#Dibber

#Dibber

Dibber got a letter from Celebutards calling him in for some kind of Induction next Thursday or else big problems with Benefits large and small. After customary complaints, idle moaning and/or delayed commiserations from immediate family, he got his conscripted ass down there early – sitting in the waiting lounge with polystyrene ceiling muzak, litter of aged magazines and a flat-screen receptionist for 48 hours, tuning to the strange comings and insidious goings of the building, the specific creak and crackle of its CCTV, pesticide and aircon as well as the buzz, clunk clatter of the Pepsi Machine, Juicer and alleged water cooler.

When it came to induction the advisor bloke sat him down in the windowless cubicle, offered pain killers and Detox Cigarettes then ran thru the spiel – everything was embargoed, nothing they said could go out of the room. The plan was a year long conscription, with option on two further years, dependant on ratings, socials and a whole lot of other stuff like pre-recognitions, cross-sells and co-convergence that a straight A’s idiot like Dibber couldn’t claim to understand. They took his fingerprints, appointed him a designated Driver, outlined a programme of corrective dental work, filled his face full of Botox, ringed his flabby arms with a Celtic-looking tattoo, sprayed him with OrangeTan, did something weird to his hair and sketched out the next six months in partial detail while the wardrobe people took his measurements with a laser-device. Later they took him down to Administration, converted his name to a hashtag, signed the papers and let the wagons roll. #Dibber was cast as a Drunken Oaf type with something of a Prince Charming thing, a well-meaning caricature whose looks would slowly melt butter but whose mouth would quickly shoot blanks. That kind of thing was mint in Endland (sic) those days – the kind of thing that people loved. They had him down for a romance with Helena Bellend, then a bust-up that would hopefully rock Twittersphere, he’d get in a punchup with Mario Mixface, apologise, flare up on PintRest and apologise again repeatedly then shack up with a new older Celebutard called Martha Martha that they were launching the same time as #Dibber. The idea was to cross-fertilise followings, routing trickledown audience from Bellend and Mixface to launch the new stablemates, and at the same time add spice to the existing properties who were far from their peak in some key market segments. #Dibber was pretty much lost at the first plot twist, his boner for Bellend quickly diminished by the prospect of later enforced carnal endorsement with Martha, whose haggard Real Face was only partly hidden by the pioneering surgery already enacted at Celebutards’ clinic. Some of the surgeons there were practically cubists – hardcore ex-military nut jobs straight out of Texas, Iraq and Afghanistan and working at the absolute ethical cutting edge of what could be reconstituted using a human face and all kinds of plasma after carbomb injuries.