I must watch it

I’m not watching Game of Thrones. I don’t want the kudos this now seems to confer on me, when being ‘the 1pc’ is fathomlessly cool. I’m not proud; I wish it wasn’t true. I tried lying, but learned the hard way that you cannot bullshit your way through a conversation about Game of Thrones in the way you can with, say, Brexit.

You have to admit you’re clueless, and then people think you’re some kind of classy asshole; the faux-embarrassed smile of the intolerable dick who says, “Oh I don’t, like, have social media”.

I’ve read the beardstroking think-pieces about how there’s enough horror in the world without watching beheadings every Monday; how the fans are soooo annoying with their embarrassing, exhilarating excitement.

Truly — that’s not me. I am not a black sheep: if I see a queue, I’ll join it. Nothing makes me happier than seeing another basic bitch in M&S’s midi-dress of the season the same day I’m wearing it. I want to engage in nerdy banter under GoT memes. But I just can’t watch it.

It’s not the time commitment that’s putting me off: it would take me two days,18 hours and 29 minutes to catch up. That doesn’t scare me: I’ve laid waste to weeks at a time, subsisting on bread, then stale bread, then ancient foraged oatcakes and burger deliveries and absolutely no sunlight, all for the sake of a deservedly forgotten American sitcom. The viewing history on my many streaming accounts is darker, more alarming and humiliating than most people’s insomnia PornHub searches.

The cast isn’t the problem. I have longabiding and intense crushes on Aidan Gillen and Iain Glen; It’s not the magic and dragons either: I am a member of the Harry Potter generation.

I’ve been trying hard, sludging my way through Series One, nodding and smiling and pretending to understand, like my first green juice. I’m not there yet, but I must — I don’t know what to do with all this social capital.