End of exams, soon, so soon....

I have just narrowly survived 5 hours of exam-related badness. Joyously, I now have only one exam left, although unfortunately it is in about 3 years' time. To mark the occasion, I think I'm entitled to vent my spleen on here. And now you have to read it. Sorry.

So. The Olympic logo, eh?

A real coup, this one. Not only is it the closest thing to a swastika since someone decided to build that strange symbol into Selwyn's arch, but it also seems to be the first logo ever which actually kills people just by being looked at. Even the Nazis didn't manage that one.

It's also been sending people into other varieties of fit, as well as the twitching type. Fits of RAGE.

Personally, I couldn't have been less surprised. Alarm bells always start to ring when people use words like "relevant" and "inclusive". They act as a kind of cipher for a specific chain of thought which is always gone through whenever anyone wants to appeal to what they imagine is the youth of today (I'm just thankful they didn't put a baseball cap on top of it).

(1) We want to appeal to Young People.
(2) To do this we must be hip and/or cool.
(3) Therefore our logo must be psychadelic, spiky, and 'edgy'.
(4) And look, it even flashes. This appeals to the Digital Generation - all those people wandering around with their iCassetteRecorders, or something. Word up.

The obvious flaw in the logic is that there is no magic formula for making Young People interested in things. It's not like smearing jam onto someone's face and waiting for the wasps to come. Young People are, generally, sentient beings (obviously, there are some exceptions - but unless Skateboarding, Injecting Heroin, and Mugging People become Olympic events, they're probably not going to be interested whatever happens) and so can see straight through the marketing.

The best advice I can give to the Olympic organisers (and I know you're reading this, Coe) is that if you want to make it attractive to Young People, just MAKE IT GOOD. It's that simple.