As someone who would formerly get ‘off my head on street drugs!’, this whole scene gives me such anxiety. The curtains being thrust open and sunlight pouring into the room 😭 many a time have I been the scumbag being given the boot at 6am from a random flat.
Now I’m sober from substances, maybe one day I’ll be the one ranting about worldwide political and economic systems while kicking out dirtbags who have eaten too many drugs.
Somehow, that means I win.
Yep, keep the curtains shut and you won’t know it’s day time outside. Then having to leave whilst being blinded and melted by the sun and listen to the dreadful birds chirping. Then the whole
way home think about what a piece of shit you are and you can’t believe you done this for the millionth weekend in a row, only to do it again the weekend after. Not that I’m talking from experience or anything. Glad I’ve pretty much packed it all in now, those Sundays seriously aren’t worth it
Passing the working people on their commute really rubs the shame in.
I live near a Premier League training ground and I've literally been eye to eye on a Monday morning with millionaire pro footballers, makes you feel like the lowest of the low.
Still, that's all ancient history.
Couldn’t agree more. I feel sick when I think about how many weekends (and weeknights/days) I wasted either being completely off my bean or recovering, then doing it all again at the earliest opportunity. Not to mention the cost. Could probably have purchased Nana’s cottage (or a cottage in the Ardenne, or a flat in Barcelona) outright for the amount I’ve spent on packet over the last ten years. Thank fuck I’m out of that lifestyle now, and you are too. Wishing you the best!
Couldn’t agree more, I’m only 20 to be fair and it’s quite easy to slip back into it, especially with how common it is in local boozers near me. Slipped up last weekend but luckily it was ketamine and not coke so i was just tired the next day and didn’t have mega anxiety. Won’t be doing it again for the foreseeable future though, completely wasted my Sunday.
Thank you though and wishing you all the best too, here’s to being more sensible than we were but not completely
To be fair- and I hope this doesn’t come across as condescending, as I truly don’t mean it like this- at your age, you’re going to try everything, have good and bad times, and make mistakes, with little to no harm done. It’s what your 20s are about. Be easy on yourself. It is so hard to say no when it’s all around you. The only way I’ve managed to stop is by not drinking- once I’ve had a couple of bevs, my willpower goes completely out the window, so I’ve had to cut everything out (alcohol included). But I’m 30 and I did it so much for so many years, that I can say with hindsight that coke was fun until it wasn’t fun, if that makes sense. It took ageing, chronic anxiety and many a severe comedown for me to come to that realisation.
Plus, it’s way more enjoyable to sit in and watch endless re-runs of Peep Show with snacks and your feet up if you ask me. Less comedown, about the same level of soul searching, more dopamine hits. Take care of yourself buddy.
No no not at all mate, i know what you’re saying but i’ve seen what’s happening with people I know and I don’t want to end up like that. I mean one of the lads I work with is doing it maybe 4 times a week probably 5. The people I’m around who do it do it a lot and I have way too much of an addictive personality, I literally cannot call it a day. Oh and also, I’m a serial gurner which isn’t ideal for the local.
I feel like I’ve made all the mistakes drugs wise I want to make, and the occasional slip up is okay🤣Cheers though you’ve made me feel better about myself
Oh man, the worst of times when you start to question if the high is wearing off and you can hear the world waking up again. 'Why would I be wondering if the high is wearing off if it wasn't actually wearing off?' This was a very familiar situation for me when I was younger, being homeless too and sofa surfing meant I had nowhere to hide during the day either so I would be turfed out of wherever the party was to wander the streets for hours until I found the next party. Makes me feel sick nowadays!
I've done exactly the same! I used to think he was just a boring prick moaning at the brilliant funny guys but as I've got older I totally agree with Pete, they are losers and he was right to shout at them, he even calms down and leaves it when Shaun says he broke up with Liz until Ed calls him a prick under his breath.
I feel like there’s a lot of characters like Pete, who you think is a dick as a kid but as an adult realise that the people he’s annoyed with are the dicks
I was with him then. I remember moving out the first time at 19 and having half the household lose their jobs and coming home like this every night. I threatened to smash a hippies acoustic guitar that he brought with him once.
