Thursday, March 11, 2010 

Social networking refuseniks.

I suspect, although I might be wrong, that I'm one of the few regular bloggers (not to mention also of a certain age) that hasn't also embraced the wonders of Facebook and/or Twitter. There are a few reasons behind this, especially the way that I'm not comfortable with revealing who I actually am, both in terms of my name and in posting photographs, which I loathe taking of myself in any event. I also dislike the whole erosion of privacy which comes with both, regardless of whether you hide behind a false identity or not; nor do I understand why other people would care what I'm doing at any precise moment. For those that have plenty of friends, or even just online friends, and are completely at ease with the past, I'm sure they're great and a wonderful way to keep in touch, I just don't think they'd add anything to the already pristine brilliance of my existence.

Are there then any other social networking refuseniks out there that do pretty much everything else on the net, including blogging, and yet don't get involved with these sites? I'd be genuinely interested to know, or even if you're just a refusenik that doesn't blog, with your reasons why, or just an acknowledgement. And no, I don't want persuading of just how fabulous Facebook and Twitter are. I'm not alone, right?

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3/11/2010 09:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, August 17, 2009 

Twitter twatter.

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who's getting thoroughly sick of both the hype and churnalism surrounding Twitter, or more appropriately, Twatter. The latest is that 40% of the messages sent on it are "pointless babble". Shurely shome mishtake? Shouldn't that be 99.9%? You also know that when the government appoints a "Twatter tsar", to go with all the other inexplicable tsars it seems insistent on appointing, the other one being Arlene Phillips as a "dancing tsar", that its demise hopefully won't be that far in the future.

David Cameron, for once, wasn't too far wrong in his view that too many twits might end up making a twat. I can see the point of the likes of Facebook, despite not using it, and do have a MySpace account although again I never use it, they're just not really for me, mainly because I prefer to operate under something of a semi-anonymous shroud. Twitter though, with the exception of when it is clearly put to good use, such as when instant updates are necessary such as on breaking news, reporting on protests and organising around them, seems to be beyond pointless; it's a glorified instant messaging service where every stalker and sad sack can follow your ever so fascinating immediate thoughts on what your sandwich tastes like, what it's like being stuck in a lift, and why the NHS is brilliant. Obviously, accusations of hypocrisy can be levelled against a blogger for criticising such "micro-blogging", and some bloggers do indeed do little more than those on Twitter do, but I'd like to think for the most part I put more thought into what I write here than many do with their numerous updates throughout the day (although blogging has been deliberately lighter this month).

Then there's just the wishful thinking, such as Sunny's that Twitter challenges right-wing dominance online. This would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic. If the NHS couldn't find enough people who could relate their own experiences of its service in a supportive fashion then Daniel Hannan would be more than right in calling it a sixty-year old mistake. Those doing so are clearly apolitical; they support the NHS, not the political arguments behind it. The entire hype behind online political campaigning has got all out of proportion to its actual value and use: there has been no indication whatsoever that the success of campaigns in the US can be translated to this country. Indeed, repeated attempts by the Conservatives to do so have failed abjectly, from their "Tosser" campaign to more recent calls for donations, whatever their size, appropriating from last year's US campaigns. If the Tories, the main players online as we are forced to admit can't do it, how can anyone?

Twitter provides what the other social networking sites do: circle jerks, where like-minded people share like-minded things, all while stroking their egos. Again, I'm not going to pretend I'm also not guilty of this, but Twitter just exacerbates the problems inherent in blogging. It is essentially meaningless, not even giving extra quality to real life relationships like Facebook does. Doubtless I'm about to be flayed alive in the comments, but once again the hype and the defences of it simply fail to live up to the reality.

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8/17/2009 10:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 09, 2008 

If we churn, churn, churn, churn, churn, churn, churn....

We haven't looked at any examples of transparent churnalism in a while, and on a day in which there is one which is deadly serious and another that is not so, it seems as good as any:

THESE chilling pictures of teenagers brandishing guns and knives were found in just ONE DAY on the Bebo website.

The users’ homepages glamorise gang violence — despite 19 young people dying in vicious attacks in London this year.


Incredible as it may seem, teenagers tend to do a lot of stupid things, and posing with weapons in a feeble attempt to look tough or hard is not exactly a new development. The only difference is that now with the rise of the social networking, on any slow news day the put-upon hacks on both local and national papers can easily put together a story purely through browsing Facebook/MySpace/Bebo and exposing some new scandal of the how the young live so dangerously.

There are just a few problems with this story. First, the Sun provides absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they even were on Bebo to begin with: there's no screen grabs of the pages with the profiles showing the images, so we have to completely take the Sun's word for it that they were on the site. You also can't now go and attempt to find whether they were or not because Bebo has now "frozen the profiles", again, something you have to take the Sun's word for, although the only profile name they give in the article, "Craks Capone" did exist, and is now "unavailable" (At least one of his "friends", again a rather loose term on social networking sites, lives in Norwood/Heath). Then there's the fact that nowhere does the Sun mention whether the images they've exposed are of individuals actually living in this country; it's not as if Bebo isn't a global site, even if it is especially popular with school age children in this country.

