Donald Trump is everything that the bogan wants from being a bazillionaire: he started by investing in residential real estate, and then became max celeb. Eventually, he scored a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, walked past countless velvet ropes, and now co-owns the Miss Universe beauty pageant. The bogan is also inspired by the idea that Trump gets to be an arsehole to people without repercussions. The 65 year old New Yorker was in Australia recently to record a cameo appearance in Celebrity Apprentice, reminding the bogan that its reality television-driven admiration of Trump is based on solid bogan philosophy.

While the bogan will normally glass any cunt who even utters the term “layoffs”, there are few ways to make a bogan happier than showing it footage of Donald Trump arbitrarily firing people who are striving for reality television excellence. Aside from the TV cameo, and appearances at a glorified business lunch, Trump’s core message to Australia was bogan catnip. It was almost like he knew of the bogan male’s ongoing failings to screw hot Asian chicks in Australian bars. “Screw China”, Trump thundered, referring to the partial pricing power that Australia’s commodity producers currently enjoy over their exports to developing countries in Asia. Screwing a billion Chinese people is like… a billion times better than screwing just one.

Just as Hugh Hefner has grown plump on mass-marketing trashy products carrying a logo that represents high end decadence, Trump is also unsatisfied with merely selling luxury to the very wealthy. $12 Trump cologne, “Trump Ice” bottled water, Trump vodka, Trump steaks (Trumprump?), Trump magazine, a forthcoming Trump online casino, Trump neckties, Trump home furniture, even short courses at the illegally named “Trump University” have followed. Trump sells the idea that looking rich is the pathway to immense wealth, an idea that appeals to bogans more than an interest-free, Hummer-branded Jet ski endorsed by David Guetta. Well, maybe not more than that. But, despite his periodic lawsuits, bankruptcies, and scandals, the Donald looks set to retain his hegemonic relationship over the bogan’s mind and wallet. Trump that, bogans.

In the meantime, here is a list of things that happened that we could have written about, should we have had the motivation. Please feel free to add suggestions.

• Teenager arrested in Bali for purchasing marijuana.
• Bogans assume he is guilty
• Bogans then assume he is innocent
• Bogans decide to wait until he’s sold his story to 60 Minutes
• Shane Warne gets engaged
• Shane Warne burns finger
• Trashmedia pay equal attention to both events
• Interest rates dropped
• Bogans took the opportunity to lament how Tough they are Doing It
• Kyle Sandilands something something
• Andrew Bolt was found to be a racist in a court of law
• Bogans blame political correctness gone mad; claim loss of free speech

What else happened?

On one hand, it secretly agreed that it was indeed being swamped by Asians (who couldn’t drive), was having its taxpayer dollars siphoned off to layabout aborigines (who were all alcoholics) and that it was subject to reverse racism because it was neither of those things and didn’t receive sufficient support in Making Ends Meet. On the other, it was not racist. The result was a strange kind of mental stagnation, as the bogan’s rigorously programmed brain was confronted with an unsolvable paradox. The result was that Pauline Hanson really attracted only the votes of those completely happy to be racist – old people.

But that was then. The past five years has given the bogan every chance to engage in Hanson’s very public rehabilitation, as the trashmedia, short of anything it could legitimately call ‘celebrities’ settled for people that were at least ‘recognisable’. Midway through realising that her 2004 attempt to re-enter federal politics was doomed, she instead opted to fail more generally at life, by featuring on Dancing with the Stars. Immediately sensing the chance to ‘forgive’ a ‘celebrity’, the bogan instantly propelled her to the final, only to be confronted by a choice between a forgiven Hanson and an ascendant Hewitt.

After that, Hanson released an autobiography called Untamed and Unashamed, two things the bogan, rebellious Underbelly viewer that it is, certainly considers itself to be. Less mentioned is Hanson’s earlier book called The Truth, which suggested that Aborigines routinely engaged in cannibalism. Nonetheless, Hanson’s journey to bogan forgiveness is now complete, as she competes alongside a series of utterly failed semi-public figures in Celebrity Apprentice, a program that is effectively designed to see which low-rent, feckless Australian is most willing to debase themselves in order to garner a few more moments in the public eye.

Today, Pauline Hanson is comfortably ensconced in the bogan pantheon, with a lifetime of income to be drawn from her continued public exposure for no reason beyond the fact that the bogan recognises her. Once, she was (allegedly) driven to electoral fraud in order to make a crust, but from now on, she may suckle on the nourishing, engorged teat of the bogan’s ignorance. And she will.

As the political class have increasingly courted the bogan over successive generations, and the corporate world has become more sophisticated in persuading the bogan to act against its own interests, we live in a world today of growing income inequality. Meanwhile bogans remain the prime beneficiaries of the explosion in welfare payments that do little to even out income inequality.

Thus, the ‘occupy’ movement sprung up. Originating in New York as an inchoate response to corporate influence on the political process, it was co-opted (as these things always are) by many and varied disgruntled protest groups who feel the need to piggyback their drive for pushing the socialist alternative on everyone else. In Melbourne’s city square, the largest of these movements resulted in a small tent city of disparate protest movements all loosely confederated around a hatred of ‘the man’. Members of these groups tend to have dreadlocks. Unless the locker of said dreads be black, nothing spells ‘hippie’ to the bogan more than dreadlocks and/or fisherman’s pants. Ipso facto, these protests were the purview of hippies and everything they stand for is uniformly incorrect.

Meanwhile, the monumental political failure that is Robert Doyle sniffed the wind. Melbourne’s Lord Mayor, having failed at every other political office he even considered standing for, realised that these people were hippies and a bogan windfall could be won by having his stormtroopers crack some heads.

The bogan, need it be repeated, is comfortably ensconced in its cocoon of normalcy. The bogan has its quarter-acre, its IKEA furniture, its large car and its porn collection, all designed to allow it to exist in such a way that it never interacts with those it finds unlike itself. Thus, it is offended by the existence of those unwashed and dissimilar who insist on appearing in public places where they cannot be easily ignored. Seeing Melbourne Police arrive in riot gear and comprehensively pound the living crap out of these people who were breaking no law is thus deeply satisfying to the bogan, which can then turn back to the news and listen to the report on how many police were injured in the operation. It will not hear that they were injured by their own capsicum spray. And it likes it that way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

]]> http://thingsboganslike.com/2011/09/12/the-announcement-youve-all-been-waiting-for/feed/ 244 Things Bogans Like TBL Disclaimer. This may or may not be the final cover. But it's pretty cool anyway. http://thingsboganslike.com/2011/09/09/245-the-makers-of-%e2%80%98the-hangover%e2%80%99/ http://thingsboganslike.com/2011/09/09/245-the-makers-of-%e2%80%98the-hangover%e2%80%99/#comments Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:13:54 +0000 Things Bogans Like http://thingsboganslike.com/?p=2638 ]]> 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.