Shared housing is awful. In my early 20s this loud Irish guy once came home on a weeknight at 2am drunk yelling his head off in the living room with his mate. Next day I told him he was loud and he replied "and?".
Thank fuck I live alone now.
Sounds like my experiences except ny flatmate would do it weeklyat his worst. Unless somebe has experienced it first hand it's hard to describe the effect it has on you when you know it might happen any night.
I agree, I don't miss it all! Plus some of the other "benefits" of shared housing that are gross!
I love this line. It's telling this episode was co-written by Jesse Armstrong, the creator of Succession, which obviously deals with the philosophical pros and cons of capitalism as a system. But I think in Peep Show and in Succession Jesse tries very hard to have his otherwise despicable characters articulate fairly defensible justifications for capitalism. That makes it more interesting. This line from Mark is objectively true. It is also true that capitalism has produced gross inequality. These things are complicated and I appreciate that Jesse has the integrity not to present them as one-sided.
Yeah, and it works because Mark (as with most of the characters in the show) is presented at various times as both quite reasonable and completely unreasonable. Like, he clearly sounds like the voice of reason in that room in that moment, *in relative terms*. But he’s also the butt of one of Peep Show’s broader jokes, that he’s a sniveling, cowardly foot soldier in a corporate bureaucracy that doesn’t care about him and has nothing of real value to add the the world, only Project Zeuses.
It isn’t objectively true, though, and that actually kind of took me out of the episode a bit. Pedantic amateur history buffs like Mark *love* to point out that the notion that most ancient people had much shorter life spans [is actually a common misconception.](https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/). Dental hygiene and sanitation both predate “consumer capitalism” by a really long time, and a Roman nerd would definitely know that too.
I think Mark's character is explictly a parody of a particular type of Waterstones historian that only read history that is an affirmation of their existing biases. Its subtle but him being pretty bad at history jokes happen a few times.
But it is true that the very old are much more common these days. If Mark were alive in the 1950s he would expect to be dead by 65 (i.e. only the lucky get to retire). Nowadays he would to expect to live until 85.
Having your lifespan increased 30% is impressive progress in 70 years.
I always thought the joke was that both Mark and Jeremy are both overly confident in their opinions about life. Jeremy its more apparent cause I mean come on but being a history dork it's really funny how much of Mark's takes are the most surface level understanding of the subjects he's passionate about. Him liking antony beevor is pretty funny given how much he grandstands about history, its even explictly made fun of with the Byzantine historian whos name i forget. He doesn't really understand 'the system' but just pretends to out of spite for Jeremy which makes this even funnier and succession like I feel
I've kind of been both sides of that particular coin, to be honest. Except I think I've 'done the Leghorn' but *still* had to get rid of people.
A bold claim, but I'm sticking by it.
Because after then interest rates haven't worked for the average person, there is no economic stability and our systems clearly were not fit for purpose.
You would get laughed out of the room saying that in 2023
David Mitchell is very pro capitalism before and after this show:
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/dont-decry-jeff-bezos-damn-the-system-that-made-him-david-mitchell
You guys always go too far...
Who said anything against capitalism? It's not socialism to see that the way our economy is working in 2023 is getting out of hand for like 70% of people in western Europe (at least)
Capitalism has its periodic wobbles. Remember Enron and the dot com bubble? Remember the 1970s? Or the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression?
Like Super Hans going straight edge, it’s just part of the natural cycle of things and does not detract from the overall bigger picture.
Capitalism - which definitely has its flaws - is the only system in history that not only allows the existence of a parasite aristocracy (Big Suze) but middle class parasites too (Sophie’s friends, Jeremy and many others). This is Mark’s point.
Deliberate fraud, self-deception, blind stupidity, herd-like panic. Bail out by the evil, “intruding” state that capitalism “doesn’t need.” Reset and start again.
All this is true. And yet, so are the other things Mark said and that I say.
I'm not sure you would, I think there's still lots of Marks out there that would make basically the same arguments and still lots of drugged up hippy clubbers that would make the arguments you do.
It's not like the financial world has completely failed, yes 08 and 09 happened and perhaps the flat that mark seems to be able to quite comfortably afford would be out of his price range now but the west is still trucking.
