once again the mindless majority have every saturday from now until christmas all mapped out.
x-factor has started and yet again it will be near inescapable, with inevitable facebook statuses and tweets about it clogging up social networking, voiced opinions in every pub, school and workplace and any upset or utterance concerning contestants or judges preposterously passing for 'news'.
i would usually avoid it like the plague but i made a decision that as a music journalist i should actually sit myself down and at least watch the first episode in the name of research and report my findings.
i was hoping to be completely and utterly repulsed by it, i thought this would make a great article if it was full of bile for Simon Cowell's unstoppable cash-machine, but to be honest i couldn't even muster the passion to despise it.
it just bored me.
of course i have no kind words to say about it and sternly remain anti X-factor but i at least wanted to feel some sort of reaction to the programme other than indifference.
and of course it was a vapid showing of 'entertaining' individuals and groups as they embarrass themselves in front of a nation just for their fifteen seconds of fame (or a lifetime on youtube) but do we ourselves believe that they believe they have any talent, they are there purely for their brief moment in the spotlight knowing that this is the type of dross that gets on the telly.
and it is now that i realise that i don't hate a television programme that lets people chase their dreams, that gives them a chance to reach a wider audience and even allows a select few to achieve the status of celebrity that they so desire.
any sense of disdain i have is for those people that actually choose to watch it and can't see through the blatantly orchestrated cranial numbing drivel that they are being drip-fed by the show's puppetmasters, and whose only attempt at validating their viewing habits is proclaiming that 'some of the auditions are really funny'!
i'm disgusted by the way society seems to converge on sofas every week to expose themselves to such drivel and that it has somehow become a national obsession, with some people even going as far as making their plans revolve around watching the X-factor at all costs.
and i know more than afew people that were vocal of their support to get Rage Against The Machine to number one ahead of last year's X-factor winner but were still guilty of flocking to their idiot boxes every saturday night and seemingly enjoying it.
i just can't accept how people that i know that consider themselves 'music fans' will still tune in week after week to possibly the world's biggest marketing tool and subscribe to this heightened state of consumerism gone mad.
