Social media - participate or disappear

In Mallorca in June

I had a bit of a Facebook débâcle the other day.  Realising that my profile was somewhat incomplete, I added some further details - notably that I was in a civil partnership with Paul.  Now this event occurred in France (so it was a PACS, which is treated as a CP in the UK) almost six years ago.  I thought I was simply clarifying the record.  Little did I realise that it came across to the world as if we had just entered into a civil partnership here in the UK.  The result was not only a deluge of "likes" and messages of congratulation but furious phonecalls from Paul's sisters asking why they hadn't been informed.  

This taught me two things immediately.  First, I'm incompetent on Facebook.  Secondly, though, that masses of the people we know actually follow people on it.  As a result, if you don't participate at all you run the risk of disappearing.

This road to Damascus experience came at just the right moment.  I've been a little obsessed in recent months with my poetic efforts, and have as a result tended to retire into my little shell.  I should know at this advanced stage of life that I can become obsessive and that it's almost invariably a Bad Thing.  

In fact it's been a wonderful summer down here in Hastings - and although I've chosen a picture (not actually a selfie in the proper sense) from our holiday in Mallorca earlier this year, the sunny background could easily, with slight adjustment - insertion of fishing huts and shingle beach and fish and chip shops - be Hastings.  The poetry obsession got its grip with a week's summer school on campus at Lancaster University in July, and I then spent my time entering one competition after another - without winning even an honourable mention in any of them.  So a bit of retreating and regrouping has taken place, with the realisation that I personally don't write better through obsessing about it, because the writing becomes overly self-conscious.  Alas, that Nobel Prize is never going to land in my lap.  But I've got so much else to be thankful for and happy about that I can live with that degree of failure.

Also, I realised that I needed to get back to blogging, which is good fun.  I shall even have to improve my Facebook expertise.  And who knows, by being a little more in touch with everyone I might even improve on the poetry front.

Antony Mair    

Antisocial media

Translation: Last week we had a power cut.  My PC immediately gave up.  So I chatted to my family for a couple of hours.  They seem like really nice people.

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

Adding to the cyber-noise

View of Hastings Old Town from East Hill

When I started this blog a year ago I circulated friends and contacts to tell them about it.  In the email I said I was going the blog route because Facebook was a step too far.  Subsequently, however, I put the odd entry on Facebook to promote the blog.  I even managed a tweet or two.

As time has gone by I've become increasingly disenchanted with both Facebook and Twitter.  I've followed a number of people on Twitter - poets mainly - and found that their tweets are a rather pathetic form of self-aggrandisement.  Similarly, Facebook encourages an alarming amount of posing.

But Facebook and Twitter are obviously meeting a demand.  Interest is created and satisfied.  At the same time, I've been reading in the press about how young people can feel under increasing pressure as their screen identities and lives fail to match reality.  How daft is that?  It's as if they're being sucked into a parallel and disassociated world that isn't satisfying their real needs and aspirations.  Scarily, research now shows that spending an excessive amount of time at a computer screen extinguishes those parts of the brain that use and develop social skills.  In other words, if you're lacking social skills get off the computer and into real life.

In parallel with the development of social media, the cyberworld is becoming more and more invasive.  Scarcely a day goes by without my unsubscribing from some trade circular or other.  You can't buy anything online without being added to a mailing list.  The most extreme manifestation was when a burglar alarm company I contacted sent me a follow-up email asking for feedback on the call I'd had with them, which was just to arrange an appointment for their surveyor.  The delete button came into action again.  

This blog was started to keep in touch with friends in other places - both in the UK and elsewhere.  Strangely, it's been developing a life of its own, and having started off with a few hundred page-views a month I've now just passed the milestone of a thousand.  Nothing in comparison with the number of Sally Bercow's followers on Twitter, but still a source of wonder to me.  At the same time, I'm a tad concerned at the fact that I'm adding to the very hubbub that I myself find irritating.  My only consolation is that if the blog fails to interest people they're not obliged to look at it!

Antony Mair