The First Stone

Social media has always been vaunted as the means to connect us all. To turn the whole world into one vast social network where we can all revel in the unalloyed joys of immediate interconnectedness. Barriers will come down. Boundaries and borders will come to be meaningless, etc. 

And I’m sure that’s true in part and I’m all for it but there’s another side to social media that is making me extremely uncomfortable of late. The global kangaroo court culture that seems to be springing up. Nearly always fired up and stoked by traditional media outlets – newspapers and magazine articles – and usually targetted at sad individuals who have not merely broken some social taboo but – worst crime of all – have been caught and publically identified as doing so.

The killer of Cecil the Zimbabwean lion is a case in point.

Now let me make it clear that I abhore “sport” or “trophy” hunting. Of any kind. I don’t care whether you’re some Southern red neck who feels shooting bears is a tradional part of your culture / your right as an American to bear arms (or arm bears or shoot bears with arms) or if you’re a South African poacher whose sole earning potential relies on you supplying misguided Chinese doctors with rhino horn and tiger bone. Killing animals for no good reason at all is worse than criminal. Killing them at the behest of market forces is deplorable. Killing them for “the thrill” or for a misguided sense of “sporting achievement” is completely despicable. I don’t buy all this BS about the beauty and the skill of the hunt, etc. The thrill is sexual at some base level; some ego stroking catharsis that sees the testosterone driven huntsman masturbate live rounds into the flesh of some exquisite beast that he cannot otherwise tame, own or match.

I don’t much care for the apology that Cecil’s killer has offered to the world either; “he was sorry that he killed that particular lion”. As if all the other animals he and his kind have killed were somehow more morally palatable because they were not named or had not been adopted as some nationalist symbol. He is very sorry, I’m sure, that that particular lion’s death came endowed with so much media exposure and so many, many column inches. He killed a lion but has wounded himself. Badly.

But do we want the wound to be fatal?

See, I’m uncomfortable with the howling of the mob. The digital stoning that the hunter dentist is receiving. The screams of outrage. The death threats that have seen this man have to go into hiding, have to close down his business. While many people I am sure feel he does not deserve pity or mercy I, however, do not want to be party to a global culture that drops the equivalent of an atomic bomb of vitriol onto one single individual – as if we are, all of us, unimpeachable in our moral rectitude, as if we are all so righteous in our social standing that we have the right to dispense condemnation and judgement and to recommend lethal injection to those who offend us.

All from the comfort of our armchairs, inbetween surfing for pictures of Lady Ga-Ga / Justin Bieber and sharing the lastest meme about funny kittens on Facebook.

I felt the same when that poor science dude got publically excoriated for appearing on TV for wearing a shirt whose pattern design was made up of bikini-clad women. Sure, that does not compare to shooting a lion with a crossbow and letting it bleed to death for 40 hours but the howls of public outrage and indignation were much the same. The world spoke with one voice – one vast unthinking, rage-filled, knee-jerk propelled voice – and that voice was without mercy or consideration or humanity.

Lord knows we all have days when we feel like the entire world is against us… but social media can now make that proposition a very grim reality.

We all mess up now and again. Sometimes we spend vast tracts of our lives believing the wrong thing entirely until life or the universe or the deity of your choice sets us back onto the right track.

But imagine if we were condemned for it via social media, the newspapers, neon flashing lights, petitions, protest marches, movies, fatwas, campaigns, death threats, the mob outside our homes hefting huge rocks and baying for blood…

How can it be that social media makes a demand of us that we are all morally and irreproachably perfect on the one hand, but so easily turns us all into a blood-thirsty, vengeful mob on the other?

Trolls

It’s finally happened. The trolls have got my goat. Got my goat and burned down the bridge.

I’ve written about this subject before but over the past week there have been some explicit examples making the headlines. The trolls are everywhere like an epidemic and (unless something is done to neutralize them) as their contagion spreads we will all find ourselves under permanent curfew.

Everybody will be (over)familiar with the Jeremy Clarkson debacle. As I’ve said elsewhere it proves the old adage true: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him a steak and you won’t get your nose punched and end up in A&E. Everyone has had an opinion on this. And everybody has voiced it. But, really, did any of us have a right? We weren’t there. We weren’t involved. For a long time nobody knew the facts and yet everybody was spouting forth about what they thought ought to happen, what punitive measures ought to be taken. 

But it had eff all to do with us. Why did it impinge on our lives so much?

But that’s a side issue. My main issue with it all is the amount of online abuse the hapless producer received since the incident became public “knowledge”. Not enough that he got whalloped by a workmate, no, now every Top Gear fan in the world is giving him excoriating grief for being so inconsiderate as to have been the victim of workplace violence in the first place. Even Jeremy Clarkson himself has had to explicitly ask people to lay off the poor producer as he has DONE NOTHING WRONG!

But it gets worse.

Now BBC bigwig, Tony Hall, who headed the enquiry that decided not to renew Jeremy Clarkson’s contract is under police protection because he has subsequently received death threats online.

Really? It’s a car show! Grow up, people!

I am becoming increasingly sickened with the amount of snide, cowardly trolling that exists and proliferates online. Give someone anonymity and they suddenly find endless seams of courage to proclaim the most bigoted, hate-filled, misinformed, kneejerk rubbish seen this side of Hitler’s private diary. Of course, ask them to put their name to it and it all goes quiet. They wouldn’t say boo to a goose. They want people to think they’re decent and reasonable, you see. They like to hide their hate under a bushel.

Not all, of course. There’s always identifiable trolls like Katie Hopkins who this weekend decided she had the perfect right to trash someone else’s happiness and spread yet more bile. Yesterday, Danny Dyer (I admit, I’m not a fan but fair-dos) announced to the world that he was getting engaged to be married. When Hopkins learned that it was Danny’s girlfriend who had done the proposing she spouted forth an unrelenting barrage of insults and innuendo, accusing him of being emasculated and not man enough to say no. Really? Really?

What possible right did this self-publicising monster think she had to offer any kind of opinion at all on Dyer’s announcement? Oh he announced it on Twitter so that makes it fair game? No. No, I don’t think it does. This is not open season, folks. Making an announcement online is no different than doing it in person down the pub, supermarket or bingo hall. As other commentators have remarked: if you wouldn’t say it in real life, don’t say it online. Don’t try and justify it by saying online announcements are public property.

At the end of the day we are each responsible for what comes out of our mouths and keyboards. If it is vile, bilious and vitriolic then the responsibility for that lies with us, not with the target. The fault lies within not without.

To cause grief seems to have become some kind of internet badge that people feel they have to earn. Seems to me you have to sell any kind of  basic human decency to achieve it. Those that applaud the trolls and are entertained by it are as bad as the trolls themselves.

What worries me is the effect all this will have on our freedoms. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression; the very free nature of the internet itself.

The thought police are already closing in. They’re already listening. The list of watchwords grows each week. The list of targets too. They’re tracing us, bugging us, like something out of The Matrix. And the worst thing is, although I want us all to retain our freedoms, I also want all these anonymous (and not so anonymous) trolls to have their refuges exposed. To have their shields ripped away so we can all see who and what they are – small, soft white maggots squirming in the harsh light of day. I want them to be made accountable for every word and utterance.

Because freedom of speech only works when we exercise freedom of thought and realize the right to say something does not always mean it should be said. If it causes harm for no good reason (and deflecting ennui is no good reason at all) then you really ought to keep silent. But it seems we cannot police ourselves. There are too many idiots letting their tongues and thoughts run amuck because stupidtroll@48 thinks they won’t ever be winkled out or because @KTHopkins knows she will be paid very well by advertisers and sponsors when her latest verbal vomit hits the tabloids.

