Boganomics: Maxximising the Bogan Opportunity

19 10 2011

Marketers should never, ever view the bogan as a problem. The bogan is an amazing opportunity. Other market segments marketers deal with are likely to be more discerning, more logical, and more restrained. When faced with the chance to pitch to the bogan, the opportunity needs to be maximised to the power of max.

Bogan marketing: novice level

The basic view of marketing involves making your product stand out amongst competitors, and appealing to the target audience in a way that makes the audience more likely to plump for your product instead of something that isn’t your product. Take, for example, a hungry bogan. One who wishes to plump for its own plumpness.

As portrayed in the above diagram, a marketing strategist for KFC aspires to instruct the bogan that it should not go to the supermarket, nor should it sample fine dining, go to a competitor, or go and do something about its waistline. Instead of any of these things, the bogan is to want a delicious Zinger burger. The easiest way to do this is to apply as many of the X factors as possible from our proprietary X-factor bogan wrangling model.

Bogan marketing: intermediate level

The novice marketer to the bogan may think that he or she has done a wonderful job by convincing the bogan that it should eat a Zinger burger at KFC. In truth, the marketer’s performance has been woeful, considering the opportunity it was presented with. The bogan has little capacity to differentiate its wants from its needs, and its own opinions from those opinions which it is instructed to possess. A higher level of bogan marketer appreciates these facts, and will use them to achieve a higher level of success.

The intermediate level bogan marketing diagram demonstrates the ability to make the bogan choose KFC for its burger, and then inform the bogan that it also needs something else in order for the Zinger burger to be truly satisfying. This can be done by packaging the products together, and calling it “deluxe”, or “value”. The bogan will never evaluate whether the package of products is indeed deluxe or good value, so there is no need to discount or add quality. When packaging the products together, the bogan marketer should consult the X-factor model to ensure that the package comes in a brightly branded carry box. Another highly effective method is informing the bogan that the deluxe value meal, while comprised of three regular menu items, is available for a limited time only.

 Bogan marketing: advanced level

The bogan marketer who has achieved the intermediate level of upselling, packaging, or expanding the bogan’s perceptions of its needs has reason to feel proud of their work. A marketer at this level is likely to be promoted to middle management, and go on to forge a solid career assisting the bogan in believing that marketing and advertising is an instrument that helps the bogan, not controls it. If, however, the marketer wishes to progress to the top of the tree, they need to abandon any quaint idea that they work with the bogan, instead embracing a gloriously depraved hegemony over the bogan’s hopes and dreams.

The diagram for the advanced level of bogan marketing shows that the bogan’s hunger should not be acknowledged by the marketer. Hunger for food can generally be satiated for $15 or less, and the bogan has more bucks than that. These bucks are the rightful property of the marketer, and need to be removed from the bogan promptly. The advanced level bogan marketer interprets the bogan’s hunger not as a hunger for food, but as a hunger for consumption. For example, a bogan marketer with multiple clients should include a plug for an iPhone app in its KFC advertisement, an app which would allow the bogan to summon a Zinger burger to its couch with little more than a wave of its finger. Now that the bogan is thinking about the benefits of advanced telephony, it is ripe to be sold a poor value, multi-year phone contract with an overloaded telco. This phone advertisement needs to follow the KFC advertisement swiftly, before the bogan forgets what it has been told it wants.

Stage one complete, the elite bogan marketer will conjure up a nonsensical branding alliance between the phone retailer and the provider of dubious and extremely expensive medical suppliers who promise that they will allow the bogan to have maxtreme sex. The branding alliance does not need to make any sense at all – the bogan is still hungry, confused, and its credit card is warmed from previous swiping. An equally meaningless connection can be then made to a car manufacturer, via a method such as an “everyone wins something” raffle or lottery, where the bogan’s supplied contact details are then used to pepper it with any number of unrelated marketing schemes. The bogan’s hunger has continued to grow, and the idea of a fast car to get it to a feeding venue is likely to be of appeal.

