Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline by Charlie Brooker

Book Type: Paperback
Published: 01 November 2007
Publisher: Faber and Faber
RRP:£9.99

Best Discount: £5.00 (50%)
Cheapest price: £4.99
Prices last checked: 20/11/2008 02:26:52

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Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline by Charlie Brooker
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Review:
Brooker is currently the best-loved pop culture pundit amongst the jaded workshy internet-hogging sullen misanthrope demographic. This is an indesputable fact. He has sat aside the collective imagination of this unhappy group like a grumpy colossus since the launch of the spoof listings website TVGoHome back in what now feels like the mid-1800s, and he continues to do so with his Guardian articles and the brilliant Screenwipe show, which I'll wager most of you have seen on the Guardian website and youtube respectively rather than in actual grubby print or on actual proper telly. This all feels very word-of-mouthy and grass-rootsy, with friends slinging URLs at you every time he says something particularly interesting or rude, and part of the reason for this popularity is that, despite his grumbling and slightly forced self-deprecation, Brooker seems like a likeable, smart guy and has an unmatched talent for a pithy little vignette. Seriously, it's completely unmatched: I've never read anyone who can produce a one paragraph nugget that manages to be as clever, scatological, sharp, heartfelt, and funny as Brooker. When most columnists try this sort of recipe it comes out indigestible and smug, like trying to swallow a lump of self-satisfied rancid grease; Brooker pulls it off effortlessly and still manages to seem human. This is probably the reason for his enduring net popularity, as in the land of short attention spans and thousands and thousands of competing distractions short, brilliant quotes are the primary currency - and he has them in abundance. Which is the problem with the book, really. It's like printing out an entire website to read through it page by page rather than being linked directly to the funny picture of the cat with the amusing caption. It's impossible to write the brilliant little gems mentioned above every single week, and between them his writing is either ephemeral at best or completely irrelevant at worst. For every brilliant insight and one-liner, there's pages and pages of wibbling about, say, 2006's Big Brother - perfect for a weekly column, but its inclusion in a book seems a little eyebrow-raising. The fact that its readable at all two years later on is a tribute to Brooker's skill, but still you get the feeling that you've been swindled a bit by some sort of bait-and-switch scam. Yes, I know it never claimed to be anything other than a collection of articles, but "Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline" to my mind suggested something more trim and toned and toothier. Perhaps this is just an inescapable result of taking Brooker out of his natural environment and cramming him willy-nilly into a book or perhaps they just wanted to bulk the book out some, but the "kitchen sink" approach doesn't really do the reader many favours. A genuinely mixed bag, this: undeniably a good read, but you feel sort of like you'd rather have just googled "best Charlie Brooker quotes" instead. On the plus side, Brooker is one of the most genuinely enjoyable columnists you can read today and you get the feeling that much, much better is still to come.