Tag Archives: Facebook

Door to the River

03/12/2012 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

After graduating from Glasgow University in July 2004, I had several ambitions in life and like many arts graduates none of them involved having a career. Well at least I had absolutely no intention of retraining as a history teacher, which at the time appeared to be the only option available to me. Instead I embraced a hazy world of denial and escapism and this involved travelling around Europe on borrowed money and giving up a £65 a week bedsit on the Great Western Road. Such an undertaking came partly as a lust for knowledge and a desire to explore new cultures and languages. Scotland for all its charms is geographically isolated, monolingual and bordered only by England.

However, I must acknowledge that one of the most compelling reasons behind my desire to travel was the chance to ditch my joke finance job at the Abbey National. So before I abandoned Glasgow for the olive fields of Andalucia, I had one ambition left in life and that involved writing my own fanzine. Such was my love of Kelvinside and its bohemian leafy character, I came up with a pun title derived from a mediocre John Fante novel and set about producing an irreverent guide to post-graduate life in the West End of Glasgow. An inky offbeat publication capturing small town blues, film reviews, Chinese takeaways and unwise polemics against high street chuggers. Ask The Kelvin seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unknown to me in the mid-Noughties, I had set about producing a dead tree publication long before the wonders of tagging, Tumblr and all the social interactive elements that assist writers today. Unable to share my thoughts on a global scale, there was no danger of Ask The Kelvin ever going viral. Living in a make-believe world I knew at the time I couldn’t make any money out of a fanzine but for some strange reason I felt compelled to make one anyway.

On embracing the self-funded model, I produced fifty copies at the local stationary store and distributed them at Fopp, Offshore and a ragtag collection of Byres Road charity shops. Back then Facebook didn’t even exist and the audience I secretly lusted and craved for during my sleepless nights in Otago Street never quite materialised. Indeed looking back it does seem really twee and provincial, especially when I compare it to some of the sexy projects on Kickstarter.

Based in New York and providing a self-funded platform to raise funds on a global scale, Kickstarter allows random individuals to become patrons of their favourite projects. Almost like a counter-culture version of the BBC Dragons’ Den, Kickstarter involves a video pitch alongside a synopsis explaining the reasons why you should support them. Not with a lazy like you can get away with elsewhere but with hard cash.

Kickstarter is an amazing place to support new talent and my personal favourite is theNewerYork, an experimental lit mag based in Brooklyn that celebrates radical poetry, love letters and seriously weird pieces of art. Like stumbling into your favourite record shop as a 17 year old and discovering heroin tainted rock zines for the first time, if you tire of the NewerYork, you are tired of life.

Surreally decorated with unfamous quotes and the occasionally haunting story, their magazine blows my wee Glasgow fanzine out of the water. Beautifully humbled by their efforts, I must confess that on reading their e-version, some 3500 miles away in an English metropolis, I never stood a chance back in leafy Kelvinside. Alas I am now older than the 23 year old locked inside a Glasgow bedsit but still similarly way inclined.

Unlike the NewerYork I don’t think I would get $8,119 in funding for the second edition of Ask The Kelvin, even allowing for the social media tools available to young writers and artists today. However, I do take some inspiration from one of their many slogans: everything has been done before, so do it better. 

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The Web is Not Great

01/23/2012 By in Press & Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Coming into work with your eyes stinging from the night before doesn’t require a night out to remember. The world is flooded with electronic light and it no longer requires anyone to go outdoors. After spending all day in front of a computer and returning home to converse in the same fashion, there appears to be more and more ways to communicate than things to say. Cyberspace has become a black hole, where our thoughts and emotions are distributed on Facebook and Twitter, and sold on and repackaged to make a profit. God once commanded his flock to down tools on a Sunday but there is now an even more powerful designer in charge and like the celestial dictatorship of old he is entirely man-made.

With the internet going on strike over proposed anti-piracy laws, the Wikipedia protests only further exposed the excessive amount of time we spend online. Such a powerful new religion now requires a Sabbath. Luxury is a result of scarcity and what leather, travel and prawn cocktails were to the working classes in the early twentieth century, spending less time on the internet will be to the twenty first. As anyone with a compulsive refreshing habit will already realise there is something wrong with having permanently sore eyes.

Online activities are too passive to stimulate and often leaves the mind under-nourished but like junk food served in neon-aisles of 24-hour supermarkets it remains curiously addictive. In a world dominated by Twitter storms, reblogging and hang outs, there is a never-ending spectre of what the computer industry calls ‘content’. But even the most erudite of web pages will leave you jaded and disillusioned after clicking the refresh button once too often.

