An Introduction

The challenge is to generate content more interesting than the background noise – which is especially difficult online. So all material herein will boast a symbiotic relationship with the pap culture.

The subjects of these articles are old world celebrities – individuals imbued with special meaning by the people whom they serve, historically regarded with veneration by the common and revulsion by the cultivated; an outdated custom that is likely to become a thing of the past as the pop culture of today further explodes into a billion little self-employed pieces. No longer will less than two dozen pretty people monopolize our envy for a decade at a time. Gradually, we are revoking our promise of attention. But for the time being, we find ourselves with a caged animal at our disposal.

The idea of using unimportant people to discuss big ideas embodies the grand design of our supposed future. For those less inclined toward that future, let it function as a commentary on the structure of all criticism. If the reign of the charismatic figure of genius is truly coming to a close, then what we are seeing is a final, glossy flailing of toned limbs soon headed for a psychic scrapheap. (One thinks of Wikipedia ...) Perhaps certain of those specimens can teach us how not to behave as each of us receives our impending close-up. On a Google Earth, populated by a self-employed paparazzi, everyone's fate will be visibility. And one might as well say it; the last generation of stars produced by the top-heavy Celebrity-Industrial Complex will have taught entire graduating classes everything they know.

Paradoxically, it is often the most trifling and banal events which demand the instantaneous glut of commentary that the Internet provides; words on events that ought to blow over in a week can't flounder in submission piles. Nor do the painfully protracted foreign intrigues of the parent-world much hold the interest of the present generation. They belong to ancient history – a dubious prospect already – and can't be dinted by ironic verve, so they are unpopular subjects for discussion, except among dangerously wilful people who watched too many James Bond movies as teenagers. Consequently, the most insipid incidents are taken out of context and enshrined digitally in the archive, imperishable in all of their humiliating glory, as though they were what really mattered in our lives. This is inherent in the means by which our gossip is disseminated. For this reason, this share of webspace comes with a promise of a date of expiry, to be determined by its uselessness.

Above all else, the meaning of a culture is in what it chooses to remember. Please let this petty nonsense not marr your nostalgia for the flesh.