PresentTense:Congratulations. Time magazine made you Person of the Year for 2006. You might think, well, I did do a good job on the shelving in the shed and the kids have stayed out of juvenile detention - but Person of the Year? It's flattering, but . . .
The editor of Time clarified this on CNN. "You. Me. Everyone," he told the journalist. Unlike previous winners, this year's bunch is not afforded the courtesy of a decent airbrushing.
Instead Time put a little, crumpled mirror on the front cover just to emphasise the point that it really is you (me, everyone). However, you have to peer so closely to make out any clear reflection in wrinkled foil set against a stark white background that all it gives is a sense of what it might be like to be a legally blind Eskimo.
Besides, there are plenty of bachelor pads around the western world which, thanks to them featuring in The Big Lebowski, already have one of those cheesy "Time Man of the Year" mirrors hanging up in the bathroom. Perhaps Time will consider bringing out an issue shaped like novelty loo roll cover.
The magazine says that it is awarding the accolade to you (me, whoever) because "individuals are changing the nature of the information age" and that we "are engaged citizens of a new digital democracy". That's precisely the phrase that popped into your mind the afternoon you were uploading onto YouTube a video of you blowing a bullhorn at a sleeping friend. Or when you were meeting other total ledges on Bebo. But there you are.
"You control the Information Age," says the magazine's cover. "Welcome to your world." Welcome to our world? Whose world have we been living in until now? Bono's and Bill Gates's perhaps, given that they shared the honour last year.
So, finally, the great mass of humanity gets its moment in the foil-reflected sun. It's not the first occasion that Time has given its famous award to a group of people. In 1966, it went to the generation 25 and under; in 1969, to the Middle Americans; and, in 1975, they gave it to American women. So, in a sense, many of this lot have now won it twice. There have been other esoteric choices. In 1988, it went to Endangered Earth. It called it "Planet of the Year", as if there had been some relentless lobbying by Saturn.
However, the masses who forced the collapse of Communism in 1989 didn't force such recognition. Nor did the global outpouring of humanity which followed the Asian tsunami of 2004. Nor have the millions who have filled news reports year after year, decade after decade. It's only when the public figured out how to make the news themselves, as well as star in it, that Time has given them recognition. Or, to put it another way, only when mankind devised a way of sharing a night's happy slapping with millions of people that it was worth honouring.
Perhaps it thought the world was occupied solely by the kind of people featured in a montage that accompanies the article: a carefully balanced multicultural mix of punks and grannies; cheerleaders and soldiers. Each in an artful mimicking of real life that the actual "you" would only ever have an opportunity to pose for if you happened to accidentally stumble into a photo-shoot for a Benetton ad.
Curious to know what the blogosphere had made of this announcement, I looked up "Person of the Year" in the popular search engine Technorati. The first site promised that I could "be a virgin every night". Can Time please cross that person off the list? Like teenagers rolling their eyes to heaven when their father starts dancing to Lil Chris, the bloggers treated the announcement with a measure of cynicism. "Do not - do not! - do not make the joke Time magazine is trying to get you to make. Do not let them succeed in their attempt to use you - to use 'you' - to go viral," one begged fruitlessly. "Condescending, patronising, marketing-driven hooey," wrote Russell Shaw on the Huffington Post.
The hooey was helped, as it happened, by the Person of the Year's sponsor, Chrysler motors, which until the announcement was running an ad which proclaimed: "You might not be Time Person of the Year. But you can drive like you are." That alone has been enough to drive traffic to the site where it will now undoubtedly run until long after the laughter has worn out.
There's presumably a sincerity in Time's decision, but making everyone Person of the Year suggests either an inability to think of a single candidate or fear of picking the wrong one; or it is the ultimate expression of an Oprah-esque culture which insists that everyone is super-special and deserving of a prize. Simultaneously, it smacks of an old institution trying to get down with the kids; a newer version of the rapping bank managers that were once a staple of radio ads.
Which is why there are plenty of online critics who believe that this is just the latest snivelling, embarrassing attempt by old media to suck up to new media. And might I say, on behalf of this venerable newspaper, how right they are.
