a sermon on social networking (2011)

as the rain pelts down on a rare saturday afternoon that i had actually made plans for, the somewhat understandable urge to further vent my spleen on a subject that’s been continually bothering me for a while now slowly transposes itself into print. immediately it occurs to me however, that writing this very post, sat alone at my computer perhaps undermines the point i will try and make, but fuck it - no one reads this shit anyway...

as the novelty of the iphone has long since worn off i now tend to keep my neck at an upright angle whilst moving around town, only to see much of the rest of the world staring back down at their little mini interactive TVs instead, much as i had previously. 

granted, a lot of us on public transport not spasmodically tapping screens still often sit there with lost, vacant expressions of abject boredom anyway, but back to the point...

at the risk of sounding faintly whimsical, there’s truly something to be said for ‘unplugging’ every so often and simply observing/interacting with the world around you, without a soundtrack, and also without the need to share every thought, every fucking knee-jerk reaction that comes into your head with the rest of your social network(s) either. 

the automatic response to share has, for this miffed chimp at least, clearly become a sickness of rather epidemic proportions. 

sure, while the new-found ability to connect and share what you’re doing/thinking with the rest of the world has it’s positives (entertaining videos, news, events), more and more it feels that every time you log on to a network these days you’re confronted with a stream of pure, unadulterated, fucking noise, as if people have opened taps from their consciousness, cameras, or lonely youtube meanderings and plugged the stream straight into their computer.  

and now for an equation officially known as the guff factor: people’s ability to process and produce more and more data in turn increases the amount of spam in a network, until it becomes almost pointless searching for something interesting. and what is interesting to me, maybe isn’t interesting to you (end sentence with public shrug).

so, how to filter such noise, whilst waiting for a ‘guff on/off’ option, and without deleting your social network account(s) in disgust and/or apathy?

although ‘discipline’ manages to sound pompous immediately, i’d love a pop-up on the odd occasion asking, “wait! are you sure anyone else gives a shit?” just before you post.

hiding people from our feeds is one option on some networks, but fails to address the problem on a larger scale - twitter being a case in point. this also assumes that all posts from the offender are banal, turd-on-paper offerings, which is maybe unfair....

if there is no real way to filter information, perhaps people will eventually react to the overload of data with antipathy, but ti reckon this is a long way off.

until then, think of me as a disinterested, passive observer...adrift at sea spitting and pissing pointlessly into the wind.

it’s always nice to end with a quote, my english teacher might have said once, so here’s a peach from Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter....

"Everybody is becoming like ... a Stasi agent, constantly observing himself or his friends."

breakfast (2010)

times have changed. back when i was a lad, the morning after a big one would consist of a stumble down albert rd (oh pompey, much as i slag you off daily, you still hold a place in my heart) to cheryl’s caff for a good-old greasy fry-up. (you can have fun here and insert any working-class name in cheryl’s place, as i just made it up, haha. the name that is - the place, god’s below, really existed, and maybe still does). 

first up - the cup of tea. anyone who had ordered a coffee would be eyed with suspicion (brows firmly furrowed) for a good five seconds, before the interest waned and was quickly picked up again by a free copy of The Sun left by some sated fellow on his way out. ten minutes were allowed to pass before the standard chin-in-the-air, eyes-expectant gesture was directed at the kitchen. when the plate was finally slapped down on the table and cheryl/cath/dave/barry trundled off to find some more ketchup, what little conversation there was quickly petered out and the troughing began. what to eat first, good man - sausages? and what of the bacon? had they ruined it by saturating the salty goodness in bean juice? 

no, thankfully not. we’re ok. 

talking was kept to a minimum during the feed, albeit until the energy (from the egg, i’m willing to bet...) kicked in and sparked off a healthy tirade of abuse (yes!) against some foolish prig we remembered all dressed up from the night before, trying to get into 5th avenue with his silly hat. “what a slag!”, and other such inventive banter. 

there was always one who couldn’t finish his food, the belly-buster proving too much on top of the kebab from the night before. the cold, sad remnants left were a subtle reminder of what we just did to ourselves, and consigned to the bin or some grateful pooch somewhere below stairs. 

good times, as far as breakfasts go. or not. i find myself not wistfully gazing back but instead thinking, how disgusting. only yesterday i was trying to arrange a breakfast meet whereby i’d prepare and present, in all their glory, waffles for a couple of hungry french fancies, employing even a kitchen mixer in my efforts to please. how continental, my mum might say (actually, that’s bollocks - she’d first ask if it was a ‘lady’s influence’, in a mock-sophisticated tone). as it went, the waffles didn’t happen this time. a french work emergency (how easy it is to put the word ‘french’ before anything to change the tone), and i was out on my tod, in the cold. the sting! with my fair lady away, i had little option but to mooch on down to a nice local cafe alone, but thankfully the fucking football was on. 

a small aside here - i like football. the fuckstick however, who’s responsible for the vuvuzela’s entrance into the world of soccer.... 

so, breakfast in germany. a few years back i shuddered at the thought, the idea, the concept of eating cheese in the morning. these days, that moment of decision before the purchase in the supermarket plays far too great a role in the day for my liking. i am heartened tho, that i still get just as big a kick from staring at other shoppers’ vacant, glassy-eyed expressions as they mill round, really thinking about whether to buy limited edition, ‘african-style’ world cup pasta. 

fuck me... 

here in the german cafe, the waitresses’ withering expression - a mixture of “yes, i understand your german despite your overly-slow expression” and “you were boring before you opened your mouth” - is like a punch to the abdomen. my eyes turn to the tv screen, turn away again as the drone of several thousand (autistic?) idiots blowing relentlessly into their native plastic trumpets washes over me like a wave of dog piss.  yet...breakfast arrives, and is beautiful. latte, bagel, fruit salad and quark. 

life is good: everything’s ok once boots are filled.