With the Apple Ayatollahs of this world religiously defining their personalities through their digitally branded toys, a dangerous cult is emerging and abstinence is a potential cure. It may involve abandoning your phone and being disconnected for a few hours. Ignoring friends might not seem the most sociable way to re-engage your mind but anything that doesn’t involve being online is time worth cherishing.

Some cellular weary businessmen in the US are checking into ‘black hole’ resorts such as the Black Mountain Ranch on holiday. Granting them a chance to unplug and rediscover their love of literature and human conversation, the resort proudly boasts of having no Wi-Fi or television facilities. A Sabbath luxury of a different kind, these black hole resorts relieve the eyes of tedium by denying access to the greatest communications system of all time. All man-made religions need challenging and especially one as powerful as the internet.  So when jumping down a black hole feels like a worthy alternative you know it’s time to put down the Kindle and reads as many books as you can.

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Ready to Start

01/03/2012 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

With too many New Year resolutions to mention and certainly none of them worth publishing online. It feels strange to be optimistic about 2012. While exercising more, eating less crisps and spending less time on Facebook are noble aspirations in the good times. Anyone reading the news would be forgiven for feeling suicidal. With storm laden metaphors sweeping across Europe, unemployment rising and a lost generation confined to living in bedsits and flatshares until they are fifty. There appears to be precious little to be optimistic about in 2012.

High unemployment certainly hasn’t put people off from trying to find jobs in London. Outside the relative comfort zone of rented accommodation, the city’s youth hostels are crammed full of Spaniards looking for work in Prêt A Manger and Starbucks. Serving egg and cress sandwiches are certainly nobody’s idea of a career but it is a job. A perfectly acceptable one if the alternative is sleeping next to a Lego pirate ship underneath the watchful eye of Mum and Dad. Doing nothing is not an option, or at least it shouldn’t be. Not everyone is able to leave home in search of work but those who do should be admired for doing so.

Curiously enough when was the last time someone British served you in that mouthful of a sandwich shop? Not that it matters but somehow it does. For job prospects are bleak and the ’los indignados’ of Spain are leaving in their droves to find employment to serve Britons over-priced sandwiches. With young people’s prospects belittled or written off as part of a ‘lost generation’. Is there a genuine alternative to this pre-scripted misery? Staying at the root of problem is a not a good idea and with reports of 18, 795 people chasing 318 jobs in Hull, then anyone young enough to move elsewhere is well advised to do so.

Already a social revision of expectations is taking shape and the middle-class dream of a range rover, dog, three kids and a wholesome marriage is not going to be an option for everyone. Well it won’t be unless there are better job opportunities and with growing economies in Brazil, Russia, India and China, then learning a new language in 2012 certainly won’t do anyone any harm. If well-educated Spanish graduates are prepared to move to Britain to serve coffees and sandwiches then perhaps it is time to look further afield ourselves?

Vince Cable recently acknowledged in an online chat with Gransnet that the “days of job security, cheap housing and guaranteed private pensions are over, but hard working enterprising young people will succeed”. Unwittingly he captured the innovative spirit of the Spanish emigrating to Britain to find work and learn the world’s global language at the same time. As a result the UK workplace is more competitive than ever before and when trilingual European graduates come in search of menial jobs then everyone has to get their act together.

Getting ahead in life has always been a struggle. And there has to be far greater innovation and courage in finding work that is stimulating and meaningful. Whether it’s freelancing online, starting a new business on eBay, learning a new language or moving overseas for the job you can’t find at home. Meekly accepting a miserable hand from a parochial negative government is not an option. Centre-left parties have failed to provide a credible alternative to the austerity cuts sweeping across Europe. Somebody has to provide a new vision for the future and with technology providing new opportunities at the touch of a button, why can’t it be you?

Rules of Engagement

11/29/2011 By in Press & Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Until quite recently the number of friends you had on Facebook really mattered. Friendship was a numbers game and anything less than a hundred confirmed you were of a lowly social status and resoundingly unpopular. In order to seem normal then tagged pictures of you drinking Mojitos with friends were vitally important. Going to see a band with friends or a house warming party must be a public event or otherwise people will think you’re loser that never goes out. Friends are social points and likewise so are the stock greetings you receive on your birthday, which are especially poignant coming from the friends you unsubscribed from three years ago.