The world is all wrong. It is starting to stink of a fast spreading rot. And this malaise will be fuel to those who want to place tighter controls on the internet, on what we say and what information we are able to access. It is a small step on the journey to somewhere very bad indeed. Very bad. And worst of all, this disease is all around us. We are all mired in it. Our society is built on it.

You have to understand, you see, it’s not bridges that trolls choose to live under; it’s stones.

Addendum

Block The Trolls

So how do we remedy this situation without imposing on other people’s entitlement to free speech?

One idea I’ve had is to exercise the right not to listen. I’d like everyone to join me in blocking the trolls. It’s easy enough to block people on Twitter (using their Twitter tags) and Facebook so let’s be more proactive about doing so. I’d like to see a mass blocking of all anonymous trolls and self-aggrandising attention seekers like Katie Hopkins. Don’t listen to these people, don’t engage with them, don’t let yourself be polluted by entering into a discourse with them. Just block them and then pass the word. Pass onto others the IDs of trolls and encourage an act of global blocking. Obviously use your own powers of discernment – take a look at the profiles pages of people first before you block them; it will give you a clear idea of the type of things they post. Don’t block people blindly or the very act of blocking becomes another way to troll. On Twitter please use the hashtag #blockthetrolls. If we starve these people of media oxgyen maybe, just maybe, they’ll either grow up or go away…

Who Is The Lord Of The Trolls?

I feel it in the air. I feel it in the earth. I feel it in my water.

The internet is much changed for nothing is as it once was.

It began with the forging of the great chat media platforms.

MySpace for the aesthetically challenged cyber-dwarves. LinkedIn and Facebook for the middle-to-upper class aspiring elves who wished to share photos of their kittens and their children and what bottled wine they’d drunk the previous evening. And Twitter… Twitter was created for all those who wished to leave snarky, anonymous comments in 140 characters or less.

But in this they were much deceived, for in secret an umbrella term was forged – social networking – and into this was poured all hatred, malice and the will to denigrate all life on virtual Earth…

And I could go on and on but you get the picture.

The internet is not a nice place. I know it has always had dark corners; cyber attics and damp basements where the virtual world kept its various madnesses and psychoses locked up. In fact, not even locked up – the correct URL would take you there in an instant. But at least the internet used to have a happier, lighter side; it used to have a tangible nod to the ethos of freedom and free information. Something unfettered (largely) by legal constraints, authoritarianism and the bigoted fears of the few. Something fun, frivolous and nicely rebellious.

Sadly I fear the Internet’s Woodstock years are over.

The bigots and haters have taken over the playground.

Cyberbullying is rife – anything from common-or-garden peer pressure to the kind of nastiness that drives people to suicide. Trolling is commonplace – anyone or anything is subject to cowardly attack but if you are a celebrity who dares to have a Twitter account you can consider yourself easy meat for the armchair reactionaries. If someone steps out of line or is seen to be out of step the mob sets upon them in a manner that is as disgusting as it is unforgiving and unreasonable – think of that poor scientist bloke who was virtually destroyed last year for wearing a shirt that featured pictures of bikini-clad women on it; the punishment most certainly did not fit the crime. And who are these self-righteous gnomes who feel they have the right not only to judge but also to condemn?

Stealing information and photos is seen as the fault of those who stored the photos online in the first place (kind of like blaming a victim of burglary for only having a shop bought lock on their front door whilst daring to own stuff). And various groups can now shutdown whole web servers with seeming ease for a major cause or a minor gripe or just because they are so pathetically maladjusted they just want to create havoc for the sense of transient joy it inevitably brings them in-between bouts of Warframe or whatever other massively multiplayer online game is currently distracting them from thoughts of incessant masturbation.

I’m not feeling the love anymore, people, and I don’t like it.

I’m not sure I feel comfortable being a part of the internet; a part of the media monster that social networking has become.

Lord knows I’ve taken a pop at the odd celeb over the years on this blog. But in my defence I hope I’ve presented a balanced (or at least an entertaining) argument, have been able to admit if I’ve been wrong or missed a redeeming point and always, always I am identifiable and accountable. I don’t operate an anonymous blog and I can be easily contacted and given a spanking if I’ve been a naughty boy.

I don’t make death threats or rape threats or threaten to harm other people’s family or property just because they voice an opinion that is at variance with my own. I don’t call down holy war on individuals who I disagree with or who present an ethos that is the opposite of the one I choose to adhere to. I don’t even wish dead those few souls who I utterly despise. And there are a few, believe me.

Because their divergent views, in my opinion, do not mean they should be exterminated from the face of the earth at my say so. I recognize that other people have the right to their views, no matter how ill-informed I think they may be, and have a right to live unmaligned even with those views up to but not including the point where they start directly affecting others adversely.

There has much been made of the ideal of the freedom of speech in recent weeks. The murders in Paris have placed it in the forefront of everyone’s mind. And regardless of whether Charlie Hebdo was a platform for healthy political satire or just an outlet to knock already beaten down minority groups I would argue the point that people have a right to express even offensive views. The freedom of speech must be freedom for all without any caveats or it is not freedom at all.

And yet I despair at the nastiness that proliferates the internet now and wish it could be stopped. And I think it bothers me because too many people are voicing their bile in a most cowardly fashion. Using nom de plumes or alternative accounts. Obfuscating their identity. Claiming and utilizing a personal freedom in order to destroy the personal well-being of others without the risk of any come-back or fall-out.

And that is wrong. That is my problem with it.

If you want to join in the latest witch-hunt then do so without a mask on your face. Let the world see who you are if you have such strong opinions that they must be expressed in aggressive and violent language. If you want to verbally threaten someone then let them and the rest of us see you coming. Take responsibility for what you are saying / spouting.

Don’t stab someone in the dark and then run away back into hiding and imagine you are a hero or have somehow done the world a great service. Because you haven’t. You’ve lost all moral high ground and placed yourself lower than a snake’s arse.

At the end of the day I don’t want the authorities or the powers that be to police the internet. I believe it would be disastrous. But until enough people make a stand we can’t, alas, police ourselves.

So it is up to the owners of all these social media networking platforms to do something. To close down the trolls and the snipers. To make users somehow as accountable for their digital outpourings as they would be if they’d shouted a hate filled slogan out on the street in the real world.

Am I wrong to want this?

Tell me and I will reply. Engage with me and we can talk.

I’m happy for you to have a different opinion.

Please express it with respect.

There Is No Debate

The beautiful game.

People, usually those blinded by their unquestioning Pavlovian devotion, still refer to football by this moniker. Perhaps 80 odd years ago when players still had full time jobs and played solely for the love of the contest the nametag was possibly true. I doubt it can be said to be so anymore.

I’ll admit I’m biased. I loathe football. Well, that’s what I say but it’s a kind of a misleading shorthand. The game itself is fine. No better or worse than tennis or cricket or hockey. What I loathe in reality is the culture of football. When I’ve dared to voice this opinion on various social networking platforms I am invariably shotdown by football stalwarts who take considerable time and energy to tell me, via lots of swearing and insults, of the marvellous community aspect of football, of how it makes people feel they belong, looks after and nurtures local talent, gives people a leg up and does a shedload of great charity work to boot. Oh and some footballers even have degrees thus disproving my cliched theory that all footballers are thickos who were only ever good at sport at school.

But all this changes nothing. I loathe the culture of football. The disproportionately large wages. The fast cars and the drivers who feel they have a right to drive them at 120mph and go hang the safety of other drivers. The attitude that they are God’s gift and their football stardom entitles them to behave like some rockstar behemoth – buying what and who they want, acquiring trophy girlfriends and trophy houses and extolling the chauvenistic ideals of sleeping around with whoever the hell they like. Nightclubs the country over are full of cocky young men who are earning far too much money for their own good and whose chat-up lines revolve solely around the fact that they are a “famous footballer”. All those around them are put there solely for their own entertainment and pleasure. Far too many of them see themselves as old world kings who own all that their eyes happen to fall upon.

