Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Or, take a silk nightgown, de-eroticize it by covering your exposed skin in gobs of glitter-sweat, and top it off with two mini helicopter pads designed to attract tiny mouse brides.

If you have enough eye shadow to give off the impression that you're an adventurous prostitute who only caters to raccoons, well that's just gravy.

She's Not Original

Lady Gaga's originality seems to be her only selling point among even people who hate everything about her. They look at her and say, "Well, at least there's no one else out there just like her," like a parent struggling to find a compliment for their least favorite child. Whenever some entertainment news show covers her, they invariably say something along the lines of: "Love her or hate her, you have to admit that she's a totally unique icon! Coming up after the break, we check in with superstar Lou Bega! Here's hoping he gives us a high (mambo number) five!"

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

But, of course, she isn't unique in any way. She is exactly one part Madonna and one part Marilyn Manson. She looked at two people who received massive amounts of attention--Madonna for being hyper sexualized and scandalous, and Manson for being aggressively controversial--and instead of saying, "Let me come up with something new in that same family of publicity," said, "I'll just do both of those things, all the time."

Madonna's whole kick was being ultra sexual, talking openly about her multiple sexual partners of varying genders. Not when anyone asked, or anything like that, she just did it all the time. Especially in her early career, she would link every conversation back to something insanely sexual and forward. "Well the interesting thing about my new album is I WILL FUCK YOU RIGHT NOW, DAVID LETTERMAN. LOOK AT ME!"

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Manson, on the other end of the spectrum, would just try to be as theatrically scary and controversial as possible. He'd use blood in his act, he'd cut himself, he'd talk about what an outcast he was. "Society doesn't accept me because I'm too IN YOUR FACE. LOOK AT ME!" Madonna took teenage girls who wanted to piss off their dads and Manson took teenage boys who wanted to piss off the football team and they built little armies. Armies that would go on to buy millions of records.

So, you take this:

And throw in a dash of this:

And it's really no surprise that you get this:

I think this is Lady Gaga. Man, who the fuck knows anymore, that could be the dude from The Strokes.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

It's that same publicity-machine mentality that informs everything that Gaga does. "Here are two things that people got famous for. If I do both of those things louder, faster and with more frequency than anyone else, the world will look at me under the assumption that what I'm doing must be interesting."

But she's not. She's the kid who ate worms at lunch because, "Hey, at least people are looking at me." And now the whole world watches what she does. People who actively avoid pop music have heard of her. She was one of Time Magazine's Most Influential People. She's tricked everyone into believing she's some creative genius, and she's just going to keep doing weird, pointless, nonsense bullshit until she's dethroned by the next incarnation of Lady Gaga, some little boy or girl who is at this moment quietly learning all of Gaga's lessons for their own cartoonish version of pop stardom. She's doing it all while A) making loads of money and B) dressed like a cracked-out Wookiee-poacher at a Rod Stewart lookalike contest.

Yep, that is exactly what that is.

I weep for the future.

Daniel O'Brien is a time-traveling funk-flautist who performs under the stage name Archbishop Fartnoise.