Everyone knows we watch reality TV to feel worse about ourselves and last night Tommy Fury landed viewers with a knockout blow on Love Island revealing the year of his birth.
Now I’m not saying reality TV makes us stupid or that people on reality TV are stupid but essentially what’s happened here is everyone already knew Tommy is 20 years old, but everyone has been rocked by the fact he was born in 1999.
In case like me you’re bad with numbers, 2019 – 1999 = 20. Mind = blown.
Look at all these people coming to terms with it on Twitter:
The shocking revelation was made when viewers saw behind the scenes footage of what happened when Craig David visited the Villa.
The R&B star’s absolute banger featuring the Artful Dodger Re Rewind came out in 1999 and Tommy noted that was the same year he was born. Madness.
In case like Tommy you were born in 1999 you’ll have missed approximately 314,980 years of human existence, then allow me – because I was studying for my GCSEs in 1999 – to fill you in on some of the things you missed out on.
You know what, I’m never going to get a brief history of time done in 500 words and in the next hour. Let’s do a montage. Cue: Craig David, ‘Re re-wind…’
So there was a small bunch of rich people who controlled everything and treated everyone else like shit.
Religion was like really important. A rich bloke called Charles said he could run England how he liked because he was ordained by God. Some other people didn’t like that. They killed him. We got democracy and another king called Charles.
By this point an Italian chap with the strangely English name Christopher Columbus had found the Americas. A load of folk from Europe moved over there and killed all the locals. They’d do a similar thing with Australia and by the end of the 1800s Britain controlled around two thirds of the world with its charming, plucky and genocidal colonial ways.
Meanwhile science, arts and philosophy happened at various stages, some before the period I started this flashback session with. In fact, there was a shit ton of ancient civilisations, as people started mooching about from Africa up through Europe into Asia up to Arctic circle even and even down to the islands in the Pacific where some more innocent people would be killed in genocidal ways.
Speaking of science, did you know next Saturday (July 20) marks the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing? They put a fucking man on the Moon.
That happened in 1969 and by this point we’d had quite a few wars between countries over several different ideological and financial reasons and get this, there were two World Wars where the entire world was at war. F*ck loads of people died. Britain, knackered from defeating Hitler and his genocidal ways in WWII, realised it no longer had the resources to control an empire. India gained independence. A fuck load more people died.
Quite soon after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, John Lennon walked out of the door marked ‘Exit’ from the Beatles, who were a band that just kind of invented modern music as we know it. You should definitely look up the Beatles if you don’t know the Beatles.
The United States and the Soviet Union had a Cold War where no fighting technically took place but nuclear annihilation was a hair’s breadth away, because despite science being really useful at doing wonderful helpful things it’s also super handy if you want to kill thousands of people in an instant.
In other nuclear assholery Chernobyl happened and sort of exposed the Soviet Union as being a bit knackered. The Soviet regime fell and we released a sigh of nuclear apocalyptic relief (watch When the Wind Blows or Threads for reference).
With Italia 90 football started to become fashionable, partly due to the incredible kit designs, partly due to the hair cuts, partly due to New Order’s World In Motion and partly due to England inventing the heartbreak of going out on penalties to Germany in the semi-finals, a feat they’d repeat at Euro 96, cementing our love of the beautiful game to the soundtrack of comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel’s Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home).
Big Brother, originally a menacing method of totalitarian control in George Orwell’s prescient 1984, became a reality TV method of totalitarian societal control and that brings us up to the point where if you were born in 1999 like Tommy Fury you were starting to learn how not to shit your nappies and enjoy the world around you where a small bunch of rich people control everything and treat everyone else like shit.
Now we just want to appear on reality TV and Africa by Toto is considered the pinnacle of music. No one can tell if we’re being ironic anymore.
Anyway, if all that’s enough to make you want to check yourself into an old people’s home, you’re not alone.
Because someone has put the Love Islanders through a face swap app and they look old af.
Nothing like sticking impending and inevitable ageing to bring someone down a peg.
Some people said Maura looks like Carol Vorderman and Curtis is being compared to Bobby Davro
Great news if they’re intending on a TV career once they’re out of the Villa.
You can do some great things with technology. Barring the mass killings, we’re an alright bunch.
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Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.