At this point, the bogan’s bucks are likely to be exhausted, along with its various lines of credit. A $15 hunger has been completely ignored by the advanced level marketer, who merely viewed it as the soft underbelly of a cash chamber worth approximately $45,000. The chamber thus emptied, this zen level marketer can choose to retire to the Bahamas. If, however, the marketer has become so hooked on exploiting the bogan that they can derive joy from nothing else, he or she can then sell a 26% interest “Deluxe platinum” credit card to the bogan, because the bogan is still hungry, and Zinger burgers ain’t free.


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#247 – Gig Photography

10 10 2011

We may have figured this out. For all the talk, posturing and driving down inner-urban streets with all four windows down and the sonic enema of David Guetta emitting at NASA-like frequencies, the bogan does not actually like music. It has an underdeveloped Morrissey gland. Sure, it responds, Pavlovian bivalve that it is, to rave whistles and sub-bass rumblings, but things like ‘rhythm’ and ‘melody’ may well do no more than cause the bogan confusion.

So, why? Why would the bogan so studiously be such a big music fan, to the point that it actually likes ‘Music’ on Facebook. Not an individual artist or band, but ‘Music’? Our thousand monkeys experts at the Boganomics Institute in Genève have, after several billion hours of rigorous testing, nutted this problem out. The bogan, knowing that everyone else ‘gets’ this music caper, must fit in. It must, on pain of social exclusion, give the appearance of enjoying the mundane bleatings of Michael Bublé and, by extension, encourage the musical abortion that is Human Nature. It must undergo the trauma of indie rock gigs to prove its bona fides. This, of course, explains why the bogan is incapable of attending these gigs without resorting to shouted conversations and the occasional punch-on.

However, these are bogans we’re talking about, and subtlety is not their strong suit. The bogan would not waste time listening to music simply to enjoy music, but to establish its street cred. So, beyond the aforementioned musical drive-bys and Facebook posturing, how can the bogan prove that it is a music fan? By taking photos, of course.

Having established that the bogan is unlikely to frequent live music performances for the pleasure of witnessing live music, it becomes easily understandable that the bogan’s true purpose for being there is to stand front and centre, raise their iPhone above the crowd, in order to get a blurry, diagonal capture of half of Kings of Leon’s lighting rig, and a flurry that could possibly be their bassist’s hand, and start snapping. And snapping.

In Phuket, the bogan is perfectly happy to enjoy the experience of getting smashed on buckets of beer and errantly identifying ladyboys while only taking the occasional snapshot. The experience of live music, however, is lost on it, so attempting to create a visual record of its attendance, and uploading it – post-haste – to Facebook becomes of paramount importance. Forward-thinking bogans may even upload a Twitpic or two while still at the gig, adding reams of bogan musical veracity to its already bulging resume of forgotten, but recorded, concerts.

The Facebook photo album ‘Kings of Leon Awsum!’ rapidly assumes equivalent importance to other albums demonstrating the bogan’s max clubbing skillz such as ‘Friday Night OMG!!!1!’, ‘Boutique Fridayz!!!’ and, of course, the unforgettable ‘Friday Night with the Girlz!!!’. The only real difference between these undifferentiated dark blobs of pixels is that three contain elevated images of poorly arranged cleavage, while the other (un)focuses on a brightly lit stage 40 metres away. The bogan now understands music.


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Boganomics Excerpt: Choose Your Own Bogan Adventure

3 10 2011

With the threatened release of our new book, Boganomics, drawing ever closer, it has become time for us to whet your collective appetite with some choice snippets to be drawn from one of the 12 chapters contained therein. Today, let’s open up with a taste from our chapter on the bogan’s love of music and nightlife:

Choose your own bogan nightclub adventure

For this exercise the reader must put themself in the bogan’s shoes.

