#oneaday Day 144: Superinjunctivitis

I’m not going to pretend to know everything about this footballer/slag business that is all over the news at the minute, and I’m not particularly concerned about said footballer’s hilarious attempt to sue Twitter over supposedly breaking his precious superinjunction, because that’s like someone suing a sword manufacturer because their hand got cut off by an insane nutter with a sword.

The question that this sort of thing always raises in my mind, though, is “who the bloody hell cares?” This whole situation wouldn’t have come about without the public’s incessant need for celebrity gossip — vapid nonsense about whatever [insert celebrity first name here so it sounds like you know them] is wearing this week, or whether [insert different celebrity first name here] is going to the shops on Tuesday or Wednesday this week.

A footballer shagged someone who wasn’t his wife. Allegedly. This is not news. We all know that footballers are Neanderthal morons who should probably be fitted with chastity belts, so frequently do their dicks turn up in unauthorised places. We also know that anyone who appeared on Big Brother is probably not averse to the idea of selling their story, however vapid and pointless, to the “newspapers” in a desperate attempt to cling on to a bit of their waning fame. Even if said story is “Hey! I shagged a married man! I’m a massive slag!”

It’s pissing in the wind, of course, but I really wish that the world could move on from the obsession it seems to have with every little thing that every celebrity, whatever they might be famous for, is up to. People who read Heat magazine need to wake up to the fact that they probably aren’t going to ever meet, let alone be friends with whoever is this week’s hotness.

You could argue it’s escapism. Perhaps true — but why not read a work of fiction instead? Why the need to pry into the private lives of people? I guess it gives people who like to hide in bushes a means of being gainfully employed rather than arrested, but it still strikes me as incredibly obnoxious.

I follow a few celebrities on Twitter and make an effort to watch certain people when they come on TV. But that’s it. I have no desire to snoop into their private lives and I certainly don’t give a shit who they may or may not be having sex with. That’s their business, whether it’s an extramarital affair or not. Their life in the public eye should be limited to whatever it is they’re famous for, then they should be left alone to deal with their problems in privacy, not subjected to endless flashbulbs.

Of course, I could (and should) just ignore it all. But when some twat who can’t keep his pecker in his pants starts taking aim at a service I use every single day for both personal and professional reasons — as an indirect result of our culture’s obsession with celebrities? Fuck that. I think I have every right to be pissed off.

So, Ryan Giggs. Kindly stop being a dick. Everyone knows where your penis has been by now, so trying to fight for your right to “privacy” actually strikes me as nothing more than attention-seeking, ironically.