In bars, clubs and parties people exchange Facebook details as a user friendly alternative to calling someone. With a new media landscape comes a new set of rules and social etiquette now involves protecting your internet history. Adding a date on Facebook is a potentially ruinous move. Sexy pictures of former partners, neurotic status updates and flirty comments will be revealed to a virgin pair of eyes. Becoming friends online will inevitably ensure you go too far, too fast and if things do go awry you will be a humiliating click away from the recycle bin. A six month probation period is essential before you can even consider adding a new partner on Facebook.

Since people are growing sick of sharing their most intimate thoughts with idiots they never liked in the first place. Private circles are now becoming increasingly attractive. On realising that you don’t want Jakers, Spanner and the pregnant girl from school following you anymore – social media is gradually becoming more nuanced and exclusive. Rules are therefore required. With Facebook becoming increasingly unpopular, alternative forms of social networking are slowly taking its place. Agenda setting and forming part of the national conversation, Twitter first began as a smug past time for media savvy professionals in London but has now opened up to the public at large.

Dangerously addictive social media has rewired our brains to such an extent that nearly everyone is now prone to shocking displays of mental promiscuity. Books lie unfinished and articles remain half-read, as the mind diverts towards refreshing a laptop instead. However, as our brains are being rewired to suit the net, the rules of engagement are still being defined. Self -publicists on Twitter ‘retweet’ praise about themselves and this involves resending a tweet/update/comment to your own band of followers. This is a massive faux pax in the social media world. Already this type of behaviour is frowned upon in dinner parties and gastro pubs as incredibly annoying. Therefore let others retweet praise about you rather than be defined by slovenly antics.

It is also important to remember that no one outside of your social circle has any interest in what you have to say. Like the gold rush of the Wild West, the people who made the real money were those selling the spades, not the poor souls digging in the wilderness. Twitter has thus become a narcissistic ponzi scheme full of link exchanges and diversions that people rarely (if ever) pay any attention too. Social networking remains an illusionary stage and while it may lack authenticity it certainly has transformed almost every aspect of our daily lives. With old media rendered obsolete, breaking news is no longer announced on the BBC or Sky News but on Twitter instead. Falling behind the curve is particularly embarrassing online – like when people tweeted about the death of Amy Winehouse three hours after it went viral in Uzbekistan.

Again like retweeting praise about yourself, announcing old news as an OMG exclusive is not good practice and with over 300 million users worldwide there are plenty of news channels to choose from. If failing to keep up with a modern news cycle is understandable then tweeting #RIP tributes to dead celebrities is certainly avoidable. Empty tributes to movie stars, actresses, sportsmen you had previously shown no interest in won’t reflect well on your brand.

In future these social media rules will have an impact on our future relationships, friendships, work and one’s personal integrity. A new social contract is slowly being formed and shedding a few dimwits from the friends list and refining your manners will benefit everyone in the future. Our generation’s thoughts and opinions on Facebook and Twitter is a learning process for mankind. Something that will prove essential when the brand building narcissists discover they are nothing but mere noodles on a graph.

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The Pen is Dead

09/14/2011 By in Arts & Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Letter writing is an increasingly rare occurrence these days. With the rise of smartphones, there are simply more convenient ways of expressing our feelings. As a frequent note jotter myself, I despair at the slow disintegration of my own handwriting. Although I do take solace in that I still compose my thoughts in legible English. For the shape of most people’s written ovals, loops and slants has been in terminal decline for decades now. Writing a letter to your friend has almost become a Victorian anachronism. It’s something quaint and romantic but no longer necessary. Like revitalising dead languages in areas they were never originally spoken, letter writing has now become a sentimental way to communicate.

Chatting online is more convenient nowadays but handwriting forces you to slow down, to think, to form your thoughts more carefully. Everybody’s handwriting will die out eventually without regular practice. Each year I witness my handwriting deteriorate and I still scribble my thoughts down on a regular basis. But note jotting doesn’t require anywhere near the same level of discipline as writing a letter. There is something about pressing the tip of a pen against a page and watching your thoughts form right in front of you. Letter writing is a genuinely cathartic experience and it helps you remember things. Unlike any messages you may compose online, there is no undo button in real life.

As a former teenage boy of letters, I feel something has been lost by the instant muses of mobile technology. When composing your thoughts on paper, the writer has to form relationships entirely dependent on their written skills. Letter writing is certainly a more genuine way to express your feelings. Receiving a handwritten letter in the post will always feel more meaningful than a hastily composed email or Facebook message. In fact putting pen to paper feels almost too personal now. Composing something online is easier because the medium provides a cloak of anonymity that a pen cannot provide.

