I sometimes - actually every day - feel like a dinosaur, surrounded by evolving species that will survive and flourish long after I have become even more fossilised than at present. Social media is/are something that I engage with on the periphery. Yes, of course I email like everyone else. It's Facebook, Twitter, texting and the various derivatives that cause me a degree of unease.
Before even getting into my specific objections, let me vent some brief spleen about the radio and television fashion for asking for input from viewers and listeners. Time was when Radio 4's Any Answers and Points of View were the only moments of feedback from the Great British Public. It was a great opportunity for those on the not-so-far right wing to air their grievances. Now there scarcely seems to be a programme without a request for input of some sort - whether it's texting your vote for a contestant on a reality programme or giving a view on a particular topic. In the latter case the invitation is usually expressed as "We'd love to hear from you" - one of the grosser instances of media insincerity. Can I really suppose that the glamorous presenter in the television studio, tired after a day of interviewing evasive politicians, with the programme producer babbling into his/her earpiece, is really waiting for my uninformed input from Hastings? I don't think so.
My objections to Facebook and its lookalikes are more specific:
1 the sacrifice of privacy is far greater than users appreciate. You're concerned about the UK becoming a police state, with a greater concentration of CCTV than anywhere else in Europe? Perhaps you don't realise how much your Facebook entries are revealing about your behaviour, tastes, opinions etc. - all ripe for exploitation via those "you may be interested in..." emails suggesting you buy anything from underpants to holidays.
2 the extent of posing and posturing has reached absurd levels. Most of us lead fairly humdrum lives, which are rich in their own way. I like to wonder what Jane Austen would have done with a Facebook page: "At Bath, in the Pump Room"; "Meeting a dear friend visiting the village". Ok - but do I really want to see groups of alcoholised people gurning at a camera lens? or the one liner of some wannabe who drops into the Ritz merely to mention it on Facebook?
3 Facebook interaction has become a synthetic and pathetic substitute for socialising. Instead of people meeting and talking (without photographing each other or the food on their plates) there are banks of autistic saddoes staring at their computer screens and sending text messages to "friends" who would cease to be so if they actually spent real time with them.
"It's good to talk", the old BT ad used to say. GCHQ may be listening in, of course, but at least there's a real voice at the end of the line.
Antony Mair
I totally agree with your comments about TV and radio. Why should we want to hear someone's inane Twitter comments - but as they are usually delivered in a 10 second soundbite by some poor person standing up to his knees in floodwater, in the dark, all in all, what does it matter.
ReplyDeleteI think Facebook can be useful - I use it to promote my blog, and also to keep a tenuous contact with old friends and workmates (we recently moved to Hastings from Birmingham). However, my Facebook page gets junked out with rubbish from 'friends' who post about angels, quack cures for cancer, fluffy kittens, celebrity diets and abused bears in Transylvania. This is infuriating, and defeats the whole object.