You step onto the footpath outside ‘ViperSnake’ nightclub. It is 11.30 p.m. on a Saturday evening and you have spent the previous few hours at the local pub, consuming a range of sugary and caffeine-enhanced alcoholic beverages and wailing along with poor timing to all the Whoooa-ohs and the Yeeeeah-eeaahs of the resident cover band. Those remaining acquaintances who have not already become overly intoxicated/embroiled in fights or forced to go home/to the hospital/to the police station join you at the club.

1. Upon arrival at the club’s entrance you are greeted with a long line, at the head of which stands a very enticing velvet rope. You are more important than the average person because your cousin’s ex-boyfriend’s sister knows someone who was once on Big Brother, and this level of celebrity entitles you to jump the queue as you are probably on ‘the list’. If you wish to: slum it with the regular folk for a change, go to part 2; push in, go to part 3.

2. A lengthy spell spent peering around those in front of you in order to catch a glimpse of the velvet rope has left you thirsty and impatient. You head to the bar for refreshments only to find yet another queue, this one without a velvet rope to encourage orderly behaviour. If you are: sick of waiting in lines, go to part 3; willing to wait your turn, go to part 4.

3. You have picked the wrong person to push in on: another, larger bogan. Yelling quickly turns to posturing, and then grill-getting-up-in. Your flight-or-fight response is heavily weighted toward fight at the best of times, let alone after a few drinks. The larger bogan easily accounts for you in an emotionless display of violence. You end up sprawled, semiconscious, on the footpath. Game over. You lose.

4. After repeatedly waving a $50 note under the barperson’s nose eventually proves an effective method of gaining their attention, you order a round of Jägerbombs. You consume yours in a heroic manner, punctuating this with a hearty Whooo-hooo while raising your glass aloft triumphantly. But then, as you look around the venue, an anxious feeling suddenly comes over you. This place seems pretty good, but you begin to question whether or not, maybe, the people are more celeb, the beats sicker and the drinks more explosive at some other club. You fear you are not having the most maxtreme time possible. If you wish to: leave and seek greener pastures, go to part 1; stay, go to part 5.

5. You decide to cut a lap of the place to check things out. It is extremely crowded, requiring you to push your way through the crowd, thereby inconveniencing the entire patronage of the club. You persist, regardless of the fact that you’re not going anywhere in particular. As you conclude your lap a stranger offers you a random blue pill at the low cost of $40. If you wish to: take it, got to part 6; politely decline, go to part 7.

6. You soon lose control of your bodily functions. You end up sprawled, semiconscious, on the footpath. Game over. You lose.

7. Having decided to stick to the liquor, you head back to the bar and conquer another Jägerbomb before going to check out the DJ. The DJ’s booth is sectioned off with velvet rope. You spend a few minutes peering beyond the rope, wondering what it would be like to be on the other side. Then the DJ starts playing a song that you don’t recognise from any Ministry of Sound compilations. That anxious feeling comes over you again. If you want to: leave this club and seek greener pastures, go to part 1; go out for a cigarette, go to part 8.

8. You head out the door you so recently waited in line to enter. You see someone smoking and ask to bum a cigarette … and a light. You have neither, because you only smoke when you’re ‘out’. You scoff at a few sad losers sprawled on the footpath, obviously either unable to handle their liquor or handle themselves in a fight. You are feeling pretty wasted and tired yourself by now. Do you: hop in a cab and call it a night, go to part 9; persist, go to part 10.

9. Conveniently, you see a cab pulling up. As you step to its door, someone else has the same idea. You want this cab, and you go for it. Go to part 3.

10. Persistence is the key to success, you tell yourself. More Jägerbombs sees you thoroughly intoxicated. Go to part 6.

 


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#246 – Tax Refunds

29 09 2011

It has happened since the dawn of time. In 1854. Taxation issues caused ancestral bogans to attack police in an unsuccessful revolt on the Victorian goldfields. The tax paid on discovered gold was deemed by the miners to be excessive, and they wanted it back. They wanted a tax refund. They did not get a tax refund. The subsequent 16 decades have, in a large part, been dedicated to the bogan getting square.

