So, that was the noughties.  Did you enjoy it?

No, I’m not sure either.  When you really think about it, lots and lots of stuff happened since the Millennium but all I can really remember of the previous decade is that everyone got an i-Phone and then Louis Walsh judged them.  This is probably not a suitable eulogy for 10 years that, logically speaking, should represent the pinnacle of all human achievement and existence thus far.

Actually, I do genuinely believe that humanity is constantly achieving greater and greater feats of excellence as time goes on but, unlike those who think this is represented by all those clever people and their big pipe in the ground at CERN, I reckon our species has thus far peaked with the Shea Stadium level of Beatles Rock Band played with the Rickenbacker controller.

Anyway, leaving the noughties behind us it’s time to boldly embark on a new year and a new decade (technically, it actually isn’t as pedants like to point out, the new decade starts with 2011 just as the Millennium actually started with 2001.  Don’t worry about it though, people who think like this are an evil on par with ethnic cleansing).  However before we get down to it this upcoming year and decade need something really quite important.

They need naming.

First of all, are we in 2010 or 2010?  I’d probably better do that in words rather than numbers.  Are we in two-thousand-and-ten or is it twenty-ten?  Personally, I favour twenty-ten, it sounds more futuristic and and while me might not all be whizzing around on hover-boards or watching Jenny Agutter undress while we run away from a chap called Francis and the ritual of Carrousel it’s at least nice to pretend we could be by giving our years more sci-fi sounding monikers.

And it looks like the future might need all the help it can get as, not only has mankind peaked as I’ve already demonstrated, but the teenies (that’s what I’m calling this decade till I can think of something better) have already got underway with the dis-spiriting news that we’ve already started hurtling down the other side of the evolutionary mountain.  Because we’ve started getting uglier.

Yes, that’s right- our old friends at BeautifulPeople.com have been at it again, this time turfing over 5,000 people off their dating website for the aesthetically pleasant and socially retarded as they have slipped below the appropriate standard of loveliness.  The folks who have managed to get through the stringent selection process and get on the website have been doing a spot of internal policing and have complained about anyone who has posted a photo of themselves that suggests they’ve gained any weight over Christmas.

Now I don’t want to pour scorn on anyone so early in a new decade but isn’t this moving slightly from an endearingly self-absorbed form of sociopathy into full blown nutterdom?  I can’t decide if BeautifulPeople.com is now on the path to becoming either a new and terrifying cult or a breeding ground for worldwide network of slightly more attractive versions of the killer from ‘Se7en’.

Judge for yourselves by reading this quote by BeautifulPeople.com’s founder Robert Hintze from possibly the most chilling press release ever unleashed: “we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld; letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model”.

Tough call isn’t it?  That talk of how they ‘mourn the loss of any member’ is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to hear some demented cult leader utter to comfort his followers after a few of their number had been at the mass suicide punchbowl a few days before ‘The Ascension’; while the use of the word ‘fatties’ does hint at the sort of simmering anger and resentment that fuelled Kevin Spacey to get Gwyneth Paltrow’s head Fed-Exed to the middle of nowhere.

So- BeautifulPeople.com; sinister cult or club for serial killers?  Robert Hintze; the new David Koresh or the new Dennis Nielsen?  Whatever it turns out to be- it’s definitely an incredibly successful website and Robert Hintze is clearly a gifted entrepreneur and the sort of man who knows how to be a success and get some publicity in 2010.

Maybe that’s what we could call this new decade then.   Not the ‘teenies’ but ‘the we-all-just-realised-that-to-be-successful-in-this-day-an-age-you’ve-got-to-be-a-cross-between-a-manipulative-control-freak-and-a-murderous-psychopath-ies’. 

Here’s to the future.  Happy New Year to you all.