With the evolutionary demise of handwriting being predicted by some experts, there is a now a romantic movement trying to restore the art of letter writing. The Domestic Sluts are kicking off a debate in London this week about social media and how our letter writing has changed since we started emailing. Does it really matter that we don’t write by hand anymore? On a practical level it doesn’t matter at all. Our need to communicate has never been driven by romantic sentiment. Once technology is established in people’s lives, it doesn’t go away. Indeed the very existence of a restoration movement suggests letter writing is dead already.

Romantic movements meaning well but they are niche by their very nature. Letter writing was never meant to be a kitsch lifestyle choice. Letters are now exhibited as period pieces in retrospective galleries, where once they lay on the porch floor awaiting to be torn open. With the rise of modern technology we arguably exchange more messages and communicate than ever before. Progress is inevitable. But as our handwriting passions slowly die, it sometimes comes at a price.

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Museum of Broken Relationships

08/22/2011 By in Arts & Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

After examining a heroin test, teddy bear and a Jamaican dollar bill at the Museum of Broken Relationships, I reopened my own dusty memorabilia of dead romances. Girlfriends come and go but their pink letters, valentine cards and hair clips remain locked away forever. The modern way of excommunicating a lover scorned is to delete them from Facebook. As feelings run high, many will have experienced the cathartic rush to purge their phone of texts, emails, messages and nude photos. Although years later you may regret deleting the latter.

Unable to throw anything away, I continue to hoard fragments of my broken relationships in shoe boxes, and these include paper clips, feathers, wooden frogs, heart shaped mirrors and an empty bottle of Prosecco. Every failed relationship has its fair share of emotional debris. Reading some of my love letters is surprisingly painful, and after a few words I begin to feel uneasy, and fold them back up feeling nothing but regret that purple ink is all I have left.

The Museum of Broken Relationships is a touring exhibition created by ex-lovers Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić in Zagreb. Some of the donations range from surreal plastic toys, postcards, reels of films and surprisingly tender BDSM love poetry. In this macabre confession room of love lost, one of the exhibits includes a bike given to a woman by her cheating husband, who on discovering his infidelity, spent her evenings riding the high winds looking for closure. She continues to ride to this day. Typical of the exhibition, the woman riding on her bike has a restless charm of personal upheaval and heart ache. The museum’s donations are anonymous and expose private grief and comic anger underneath a white ticker tape of shredded confessions.

One of the most illuminating exhibits came from a BDSM convert, who experienced her first ever sado-masochistic relationship with an art historian called Simon. Her love is represented in a book of nine poems, and she spoke of a man ‘….emotional, dysfunctional, demonstrative, difficult and controlling. Yet I was drawn to his tortured soul. He is intelligent, deep, dark and poetically literate. I had some truly magical sexual experiences with him and I fell for him or as he would say I was “obsessed” with him”. Alas such a temporary form of insanity now has a graveyard for where love goes to die.

Originally conceived in Zagreb, the Museum of Broken Relationships is now touring internationally, amassing stories and donations from cultures from all over the world. However, not everyone has to visit Covent Garden to appreciate the stories on display. They lie tucked away in your own draws, cupboards and inboxes. As we all have a Museum of Broken Relationships in our homes, and words that have been laid to rest and star spinning memories lying soaked in dust.

Museum of Broken Relationships
Tristan Bates Theatre
London
WC2H 9NP

Exhibition runs until September 4th 2011.

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Paradise City

03/22/2011 By in Arts & Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The slippery side streets of Soho have entertained the capital’s residents for centuries and it remains one of the most seductive landmarks in Central London. Renowned for its trashy lingerie, drug dens and peep shows, the unofficial red light district is a honey pot of illegal activities. Despite frequent attempts to clean up its image in advance of the 2012 Olympics, the back alleyways of London’s West End retain a downtrodden appeal. Blue tooth messages are sent to visitors walking past illegal brothels, and friendly Russian gangsters are fond of marching their customers to nearby cash points for bonuses. These are obviously not the type of establishments you check in on Facebook but anyone who goes for a “massage” at 5am probably does get what they deserve.