Out of this culture we inevitably get people like Ched Evans.

I find it hard to countenance that there is even a debate about whether he should be allowed to return to a football career after he has been convicted of raping a 19 year old woman who was far too intoxicated to ever consciously consent to what was happening to her. The fact he has shown no remorse and refuses to apologize – indeed he refuses to accept that he did anything wrong – is testament to all that is wrong with footballing culture. The facts behind the case highlight the tawdriness and dehuminazing aspects of football social culture. Another player, Clayton McDonald, apparently sent Ched a text to say he had a “bird” lined up. Ched went round to McDonald’s hotel room and watched him bed the poor girl. Ched then decided he’d like a go too. CCTV footage reportedly shows not only how drunk the girl was but also various team mates of Ched watching from the sidelines as if they were at a spectator sport. No doubt braying and shouting slogans as if they were on the terraces; egging Ched on.

Let’s make it clear; there is no debate about the facts. Sleeping with someone who is too drunk to consent to the act is a crime. It is statuatory rape. End of. The fact that not only Ched and McDonald were a party to this but also others is a disgrace. Not one of them stopped to think how they would feel if this poor woman was their sister or daughter or other family member. So little empathy or respect for another human being – all burnt up in their unailienable rights to sate their own voracious desires. Because plainly their status means they own the world and can do whatever the hell they like.

To make it worse supporters of Ched – how can such a man have any? – have subesquently harrassed the poor woman so much so that she has had  to move house 5 times and go into hiding. She now cannot see her own family in case it blows her cover.

Again, this highlights all that is wrong with footballing culture. That a mere game is placed above not only the law but also all human decency. Defenders of Ched say he was punished with imprisonment not unemployment so should be allowed to return to professional football. It sounds a logical argument until you consider that the culture that has grown up around football and footballers created the circumstances that led to the rape in the first place. Acknowledge that and Ched’s return to football is impossible. Acknowledge that and you have to accept that it is not only Ched that needs to be punished, corrected and reeducated but a huge proportion of the profession itself. Plus those fans that still can see nothing wrong with Ched’s behaviour on that night.

Football – the players, the managers, the club owners and even the fans – need to take a long hard look at themselves. I’m sure there is plenty to celebrate about football but there is too much that needs to change. I’m sure many of the fans and players are decent people with good morals but as Ched and his team mates clearly show, there are too many with a highly inflated sense of entitlement that leads them to treat others as nothing more than pieces of meat, there to be used and then forgotten about. They and those fans that condone this kind of behaviour need to be educated to the contrary. A strong message needs to be sent out that this kind of behaviour is morally wrong and repugnant. It is a blight and a cancer and those on Twitter and elsewhere that think it Ok to harrass a victim of rape are as guilty as Ched. They all need to be eradicated from football completely. Expunged and exiled.

Maybe then, when footballers are proper role models that showcase respect and decency and even, dare I say it, chivalry for all, both on and off the pitch, then maybe, just maybe, football will truly be the beautiful game that so many of its fans desperately want it to be.

Calling All Game Developers

It seems to me that the more the world goes to pot – WWIII threatening in Ukraine, another holocaust threatening in Iraq, Cloud storage going up in smoke – the more the masses are going to want to escape from the unending media misery by diving into digital worlds of their own making. And being an opportunist kind of chap I figure I could make a fast buck or two and thus escape the impending Western Armageddon for real by cashing in on this virtual life-hacking industry by coming up with my own digital games.

Having little or no hard programming skills I see myself more as the conceptual engine behind the venture and will be looking for a few code monkeys to actually copy and paste all the binary gubbins into a working software platform. Or whatever it is these Visual Basic nerds do when they’re not checking their emails on their Androids.

I’ve already come up with some amazing games concepts which I am convinced will effortlessly fly off the shelves at Steam or Game. Or even Argos.

Moancraft – people are randomly spawned into a world where they have to dig for the resources to survive by moaning and complaining themselves into ever deepening holes and pits of despair. The more they moan about their lives the deeper they drop until they either reach the Epiphany Layer or plough on through the bedrock of misery and drop completely out of the world to the sounds of cheers from the other inhabitants.

Grand Theft Otto – this is a World War II simulation game. Sort of. You play Otto, a blond despot who goes on a violent retail spree across Europe and much of the world (kind of shopping with menaces) and accrues as many of the world’s treasures and artefacts as possible. This is a sandbox game where you can drive the vehicle of your choice (a tank is a good option) and do pretty much whatever the hell you like, destroy what you like and kill whom you like. Imagine a pre-United Nations world unfettered by any kind of global moral compass. Or if you can’t imagine that read the newspapers and imagine it’s the real post-United Nations world. There is very little difference. On the bright side your tank is very shiny. With the blood of countless innocents. And you can give your avatar a very severe moustache. Older version of the game may also be available: Grand Theft Ottoman.

Skyeram – set on a sprawling but illogically tiny Scottish island you play a male sheep who battles dragons, runs around through vast underground burial cairns fighting the undead and who frequently dies by jumping off massive cliffs whose height you have totally miscalculated. You can either join the Blue Coat faction and fight for independence or join the Old Empire and fight to keep the masses under the unthinking yolk of traditional oppression. Or you could just kill everybody and mess up every quest contained within the game as you say no to life both real and virtual and submit yourself to solipsistic armchair autocracy.

Other games currently in mental development are:

Assassin’s Crud – an assassin with OCD cleans all his weapons daily and collects all the resultant smeg, blood and gristle and stores it in a jar that he keeps on permanent show on top of his highly desirable Venetian sideboard.

BO Shock – a man who hasn’t bathed for 17 years shuts down a chemical weapons plant by wandering through the front doors by accident and rubbing himself off against an air conditioning vent.

Unreal Tourniquet – you have to invent the most unlikely and useless bandages possible. The player with the most resultant deaths (frags) wins. Ingredients will include Blue-tack, a fax machine, a nude photo of Jennifer Lawrence and a Muller Crunch Corner.

Super Mario Bros (Real Life Edition) – 2 normal plumbers come round to your house, overcharge you for fixing your blocked pipes and then freak out when you show them your pet terrapin.

Now don’t worry guys, there’s plenty more where they came from – I’ve hit a rich seam – there’s more than enough to go round. If anyone is interested in coding these up just PM me on Facebook. Or Pinterest. Or Twitter. Or some other social networking platform that I am currently not allowing to connect me to the outside world.

Do Not Lend These People Your Ears

I managed to navigate most of 2013 without once having my existence bent out of true by the verbal crowbar that is Katie Hopkins. Sure I knew who she was, could surmise what it was she was working so hard to be and what she was aiming to become but she was as a gnat on the giant arse that is UK reality TV. And I make it my business to have as little to do with that particular arse as is humanly possible.

And yet, come the end of the year, with every web site, newspaper and chav mag producing a 12 month retrospective, Katie Hopkins is leaping out at me from photos, from sound-bites and no doubt from tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappings too.

Katie Hopkins said this. Katie Hopkins said that. Outrageous Katie Hopkins. Katie Hopkins, how could she? Kate Hopkins rent-a-gob.

The latter moniker – rent-a-gob – I’ve seen in more than one publication. If I were her I’d copyright it right now; she seems the kind of girl who’d be up for making a fast buck.

My initial response was probably akin to that of many people: revulsion, a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss her as just another transient sneery mouthed reprobate. The shrew equivalent of a one hit wonder in the Gallup pop chart. Someone mad enough (and hard hearted enough) to make some money out of being universally disliked and then forgotten about.

