Being Scrooge-Like: An introduction to Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self

Abstract

Fourteen-year-old Adam is sick of his mates: they drink, smoke and look forward to a life on benefits. Adam yearns for something different. He has ambition. He wants to do more than just hang around and he nurtures hope for a future career. In the five-part television series How to Dump your Mates, psychologist Geoff Beattie is sympathetic, ‘friends’, he states, ‘exert great influence over early personal development, the wrong crowd can hold you back, stop you trying new things and ultimately, prevent you from being yourself’. Over four days Beattie takes Adam through a crash course in ‘dumping’. Adam learns to confront his old mates and tries new friends on for size. After a dramatic moment when his separate ‘worlds’ collide and the two groups of friends surprisingly meet, Adam’s final task, and the show’s reveal, is to decide which mates to keep and which to dump.