Life's little certainties and a criticising culture.

This blog began over a week ago, but I went to bed instead
of finishing it. What a model of determination and stick-ability I am…


There are a number of certainties by which we can depend on,
and if necessary, plan our lives around. One such example would be that during
my AS History class, whenever discussions reached potentially controversial
subjects, Marie would start a sentence with “I’m not being racist but…”, before
going on to say something that even Nick Griffin may consider to be beyond the
pale. On a more contemporary note, university students have huge difficulties
making it in for 9 o’clock lectures, despite our recent school lives requiring
an earlier start, and another of these certainties is that Mitch Sargent’s
attendance will be incalculably poor at this time of the day. (Some say his
alarm clock doesn’t have an AM setting and starts at midday…) Those of us that
know him quickly accepted this to be the case though, so nothing is thought of
it, and it has just become another of those things to be overlooked as
inevitable. No doubt that anyone reading this will have similar quirks, and
will know things that they can set their watch by, or know will come to pass
through experience.

However, the most certain of these certainties is the abuse
that the V Festival line-up will receive on release every year. Frankly the
line-up could involve a day headlined by Michael Jackson and Elvis, and a
couple of hundred teenagers would describe this as predictable, and Freddy
Mercury closing the Sunday could equally be dismissed as average at best.
Granted this is a gross exaggeration, as I’m sure there would at least be mild
interest if Virgin listed a load of dead artists as their main performers, but
the principle stands. Whoever is listed as performing and however prolific the
headline acts are, to the world in which we live it is described as not good
enough. This year as Twitter continues to go from strength to strength, it was
full with potential festival goers criticising a line-up full of people and
groups they do listen to.

The reality though is this, if I turn on live coverage of V
this summer I will see the fields absolutely full of revellers (that’s a very
journalistic term so I threw it in) enjoying the performances of the stars they
criticised, having had to pay an extortionate amount of money to get there, so
the line-up can’t be all bad. What I think has happened is we have entered a
world, with the help of social networking for scale, in which everybody feels
as though they have to criticise things as average, mediocre or worse, in case
somebody they know disagrees and they are made to feel they are being judged
for liking something substandard. It’s a scary thought, but in today’s world it
is so easy to criticise, rather than praise, and we now live in a society where
mainstream is boring and everything is crap.

As Louis Armstrong said, What a Wonderful World…