Although to dismiss Soho as a magnet for illegal vices would be extremely misleading. For while some men wander in search of foreplay with their trousers on, Soho is also home to some of the finest restaurants and bars in London. The relationship between sex and food is the belief that one tends to lead to another, irrespective of which comes first. Soho luckily provides both in abundance and anyone caught stumbling along say Green Court will realise that Yalla Yalla is one of the finest cheap eats in London. The Beirut food court is notoriously difficult to find but one of the attractions of eating out in Soho is that you get lost every time and nothing ever feels the same.

Attending restaurants in Soho is a bit like going to the theatre, where customers find themselves auditioning to play the lead role in a make believe world. Foreign themed restaurants are fond of describing themselves as ‘authentic’ but the word is misleading. A murky back alleyway in Soho is nowhere near the Middle East and while the rural taste of Lebanon at Yalla Yalla has never been in doubt. There is nothing remotely authentic about Soho.

Whether its old men drinking in 1940s pubs, PR darlings sipping cappuccinos or film journalists scribbling inside darkened rooms; the Soho peep show continues to entrance and deceive its audience. Constantly on the run and never dull, the side streets are awash with sexual favours and androgynous ecstasy. Soho meanwhile remains as slippery as ever and will put on magic shows for its audiences longer after 2012. Whether the law authorities will continue to permit such activities remains to be seen.

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Jameson Cult Film Club

03/04/2011 By in Arts & Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As rock star queues spiralled around the Royal College of Surgeons to watch Monsters at the Jameson Cult Film Club . Fans wanting to “check in” were unlikely to have been disappointed by the whisky cocktails, gas masks and Q&A session with Gareth Edwards. By embracing the seductive charms of social media, the Jameson brand has tapped into the pop-up cinema movement pioneered by the Secret Cinema. With corporate multiplexes providing an increasingly bland experience, social cinema movements such as the JCFC appear to represent the ‘Big Society’ in action.

Although with unprecedented public demand ensuring a complete sell out, many fans were abandoned outside cursing the pre-event hype and unseasonably cold weather. Drinks vouchers are never going to compensate for previously reliable public services. But fans who were lucky enough to step inside the “infected zone” quickly found themselves surrounded by actors in gas masks and Che Guevara inspired armed guards. Once inside the wooden halls of the Royal College, media savvy fans checked in on Facebook and received a complimentary bag of horror DVDs.

Gareth Edwards budget cult thriller ‘Monsters’ provided the entertainment and on taking your seat inside the old lecture hall, the true power of social cinema really came to light. By huddling together on a creaky floor the JCFC provided a greater sense of warmth and intimacy than you would ever find on the multiplex slopes of Cineworld.

The pop-up screening almost felt like a religious sermon as people sat together in cinematic unison. On stepping aside half-way through the screening, I stood and watched hundreds of faces silently entranced by a dusty green light. It was only then did I feel the emotional power of a shared experience in an increasingly fragmented world. A theme for our times, indeed.

Your mind is the scene of the crime

02/03/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

After moving to South Hackney two years ago, I have enjoyed a peaceful inner city existence and never felt in any danger. Occasionally teenagers can be seen loitering around the canal bridge and feral kids play improvised football against the recycling bins. But this if anything provides a sense of gritty character to an otherwise dull residential neighbourhood. While the grim Stalinist appearance of the estate and being surrounded by human storage containers is depressing at times, I have never had any reason to be fearful. Well at least until the coalition government’s new crime website was launched this week. The location based website provides an interactive map of reported violent crime, burglary and anti-social behaviour on every street in England and Wales.

Almost immediately I punched in my postcode and against my better judgement, I found myself living in a crime hotspot. Everyday I walk over the canal bridge on Shepherdess Walk and feel perfectly safe. But the government website reveals a different story. There are incidents of burglary, vehicle crime and drug dealing on what I had previously assumed to be an idyllic thoroughfare. Clearly the teenage hoods on the bridge have been up to no good. Further inspection of the website reveals there were 2134 reported incidents of crime in my postcode area in December alone.

Should I be too scared to leave the house now? The chances of me being a victim of crime appears to have increased since I discovered what goes on outside when I’m indoors. Even though I should be terrified of my crime ridden estate, I have yet to even spot a litter bug during my two-year stint in Hackney. Such horrifying statistics are in stark contrast to what I experienced in rural Aberdeenshire as a child. After pouring over the dark side of inner city life, I initially began to reflect back upon how kids from my village would play football after school instead of drug dealing or car theft.