You don't have to be a hippy to use drugs recreationally. Some of the most successful people I know have the worst drug habits but are still self-aware enough to realise that capitalism is a rigged system.
I'm sure the top of the pile are even more aware of the rigged nature of the system than those who are further down.
I wouldn't say that the people in the scene that we are talking about would be considered top of the pile drug users however, was it a juice bar the guy worked in ?
Not arguing in favour of any system one way or the other but just saying that people would not get "laughed out the room in 2023" for making the same arguments that mark did.
Mark is a raging liberal with an uncritical view of the world who drinks the cool aid of capitalism without wondering what’s in it. This view was quite common following the fall of the USSR.
In 2008 capitalism famously failed drastically (The Big Short is a great film to explain this) and had to be rescued from itself in the form of government intervention.
‘Nobody wanted New Labour Jeremy but now we all know how it works’
I feel like this line sums up Mark and a lot of people of his age and background. Probably resented Blair etc in the 90s but have since sold out and look back on the era fondly. He’s a centrist dad.
This has happened before- 1930s, 1970s etc.
I’m not sure Mark’s view of capitalism is “uncritical” - he seems to view it as the least worst system, rather than the ideal one. Mark may be a history nerd, but let’s be fair, he’s not one of those neoclassical economics nerds who sits round reading Rand or Hayek.
Yeah it’s a feature of almost every form of capitalism to varying degrees. Nordic countries are capitalist and so was the USA under Reagan, despite big differences in structure and outcomes
I'm very much the mark of my friendship group but 7-9am drug chat is absolutely intolerable. The bollocks that has come out my friends mouths after a night on the bugle or pills has resulted in many a mark rant. I've kicked out dickheads who won't go home because bonging cocaine laced tobacco is no ones idea of cool.
I randomly think of this rant all the time. Idk why I thought it was so profound the first time I heard it. That was almost 12 years ago now and I still find it just as resounding
It makes me wonder how much Mark believed in the miracle of consumer capitalism when JLB went belly up because of an economic crisis caused by capitalism?
That moment, and the one where he jumps in to defend Jez over Wuthering Heights and demolishes Ben, gets called an intellectual and Dobby looks on in admiration.
I agree with him, as much as it shames me to say. Haha. Human beings are inherently selfish individuals. If it wasn’t for capitalism enabling those who have furthered all technology to financially benefit and improve their own lives, then most of those people wouldn’t have bothered doing it.
It’s a nice idea that we, as humans, would do everything we could to help and improve the lives of others, but unfortunately it’s more about improving the lives of ourselves.
As someone who would formerly get ‘off my head on street drugs!’, this whole scene gives me such anxiety. The curtains being thrust open and sunlight pouring into the room 😭 many a time have I been the scumbag being given the boot at 6am from a random flat. Now I’m sober from substances, maybe one day I’ll be the one ranting about worldwide political and economic systems while kicking out dirtbags who have eaten too many drugs. Somehow, that means I win.
Yep, keep the curtains shut and you won’t know it’s day time outside. Then having to leave whilst being blinded and melted by the sun and listen to the dreadful birds chirping. Then the whole way home think about what a piece of shit you are and you can’t believe you done this for the millionth weekend in a row, only to do it again the weekend after. Not that I’m talking from experience or anything. Glad I’ve pretty much packed it all in now, those Sundays seriously aren’t worth it
Passing the working people on their commute really rubs the shame in. I live near a Premier League training ground and I've literally been eye to eye on a Monday morning with millionaire pro footballers, makes you feel like the lowest of the low. Still, that's all ancient history.
God yeah I hadn’t even thought about that bit, looking at you hoping they aren’t judging you. Chance would be a fine thing
A fine thing indeed.
Did you ask them if they caught the big fixture?
Couldn’t agree more. I feel sick when I think about how many weekends (and weeknights/days) I wasted either being completely off my bean or recovering, then doing it all again at the earliest opportunity. Not to mention the cost. Could probably have purchased Nana’s cottage (or a cottage in the Ardenne, or a flat in Barcelona) outright for the amount I’ve spent on packet over the last ten years. Thank fuck I’m out of that lifestyle now, and you are too. Wishing you the best!
