Twittering your time away?

UNLESS you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, camping out in the Nevada desert or hanging out with a group of Eskimos, you will be familiar with the modern phenomenon that is the social networking site.

Websites such as Facebook and Twitter have taken off dramatically over the past couple of years with the number of people signing up increasing more and more all the time. Most might think that catching up with your friends, getting all the latest gossip from your favourite celebrities and being invited to events and parties all on the same website would be an amazing breakthrough in our so called ‘blogosphere’. However, for all the success that social networking websites have drawn, they are matched with a backlash of negativity. Are social networking sites fuelling societies voyeuristic need for gossip in an uncontrollable way? It seems the dark side of the social networking site is rife with bullying, addiction and manipulation.

A survey published last week by the IT firm Morse stated that 59 per cent of office workers in London admitted to spending on average 56 minutes per week reading and sending ‘tweets’ on Twitter. This is costing businesses in the capital £325million a year in lost productivity. This survey and others similar have sparked many London firms to introduce a ban on Twitter and Facebook in a bid to control the seeming addiction which many office workers have demonstrated through their inability to control their obsession in the workplace.

However, it isn’t only office workers who have shown signs of addiction to social networking sites. Recently some of the most followed celebrities on Twitter have admitted defeat and deleted their accounts claiming the websites were taking over their lives. Lily Allen last week stated that her boyfriend had made her choose between her tweeting and him. She signed off with the post, “I am a neo-luddite, goodbye.” Stephen Fry has also claimed he will quit the site with his tweet updates averaging on around one every half an hour. He alone has 949, 906 followers and has tweeted 4, 647 times since he signed up.

To us mere mortals the notion that celebrities are ‘addicted’ to social networking sites may seem ridiculous. Partly due to the fact that all their tweets seem to be about the celebrity parties they’ve attended or the plugging of their new book, it seems a lot like another line of publicity for them and the idea that they are addicted to the attention gained through fame is hardly news to us. However it’s when the addiction leads to more serious ends that there becomes a real problem. There have recently been reports of child neglect which can be traced back to a Facebook addiction and people losing their jobs over posts about their boss have been spotted and taken out of context.

Kelly Moyston who recently appeared on the reality television programme ‘Wife Swap’ has been branded ‘Britain’s worst mum’ by the tabloids after she displayed what can only be described as child neglect after admitting she spends 10 hours a day on Facebook. She claimed her eighteen month old child was too much of a ‘drag’ and admitted she often leaves her sat in front of the TV, feeding her only fast food while Moyston herself feeds her addiction.

Just how much should we be watched and monitored? The owners of Facebook recently lost a legal battle over owning the rights to the photographs which members post on their profile. Just how different are ID cards given to us by the government to profiles, conversations and pictures free for anyone to see on the internet?

Aside from the problems that these sites are causing for businesses and celebrities, the way sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Bebo are affecting the younger generation has presented some harrowing reports. In August this year the first ‘cyber bully’, Keeley Houghton, was put behind bars for sending death threats to an eighteen year old girl she had bullied during their time at school. Houghton searched for Emily Moore on Facebook and even though the physical bullying had ceased, the internet provided a new way of torment. In November 2007, thirteen year old Megan Meier committed suicide after falling victim to a ‘cyber bully’ whom claimed he was a teenage boy on the social networking site Myspace. He actually turned out to be an adult neighbour who groomed Megan via the exchange of messages on the site. She was found hanging in her wardrobe by her father the day after the online ‘friendship’ ended. It seems that social networking sites can be used as much for harmless debate and discussion, keeping up to date with your friends and checking out the latest celebrity gossip as they can for paedophiles and ‘cyber bullies’ to groom and torment their victims, sometimes so badly they can cause depression and suicide.

So, the backlash against social networking sites has resulted in ‘Facebook suicide’. However, research has shown that rather than actual ‘suicide’ the most dramatically an exit can be made from Facebook is by being in a ‘social coma’. This is due to yet another Orwellian example of the control facebook can exert over its members through the inability by members to actual completely delete their Facebook profile. Rather than the deletion of a profile, it stays in cyberspace and can be re-activated at any time….

So far 31 million users have committed ‘mass suicide’ before their profile consumes them and the total is said to be rising. Bullying and addiction are ruining families and posing unemployment for the unlucky. Twitter is consuming so much of celebrities’ time they feel they can’t control their so called addiction and so have had to delete their profiles. We are constantly being watched and it seems the love of all things reality has gone too far. This is a bid for the re-emergence of real life friends, rather than the cyber variety. So, grab your coat, call a friend and arrange to go for a coffee. It might just save your social life. Literally.

