David Bowie was many things to his adoring fans: a visionary, a fashion icon, a sex symbol and a brilliant musician. There is no doubt he helped change the face of modern British culture and, with it, the lives of many people who found him relatable and inspiring. With his passing there was an outpouring of grief not seen since the death of BB King, for a man who valued art, beauty and intellectualism just as much as he did music.
In an interview 15 years ago, Bowie provides some extremely sharp foresight, explaining to a bemused Jeremy Paxman how the internet will change the face of society “for both good and bad”, saying that they had “barely touched the tip of the iceberg”. How right he was, and how ironic that the internet was full of eulogies for not only Bowie…but David Zowie, maker of 2015’s most dreaded chart hit ‘House Every Weekend’.
As I scrolled through twitter looking at countless tributes to Zowie I couldn’t help feel a little bit empty inside. Read between the lines, and you’ll spot trolls riding the wave of Bowie tributes to turn the attention back on them. Bowie described the internet as an “alien machine” and the internet culture that has developed now is probably what Bowie envisaged all those years ago, where people hidden behind a wall of selective information either become emotionless trolls laughing at their computer screens, or cultureless idiots who’s souls get sucked out through the screens of their phones. Either way, the eulogies proclaiming “RIP HOUSE EVERY WEEKEND” leave much to be desired for the intelligence of the internet generation we find ourselves a part of. I wonder what Bowie would make of it?