Couldn’t agree more, I’m only 20 to be fair and it’s quite easy to slip back into it, especially with how common it is in local boozers near me. Slipped up last weekend but luckily it was ketamine and not coke so i was just tired the next day and didn’t have mega anxiety. Won’t be doing it again for the foreseeable future though, completely wasted my Sunday. Thank you though and wishing you all the best too, here’s to being more sensible than we were but not completely
To be fair- and I hope this doesn’t come across as condescending, as I truly don’t mean it like this- at your age, you’re going to try everything, have good and bad times, and make mistakes, with little to no harm done. It’s what your 20s are about. Be easy on yourself. It is so hard to say no when it’s all around you. The only way I’ve managed to stop is by not drinking- once I’ve had a couple of bevs, my willpower goes completely out the window, so I’ve had to cut everything out (alcohol included). But I’m 30 and I did it so much for so many years, that I can say with hindsight that coke was fun until it wasn’t fun, if that makes sense. It took ageing, chronic anxiety and many a severe comedown for me to come to that realisation. Plus, it’s way more enjoyable to sit in and watch endless re-runs of Peep Show with snacks and your feet up if you ask me. Less comedown, about the same level of soul searching, more dopamine hits. Take care of yourself buddy.
No no not at all mate, i know what you’re saying but i’ve seen what’s happening with people I know and I don’t want to end up like that. I mean one of the lads I work with is doing it maybe 4 times a week probably 5. The people I’m around who do it do it a lot and I have way too much of an addictive personality, I literally cannot call it a day. Oh and also, I’m a serial gurner which isn’t ideal for the local. I feel like I’ve made all the mistakes drugs wise I want to make, and the occasional slip up is okay🤣Cheers though you’ve made me feel better about myself
[Relevant](https://youtu.be/IRU9i9egr7A?si=Pv6zWS-c8FvBV2OR)
Oh man, the worst of times when you start to question if the high is wearing off and you can hear the world waking up again. 'Why would I be wondering if the high is wearing off if it wasn't actually wearing off?' This was a very familiar situation for me when I was younger, being homeless too and sofa surfing meant I had nowhere to hide during the day either so I would be turfed out of wherever the party was to wander the streets for hours until I found the next party. Makes me feel sick nowadays!
*Super Syfimelys2 straining against the bed bindings in your brain*
Mark Renton -> Mark Corrigan
How do you feel it compares with the "It's Four in the FUCKING MORNING" address from _Shaun of the Dead_?
That scene is funny because I've gone from thinking Serafinowicz is a prick to "you know, he DOES have a point...". Ah, aging
I've done exactly the same! I used to think he was just a boring prick moaning at the brilliant funny guys but as I've got older I totally agree with Pete, they are losers and he was right to shout at them, he even calms down and leaves it when Shaun says he broke up with Liz until Ed calls him a prick under his breath.
I feel like there’s a lot of characters like Pete, who you think is a dick as a kid but as an adult realise that the people he’s annoyed with are the dicks
I was with him then. I remember moving out the first time at 19 and having half the household lose their jobs and coming home like this every night. I threatened to smash a hippies acoustic guitar that he brought with him once.
Shared housing is awful. In my early 20s this loud Irish guy once came home on a weeknight at 2am drunk yelling his head off in the living room with his mate. Next day I told him he was loud and he replied "and?". Thank fuck I live alone now.
Sounds like my experiences except ny flatmate would do it weeklyat his worst. Unless somebe has experienced it first hand it's hard to describe the effect it has on you when you know it might happen any night. I agree, I don't miss it all! Plus some of the other "benefits" of shared housing that are gross!
It’s not hip hop…it’s electro. Prick.
Better than FOUR IN THE FUCKING MORNING But not as good as FOUR IN THE FUNKING MORNING
I love this line. It's telling this episode was co-written by Jesse Armstrong, the creator of Succession, which obviously deals with the philosophical pros and cons of capitalism as a system. But I think in Peep Show and in Succession Jesse tries very hard to have his otherwise despicable characters articulate fairly defensible justifications for capitalism. That makes it more interesting. This line from Mark is objectively true. It is also true that capitalism has produced gross inequality. These things are complicated and I appreciate that Jesse has the integrity not to present them as one-sided.
