Best Use Yet For Incognito Mode

Among the many other signs of ageing, one of them must be the increasing frequency with which bands from your childhood spring up on shows such as Never Mind The Buzzcocks as the 'remember these from so long ago that noone actually remembers, and can you even recognise one of them now?' ... rounds. This week it was one of the girls from B*witched (yes, that asterisk is important, and I have no idea (1) why and (2) why I remember that keenly).

After the short snippet had given me a bit of an earworm, I did search for the video on my phone - here if you want to inflict it upon yourself by the way - before immediately realising that I've now cursed myself to have random Irish 90s cheese-kiddie-pop acts appearing in all my search options and adverts for the next few months.

It was worth it though. I'd forgotten how bad the video was - the entire premise seemingly sold on a 'just dance, girls, and we'll CGI in a load more people doing the exact same dance on either side later so it doesn't look too silly' basis, when the budget ran out and they decided to just go with the four of them in a field, doing their very best to prove the theory that just because four people are doing the same synchronised movement it doesn't stop it from looking total bollocks. It's an unstable field, too - occasionally the entire ground tilts and the girls roll off into the fiery pit beneath. That, or it's some terrible camerawork - it really could be either. The dramatic masterpiece of the video - and my particular highlight - is, however, the dramatic zooming out at the 19 second mark when the treehouse is revealed to be ... right next to them!

But! Don't let my justified mockery of the terrible video distract you from how bad the lyrics are. Bragging about a house with windows and doors? Call me old fashioned if you must, but a house without windows and doors isn't a house. It's a box. Or a bunker. Either way, not a selling point. The worst part is that listening through the entire song, that's actually the lyrical highlight. Not to mention the fantastic random pieces of dialogue interspersed throughout, which in no way at all utterly stereotype Irish people, speech or cliches.

This entertaining and distracting diatribe aside - nothing like being topical by cynically tearing down a 15 year old pop video - does lead me to believe that I have inadvertently discovered the best use yet for the Incognito mode in browsers: watching embarrassing old pop videos, while still avoiding it cropping up to humiliate you in later searches or histories. To prove the point I followed this up by watching the linked video for Mmmbop, by Hanson; and yet Google is none the wiser ...