In modern Australia, income tax is deducted from a worker’s salary at a rate that, all other things being equal, should result in the person neither underpaying or overpaying tax throughout the year. This system entitles the bogan to bark about the perpetual and limitless misuse of its taxpayer dollars. This very nearly makes sense, so it is not meaningful to the bogan.

While British colonists in North America 350 years ago lobbied for political change (and led to the American Revolution) with the slogan “no taxation without representation”, the bogan, being the ambitious parasite it is, has higher aims. While the bogan will reluctantly have tax deducted from its monthly salary, it agrees solely on the condition that all of this money, and more, is returned to it at the end of the financial year. Also, it wants infinitely maxtreme levels of political clout at all times. “No taxation, yes representation”.

A recent survey reported that 89% of people expected to receive a tax refund from the 2010-11 financial year. From this, we can deduce that at least 11% of Australians are not bogans. The remainder comprises people who genuinely warrant refunds, people who have successfully defrauded a pathway to a refund, and a large horde of bogans who are smirking on borrowed time. In the weeks and months after June 30, Australia’s towns and cities rattle from the shrill cry of bogans opening their ATO envelopes. Birds flap from their perches on sandstone cathedrals. “Where’s the refuuuuund?!?”, complaineth the bogan, upon receiving a cheque for a mere $400 to offset unspecified and highly dubious expenses. The bogan knows that it paid thousands in tax over the year, and continues to ponder this injustice as it drives down the smooth, four lane road to chemist. A script for PBS-subsidised Ritalin is collected for little Thailaar, who is on her third warning at a private school mostly funded by the government.

An angry phone call to the creative accountant later that day involves a slew of incompatible accusations about the accountant’s level of ability, coupled with a demand that the tax return be filed again, getting it “right this time”. Because the bogan is acutely aware of its Bill of Rights, it therefore knows what is right, and that it has a right not to pay bills. Conceding that bogans (particularly those in marginal electorates) are indeed right, parties on both sides of the political fence are profoundly reluctant to reduce any tax deductibility loopholes frequently used by bogans. Furthermore, new ways to offset income tax miraculously appear near election time, confirming that, Eureka! – the bogan is right.


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The Announcement You’ve All Been Waiting For

12 09 2011

It’s been long coming. You’ve known about, perhaps without really knowing about it. But it’s been there, like a splinter in your mind. The knowledge that, someday, perhaps soon, the TBL team would be releasing another book. Well kids, that time is SOON!

The cast and crew at Things Bogans Like would like to introduce you to the world of:

BOGANOMICS: THE SCIENCE OF THINGS BOGANS LIKE

After spending decades in their dungeons painstakingly piecing together the almighty tome that was Things Bogans Like, a question struck the six of us. Why? After extensively cataloguing WHAT the bogan enjoys, the question of causality arose, and it was something we couldn’t answer easily. Thus, we spent hundreds of minutes hunched in front of the Underwood Five typewriters we bought with our max royalties from book one, and punched out the hastily conceived, shoddily constructed, downright HILARIOUS sequel, the cover of which you may or may not see before you.

“But where and when can I buy this almighty literary landmark?” I hear you asking.  Well, that would be on October 25th, 2011. In all good book stores. And several bad ones. We are considering a payment program based on creating a micropayment system that will charge readers on a per-word basis. This post will be $1.23, please.

In Other News…

Over the past few months, the TBL team has quite literally been scattered to the four winds, with members (whose locations we’re passingly aware of) presently in Austria, Ghana, and somewhere entertaining university students in a Parisian backpacker hostel. As for me, Chas, I’m heading off on a TBL research trip to Darwin for three weeks, the price one must pay to achieve verisimilitude.

Resultantly, there may be little to no activity on the blog for a little while, although efforts will be made to tweet the experience on Twitter with the Tweeting the kids are so fond of these days, so feel free to follow us there.