But then it hit me that the most revolting thing about this kind of media event isn’t the poor hapless individual at the eye of the storm but the storm makers themselves. The thunder and lightning of the newspapers and TV execs who book her on their shows and shovel the excrement that falls out of her mouth into their column inches. The howling wind of the glossy mag editors who deliberately provoke her with irresistible punch-line issues and un-PC bandwagons that she can’t stop herself from jumping upon. And worst of all the all-pervading insipid rain of the general public that read and watch and Tweet and Poke and Klout about all the immaterial, unimportant nonsense that Katie coughs up just so she can watch us splutter and retch in joyous outrage and thus feel justified in doing it all again and again and again (and then smugly listen to the chink of cold coins falling hollowly into her deep, deep, soulless pockets).

I feel sorry for her.

She plainly craves recognition. Craves “fame”. Wants people to know her name, to know her by sight.

But it’s a bit like accepting the job of village idiot just because you can’t bear to be anonymous.

I daresay she’ll make a killing. I don’t know what the going rate is for appearing on a TV chat show these days but I bet it’s easier money than a real job. There’s already talk of her being on the next series of Big Brother. I’m sure they’ll make it worth her while just as she’ll make it worth their money. And then there’ll be the inevitable fall from grace. Then the carefully planned radio silence. And then the abashed, contrite, redemptive return. The cathartic outpouring of all her issues and how horrible it was to be so universally reviled. There’ll be a book deal on that particular horizon. Maybe even a regular appearance on kid’s telly or a TV magazine show with plenty of conscience.

And of course her opinion will be sought and bought on the next poor rent-a-gob that the media people will have temporarily shoehorned into the limelight by this point. Because there’ll always be another one. It's a fast moving queue. Like the role of Master of the Dark Arts in the Harry Potter books, nobody stays in the job for long; it’s cursed:

“So you want to be the next village idiot? Fantastic! We’re the people who can help you do it and we’ll all make a lot of money out of it into the bargain…”

Lord knows I’m more than happy for the village idiot to be reformed and redeemed but do we have to go through the endless pantomime of salacious baiting and vampiric bloodlust first?

Can’t we quieten the great god rent-a-gob once and for all by just choosing not to listen?

Because at the end of the day, who’s the greater idiot? The idiot who shouts or the idiot who drops everything to listen?

Oi!

Did any of you lot actually hear what I just said…?

;-)

Knight Rider 2013

It is a well-known fact that the average domestic washing machine has more processing power than NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe. And it struck me the other day as I watched my boys play on their Nintendo DS’s that it must surely follow that there is probably more computing power in those annoying little games consoles than the original producers of Knight Rider could have ever envisaged for their crime fighting super car, Kitt, in the 1980s.

And then my own internal CPU got to working… What would happen if we brought Kitt bang up to date with modern computing technology (and conveniently ignored the fact that some daft producer in the US actually already did that in 2008)? Would Michael Knight and Kitt actually benefit from modern social networking and broadband Wi-Fi?


“Kitt, I need all you got on Mr Big – prison records, Interpol logs, all known connections to any terrorist cells!”

“Sorry, Michael, I’m playing Angry Birds on Facebook. How about if I PM him and see if he gets back to us?”

“Goddamn it, Kitt, I need that information now!”

“[Sigh] OK, Michael. I’ll Poke him.”


Or what about:

“OK, Kitt, let’s get Mr Crimelord down to the precinct. He’s gonna be banged up for twenty or my name’s not Michael Knight!”

“Sorry, Michael, I refuse to help you arrest that man.”

“What?!”

“He’s one of my connections on LinkedIn. I need him to endorse me for crime fighting and high speed car chases.”

“So in his case you’re not going to fight crime so that he can endorse you for fighting crime?”

“That does not compute. Screw you, Michael. I’m going to Tweet that you’re a pedantic, crime-ist asshole.”


Or what about during a high speed car chase and Michael presses the much loved (and completely over used) Turbo Boost button?

“Come on, Kitt, let’s go – Turbo Boost!”

[Nothing happens]

Michael presses the button repeatedly and furiously. “What’s happening? Turbo Boost! Turbo Boost!”

[Still nothing happens]

Michael starts hammering the Turbo Boost button with his fist. “Jesus – the bridge is out! I need that Turbo Boost now Kitt! What the hell’s going on?”

“Sorry, Michael. Please be patient. I’m buffering.”


*sigh*

The imaginary world of my teen-hood would have been so disappointingly different if I knew then what I know now.

Tune in again next week when I’ll pitch an idea to bring Baywatch bang up to date utilizing spy satellite technology…

When Will They Ban Facebook?

I used to loathe Facebook.

I'd sneer at it. Snarl at it. Use it sparingly, use it begrudgingly and know that I was being a hypocrite.

It seemed to embody the worst of social media: aggrandizing the trivial; making monoliths of minutia. It encouraged its users to market themselves as "social product" whose worth was tied into the value of their status.

I saw it as evidence of society's degeneracy; proof that any promise of revolution was being bought off with the sop of funny pictures, in-jokes, soft porn and distracting memes while Rome burnt beyond the little bubble of our individual internet connections.

Maybe though that was just me? Maybe I was only seeing the pretty lights on the surface; the Angry Birds, the Photoshopped pictures of celebs, the wool over my eyes?

Frequently when I log into Facebook now I am pleasantly surprised at how politicized it is. My updates are rife with international satire, news of causes, plights and global injustice. There are petitions. There is shared outrage. There is a sense of movement and speaking out. Of things not being allowed to be swept under the carpet. Illegal evictions in Kenya appear alongside stories of dodgy banking deals in the UK and the yet further developments of Operation Yewtree.

Somehow Facebook has become a news source.

Again, maybe that's just me?

Facebook, like anything I suppose, can be as trivial or an meaningful as the individual makes it.

I can't believe I'm going to say this but, thanks to Facebook - or rather thanks to those who use it - I feel a little more world-aware than I have been for a long time. I'm not saying I'm suddenly an activist with a balaclava and a wine bottle filled with petrol... but that little bubble of my internet connection seems wider and a little more all-encompassing than it once was.

As clichéd as it is: I feel connected. Connected with people who are as dissatisfied as me.

On Facebook we snarl now at a politicians. Take our celebs to task. Castigate lazy and misinformed (and misinforming) journalists. Share the traumas of people in far away countries that we will never meet but whose trauma touches us. People are speaking out. Shouting. Demanding.

Maybe society isn't as degenerate as I feared?

But I worry.

Despite the appalling behaviour of our journalists the conclusions of the Leveson Enquiry are, nevertheless, a blow for freedom of speech. Yes, there need to be checks and balances but the press also needs a certain amount of freedom to pursue those in power who are doing us wrong. I worry that as the gags start to be applied, where will it end?

Social media - our voice - is already no longer as free and unfettered as it once was. People have got into legal trouble on Twitter and elsewhere.

How long before the censors start carving up what we can and can't satirize on Facebook? How long before they stop us sharing information, our stories, our opinions, our Photoshopped pictures of David Cameron morphed into Iggle-piggle?

How long before the powers-that-be ban Facebook altogether?

Do we really want to go back to a blinkered life playing Angry Birds while the politicians and corporations stalk the streets outside armed with fire brands and petrol?

Prince Harry To Lead Native Americans In Open Revolt

The great thing about the modern world and social networking is that news can be delivered instantaneously in sound-bite form so that it is quickly and immediately digestible. I no longer need to wade through hours and hours of news channels or column inches of newsprint to get the gist of what is going down out there in the big wide world.

Some news today has had me smiling wryly and inflating with slightly irreverent pride for the latest achievement of one member of our Royal Family.

It seems that Prince Harry has qualified to become an Apache Commander.