"Is that the Andy Warhol?"

So it's official, I now have a lovely, brand spanking new pad to move into on Friday in the up and coming area of Dalston, London. Oooo how very exciting!

In other news, whilst on my search for a new flat, I came across some interesting people. Whilst drunkenly covorting around the streets of Shoreditch on Friday night we stumbled upon a motown night at Catch. It happened to be the birthday party of the keyboardist from Florence and the Machines boyfriend. And very lovely he was too. Florence could be seen smoking in the toilets, tut tut, and dancing rather dramatically in the middle of the dance floor.




As I was doing my best Edie Sedgwick impression, complete with 60's style attire, my eyes set upon an Andy Warhol look alike across the dance floor. I felt it was only fair that I told him my thoughts and after a lengthy convo about the north and art it became apparent this Warhol look alike was none other than Florence's dad. Peculiar times to say the least. 'Nick' then divuldged that Andy Warhol actually went to his wedding! This was all a bit too much for me...I was talking to someone who had talked to Mr Warhol himself. Well I never!

Quote of the night, "Well everyone said that Warhol would have gone to the opening of an envelope". Kuddos to Mr Florence and the Machine!

Fish and chips on the front please

For those of you who know me well, you'll know my favourite place in the whole entire world is Blackpool. There's something beautiful about the tackiness of the whole affair. Blackpool rock, fish and chips, old ladies almost blowing away to sea on the windy sea front, the gypo's on the pier, novelty T shirts and the pleasure beach. I ask you, what's not to love?

Kindly, VBS.com have obviously recognised my love of the Paris of the North and created this documentary...

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/rule-britannia/blackpool-las-vegas-of-the-north

...if you watch it you may just fall in love with Blackpool, as i have. Or perhaps you won't. Either way give it a watch, if only for cultural purposes.

Lonely girl, aged 19, seeks fun loving male with GSOH

I've recently become interested in the modern phenomenon that is Internet dating. Not because I'm looking for love myself, if you must know I'm happily loved up at the moment, but because this is something which has come around completely within my time upon this planet. I mean, before the Internet our parents and grandparents actually had to go out and meet people....face to face...yes, i know, how terrifying. Never could they cower behind a computer screen flicking through cheesy display pictures, having to pour over endless blurbs speaking of a love of pina colada's and getting caught in the rain.


Whilst browsing through the many ads posted on gumtree which isn't even really for dating anyway, i realised it must really take a certain kind of person to think that the love of their life is waiting for them somewhere in the abyss which is cyberspace. You don't exactly have to be the prettiest girl in the world to go down the town on a Saturday night, low cut top and towering heels, bit of lippy, pint in hand and waltz up to first man that notices all the effort you've made for a quick snog. If you're lucky you may exchange numbers. If you're really lucky he won't have given you a fake one...

But, surely actually meeting someone face to face is a little more rewarding than summing your whole personality up in less than fifty words complete with a picture which you've spent ages finding in the archives of endless holiday snaps...it will be at least twelve years old and shows a rather 1980's looking size 8 with a perm, grinning...perhaps grinning because at the tender age of 20 she never knew this picture would one day grace the pages of a dating website aged 42, divorced, three kids...

Perhaps i am being a bit harsh...i understand that not every member of a dating website is a lonely spinster complete with as much baggage as an airport lost and found but it does seem to be something my mind can't comprehend. I do have a friend who, aged 19, arranged to meet a local young man whom she met on gumtree.com. At the end of the date it became clear that he was only after one thing and it wasn't marriage. This to me indicates exactly my depiction of the underbelly of the Internet dating world...it all appears very seedy and unnerves me somewhat. It's all too easy to hide behind a quirky description and an out of date picture showing your 'good side'.

This is a pledge to get out there and meet people in the real world...or you may end up with....

"Dontcha Wish Ya Had a Boyfriend That Is Hot Like Me Age: 38" He's 5"10, has blue eyes and is seeking a girl to explore with.

What exactly he wants to explore, however, has not been divulged in the ad...

Sicko.

I don't know about you, but i'm getting sick of all this talk about swine flu. Having a part time job in a doctors surgery probably isn't the best way to get around this problem but the media's handling of the sitch is also making me re think my chosen career path somewhat.

If we believed what the media had told us as a collective then by 2010 we would all catch swine flu, the emergency services wouldn't be able to cope so the service sector would shut down causing us all to die and the world to end. Truthfully, swine flu is no worse than 'normal' flu and the number of fatalities are of a similar rate.

But is the reason for this scare mongering as straight forward as it appears? Hasn't it almost masked talk of the recession? And aren't certain industries benefitting financially from it, from producing the tami flu medication to setting up a national helpline providing hundreds of jobs just as employment rates hit an all time low...