More importantly, BOGANOMICS, EVERYONE!


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#245 – The Makers of ‘The Hangover’

9 09 2011

We know that the bogan likes sequels, and we know that the bogan likes remakes. Both of these things provide the bogan with a rich, nourishing bubble of security that – when it is enveloped by its Natuzzi™ couch, watching its Samsung™ 60” plasma – mitigates the risk that bogan lives in constant fear of. That it will buy something that reflects poorly upon it.

Most industries figured out the power of branding in appealing to the bogan long, long ago. Proto-bogans were encouraged to make their children happy little Vegemites™, or that nine out of ten doctors smoked Marlboros™. It has reached the point today that the marketing industry is engaged in a constant tailspin, like Keanu Reeves to the bogans’ Patrick Swayze, as they both hurtle to Earth, the bogan seeing no reason to pull the ripcord just yet.

The trouble in the modern day, however, is that branding’s easy with products that can be re-purchased. The bogan that is convinced to switch from Red Bull to Mother so it can be more maxtremely manly will continue to drink said massive cans once its loyalty is certain. When it comes to films, it is less simple. The bogan will, perhaps, pay money to see a movie in the cinemas, or most likely watch it at home on the screen it purchased on generous interest-free terms at Harvey Norman. Once it’s bought, or watched, it ain’t about to get bought again, no matter how strong the brand.

Now the moguls, as the movie types’ superlative tends to be, had a few fixes, namely making the same film again, and making n sequels of any popular film, turning it into that most appealing-sounding of film concepts, a ‘franchise’. Having bogans pay extra money for the sick-inducing experience of watching in the third dimension was also a brief fillip, before even bogans cottoned on to the inanity of Avatar (until Avatar II comes out, of course).

Trouble is, making a new movie is expensive. The cost associated with putting together even a lame remake masquerading as a sequel was discovered by the makers of The Hangover (Zack Galifinakis + baby), as they made the same movie again, chucked a ‘2’ in front (Zack Galifinakis + monkey) and made a metric fucktonne of money. Metric fucktonnes of cash notwithstanding, though, even a sequel is a gamble. So they figured out something even better. Apply the branding of entirely unrelated material to a new movie. Thus, even though Judd Apatow has directed a mere three feature films, there have been at least 370 lesser works tossed out to the slavering bogan horde with his name attached, to huge bank.

In the relative Apatow-silence since Knocked Up (no one liked Funny People), there needed to be a new brand to bring the bogans in. Luckily, The Hangover, with its references to maxtreme partying and Las Vegas, hooked bogans the world over good and proper. Thus, we have been treated to the likes of Due Date (Zack Galifinakis + puppy) and The Change-Up, in which other movies are remade at low cost, then branded ‘Hangover’. We’re confident that they will make a metric fucktonne of money.


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#244 – Low Interest Rates

5 09 2011

The bogan understands economics. With a level of understanding akin to James Cameron’s grasp of screenplays, the bogan will frequently invoke its right to free speech to opine vociferously on the performance of the economy, thus the performance of the government of the moment. And the bogan knows that there is only one true measure of economic performance: interest rates.

Interest rates are the Reserve Bank’s sole means of regulating an overinflating economy, or spurring on sluggish consumer and business spending by discouraging or encouraging bank lending. However, unlike the ‘conventional’ economic wisdom, which the bogan is assured by News Ltd is spurious, the bogan knows that a truly strong economy exists only when interest rates are at all-time record lows. The bogan approaches interest rates much like a climatologically paranoid beaver. Should it rain heavily, the beaver’s dam could well be fucked. The bogan, loaded up with $500,000 of borrowed money to pay off the McMansion, views rising interest rates much like as incoming inclement weather; that is, a clear signal of impending economic doom.

