Instead of webbed feet and wildly-roving eye-balls, Fictional Bob was simply born with a few mis-shapen facts, and it was these which ultimately made him so successful.
It is difficult, nowadays, to walk in to an office block without seeing a hundred blank-eyed Fictional Bobs staring soullessly into their computer terminals, never at you. Never daring to view the world outside of their own little Hell, too scared that they too may find themselves shot down.
For the long-running story of Fictional Bob was as tragic as it was funny. While critics and loyal die-hard fans alike loved his quaint scruples, he never had it easy. Oppressed, psycho-analysed, discriminated against and sacked on no fewer than four hundred and seven occasions in his 50 year run, Fictional Bob was put through the wringer. And, in perhaps the greatest tragedy of all, his often humorous and always bile-filled musings became an opiate to the masses, not a cure.
The bosses won, Fictional Bob failed, but he made a few people smirk and snigger along the way. He said up yours to his conformity and his fans lauded him for it, while benignly accepting their own. Bob's plight didn't inspire action, it inspired unfulfilled fantasies of freedom from the modern slavery of Corporatism. It served as a warning, not a call to arms. People loved Bob, but they didn't want to be him.
Daniel Donovan, the radical Blogger creditted with and ultimately consumed by Fictional Bob's creation, was once quoted as saying, in typically outrageous fashion: "I'm not that radical or outrageous actually, I just have an opinion". Perhaps, on reflection, that shows just how out-there he was.
Everyone nowadays knows that for society to exist at all, everyone must share the same values, beliefs and, most of all, general appearance. The plastickier the better.
Fictional Bob rose to popularity amongst the darker fringes of popular culture. After debuting on The Alternative View blog, he was quickly moved to a regular role on Donovan's more whimsical offering The Creative View, and the partnership thrived. Later that year, Bob got his own site, although this was seen by many as merely a cynical rebranding of The Creative View in order to exploit the monetization potential of its most enduring star. Fictional Bob himself was unavailable for comment.
From that point, even as Bob's street-cred soared, the Blogger himself was falling apart. He was increasingly caught up in the scandal of "who" Fictional Bob "is" and what "he" wants. The duality and interchangeability of writer and character seemed to drive him to distraction. The media, driven to fill their relentless 72-hour a day coverage (via the red button! tra la la la la) seized on a comment which soon became Donovan's infamous tag-line: "I am not Fictional Bob".
"He's a composite character, based in part on my own experiences and based in part on my observations of others," Donovan explained in a rare public appearance, shortly before his death last week. He went on to say: "Now fuck off, ya bastards".
His death itself is a mystery. Old, lonely and bitter, he is thought to have tripped over his own short-sightedness. "He never saw it coming," his sole surviving well-wisher (and rumoured love of his life) remarked, as she tipped the ashes away at a funeral service for one. Well, one apart from the hordes of cameramen, reporters and dolly-bird presenters.
Fictional Bob lives on in the blogs and cartoons and billboards and films. Many will say that Daniel Donovan lives on in these too. He would not have been one of these people.
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