I'm assuming that sometime over the last year he befriended a descendent of Cochise - maybe saved his life in a bizarre bingo accident on a reservation somewhere in America's mid-west - and that the relationship developed to that slightly awkward point where it was necessary for them both to nick the palms of their hands with a sharp knife and rub the wounds together so that they became blood brothers.

I guess after that it was just a small leap of ideology to thoughts of uniting all of America's scattered  Native American tribes. How Prince Harry managed to fit that into his Las Vegas itinerary without the world finding out, I don't know, but clearly the ginger Prince conceals many hidden abilities and skills the like of which his brother can only dream of. And by brother I mean, William, not his new brother Cochise who by now must surely be aware that Harry has heap strong medicine.

Once the First Nations were again re-established and as one behind their new leader, He Whose Hair Dances With Fire, the next step was quite naturally declaring war on the white European usurpers and taking back the lands and buffalo that they had stolen from their ancestors. I'm assuming that at this point traditional ties with Prince Harry's Germano-British family back home in the UK may have become strained unless Prince Charles has developed a sudden yen to sell Ye Olde Duchy Buffalo Mozzarella but Harry is plainly a man who likes to push his envelope out as far as it will go. And after all, blood is thicker than the monarchy especially when your palm is itching like buggery.

In the absence of John Wayne to act as an honourable counterpoint to the glory-hungry appetites of the US I fear this latest career move by the young Prince can only lead to bloody conflict and strife. The war on terror may have to take a backseat and bingo may have to be outlawed. It is unknown at this point whether Johnny Depp has abandoned his moderately successful movie career and his frequent on-screen liaisons with Helena Bonham-Carter to honour his Native American heritage and join the confederacy of First American tribes in their fight for emancipation under the gingery auspices of He Whose Hair Dances With Fire but it is certain that most of the cast members of Last Of The Mohicans are already paid-up blood brothers.

The tomahawk of war has been thrown, Obama. Or to paraphrase Shakespeare: the bow has been bent and drawn. It is time to make from the shaft of the ginger Prince.

Look Out Outlook

Back in my younger days, when I was single and had no care to be respectable, I had a joyous relationship with Hotmail.

So much so I had several Hotmail email accounts.

If I wanted to sign up to a web site or a subscription that I wasn’t sure was entirely kosher I would use one of my Hotmail addresses. When I was laundering money for the Triads I put all communications through my Hotmail account Wishywashy@hotmail.com. When I was gun running for Serbian gangsters deals were done via AK47sRUs@hotmail.co.uk. And when I was maintaining several mistresses simultaneously and patronizing a local escort agency I found totalesxclusivityguaranteed@hotmail.com really useful.

*sigh*

Those were the days. I’d log on, log in and frequently be surprised by the various communiques that were often or not waiting for me (frequently not).

And then things changed.

Not so much the getting married, having kids and becoming a 'law abiding citizen' thing. More the Hotmail mutating into Outlook type of thing.

Suddenly me and Hotmail or (if I must use its Snickers name rather than its Marathon name) Outlook (if you insist) became estranged. Suddenly our theme song changed from Dennis Waterman’s “I Could Be So Good For You” to Cliff Richard’s “It’s So Funny How We Don’t Talk Anymore”. We no longer had a thing going on.

Communication between us utterly died until now we barely even make eye contact.

When I try and log in these days all I get is the “I’m sorry, I’m not available right now” brush-off. Sometimes I only have to type the Hotmail address into my browser and I’m cold shouldered to the point where the log in page won’t even load. Outlook just isn’t putting out for me anymore.

See, Hotmail was fine when it was just an email client. When all I wanted was to send crapola and receive spam. We both knew where we stood and neither of us got ideas above our station.

But now Outlook wants to be the conduit through which I CONNECT to the entire effing internet. It wants to hook into my social networks and my own home computer. It wants me to diarize my life solely through its jealous online portal. It wants to store all my contacts and personal information inside its covetous cloud. It wants me to invest more time and energy into it than I’m willing to give. It wants to own me [man] and I didn’t ever come to Hotmail to be owned.

And I could just about cope with all that; I could just about shrug off all the irritation and irksomeness it causes me…

…if just once, just once the damned thing would load up properly first time and allow me to send just a simple sodding email without crashing on me.

Because that’s all I want:

An email account that sends and receives emails.

An email account that works.

Because the Serbs are getting impatient and the pimps are after me for welching on a deal. I’ve got urgent business to attend to Goddamnit!

The BARFTAs

You won’t have heard my name mentioned at last night’s BAFTA awards but you may have heard one of my jokes.

At least I think it was one of mine. It was a pretty damned weird coincidence if it wasn’t.

Some of you may have heard of this “Twitter” thing. A few of you may even use it on occasion. I know I tend to use it very occasionally. And like a lot of people on Twitter sometimes I get sucked into “Following” various celebs just to feel idiotically closer to them. The whole thing is very shallow and needy and more than a little shameful.

On occasion, when temptation gets the better of me, I may even try and send a Tweet to one of my favourite celebs, just in passing, nothing heavy meant by it and the whole exercise in no way affects my emotional or mental state to have you ignore me yet again, thank you very much, that is the last time I EVER EVER watch one of your shows, do you hear me you arrogant stuck up arsehole?

Because, of course, these people are bombarded with Tweets from needy idiots all the time wanting the instant gratification of a response from someone famous just to they can write a blog post about it. So many Tweets in fact that you have more chance of seeing Romola Garai’s stiches than having your Tweet actually seen by the intended recipient let alone having it replied to (and you will have to have watched last night’s BAFTAs to get the stitches reference).

I know this. So I have Tweeted a celeb on no more than 3 occasions in all my years using Twitter. Most of the time I am sane enough to keep away from such shenanigans. But sometimes, just sometimes, I get drawn in.

As I did yesterday morning. I just happened to see a Tweet from buoyant Northern comedy lass, Sarah Millican. She was on her way to the BAFTAs, was plainly nervous and so had done “a little sick in her mouth”.

To which yours truly, unsung comedy genius and master of quick wit and repartee that I am, replied, “Shouldn’t it be the BARFTAs then?”

The awkward Twitter silence that followed that gag made me feel pretty sick I can tell you. But I shrugged it off – *sigh* I never learn – and felt no negative feelings towards Sarah Millican; she's lovely. I rationalized it. It was my neediness that was at fault not the fact that she was too busy. C’est la vie.

And then at the BAFTA’s, lo and behold, whilst presenting an award Sarah makes a reference to the difference in Northern and Southern pronunciation and that now she was down South she ought to pronounce BAFTA “BARFTA”…

So a different spin put on it but the punch-line was essentially mine.

Right?

Or am I reading too much into it?

Was it just a coincidence?

To be honest, I don’t want any credit. Just the opposite. I want to assuage some guilt. The joke fell flat and I feel responsible.

Sarah, I’m sorry, pet. I feel like I really let you down.

Tweet me soon and we’ll talk about it. Kay?

I'll Give You A Klout Around The Ear

I haven't, if I'm honest, got Klout.

I haven't got it and I don't get it.

I have, at best, a tolerate / hate relationship with Facebook. When I think about it too much I feel my lips pull up into a sneer as I calculate the myriad ways that this whole particular social networking platform is spiritually and morally wrong. When I don't think about it at all I post funny pictures and status updates with comedic value.

Occasionally I'll let Twitter be my bitch. But I treat it mean and keep it locked up in the basement for most of the time. I'll cold-shoulder it for weeks on end before gracing it with a brief caress; before I brush a finger across its erogenous zone. And then, just as its about to come, I'll drop it.

Screw you, Twitter. You love it.

But Klout foxes me.