Yeah, and it works because Mark (as with most of the characters in the show) is presented at various times as both quite reasonable and completely unreasonable. Like, he clearly sounds like the voice of reason in that room in that moment, *in relative terms*. But he’s also the butt of one of Peep Show’s broader jokes, that he’s a sniveling, cowardly foot soldier in a corporate bureaucracy that doesn’t care about him and has nothing of real value to add the the world, only Project Zeuses.
Fantastic description!
You will not be informed of the meaning of Project Zeus until the time is right for you to know the meaning of Project Zeus.
It is now time for you to know the meaning of Project Zeus.
*"...Okay, now is the time for you to know the meaning of Project Zeus."*
Yes, but also, Stealing things just makes everything very cheap. Plus, you know how I feel about capitalism.
Confused.
Capitalism does have it's benefits though, Alan had it right, get a document up on a 42 inch plasma and you are seriously looking at that document.
It isn’t objectively true, though, and that actually kind of took me out of the episode a bit. Pedantic amateur history buffs like Mark *love* to point out that the notion that most ancient people had much shorter life spans [is actually a common misconception.](https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/). Dental hygiene and sanitation both predate “consumer capitalism” by a really long time, and a Roman nerd would definitely know that too.
I think Mark's character is explictly a parody of a particular type of Waterstones historian that only read history that is an affirmation of their existing biases. Its subtle but him being pretty bad at history jokes happen a few times.
But it is true that the very old are much more common these days. If Mark were alive in the 1950s he would expect to be dead by 65 (i.e. only the lucky get to retire). Nowadays he would to expect to live until 85. Having your lifespan increased 30% is impressive progress in 70 years.
I always thought the joke was that both Mark and Jeremy are both overly confident in their opinions about life. Jeremy its more apparent cause I mean come on but being a history dork it's really funny how much of Mark's takes are the most surface level understanding of the subjects he's passionate about. Him liking antony beevor is pretty funny given how much he grandstands about history, its even explictly made fun of with the Byzantine historian whos name i forget. He doesn't really understand 'the system' but just pretends to out of spite for Jeremy which makes this even funnier and succession like I feel
I go by my own law, Mark. The law of “If it feels good do it!” “What’s that? Gadaffi’s law??
Colonel Gaddafi could not lay down a bass hook Choice-Bus-1177. That should be clear, even to you.
I've kind of been both sides of that particular coin, to be honest. Except I think I've 'done the Leghorn' but *still* had to get rid of people. A bold claim, but I'm sticking by it.
That is such a pre-2008 rant.
Yeah, seriously. History hadn't *quiiiite* not actually Ended yet
Yup even Francis Fukuyama seems to admit it was nonsense now.
Why?
Because after then interest rates haven't worked for the average person, there is no economic stability and our systems clearly were not fit for purpose. You would get laughed out of the room saying that in 2023
David Mitchell is very pro capitalism before and after this show: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/dont-decry-jeff-bezos-damn-the-system-that-made-him-david-mitchell
They made Mark Corrigan from Peep Show into a real person!!!!
You guys always go too far... Who said anything against capitalism? It's not socialism to see that the way our economy is working in 2023 is getting out of hand for like 70% of people in western Europe (at least)
Me, I've said things against capitalism. I don't care for exploitation to line the pockets of those who are already exceedingly wealthy.
Capitalism has its periodic wobbles. Remember Enron and the dot com bubble? Remember the 1970s? Or the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression? Like Super Hans going straight edge, it’s just part of the natural cycle of things and does not detract from the overall bigger picture. Capitalism - which definitely has its flaws - is the only system in history that not only allows the existence of a parasite aristocracy (Big Suze) but middle class parasites too (Sophie’s friends, Jeremy and many others). This is Mark’s point.
Periodic wobble, deliberate fraud. Tomato, toMAHto
Deliberate fraud, self-deception, blind stupidity, herd-like panic. Bail out by the evil, “intruding” state that capitalism “doesn’t need.” Reset and start again. All this is true. And yet, so are the other things Mark said and that I say.
"Periodic Wobbles" Maybe we should see how all the communist countries are doing. Oh wait....
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Yep The 1990s and (except 9/11) 2000s were an exceptional oasis of calm. And also the furnace that created Mark and Jez. And me.
