Enough already with the unicorn humour. Please.
I know my last post was about Australia's genocidal colonisation, but now it's time to get serious.
I went to see Deadpool two days ago, marvel's sarcastic, fourth-wall-breaking, more meta than meta answer to the Punisher. I loved it. It's a really cool movie even if it does make stupid people feel clever by spoon-feeding them every reference. But then he jerks off while facing a unicorn and every twentysomething in the theatre laughed the laugh that every professional comedian recognises: the one that says, "Hey this movie really 'gets' me".
Sorry, but there's actually nothing to get. Your generation is online a lot, the zeitgeist is now actually tangibly quantifiable in cyber space. As a comic I've seen countless younger newer supposedly 'alt' acts use 'unicorn' as a catch-all go-to punchline. And I see a sea of kids lap it up. Because they're all so mentally connected, 24 hours a day, they confuse this regurgitation with an actual imagination.
I wish I was throwing bigger punches here: perhaps making a conspiratorial weighty argument for a generation being brainwashed somehow by Google to make us all buy cigarettes again (although my money would be on gay agenda, whatever that might be (as far as I can tell the 'gay agenda' always seems to be 'be okay with people being gay')) Ooooh I just did brackets inside my brackets in the middle of a segue. And now I'm telling you that I'm doing that, which makes you the clever one. See what I'm doing? Of course you do. Because I'm telling you. (Pssst! You should totally smoke cigarettes and be gay)
I digress, (or do I?)
I'm being something of a hypocrite here; on my first album some 17 years ago I said, "Pointing out what's hack is hack". But the new hack seems to be perceived originality. An online shorthand, that misfits confuse with independence and left-field thinking, born of overcrowded urban living and some sort of plugged in fever. There is something robotic about a generation that looks at humour as some sort of pavlovian algebra: "THE MAN SAID UNICORN - UNICORNS ARE LEFT FIELD - I AM AMUSED - MAKE LAUGH NOISE WITH MOUTH."
I realise this makes me sound about a thousand years old. But ask yourself how many times you've heard a millennial declare, "I am totally obsessed with (insert not particularly niche, niche item/topic/tv show here)"
Are you really? You're really obsessed with unicorns/pirates/ninjas/cheese/duck egg blue? You can't sleep without thinking of these things? You wake up and the first thing on your mind is unicorns/wasabi peas/whatever the f***?
Then you're an idiot, what's more you're not even a special idiot. You're not even a one in a million idiot. You're just an idiot amongst lots of idiots, programmed to laugh every time you see a unicorn or even hear the word. I don't know what the greater gain is here. But I think one day there's going to be a big hypnotic siren and you're going to kill all of us.
So you know what? Unplug for a bit, quit your so-called bullshit "ninja/unicorn obsession" and memorise some fucking phone numbers while you're at it.
Bam! Burns out!
Brendon is currently appearing at the Adelaide fringe click here for tickets