I keep getting Klout requests and notifications and I cannot for the life of me work out what I am supposed to do with them. I can't even work out if I'm meant to be pleased that someone has Klouted me. In common parlace I'd say probably not; I ought to be pissed off. But people are sending them to me in the same spirit as a poke on Facebook. And even I know that a good poke is good for the soul.

But what the fuck is Klout?

Can someone please tell me?

I click on the links when someone throws a Klout my way and, yes, a page opens in my browser that looks rather glossy and slick but I cannot see any direction at all as to what I am supposed to do next. Other than to shrug my shoulders and think to myself, "OK, that's several hundred nanoseconds of my life that I'll never be able to devote back to internet porn" and then I close down the window.

I'm guessing Klout is some kind of competition. A popularity contest. I'm guessing the idea is to build up some kind of influence on the internet and Klout gauges just how much clout one has accrued.

But it also seems transparent to me that other web sites don't give a shit what Klout says so having acres of clout on Klout is going to benefit me a fat load of diddly-squat.

Will it get me a table reservation at The Ivy for tomorrow lunchtime? No.

Will it get me onto the film set of Doctor Who and into the knickers of Alex Kingston? No.

Will it buy me credit enough with my bank manager than I can resign from my job with instant effect and never have to return next week to it when my holiday ends? No.

In that case I am not interested.

The only clout you're going to get from me, Klout, is the back of my hand.

I’m Going To Blow Up The Olympics

So Paul Chambers, the man who sparked a full-on security alert at Robin Hood airport (near Doncaster) when he Tweeted “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!” back in 2010 when the airport was temporarily shut during heavy snow has finally won his appeal against his conviction for “sending a menacing electronic communication” at the High Court in London.

I’m pleased for him in a kind of passive, passing, glad-somebody-finally-saw-sense kind of way. Mainly though I just feel hugely disgruntled at the amount of tax payer’s money that has been wasted bringing this case to trial, bringing it to appeal at a Crown Court only for that appeal to be initially quashed and then being brought to the High Court where it was eventually brought before someone with a brain cell who could finally see it for the ridiculously petty pile of shit that it actually was.

Apparently his initial appeal at the Crown Court was overturned because the judge said the Tweet was “clearly menacing”.

Clearly menacing? I’ve received begging letters from the RSPCA that were more menacing than that.

It is surely plain to everyone that the Tweet was a joke. A joke in poor taste admittedly and not even particularly funny but a joke nevertheless. The guy was cheesed off. His flight was delayed. It was snowing. He was stuck in Doncaster. It was an unthinking moment of heat and frustration. It was a little guy sounding off against a big corporate machine that had let him down. And can I just say again that he was stuck in Doncaster?

Even if he really had blown up the airport surely that alone would be a mitigating circumstance?

As it was, John Cooper QC last month said: “[the Tweet] was certainly not sent in the context of terrorism and it was wrong for the crown court to make such an association”.

Hallelujah.

Commonsense prevails at last. The Law is less of an ass than I thought it was.

But the staff at Robin Hood airport ought to hang their heads in shame along with all those who helped push this case along via the hard earned money of the likes of you and me.

Have we actually really reached an age where the average man on the street can’t cock a snoop at the big corporations with the only weapon available to him that is still free – i.e. his speech?

We have to accept here that there is a huge, clearly recognizable difference between “you have five minutes to evacuate, there is a bomb on your premises, die infidel pig-dog, the code word is kebab” and “your service is so crap you need a bomb put under you to get things to improve”. Real bomb threats are, after all, plainly not funny.

Real bomb hoaxes are also not funny. But “you've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high”, oh and by the way you can clearly identify me by my Twitter account and my 600 Followers is clearly not even in the same ballpark. That isn’t even remotely threatening. It’s someone throwing their rattle out of the pram and then having it taken to the police by a prat who then complains to the police that they felt frightened by the rattle - please lock them up Mr Policeman for I was very fwightened.

Honestly! Some people need to get a life.

Preferably before I blow them sky-high with the two tonnes of Semtex that I have rabidly secreted down my Y-fronts and packed into the hairy chambers of my armpits.

Go on. Complain about this fucking blog. I just dare you!

My finger is hovering over the button right now! One wrong move and you’re all going to die with the smoke of my singed underpants in your lungs!

Too Little And Too Much

I am out of love with technology this morning.

This morning the internet isn’t doing it for me and, if I’m honest, it’s been getting on my tits for the last week or so.

First up is Disqus. This is the technology that is working “too little”.

I’m Disqusted with it. I know some of you use it. I know some of you praise it to high heaven. Some of you are even honest and say that it’s just OK. Whenever I encounter it I have worked out that I have a mere 1 in 4 chance of it (a) letting me actually letting log into it and (b) after that actually letting me leave a comment. On some blogs it handshakes with me without a problem. On others it seems intent on giving me the two fingered salute and spitting all over whatever words of wisdom I am trying to impart. Those of you who haven’t heard from me for a post or two (Nota Bene and Wanderlust), I am afraid Disqus says my name is not on the list and I cannot come in. I’m not wearing the right jacket or shoes and I’m not wearing a tie. I have tried. Honestly. I’ve tried signing in via different applications and tried leaving it to work its magic for hours. I get a nice graphic of three cogs spinning around but it just hangs endlessly like a highwayman at Tyburn. I have tried banging my head against my computer screen but that just warps my vision.

As for the technology that is doing “too much”. That is hotmail.

When I log into hotmail I just want to nip in quickly, check for any new messages and then log straight back out again. I don’t want a hug or a snog. I don’t want to indulge in frottage or dry humping. I don’t want a date or a full on marriage with kids, a dog and an affair with the butcher’s wife down the road.

So why the hell do you insist on continuously asking me for my telephone number?

This is a piece of deeply personal information. Surely the whole point of a hotmail account is some level of anonymity? A hotmail email address if perfect for shopping at sites you don’t trust 100% and for on-line surveys where you want to leave information but nothing that MI5 can trace back to your front door. I can’t fathom why an email account provider would need my personal telephone number. Oh I know it’s supposed to be about security and password / account protection. But really! If you can’t vouchsafe the security and integrity of my email account why the hell should I trust you with my telephone number?!

Unfortunately there seems to be no way to switch off or bypass the request (except, I suspect, by acquiescing which I am not about to do). Every second log in I get taken to the “can we have your phone number” screen. I merely retype “hotmail” into the address bar of my browser and finally get taken to my account. But it is becoming annoying. Take a hint Hotmail: I am not giving you my telephone number. Not now and not ever. How dare you even ask? Next you’ll be asking me for my home address, bank account and inside leg measurement and a biometric photograph of the skin whorls on my left testicle.

The only thing I’m happy to give you is a biometric photograph of the skin whorls on my middle finger.

Swivel!

As for Disqus... hold the line, sir, I’ll be with you in just a sec...

How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways...

Enemies.

They're everywhere. On the street. Down the pub. At work. On our Facebook pages. Tweeting us from the poisoned depths of their hatred addled minds. They infiltrate our social networks both real and virtual and we cannot escape.

We all have them. And you know how the saying goes, don't you?

Can't live with 'em...

...and, er, that's pretty much it really. You can't live 'em so it makes good sense to quickly dispatch 'em. And as horribly as possible.

If morality were not a problem, if justice was your bitch, if you had a greenlight to do whatever you wanted to your enemies and people would still give you a thumbs-up afterwards and say, "yeah, that was justified, they had it coming", how would you dispatch your vilest, most obnoxious enemy from off this mortal coil?

It is something I have been musing on a lot of late. Possibly there has been too much red meat in my diet. Possibly Dr Pinchworthy has done up my straitjacket a smidgeon too tight. Possibly I'm a donkey on the edge (thank you, Shrek fans, I'm here till next Thursday, please try the veal). But I have compiled my top seven list of ways to rid myself (and the world) of the malodorous, the malignant and the vacuously moronic.