Thus, every month, there is a near-pornographic obsession in the trashmedia with the upcoming announcements on interest rates, as ‘journalists’ rapidly calculate the monthly cost facing overleveraged bogans’ average mortgage repayments. Accordingly, bogans will express outrage when the banks have the temerity to ‘pass on the rate rise’. National politicians will then fuel the flame of righteous bogan fury, claiming that the banks have a responsibility to bogans everywhere, and that their behaviour (making a profit) is un-Australian.

Once the dust has settled, the bogan will begin complaining to everyone about how the rising interest rates are the government’s and the banks’ fault, and that they are now in ‘mortgage stress’, because that it a term they heard Kochie use once. This is despite the fact that mortgage rates are still about half the level of 1991. This is also despite the fact that the bogan has happily loaded up the credit card at 20% for a new bookshelf from IKEA, a 0.25% increase in the interest rate is enough to send the bogan into a seething rage.

The bogan, under the extraordinary levels of mortgage stress it inherited due to the policies of a government that has no control over interest rates, will approach the bank, asking to fix its exchange rate. It understands economics, but not fixed or variable mortgages. It resigns itself to watching the monthly announcement on the increase in interest rates, and will then exercise its right to free speech to opine vociferously about how unaffordable housing is in Australia.


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#243 – Perspective-Based Photography at Famous Landmarks

25 08 2011

“Wait…move your left hand over a bit…that’s it…nah, wait, you missed it. Fuck. Try again.”

Travel to any part of the world with any landmark that has appeared in a James Bond movie or a Contiki catalogue, and you will undoubtedly hear words to this effect. With a strong Australian dollar, cheap flights, and internet accommodation bookings, the newly internationalised bogan has embraced overseas trips/tours/drinking with a previously unseen fervour. They then decide, in their uncommonly belated manner, that it would be totally bitchin’ if they posed alongside a famous landmark, employing their unparalleled grasp of telephoto perspective to create the impression they’re, you know, holding it up! While the bogan has precious little perspective on life, empathy, culture, and modesty, it has an unlimited desire for perspective in its photography.

How artistic and clever it makes the bogan feel to have come up with such a devastatingly effective photo. The several hundred other travelling bogans undertaking the same process within a 50 metre radius are clearly ripping off what is an original idea. It is inconceivable that anyone other than that one particular bogan could have realised how extreme it would be if a photo made the Eiffel Tower look really small, with the tip being squeezed by the oily pincers of the bogan.

After the magic of the digital camera allows the bogan to make the requisite 300 attempts to place the photo’s two subjects in harmonious alignment, it can be taken home, enlarged 100 times and placed on the wall of the formal living room. The roaring success of the photo is enough to induce the bogan to tell its friends that it’s thinking of becoming a pro photographer. Indeed, the possibility to take more perspective-based photos (along with V Australia now flying to North America) may lure the bogan to journey to NYC to create a sidesplittingly unprecedented scene where the Statue of Liberty gets sodomised from behind. An alternative, and equally appealing option is to kiss the Sphinx, and then make a joke about getting older pussy. Or, or, what about one where it looks like the ruins of the Acropolis are getting stomped on?!?!

The bogan will never, ever, ever tire of this.


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#242 – Playing the Market

19 08 2011

The bogan’s love of making a quick buck is well noted, so it was only a matter of time before it turned it’s liliputian attention span to the sharemarket and its promise of easy, maxtreme wealth. But the bogan isn’t interested in investing. In doesn’t care for fundamental analysis, P/E ratios or portfolio diversification. Even the shortest investment horizon is too long by half. The bogan wants a quick fix, a super expressway to leviathan plasmas, hot asian escorts and solid gold houses.

Taking Koshie’s advice on Sunrise, the bogan puts $5000 in a managed fund. But after a year, the bogan is shocked to learn the fund has only made a paltry 12% (despite outperforming the market by 4%). It expected to turn to that $5000 into at least $100000 by now!