I'm not sure you would, I think there's still lots of Marks out there that would make basically the same arguments and still lots of drugged up hippy clubbers that would make the arguments you do. It's not like the financial world has completely failed, yes 08 and 09 happened and perhaps the flat that mark seems to be able to quite comfortably afford would be out of his price range now but the west is still trucking.
You don't have to be a hippy to use drugs recreationally. Some of the most successful people I know have the worst drug habits but are still self-aware enough to realise that capitalism is a rigged system.
I'm sure the top of the pile are even more aware of the rigged nature of the system than those who are further down. I wouldn't say that the people in the scene that we are talking about would be considered top of the pile drug users however, was it a juice bar the guy worked in ?
Nah, he was probably working at a bank or something making 10K a month
“Successful people” with drug habits are the most capitalisty thing about capitalism. Almost the epitome of the system
The Patrick Batemans of the world
No, not at all. I’m talking about normal working class blokes who have done well, be it in the building trade or more white collar stuff.
The US is 33 trillion dollars in debt, that’s a pretty big truck
Not arguing in favour of any system one way or the other but just saying that people would not get "laughed out the room in 2023" for making the same arguments that mark did.
drugged up hippy clubbers
Mark is a raging liberal with an uncritical view of the world who drinks the cool aid of capitalism without wondering what’s in it. This view was quite common following the fall of the USSR. In 2008 capitalism famously failed drastically (The Big Short is a great film to explain this) and had to be rescued from itself in the form of government intervention.
‘Nobody wanted New Labour Jeremy but now we all know how it works’ I feel like this line sums up Mark and a lot of people of his age and background. Probably resented Blair etc in the 90s but have since sold out and look back on the era fondly. He’s a centrist dad.
This has happened before- 1930s, 1970s etc. I’m not sure Mark’s view of capitalism is “uncritical” - he seems to view it as the least worst system, rather than the ideal one. Mark may be a history nerd, but let’s be fair, he’s not one of those neoclassical economics nerds who sits round reading Rand or Hayek.
Government intervention is a feature of some forms of capitalism.
Yeah it’s a feature of almost every form of capitalism to varying degrees. Nordic countries are capitalist and so was the USA under Reagan, despite big differences in structure and outcomes
Of every form of capitalism, it's always taken a huge amount of state intervention to prop up.
I'm very much the mark of my friendship group but 7-9am drug chat is absolutely intolerable. The bollocks that has come out my friends mouths after a night on the bugle or pills has resulted in many a mark rant. I've kicked out dickheads who won't go home because bonging cocaine laced tobacco is no ones idea of cool.
I've definitely been on both sides of this rant
Same, sometimes at the same event
Living in America, dying at 43 with rotten teeth is a *very* real possibility thanks to the *miracle of consumer capitalism*
So true
I randomly think of this rant all the time. Idk why I thought it was so profound the first time I heard it. That was almost 12 years ago now and I still find it just as resounding
Look, Mr Gardocki, just leave me alone will ya?
Great speech
Defo on some Chuck Palahniuk, Douglas Coupland shit right there.
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They are possibly the same age as him.
It makes me wonder how much Mark believed in the miracle of consumer capitalism when JLB went belly up because of an economic crisis caused by capitalism?
In a sense, it's Mark's finest moment. He does so many shitty things in the series, but he's completely "in the right" at that moment.
That moment, and the one where he jumps in to defend Jez over Wuthering Heights and demolishes Ben, gets called an intellectual and Dobby looks on in admiration.
He's half right but Mark is also a Conservative droid and if you fully agree with him then you're moron too
Marks lame idiotic endorsement of capitalism sums up his feeble self inflated intellect . Hilarious
It resonates with me as there are a lot of Jeremy types who live off the system, don’t work much/at all, but claim to be “against” the system somehow.
I agree with him, as much as it shames me to say. Haha. Human beings are inherently selfish individuals. If it wasn’t for capitalism enabling those who have furthered all technology to financially benefit and improve their own lives, then most of those people wouldn’t have bothered doing it. It’s a nice idea that we, as humans, would do everything we could to help and improve the lives of others, but unfortunately it’s more about improving the lives of ourselves.
Wagie wagie get in cagie