1) Attach them to a 50ft bungee rope (think about this) and hoof them off the nearest motorway flyover. I guarantee a juggernaut will drag them a good 1.8 miles before the rope rips 'em back out again.

2) Hack into their computer, access various bomb-making web sites, change their email address to ObamaMustDie@hotmail.com and - hey presto - let the FBI do it for you.

3) Death By Botox - modify an iron maiden (available from any decent hardware store) so that the spikes are replaced with hypodermic needles that pump out an "above the recommended dose" of botox into every square inch of your enemy's body. Not only will they die horribly but their corpse will look like a doll made entirely from Walls' "thick pork" sausages. Especially effective if (a) your enemy is vain, (b) spent most of their life as mutton dressed as lamb and (c) they're vegetarian.

4) Death By Higgs Boson - as inspired by X-Men 2, inject iron filings directly into various body parts (the choice and number is yours) and cast your enemy into the heart of the Hadron particle accelerator just before it is activated by guest executioner, Professor Brian Cox.

5) Death By Perpetual Motion - insert a simple tube (akin to those used during colonic irrigation) into your enemy's anus whilst the other is attached to your enemy's mouth. A cheap pump should ensure that all matter produced is shunted upwards against gravity, creating a macabre Catherine Wheel of Delights that should keep you chortling for... ooh... hours. Good for those enemies who talk nothing but shite but think that every utterance that comes out of their mouth is Godly wisdom.

6) Utilizing the knowledge gleaned from your years of service with MI5 (which I know you all have), adapt and customize your enemy's make-up paraphenalia so that the lipstick, the eyeshadow and the blusher all secrete highly concentrated sulphuric acid. Merely encourage your enemy to pass a mirror and then sit back and - ta daa! - watch them rub themselves out. Why? Because you're worth it!

7) Staple their nipples to the ears of a rampaging cheetah.

Right, I don't know about you lot, but I am currently luxuriating in revenge fantasy bliss.

Do feel free to add you own delicious devices of destruction to the list - or even to nominate a few potential "clients".

'Cos one day, people, we will all have our revenge! They've got it coming! You hear me? They've got it coming!

Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

Thank you, doctor, is it time for my Tixylix now?

Talk To The Hand ‘Cos My Tweets Ain’t Listening

There was a brief moment back in late 2010, early 2011 when I was a little predisposed to be in love with Twitter. I’d Tweet something every day. Offer it a little sugar. Bestow upon it a little love.

Throw it a bone.

But it felt unrequited. My pebbles disappeared below the surface with barely a ripple. Nobody really responded.

Maybe I wasn’t using big enough pebbles? Maybe my wit was nothing more than granite chips compared to the atmosphere bending meteorites dropped by other Twitter users?

Who knows? I felt that any effort expended on Twitter was like trying to teach a pig to sing. The relationship was never going to be music to my ears and there was frequently too much shit around underfoot.

I didn’t delete my account though. And I realize there is something weak and inconstant about that. I just couldn’t make a clean break. Hell, I thought, I could still use Twitter. Treat it like a Parisian whore and pimp it out when I had something to sell. Another blog post. An ad hoc witticism. A sneery dig at those dolts on The Apprentice. I’ll use it and abuse it and then shove it back into its electronic box.

An unloved tissue.

So it’s a constant surprise to me to learn that I continually pick up new Followers. Every month more and more people elect to Follow me. Some of them I have heard of – fellow bloggers and writers and the like. They’re fine. They’re good. Welcome aboard, chums, just sorry about the disappointing fare I am offering. But most are...

I am at a loss as to how to describe them. A gallimaufry of weirdos? A ragbag of misfits?

Yesterday a Spanish restaurant in Sussex who specializes in Tapas added itself to my Followers list.

Why? Why would they do this? I have never been to Sussex. I have no plans to visit Sussex though I hear it is very nice. I’ve nothing against going but if I did go it would not be to go and eat Tapas. I don’t eat Tapas in my home town. I’m not going to travel a hundred miles to eat it elsewhere just because some faceless catering exec on Twitter is Following me.

And then there are the self-help crowd. There are dozens of them. Tina Sparkle and her Healing Womb Crystals, Warlock Bryan and his soul cleansing runes of Mordor, Russell Grant and his magic flamenco shoes who will help you dance your way to enlightenment and a gestalt therapist’s couch. The kind of people who, if I saw their books on sale in the Health, Mind & Body section at Waterstones, would make me want to heave up all over the hard-backed edition of The Pirelli Calendar 1960’s To The Present Day that I had concealed under my duffle coat.

Plainly they read my bio on Twitter and the first thing they think is: Christ, this guy needs some spiritual help; I will offer my services free of charge in bite-sized 140 character chunks for him to consume throughout his soulless days at the Satanic mill wherein he works.

Now, they might be right in the their analysis. Maybe I do need spiritual help. Maybe I do have too much anger and negativity in my lymphatic system. Maybe my chakras are more blocked than the botoxed pores of Victoria Beckham’s face.

But if I need my soul saving by Twitter then, frankly, I am beyond all hope of ever being saved by anybody and not even some magic crystals basted in the intimate juices of Tina Sparkle are ever going to be able to help me.

Ever.

I am this close to deleting my account.

This close.

But... erm... I wanted to pimp this blog post so, you know, I might do it tomorrow.

I Won’t Bite

My relationship with Twitter is absurd. In fact, in common parlance, it would be considered abusive.

I use Twitter. I use it only when I want something from it. Once it’s delivered I drop Twitter like a hot potato. I neglect it. I go off elsewhere, leaving Twitter to sob pathetically on the shoulder of a girlfriend while I’m down the pub laughing about it all with my mates. Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen.

It seems to work. Twitter is always there for me when I want it. It never says no. Sucker.

I say this so you’ll understand that my use of Twitter is highly infrequent.

Now. I Follow a few celebs. Mostly just to be nosey. And I realize that this whole enterprise is utterly pointless because I’m not on Twitter often enough to read any of their Tweets. Every time I dip into Twitter it’s full of people moaning about their children not going to bed properly and people who I don’t Follow trying to sell me something. I’m rarely online when Barrack Obama is for example. I guess we are like ships that pass in the night.

Very, very occasionally though, I get lucky and find myself Tweeting when a celeb is Tweeting.

It’s tempting, isn’t it? To reply. They’ve come out with some lame witticism or other and you think, I can top that.

And so you Tweet and hit Reply.

And then you feel dirty.

And a little sad.

Because none of us like to think of ourselves as sad star chasers. None of us would go into work the next day and boast that William Shatner had replied to one of our Tweets and aren’t we absolutely amazing as a consequence.

OK. That’s a bad example. I probably would boast about William Shatner replying to one of my Tweets. It’s William Shatner, for God’s sake.

But in general. the celebs don’t reply anyway.

And then you move from feeling dirty to feeling insulted. Hey! Cameron Diaz! Don’t ignore my 140 character review of your latest movie! At least have the grace to say thank you when I made the effort to spell ‘vacuous’ correctly!

But what did you expect? It was dumb to send the Tweet in the first place.

But I do get caught like this occasionally.

On Wednesday when I was doing my usual Twitter based sniping at The Apprentice (about the only time I use Twitter to be honest) Lisa Rogers, star of The Big Breakfast, Scrapheap Challenge and possibly at least one other TV programme that is still being shown on Dave (and pictured above) entered the snarling ring of Apprentice putdowns with the conjecture that the contestants were all “nobbers.”

