Throughout the article, Brooker’s negative angle on the whole subject is irksome and tiring to read. He writes “‘I just hope you trust the staff down the Orange store next time you're upgrading your phone.” Personally, I expect that the staff in any telephone store have better things to do than to spend their days flicking through any texts, photos or other miscellaneous bits of information they can get their hands on. As he partly admits in the next paragraph, Brooker’s opinions are heavily swayed by ‘sheer paranoia’.
Brooker’s target audience for this passage is hard to identify. Throughout the passage, it is clear that he understands his readers to be similar to him, and to act as he would do in the situation described in paragraph 6 (“On the ’phone to the……going to wash my hands”). When he refers to the current state of technology, he describes it as “‘our terrible modern hell”, as if the readers are to agree with him about the situation. He makes another assumption when talking about “leaked nudey photos” in the penultimate paragraph, saying “You’ll stand and stare like the rest of us.” Does he make this assumption of all of us, just those who regularly read The Guardian, or just his fans?
The target audience is made even less clear, when he refers to ‘Paris, Britney, Rihanna, Miley’ but also ‘Mahmoud Ahmadinejad andVince Cable’. Is it really likely that the majority of people reading this article will be able to identify all those people? Perhaps one group or the other, but Disney pop stars and Iranian Presidents rarely have the same following.
I was disappointed by this article, which was misinformed and un-engaging. Please pass my comments on to the author.
Sincerely,
Kate Stone