Here's my article-in-reply:
Charlie Brooker: I love you. There, I've said it. In a platonic way, obviously (I've got the wife and kids now), but your blend of black humour, narcism, sardonic social commentary and biting wit keeps me lapping up every single torrid word that spills from your frothing mouth.
You are, of course and at best, a sociopath. And now you've directed your laser sights onto a tenet of my world, you've put me in a really weird place. You're wrong and I don't want to admit it, because for me that now cheapens and insignificants all of your previous works. I'll never be able to watch Screen/Gameswipe with such co-consipiratorial fervour again, now in the knowledge that you've taken aim at something I hold dear and, it has to be said, missed quite spectacularly.
You made a pop at the Mac. This isn't your first attempt - I remember you wrote a piece a while back citing similar gripes (the self-serving, whimpering, Mac zealots who worship at the alter of Jobs and revel in the schadenfreude of watching others suffer in the Dante's Inferno-esque torrid abyss of using the Windows operating system). But, I let you have that one.
But now, you've walked into my back yard, dropped your scats and are taking a piss all over my azaleas. You may already have done that to my neighbours, and I've found it very amusing, but doing it on my property and on greenery I've spent many hours tending to, it isn't quite so funny.
So, first off, the Mac's design. You say the better something is designed, the more you dislike it. I happen to be a software user experience designer. I spend my day pouring over (what can seem at times to be) the most miniscule of detailto make the experience of using software I design easier for the user. I love my job, I think it's a noble trade - not in the same league as teachers, doctors or third-world aid workers - but an attempt to make the world we live in slightly more friendly, less frustrating and more seamless.
The design that has gone into Apple's products is the result of hundreds of massively talented people spending many a tortuous day locked in a darkened room with nothing more than a whiteboard, a painfully expensive latte, and a deadline. Making something highly functional yet immediately accessible verges on art. Usability design is the constant raging battle against entropy.
I know, Mr Brooker, you're trying to make a joke. Ha ha… look at me and how contrary I am. The rest of the world thinks simplicity is good, but I want you to go boil your testes if you agree. Well, well done. We've had a bloody hard time of it, here in the software industry over the last ten years, trying to convince people that good design is better than features, price or fashion.
Whether it is funny to poke fun at Mac advocates or not, surely the bitterly painful truth that the king of operating systems is actually wearing no clothes should gnaw at yours and everyone else's injustice glands until they burst. It just isn't right that ****** Windows is allowed to profligate and maintain it's cast-iron manacle around the necks of the world's population. Computers help the world progress. These computers probably run Windows. Windows stops people doing what they really want to be doing more than it should. Therefore, Windows is holding the world's progression back.
As for your claim that I wander the streets at night, an etherial force keeping me six inches off the floor, waiting to catch an unsuspecting bystander trying to install their third security patch that evening, then simply laughing in their face - you're wrong, because you're judging me (and the others like me - I'm not refuting they are out there) as you judge yourself. You'd stand there laughing in disbelief while the stupid fumble with their primitive doohickies. I feel a genuine humanistic urge to help pull these poor frightened souls out of the dark, hateful existence they've found themselves in. Not because I love comparing their plight to my perfect existence, but because I think I can see something they can't or they may not have realised was there. I stopped out-and-out preaching years ago - I realised the inherent apparent sanctimoniousness of it was outweighing any benevolent message I was trying to get across. Now, I only advise when asked. But there will always be a part of me that wants to help people out of their misery. That's because I, very much unlike you, don't find comfort wallowing in the blackness.
Mr Charlie Brooker. I still love you. You need to keep doing what you're doing to put everything in perspective. I'm not going to stop reading your column, watching your programmes, or being far too intimate with the little doll I've made of you, but don't think you're getting away with this kind of cheap jibe again. Next time you're scrabbling for ideas, please think twice about taking aim at my Mac.