While times have changed since the 1980s and the rise of the internet and games consoles has probably contributed towards more kids staying indoors, I remember how my peers indulged in criminal activity of their own. Every year local school kids would construct massive hay bases in nearby fields and cause thousands of pounds worth of damage. Most eight years old’s are unaware of the economic value of a hay bail and are unlikely to have a crisis of conscience when they turn one into a straw heap. As a result, local farmers would angrily come charging after us in their tractors once they realised their cherished field had descended into a William Golding novel. The thrill of the chase begins when you are young and I fondly remember scrambling over stone dyke walls escaping from irate Doric farmers as a school boy.

Crime like love is in the eye of the beholder and while stealing strawberries and pea-pods from an allotment patch might have seem like harmless fun to a country village boy. Is it really any different from local youths in Hackney stealing Mars Bars and Coke cans from a 24 convenience store? Enid Blyton would have loved my village escapades and my experiences of youth crime seem incredibly idyllic in hindsight.

While urban youths are frequently demonised in the media, I can empathise with bored teenage youths loitering around shops in sub-zero temperatures. Dimly lit streets and high rise buildings judge their offspring cruelly in the absence of wide green spaces. In light of the newly publicised figures, I should perhaps tread more carefully along the streets of Hackney but appearances are deceptive and likewise so is the fear of me becoming another government statistic.

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Evolving English

01/20/2011 By in Arts & Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

If reading your Facebook page doesn’t send you into a murderous rage then obviously you don’t have any issues with the English language. Such is the eclectic range of friends in my feed, I frequently find myself laughing at some of the witty, charming and hilariously stupid updates. One anonymous connection of mine  ‘…wishes this abses would go awa no am nae gan 2 the dentist i hate them al burst it myself’. Facebook inevitably provided this young Scotsman with counselling and advised him ‘Dina mean to scare u but my fiance’s cousin died from one, burst and all the poison went into his blood and into his brain. Better get it sorted!’ And while that does sound extremely painful, what I found interesting was not his abscesses but the near impenetrable use of the Scots dialect.

On wanting to discover more about phonetics, I decided to go along to the Evolving English exhibition at the British Library.  The concept behind the exhibition is the historical, political and social origins of the English language from 5th century runes to 21st century ‘txt-speak’.  As a matter of principle I have always written text messages in proper English. Such is my aversion to typing without vowels; I regularly had to endure severe financial penalties throughout the pay as you go era. With a flush new phone contract, I can now compose long messages without having to scratch a voucher card every other day. But with unlimited text bundles and small screen technology no longer so constraining, there are no excuses for txt-speak anymore. Yet in everyday life I find this linguistic phenomenon remains as potent as ever before.

For nearly a decade now I have dismissed txt speak with a barely concealed contempt. Some of my prejudices were further exposed in an innocuous conversation with a womanising guy who insisted ‘all girls use LOL’ when they are texting. By doing so he unknowingly confirmed that getting a ‘LOL’ out of a girl is an essential part of the modern courting process. Laughing out loud I passively acknowledged his sexual prowess and considered LOL to be feminine ever since. In stark contrast any self-respecting man using this abbreviation is beyond contempt in my opinion. But why I am being so blatantly sexist by inferring only women can get away with such frivilous language? Modern text abbreviations are often open to interpretation as this heart warming tweet reveals below.

Considering that nearly 2 billion people on earth speak varying forms of English, I began to question my own relationship with the language.  Despite having a distinctive regional accent, I have always composed my words according to how I think rather than how I speak. And while I love reading dialect in novels, stories and poetry, I continue to mock ordinary people who express themselves in txt talk. Following the finest traditions of prejudice, I have always dismissed txt-shorthand as a form of illiteracy and those who use it to be really ignorant and lazy.

Although this is to disregard the evolutionary nature of English and texting is just another example of the malleability of the language. Constantly changing and evolving from the 5th century, English has never remained static and while txt speak is subject to serious derision by conservative academics. It isn’t that much different than some of the ludricious office jargon I have to endure on a daily basis, where mangled words such as ‘hyper local’, ’granularity’ and ‘consumer facing brands’ are considered gospel.

Even some of the most cultured and intelligent people I know are prone to a good LOL now and again. Indeed I have a new found affection for people who Laugh Out Loud but for reasons unknown to me I still think men who use it are idiots. Alas despite being enlightened by the British Library, I refuse to use LOL on grounds of principle. Instead I have an alternative expression of mirth in the form of ’haha’, which I regularly use when reading about ex-school colleague’s gum problems on Facebook.

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