Over on the Guardian's website, Charlie Booker has a delightfully hateful piece on nightclubs and why they're awful. Booker doesn't just criticize clubs; he demolishes them, strafes their ruins with mortar fire, and grinds up their overpriced ashes. Rarely have I felt such kinship with a columnist.

The whole piece is brilliantly derisive, but the money paragraphs come near the end:

The second thing that struck me was frightening. They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that's all they seemed to be doing. Standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and cameras. One pose after another, as though they needed to prove their own existence, right there, in the moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little dancing. Just pouting and flashbulbs.

Surely this is a new development. Clubs have always been vapid and awful and boring and blah - but I can't remember clubbers documenting their every moment before. Not to this demented extent. It's not enough to pretend you're having fun in the club any more - you've got to pretend you're having fun in your Flickr gallery, and your friends' Flickr galleries. An unending exhibition in which a million terrified, try-too-hard imbeciles attempt to out-cool each other.

Yes, yes, and more yes. Charlie -- give me your number and we'll hang out next weekend. We can go to a nice, low-key bar and then play Dungeons & Dragons in my basement until the wee hours. 

(Thanks, reddit, as usual.)