large as a weird example. We did see the end of it, but should we have bothered watching it…?
The eventual (one can only hope) demise of everything else in this list will no doubt feel the same. Yes, we’ve witnessed the end of an era, and in the end none of it feels all that worth it.
Except Vine.
No, wait, that’s already finished…