Charlie Brooker: The Misanthrope's Misanthrope.
This piece was spiked by the Grauniad, too depressing. Can't imagine why.
"Okay. I live in London, a city where it's hard not to look around and think, "Christ, so it's come to this" on a daily basis. Cities are one of human civilisation's most significant creations, and London is supposed to be one of the finest cities in the world. But it's horrible. It's cold, cramped, and ringing with sirens. Visually, it's an unending collage of immense grey boxes squatting beneath immense grey clouds, surrounded by thick grey-tasting air. Your best chance of seeing a splash of colour in London is to stare at a billboard or spew on the pavement. Coincidentally, those two activities also represent the finest entertainment the city has to offer.
But it's not just London that's awful. You are too. And by 'you', I mean 'us'. Humankind. After all, we clearly peaked about 40 years ago, and it's been downhill ever since. For all this talk of the dazzling modern age, the two biggest advances of the past decade are Wi-Fi and Nando's. That's the best we can do. Meanwhile the environment's crashing, fundamentalists and morons are at each other's throats, God's so disappointed he's wished himself out of existence, and the rest of us are merely pottering around, distracting ourselves by fiddling with our iPod settings."
τLabels: misanthropy
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