The exasperated bogan then accompanies its entrepreneurial mate Troy to a seminar that promises retirement by 40. The bogan loves being in on a secret, and the seminar seems to offer an exclusive avenue to intense max millions. Two hours later, however, the bogan exits the seminar hungry, confused and dissatisfied: the free sushi had weird seafood in it, it doesn’t understand what a CFD is, and the only time it had ever been exposed to a stop order in the past was when it attempted to enter its partner’s back door without prior permission. Besides, the promised 25% per annum return is still grossly inadequate.

Its plans of becoming the next Warren Buffett buffeted, the bogan considers doubling its money at the dogs when the conversation at Thursday night poker turns to the market. “Boys,” the bogan’s business mate Troy says to the attentive crowd, “a mate of mine gave me a hot tip…” Scrambling outside in between Coronas, the bogan jumps on the iPhone to his wife. “Jade, we’re gonna be rich,” he exhorts excitedly. “Can you free up some money…”

The next day, the bogan puts the children’s education fund in Yam Aha Ltd, a highly leveraged agricultural investment scheme, growing yams in Papua New Guinea with revolutionary farming techniques. Not content with the promised 150% return, the bogan then takes out a margin loan, boosting his surefire, guaranteed return to a whopping 300%.

Initially the stock does well, prompting the bogan to gloat to his friends about ‘playing the market’ and purchase a new jetski and 3D plasma. One month later the stock has turned south as tropical cyclone Wilson leaves the summer yam harvest in ruins, and the bogan yammering. Initially, the bogan slogs it out like an ANZAC, taking solace in Troy’s sage forecast that the world price of yams is about to rocket as the Chinese government produces ethanol from yam extract. The next month, however, the stock plummets before going into a trading halt as ASIC announces Yam Aha is really a front for endangered parrot smugglers.

Forced to sell the McMansion to meet the margin call, the bogan vows to be wiser with his money in future. Until Troy tells him about the octagon scheme….


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#241 – Theatre Restaurants

10 08 2011

Despite the best efforts of their marketing departments to abandon their traditional audiences, theatres around Australia remain only occasionally of interest to the bogan. This occurs during the runs of things such as Shane Warne the Musical, Puppetry of the Penis, and the farewell tour of something they once fleetingly liked.

However, there is one type of theatre that the bogan has maintained a hunger for. A theatre whose exterior is so maxtreme that it couldn’t possibly contain things that bogans do not like. Theatre restaurants have been present in Australia’s capital cities for decades, and also can be found in bogan strongholds such as Newcastle and the Gold Coast.

While theatre restaurants may appear to be particularly bogan, there is a brutal subtext to these venues. The people who theatre restaurants pay to amuse the bogan on stage are very unlikely to be bogans. Generally, they are inner urban uni students or drama graduates who have failed to take Hollywood by storm. As punishment, they are forced to spend the rest of eternity dressed up in corsets and plastic fangs, clumsily overplaying physical comedy so that the bogan knows when to laugh.

Because the actors and hosts at the restaurant all look ridiculous, this gives the bogan the green light to express its own sartorial personality when attending a theatre restaurant. An unfortunate side-effect of this, is that theatre restaurants are popular venues for hens’ nights. The boganic bride-to-be, adorned in enough penis-themed products to impregnate a latex sex doll, is in its element at a theatre restaurant.

These actors will cavort around the restaurant, barking into lapel microphones, and involving selected bogans in the hilarity. Meanwhile, the bogan chews its way through a plate of rubbery beef and blackbean, and offers the room unsolicited insight into what’s on its mind.

As the bogan gnaws futilely on its rapidly congealing meal, it pauses to consider the entertainment value of the miserable actors on the stage before it in silence. While it finds the entertainment to be awesome in the consistent way that the stars of the show will draw attention to the flaws of various other guests, and the buxom wenches seem to be hovering around its table quite a bit. But then, the host, Count Dracula himself, swaggers towards the bogan, eyeing its Elwood t-shirt and lycra sleeve ‘tattoo’…


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