It has taken just one word, one word to burst Russell Brand’s revolutionary bubble of being some kind of modern day “Che Guevara.”
One word, and all his pompous verbosity and over-weening self-aggrandizing vanity is turned to great comic effect.
The word is “Parklife” as in the in the 1994 hit song by Blur.
You may recall that tasty toe-tapper—the one where actor Phil Daniels spouts a lot of self important nonsense about nothing much in particular—the kind of drivel that could so easily have splurged out of Russell Brand‘s own mouth:
Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as…
(There’s a game here—spotting which is Brand and which is Blur.)
It all began in response to a tweeted quote from Brand’s book Revolution about the “significance of consciousness.” Earthman Johann tweeted “Parklife” and suddenly Brand’s revolutionary zeal was undone.
"Parklife!" pic.twitter.com/8eLMCSjrXO
— Earthman Johann (@paperclipracket) October 26, 2014
Mr. Earthman Johann tweets that “Buzzfeed and the Independent is all very well, but I’ll not rest until Slate have dashed off some hurried analysis of the Parklife meme.”
This was followed on November 2nd by another tweet form Dan Barker:
Russell Brand's writing feels like someone is about to shout "PARKLIFE!" at the end of every sentence. pic.twitter.com/3uio7yrOfo
— dan barker (@danbarker) November 2, 2014
From such small beginnings a viral revolution was unleashed. Next up, was a Vine by Alan White that merged song and revolutionary in near perfect harmony.
From then on, nearly everything Brand tweeted was ridiculed by “#Parklife.”
@rustyrockets PARKLIFE!
— UNDER Repair (@Nickipedia101) November 3, 2014
And lo, of course, the inevitable YouTube videos.