The Hell of Nightclubs

Charlie Brooker

I went to a fashionable London nightclub on Saturday. Not the sort of sentence I get to write very often,
because I enjoy nightclubs less than I enjoy eating wool. But a glamorous friend of mine was there to ‘do
a PA’, and she’s invited me and some curious friends along.

Obviously, at 36, I was more than a decade older than almost everyone else, and subsequently may as
well have been smeared head to toe with pus. People regarded me with a combination of pity and
disgust. To complete the circuit, I spent the night wearing the expression of a man waking up to
Christmas in a prison cell.

‘I’m too old to enjoy this,’ I thought. And then I remembered I’ve always felt this way about clubs. And I
mean all clubs – from the cheesiest downmarket sickbucket to the coolest cutting-edge hark-at-us
poncehole. I hated them when I was 19 and I hate them today. I just don’t need to pretend anymore.

I’m convinced no one actually likes clubs. It’s a conspiracy. We’ve been told they’re cool and fun; that
only ‘saddoes’ dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little-pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be
labelled ‘sad’: it’s like being declared worthless by the state. So we must muster a grin and go out on the
town in our millions.

Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot tunes thumping
through the humid air so loud you can’t hold a conversation. And since the smoking ban, the masking
aroma of cigarette smoke has replaced by the over-bearing stench of sweat and hair wax.

Anyway, back to Saturday night, and apart from the age gap, two other things struck me. Firstly,
everyone had clearly spent far too long perfecting their appearance. I used to feel intimidated by people
like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgement of others,
trapped within a self-perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety. I’d secretly like to be them, of course,
but at least these days I can temporarily erect a veneer of defensive, sneering superiority. I’ve
progressed that far.

The second thing that struck me was frightening. They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that’s
all they seemed to be doing; standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and
cameras with one pose after another, as though they needed to prove their existence, right there, in the
moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little
dancing: just pouting and flashbulbs.

Surely this is a new development. Clubs have always been vapid and awful and boring and blah – but I
can’t remember clubbers documenting their every moment before. Not to this demented extent. It’s not
enough to pretend you’re having fun in the club anymore – you’ve got to pretend to be having fun in your
Flickr gallery, and your friends’ Flickr galleries. It’s an unending exhibition in which a million terrified,
try-too-hard imbeciles attempt to outcool each other.

Clubs are insufferable dungeons of misery. Shut them all down.