The X Factor - Time to face the "music"!

I used to religiously watch the X Factor on a Saturday and Sunday night. That is a sad truth to admit but there you go - I admit it. This year things have changed. Finally, after years of watching the manufactured garbage, I am finally bored of it. It’s the same thing every year - the same anti-climax at the end when you realise you’ve wasted hours of your life to see some no hoper have a (very short) music career.

The setup of the show is so transparent, so fake, as it blatantly preys on the uneducated and stupid people of society. If you don’t know already, here’s how it works. Take a person who has a half decent voice (there’s plenty of them busking on the city streets by the way) but make sure there is something about them that connects to us on a human level – ugly, weird, crazy, cute, shy, old or young – and hopefully tragic. Tell the world their tragic back story whilst playing the awful ballads of Westlife in the background. Accessorise them – make the weird bloke look weirder, make the fat lad look fatter, make the cute girl look cuter - accentuate their individualities! By following these simple steps you can easily manipulate the general public into spending their cash voting, and also manipulate the “artist” into thinking they’re superstars in the making. Basically, you have to lie to them and lie to those watching at home.

The producers, judges and intelligent viewers know that all but two or three are pure rubbish with zero chance of making it in the industry. 90% of them have no charisma, no star quality, but because of their individual, easy to manipulate “thing” they’re easy money for ITV and Mr. Cowell. People will vote and the show makes money. Then, when the show producers have squeezed all the money they can out of the artist, they chuck them on the scrapheap as the show strategically picks them off one by one.

Everybody likes the underdog and this year I’ve counted about seven of them and it is thanks to these industry no-hopers that X Factor receives 8.6 godzillian viewers every week and manages to attract “stars” to perform on the Sunday show. These stars pay the X Factor bosses to appear and even more money is made. The people that hate the X Factor but find out that their hero Bruno Mars is performing, watch the X Factor on the Sunday, which in turn grows the viewing figures again, which helps them attract even bigger stars. The cycle continues.

X Factor is a work of manipulative genius and it all starts off with the auditions. The audition shows are cut so that we are allowed to laugh at clinically insane and mentally ill people of Britain without having to have a conscious about it. It is barbaric, it is wrong, yet by the way its cut, we don’t care, it’s just a laugh, innit? In between the chuckles a star is lined up. We hear the tragic back story, they play the heroic background music and as if by magic, the person walks out on stage as an underdog and captivatingly wows the crowd. We remember them, we love them a little bit and without even knowing what we’re doing, we’ve been brainwashed to watch their journeys for the next 16 or so weeks. I believe the winner has been lined up (groomed) to win since week one and when they finally win we pretend we’re surprised and even shed a little tear. Then it’s Christmas and we wake up from our weird stupor wondering why we’ve stayed in every weekend for four months and lost all of our friends.

X Factor is a work of genius but it’s diabolical, commercialised rubbish.