Given the biscuit based activities of this week’s task I automatically responded with the Oscar Wildeian “don’t you mean ‘HobNobbers’. (Excuse me while I snigger to myself again... ahem ahem ahem; I’m just so funny sometimes.)

Lisa didn’t respond.

I mean, come on. What girl doesn’t like a biscuit based joke? A digestive jest? A drink is surely too wet without one?

I did get annoyed. But then I calmed down and thought it through. I was being unfair. I can imagine what it must be like. You’re a celeb. A star of TV, stage and screen (or maybe just Heat magazine) and all these people are Following you on Twitter. Every time you log-on you get thousands of Tweets from desperate Twits desperate for your attention. It’s easy to see what happened.

Amongst all those tens of thousands of Tweets that Lisa was receiving that evening my superbly crafted slice of immaculate comedy gold must have blazed forth like the sun shining into Bryn Celli Ddu barrow on Midsummer’s morning. Her retinas would have melted with mirth.

No wonder the poor girl couldn’t bring herself to reply. I mean what on earth could she bring to the table after that little hydrogen bomb of hilarity had gone off and vaporized her funny bone? She probably thought that anything she said after that would just sound wet and as funny as one of Eamonn Holmes’ jokes. Best to keep schtum and not reply.

Lisa, what can I say?

It would have been fine. I’m brilliant at summoning up polite laughter to bolster other people’s fragile egos. I would have made allowances for your comedy ineptitude.

I don’t bite.

I’m like a big cuddly HobNob of comedy.

You don’t have to be a high class biscuit yourself to appreciate my fulfilling oaty base. You can dunk me in your best China and it would be fine.

You wouldn’t cramp my style, honest.

And I’d even be prepared to sample a couple of your custard creams in return.

Now I can’t say fairer than that.

P.S. And I didn’t even make a joke about Ginger Nuts. That’s how good I am.

Kerching

Up until a couple of weeks ago I had never made a penny from my internet presence. Not a dime. Not a peanut.

For some reason Bravissimo don’t consider my physique at all suitable to advertise their buoyant range of bras and glandular support devices – this despite my enthusiastic championing of all the marvellous work they do – and so my pleading to feature one of their banner ads on my web site fell on deaf ears. Even after I’d offered to do it for next to nothing.

Clearly their business brains are suffering from a poor blood supply. They might want to consider a cross-your-heart bra in future.

So I had reconciled myself to a life of non-monetary recompense for all my wonderful web work. I even turned it into a virtue.

Ha! Let others whore and sell themselves for baby wear lines and cholesterol lowering products. For me it is all about the writing. The written word. The art, my luvies, the art.

And then Marks & Spencer – or rather an advertising agency working for Marks & Spencer - approached me via email and offered to pay me $90 (yes, you heard that right: $90) just to feature a text link to their wine page on my main web site, pocketropolis, for a year.

Ha! I thought. Easy money if it’s kosher.

‘Cos I must admit I was a bit dubious about the payment actually being made. Despite my Willo The Wisp and fairy light demeanour (ahem) I am a cynical soul who wouldn’t so much look a gift horse in the mouth as give it a CT scan.

But – and this is what persuaded me – I haven’t updated pocketropolis in about 2 years. I’ve neglected it badly. It’s like a garden slowly going to seed. You know how it is – too many other pressing things to do; too many other creative projects, work, kids, life. But nevertheless this is where M&S and their advertising lackey wanted the link. Not on my blog (whose stats are looking so good they could be on a catwalk). But on my main web site that is starting to resemble a torched car left on a roadside in Essex.

Money for old rope then. (Hey, wonder if Bravissimo have ever thought about designing a bra made from old rope?)

So I added the text link. Not exactly in pride of place. And waited for payment.

It took a while. The old cynic in me began to hover its index finger over the delete key. All those prompt replies from the lackey when they were chasing me had stopped. I heard nothing for days.

And then just when I was about to give up the money arrived electronically.

Real money.

Just over £50 given the current crap exchange rate.

Shit. I’ve finally made money out of this internet thing. Money for nothing. My chics for free.

Easy.

And I don’t feel like I had to hack off a bit of my soul and hide it in an old locket for Harry Potter to find at a later date either.

It’s good. I think I have the bug. Now I want to make some real money. Big bucks. Amounts that would make a Swiss banker cry.

See, I have this idea for a web site... kind of a social networking thing where people can upload photos and tag people in them only I’ll assume copyright of all their images and then secretly deploy face recognition software which can be abused by third parties to identify everybody on the site and all of them can pay me loads of money to trample all over everybody else’s human rights...

Cool, huh?

Or do I need to hack off a bit more of my soul before I'm able to leap onto the Facebook bandwagon?


P.S. I was going to illustrate this post with a nice picture of a fulsomely filled bra. A rope bra. 'Cos it would fit the gag I made above. I typed "rope bra" into Google's image search.

Sweet Gee Zus. I thought I'd seen everything and could stomach about the same.

You learn something new everyday.

I need to start practising my double carrick bend.

It's a type of knot (in case you were wondering).

Anti Social Networking

I’ll be honest. Despite being a denizen of the internet for the last 15 years I am not up on the whole social networking scene.

I dragged my heels with Facebook (and still grit my teeth when I use it).

I tried MySpace and loathed it so dumped it. I now have NoSpace and am much happier.

Skype I’ve heard about but can’t bring myself to install.

Messenger I have permanently disabled because I hated the way it would launch itself on me as soon as I turned on my PC (like being hounded by a happy-clappy stalker).

Twitter I use infrequently and cynically, i.e. only when I have a blog post to sell.

I admit I tried ICQ (remember that?) in the early days but found it bothersome and frustrating – I’d be at my computer trying to do stuff and people would bug me for inane conversations overloaded with smilies and emoticons.

Emoticons. Urgh. I hate both the word and the concept. Let’s break it down: emotions / cons. You get my drift? :-P

But some Social Networking facilities have made it through my taste firewall. LinkedIn is one of them. It seemed a good idea at the time and helped me to reconnect with an old friend but since then I hardly use it. I’m Connected with a handful of people – some old school friends, some blogging pals and, er, that’s it.

Nobody – and I mean nobody – has used the site to contact me in the manner recommended by the site’s administrators, i.e. nobody has offered me work / money / commissions / contracts. It has done absolutely zilch for my career prospects.

But nevertheless I’m on there. Pimping myself. Or rather, pimping my online persona. Links to my web site and this blog. The kind of unthinking self promotion that we all do from time to time.

Suddenly, within the space of 2 weeks, I have had Connection requests from 2 people who work in the same Local Government corporation as me. People who I see once in a blue moon and only ever in a professional capacity. One of them is very, very high up in the corporation hierarchy. Very high up.

I confess it has put me in a spin.

You see, I don’t want these people getting too close to my online persona. I don’t want them reading my blog and the comments upon it and realizing what a cynical, back-stabbing little turncoat I am. I want them to continue thinking I’m a good boy who keeps his head down and deserves the money that they keep paying me every month.

This Connection thing is too close for comfort.

And utterly pointless.

I mean, what’s the good of them Connecting to me on LinkedIn? Are they going to offer me a job?

Hello? I’m already here.

So the barricades have gone up. And by barricades I mean I have ignored the email from LinkedIn – including the reminder email that tells me these people are still waiting for me to confirm a Connection with them.

I don’t want a Connection with them. The real life connection is bad enough. I don’t want them following the breadcrumb trail back to this ‘ere blog and the harsh excoriating heart of my lifelong malcontent.

I am simply too anti-social for Social Networking.

Too curmudgeonly. Too grumpy. And that’s the plain honest truth.

I mean, they’ll be wanting me to Poke them next. And that folks is just an interaction too far.

I think I may just have to be permanently AFK.

That’s all, folks. Goodbye.

P.S. Do feel free to RT this post.