Celebrity Requiem
Influencers, astrology, and Kim Jong Un versus Reality.
This weekly column makes no apology. What came before us was more cerebral, more meaningful, more beautiful, less chaotic, and infinitely less tedious.
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Nil By Mouth
A pandemic of Turkish teeth and Brazilian bums obscures the real crisis.
The word ‘influencer’ sounds much like ‘influenza.’ If rushed out of a mouth too rapidly, you’re liable to confuse the two. It’s simple. One describes a highly contagious disease, deleterious to human health and often fatal. The other has something to do with the flu.
There’s an outbreak of influenza in Dubai. Or so I heard. On Sky News, a breathless reporter braved the unceasing heat, the unceasing humidity, that unceasing sense of unreality which stalks Dubai, that gaudy theme park in the desert. She sought that peculiar species: the influencer.
For the unaware, the influencer is Great Britain’s only remaining export. Yes, the nation which gifted the world the industrial revolution, dragging man from a nasty, brutish, and short life into one just nasty and brutish, exports influencers across the globe. Many land in Dubai.
That glinting shard of glass in the sand attracts influencers like iron filings to a magnet. Anyone pretending to be someone lives in tax-free, crime-free Dubai. Naturally, influencers adore their slave colony in the sun.
Here in dreary, rain-sodden England, reality intrudes upon a one-time high priest of the reality-TV-influencer complex. Scott Timlin, also known as Scotty T, appeared in court last week charged with fraud.
Scotty once starred in a riotously popular reality show called Geordie Shore. The premise: Mahogany-skinned twenty-somethings with the manners of a topless blender, hop from party to bed to bed to party. They fall out. They make up. They make up. They fall out.
Around the early 2010s, nightclubs bubbled with imitators. Topless boys, their chests smoother than Fabergé eggs, bopped to tinny beats like Scotty T. They didn’t get drunk but ‘mortal.’ Barbers trimmed countless heads in the Geordie Shore standard-issue: Too short on the sides, and too long on the top.
I caught half an episode back in 2013, when 1.2 million of my fellow Brits—all of them permitted to vote—tuned in with Jesuitical devotion. The memory is a kaleidoscope of Grey Goose vodka bottles, tanned torsos, tanned tits, too white teeth, mewling, screaming, shouting, cackling, all to the drumbeat of house music. An episode of Geordie Shore was like watching the impulsive id team up with the rational ego to beat the shit out of their moderating influence, the superego.
Last week, I recognised a face in the paper. Scotty T was one of seven influencers in court for illegally promoting FX trading schemes to their Instagram followers.
They promised easy wealth to anyone who wanted a piece. The reality, as Scott’s lawyer outlined, was not as it appeared on Instagram.
Scotty’s three million followers imbibe a daily stream of bronzed torso, Turkey teeth, and modern-day snake oil. Ironically, he models a brand called ‘Ikigai’—the Japanese concept of living purposefully.
There’s a ‘natural’ cannabis-based medicine for ADHD. High-protein microwave meals. There are pills and potions. There’s even a BMW with the licence plate: ACHIEVE.
And then there’s reality. Scotty’s lawyer revealed that Scotty earned £30,000 last year. He needed a £5k loan from his mother “to stay afloat.” A Lidl supermarket manager clears £55k.
That’s not to revel in Scotty’s misfortune. It’s none of my business.
Back when things made sense, that is, before the ‘End of History’ 1990s, young men like Scotty left school and walked into well-paid industrial jobs. They put their heads and hands to good use and even bought their own homes with enough cash spare to stow away for the future.
And then the Very Clever People boxed up those jobs and shipped them overseas. Meanwhile, ‘reality’ TV exploded across our screens.
And then came social media. With a click of a button, anyone can become anything. Or at least they can pretend to be. So, I guess we are all influencers now. But, as W.S. Gilbert once put it, if everybody is somebody, then nobody is anybody.
