Via @gavindeas, an incisive take on the current Christmas number 1 battle. (Sign that humanity has no future, assuming Youtube comments are indicative, part 94: when I went to the Rage Against The Machine Killing In The Name Youtube page to remind myself which song it was that everyone was talking about, the first comment was someone saying how rubbish the song was and X-Factor ruled.)
Last year, when people tried the same trick, the alternative single was obvious - the X-Factor was covering Hallelujah, so let’s go out and buy the Jeff Buckley cover instead. This year, while the idea is also pretty simple - buy a song that repeatedly says “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” - and good enough that you can see why it went viral, it’s sufficiently non-obvious that someone had to come up with the idea.
It reminds me of when John Glenn went into space for a second time back in 1998: suddenly Usenet was full of people saying “We only have a few days before John Glenn comes back to put on monkey masks and bury the Statue of Liberty up to her neck in sand”.
That one at least I could find out, because Google has all of Usenet archived. If it’s true that this started on Facebook, it’s going to be much harder to find out whose idea this was, because so much of Facebook is friends-only. Which is a shame: this person deserves their small slice of Internet history.
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