It seems strange that something should come along at about this time which is as newsworthy as a global recession. Pandemic predictions have faded in and out of the media over the years with bird flu and mad cow disease (it's those bloody animals fault i say!) but never have they made such an impact as this.

Perhaps this moral panic will end in a couple of months but another distraction will hit our front pages. Yet again the government have manipulated the public by puppeting the tabloids to distract us from the real problems which exist in our society. If that's the best you can do Gordon, then you might as well stand down now.

So, if you start to feel a bit head achey, have a cough or cold, then don't panic. Perhaps use the time quarentined in bed to think about the real problems we are facing right now, problems which have been cleverly masked by some Mexican pigs.

I ♥ U?

I've been thinking a lot recently about the concept of 'love'. Probably the most dramatic and intense of all the human emotions, i find it hard to get my average sized brain around it. What exactly is it? It certainly makes people act in the most unnerving of ways and do things i'm sure they wouldn't normally do if they weren't under the influence, so to speak.

Christians believe that there are four different kinds of love, like the way you love your family even if secretly you think some members are knobs. Or sexual love where you are purely attracted to someone in well, a purely sexual manner, i.e. they're fit but you find them immensly boring so a relationship is out of the question.

Nostalgia also seems to come hand in hand with 'love' or perhaps more with romance. Her; all curls, rouge and lace. Him; tall, dark and chiselled. Lots of passionate kissing on black and white film reel. Ahhhh makes me swoon just thinking about it.

But how do we fall in and out of love? I haven't had a boyfriend yet which at some stage i haven't thought "Right, this is it Laura, he's the one" and told my friends i'll be getting married and they can be bridesmaids, usually resulting in knowing looks of sympathy at my naiivity. One minute you're in love and everything is in sky HD, just a little bit brighter than usual and you become part of a 'twosome' who do everything together, forever name dropping to dissaproving single friends who secretly can't wait for you to break up so they can have the old, fun you back. The next minute you hate him. Everything about him makes you feel sick and you never want to see him again, until you see him with another girl and your insides turn to jelly, your heart stabbed with a safety pin and the like. Just me then? I doubt it, i've seen enough rom-coms to know i'm not alone.

And why is telling your partner that you love them the most important part of any new-ish relationship? Slip it in too soon and you're clingy, leave it too long and you have committment issues. It's a minefield out there. If i had a £1 for all the people i've told on nights out that i love them, yes that i actually love them, after a few jd and cokes and having just met them, i would be a millionaire by now. Perhaps a slight exaggeration...maybe i'd have a tenner but whatever, the point is why have we built this 'love' up to be some kind of make or break word in our relationship vocab. How do we even know what love actually is? It's not like anyone has ever sat us down and said "look, one day you will meet someone and when you think about the fact that they might be with someone else one day you'll feel as though you've been kicked in the face. That, my friend, is what we call love". Maybe someone should be appointed this job in light of the credit crunch, just to avoid confusion. Look at me saving the economy and helping you love sick lot out there.

All i know is that without love, even if it is pretend because we're never sure what it actually is, the world would be a pretty boring and un-lovely place and we wouldn't want that.

If you have read this lengthy rant then i love you :).








No seriously, i actually do...

And which publication do you work for?

Rather robust woman, greasy hair, poorly 'streaked' blonde picks up her phone and blatantly, without dialling any number in particular murmurs drunkenly down the phone, "meet me at tha basstop, there's sam c**t ere yoor gunna av to tw*t, ee won't stop breavin on me."

This was the end to last night for me. Let's start at the beginning....

I've been working at graduate fashion week for the past two days and it's been my first real time as a 'member of the press'. A small white badge with the word PRESS imprinted upon it entitled me to free food and drink all day, front seats at the gala show and a chance to mingle with the 'slebs at the aftershow party. I could very much get used to this lifestyle as i'm sure anyone could. I've been left revelling in the memories of being sat behind Claudia Schiffer and Erin O'connor, and all because i am now a fully fledged, albiet somewhat flukish, member of the press.

However, when one is on the number 25 bus to Whitechapel on a Wednesday night apparently this newly granted status does not matter much at all or in fact bode well. Jordan and i were stood minding our own business only to be called 'fackin cants' i'd say all in all around 20 times by this absolutely lovely women sat next to us. The crime you may ask? Jordan was breathing on her. I absolutely love London. In no other place in the world would this situation happen i am sure of it.

Still feeling rather woozy from all the free alcohol so i think i'll have a lie down, perhaps go and twat some kids later if the breath on me but i'll see how i feel.