Rebellion Is All The Rage

The battle is over. The numbers have been counted. The week before Christmas was threatened by a force which has consistently been dominating our culture and society. Over the last five years the public's apathy has seen the problem simply grow bigger.

A fascinating seven days saw the internet awash as two camps clashed. The established powers had an entrenched view of how things should be. The other corner was home to a majority that were tired of how things were and wanted change.

So are we talking about the Copenhagen Climate Summit to try and save the Earth or a pop battle?

With mixed emotions, we are mostly talking about the latter. The Facebook Pop War of 2009 saw a great victory scorching itself into history. Clash pushed it every way over six days of shifting ground; there were some thrilling developments. The mainstream lost to an underground network who were bored with the hollow soul of televised karaoke stealing yet another Saturday night from culturally catatonic millions who generally did what they were told by Simon Cowell.

The thought of the Christmas No.1 continually being monopolised by melodic nonsense channeled through a puppet, purely groomed to sell more irrelevant crap to people, finally became too much. It could have gone on for decades if technology like Facebook hadn’t connected the disenfranchised.

Yet now, as the silent majority have won and spoken with their downloads, the over riding feeling is: Fuck that was SO easy! Why the hell has that not happened over slightly more vital issues?

Should this activity not be happening every week against issues that cause inequalities and actual pain to people’s lives? Why has a revolt against something as benign as a pop cover version galvanised so many online voices into a vitriolic spasm against one man?

Partly because everyone is obsessed with Facebook. And partly because Simon Cowell has so successfully created a TV persona which the nation hates to ludicrous proportions. The villain of Cowell was ingenious. The evil façade of a bully was vital to grabbing in an audience desperate for pantomime and catapulted his franchise to unprecedented success.

Ironically though this constructed persona backfired as the faux hatred went airborne and infected a network in which Cowell has absolutely no control or stake in. People it seems love X Factor's Joe. Even the most ardent of protesters say this whole campaign was never directed at him - even though he’s singing such spam as climbing mountains in a veiled hymn created by a team of Disney writers.

Thus Cowell was the unwitting architect of his own downfall.

Less amusing irony however is prevalent in the fact that whilst the UK’s youth riled themselves into their most passionate revolution for half a decade, one of the most internationally significant conferences of the last 12 years was happening just across the English Channel at the Copenhagen conference against climate change. In another 12 years, as the world’s ecosystems and climate spirals out of control the whole notion of buying a CD of a manufactured pop artist will seem so trivial we will be shocked.

Maybe the empowerment many people felt this weekend, when an ideal they subscribed to ACTUALLY worked out, may help them to contemplate and solve bigger and more pressing matters that actually threaten their physical world.

The Rage Campaign was such a trivial war yet thrilling for many to see it work. To see so many people mobilise against one force was refreshing beyond belief.

Maybe Simon Cowell can do our futures a favour and paint himself as the face of Illegal Wars, the Minister for Entrenched Religious Frictions or maybe even the President of Waste and Complacency.

Then youth rebellion might actually be able to focus itself concisely.

Words by Matthew Bennett