When whimsy meets rage-bait, and it *all* goes wrong

The Guardian outdid itself in last Saturday's G2 magazine with the world's worst ever listicle, and with the internet now having found it, they're getting the online kicking they thoroughly deserve.

Presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sitting in an editorial meeting for last weekend's G2 magazine that comes with the Saturday edition of the Guardian, we can only presume that someone thought, “I'll tell you what we need in these fractured times; a listicle of 100 things that we all have in common in this country. Make it light and funny, and we're onto something.”

Well, if social media over the last couple of days has been anything to go by, they may have united the nation; just not in the way that they were probably expecting. Because The Guardian certainly produced a listicle. If anything, they produced two listicles; a big old pair of listicles in a hairy fleshbag, swinging apparently carefree between their legs for all the world to see.

In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about here, it’s this; in a highly competitive field, almost certainly the worst thing I’ve read this year. Do feel free to read it yourselves, but take with your click the warning that the very best that will come of it is that you will cringe your rectum inside-out.

In a sense, that “what we need in these fractured times” narrative is something that is worth pursuing. We could all do with something that makes us feel like an actual society. And it should be remembered that this is presumably supposed to be whimsy. Humour. A sideways glance. But, but, but… is it really whimsy when it fails so hard at what, going by the headline and the blurb above the actual list itself, it purports to be trying to achieve?

Because frankly, I have so many questions. I’m willing to accept that the writer didn’t write the headline. That’s commonly the case. But presuming that to be the case, why hang the writer out to dry like this? Because their reputation has not been enhanced by the reaction to it online over the last couple of days or so.

It certainly, absolutely, definitely does not end there. Why make repeated references to specific places and—let’s be frank here, because there is always space for this sort of thing—not even places with funny names? Everybody knows that far from everybody watches the same television shows, why make specific and repeated references to them? Why use language that makes you sound like Steve Buscemi in 30 Rock, such as “sick fade”?

The list goes on. Why refer to having crushes on people when we can say with certainty that up to half of those reading it will involuntarily grimace? Indeed, why use Steve Jones as an example of a celebrity crush when for a decent proportion of the population that name still means the guitarist out of The Sex Pistols rather than—and this is presumption on my part, since it’s absolutely not spelled out, merely presumed that we all have one—the current presenter of F1 on Channel 4?

At such points, it’s tempting to wonder whether the entire list was written as a piece of rage-bait. After all, we all know that The Guardian hasn’t got any money these days, and such times tend to bring out the absolute worst in editorial boards. A rage-click is still a click, right? Doesn’t matter whether they’re angry or not, yeah?

Well, perhaps if the overwhelming emotion being felt by those who actually read it ends up being, “Jesus tittyfucking Christ, what on earth has happened to The Guardian?”, it starts to feel somewhat as though the entire episode has been somewhat counter-productive. Enjoy those clicks, lads, they may well be your last. And of course, they could have left this particular feature in the magazine and not published it on the web, leaving them open to a vast amount of ridicule, but evidently that was not considered an option. The apparent lack of self-awareness is frankly staggering.

There is one semi-serious side to all of this. The media has become an employment wasteland in recent years, with redundancies coming in vast swathes. As a writer who has been a victim of this himself, I am affronted that anybody could get the space to write this in a national newspaper and waste it on this absolute rot.

To get such a byline is an immense privilege, and yes, it is extremely annoying to see such space being given to something this vapid and unfunny. That all involved seem to have seen fit to publish it when there are literally thousands of us living on the breadline who would or could have produced something so much more enjoyable and readable than this feels like an insult to the entire industry in which they’re based.

It’s only been four and a half months since it was confirmed that they would be making editorial redundancies this year. Presuming that to have actually moved forward, how on earth are those affected by that supposed to feel when they read this sort of thing? Mind you, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when the editor is happy to hand out a weekly column to the writer of such classics of the voluntarily bovine genre as, “After decades of trial and error, I think I’ve nailed the perfect handshake”, “I’d hate to be learning English again. Apostrophes are a nightmare” (to which I can only reply, “Aren’t you supposed to be a newspaper columnist? Because this reads like a driving instructor saying that the clutch on their car is something they don’t understand”), and “I’ve failed at jugs, I’m worse at teapots – why can’t I ever pour anything properly?”.

That the writer is the editor’s husband is a small matter that I will leave you good readers to decide your own opinions over. Bear in mind that there are over 400 of these, going back more than five and half years. That’s a weighty bookful of pages which somehow have never been brought together for would surely be the world’s most WTF Christmas stocking filler for that relative that you really, really hate.

We moan and moan and moan about the right-leaning bias of the British media, but this argument is fundamentally unwound somewhat when the biggest name in the leftish-leaning media starts pulling stunts like this, yet again. As a writer, it makes me feel “why should I bother?”. But moreover, this sort of thing should make us wonder, “Why should we bother with The Guardian?”. As a reader, if you are paying for it, you may well be wondering why you’re doing so. In the current hellscape that is trying to get anybody to pay for their media consumption, these feel like valid questions to ask.