The whole point of YOU magazine is that when you look at it you see yourself there and so straightaway you identify with yourself, you identify with the ‘you’ you see there and that makes you buy the magazine. Not only do you buy the magazine, you also buy the entire conceptual world that it (and many other publications like it) take for granted. ‘What world is that?’ you ask brightly, but none too intelligently. You’re cheerful enough but all the same you’re not really paying attention. You’re already bored and I haven’t even started. The point is that you straightaway think ‘Cool – that’s me,’ and this brings you ‘on side’ straightaway – you are on the inside looking out and you don’t even know what the real world is any more. Something’s messed around with your insides. You see yourself and so you automatically think ‘That’s my type of magazine because I’m in it’ and this is a very good hook to pull you in with. It’s a key selling point. Would you buy yourself? Of course you would – you’d join that club in a second. You’d see yourself in the magazine and you’d think ‘That magazine (or whatever) must be cool because I’m in it!’ That proves the point and no one is ever going to be any the wiser. So when you identify with the version of you that you see there in the whatever-it-is-you’re-reading-or-viewing you not only buy into that ‘version of you’, you buy into the whole conceptual matrix that this version is created out of. You’re buying into it all, as usual – you can’t buy just the one thing without also buying all the other things that go along with it. You’re not just nibbling at the bait, you’ve gone and swallowed hook, line and sinker as well. You’ve swallowed the tackle box along with twenty back issues of Angler’s Times. You have – unwittingly – agreed to swallow whatever is there to swallow and you don’t even know what that is. You don’t care, you’ve agreed anyway. You’ve agreed and you don’t even know that you have. It’s a classic Trojan Horse manoeuvre you see – you see yourself so you identify with yourself because you reckon that if it’s you then it must be cool (it’s got to be cool after all because if you can’t trust yourself then who can you trust) but then unknowingly you’ve also signed up for the world that this version of you comes with and so that’s cooked your goose good and proper. That’s one well-cooked goose right there! And so it’s not really a magazine we are talking about it’s a world and you look into this world (for whatever reason) and you see yourself there and you think ‘Hey look – that’s me!’ and you really and truly do think it’s you and so that’s that – game, set and match, Bob’s your uncle, and so on. But that was only the bait you see and so you’ve been suckered good and proper. That wasn’t you at all, it was an alien concept designed to snag you, designed to draw you in, designed to capture you and then replace all your DNA with its own alien DNA in such a way that you’ll never notice the difference…