With all that in mind, we then have the relatively slight problem of this not exactly being just an issue on Bebo. Amazing as it may seem, there are doubtless pictures of youths with weapons on Facebook, and shock, horror, MySpace. You know, the social networking website that just happens to be owned by the Sun's own parent company, and which mysteriously never receives any bad press while Bebo and Facebook have in the past been criticised on a large number of occasions in the Sun. Perhaps there's also a clue to why the Sun's chosen Bebo to embarrass on the front page of Bebo itself, which currently has as one of the featured profiles the "STOP Knife Crime" campaign group. Meanwhile, over on MySpace, second in the blog charts is this thoughtful piece: Are All Women Whores Till Proven Otherwise???

Far be it from me to suggest how Sun hacks do their job, as that's obviously what Red Rupert and Rebekah Wade are paid for, but it would have been just ever so slightly fairer if they'd investigated all three of the major social networking sites, took screen grabs of the profiles with individuals showing off their weapons, also proving that they happen to live in the UK, and then presented the shocking evidence to the salivating public, i.e., you and I. This would however have taken far more time than simply banging out 250 words accompanied by photographs you have to take on trust are from Bebo and feature UK youngsters, precious time that may simply have not been available to Vikki Thomas. This is of course also the tabloid media we're talking about, where too much effort, rather than attempting to make the best of the medium available to you, is simply trying too hard.

Trying too hard is not something that afflicts the PR industry in attempting to get the most daft references to their company into the press. Previously we had the ridiculous story of the teenager that wanted a taxi but ended up with a cabinet because of her mockney patois, which just so happened to also advertise the company that provided the cab, innit, that the teenager didn't want. Today there's the equally preposterous story of a woman who put her bra on "while in a hurry" who just didn't happen to notice there was a baby bat nesting in it until five hours later. Now, never having needed to wear a such a constraining item of clothing I wouldn't personally know, but somehow the idea of not realising there's a living creature in an item of clothing next to your skin, and such a sensitive area of epidermis to boot, for five hours, doesn't wash. Luckily, not only is the woman in question attractive and willing to pose in just her bra, she's also more than willing to make clear that all this occurred while she was working at the Holiday Inn near Norwich International Airport.

The Churners were on the spot, tipped off by none other than 5cc, but the story has spread far further than even the tabloids now, also infecting the Independent, Torygraph and the BBC, as well as numerous other news sites worldwide, although it appears to have started via the Eastern Daily Press. You have to credit whoever thought the story up, as it's been one of the most viewed reports throughout the day. 5cc speculates it might have something to do with the new Batman movie also, but that part of the original article is one of the few parts of it that hasn't been copied and pasted into all the subsequent ones, so it seems far more likely this was an attempt to get trade over to see the famous Abbie Hawkins at the Holiday Inn near Norwich International Airport. The fact that this is lazy journalism of the lowest kind, with apparently no one actually bothering to check whether this isn't a pathetic attempt by Holiday Inn to bypass advertising costs doesn't seem to matter when it's a story apparently too good to be true and gives the excuse of being able to show a woman in the flower of youth with large breasts either in your newspaper or on your website. Still, at least it shows more creativity than yet another "worst lyric" poll, which is where this post's title comes from.

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7/09/2008 09:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, May 29, 2008 

Scum-watch: Getting drilled.

In the old saying, just what exactly does this have to do with the price of cheese?

A DENTIST drills teeth — while his girlfriend thrills men with sex shows upstairs.

The blonde called Tiny charges £100 an hour for her exhibitions.


Yes, I realise this is the Sun, but not even this most crass of papers usually plumbs the depths of such Sunday scandal-sheet salacious shit.

The Sun investigated her seedy business after dental patients alarmed at "sex noises" contacted us.

Oh, I get it. The dentist or "Tiny" must have done something to piss off someone in the Sun chain of command. Which "dental patient" exactly was this?

Conveniently for anyone living in Watford, the Sun has happily snapped the outside of the dentist surgery, meaning that anyone who wishes to sample the delights of Tiny as the reporter did, who only excused himself after Tiny had performed her act, can quite easily follow in Alex West's footsteps.

Of course, the Sun is by no means the most hysterical of hypocrites in this case. Not only does it not run a topless lovely on its third page every day, but it also doesn't run a sordid competition every year where it encourages its readers to get naked for the wonderful prize of £5,000 and a year's modeling contract. It also doesn't encourage women on their social network to do the same, and neither does it run a page 3 idol tour, where again, the sort of display which Tiny provides is only slightly more explicit than that which it doesn't give the local leering lads.

Elsewhere, it wouldn't be another day in the life of the tabloid that never prints a bad word about MySpace if there wasn't an article about how awful Facebook is:

TEENAGE revellers trashed a Spanish mansion worth £4.4 million - after the schoolgirl host posted an open invite on Facebook.

Why anyone in this country would care is a question worth posing.

Finally, the paper is reporting the tragic case of Nisha Patel-Nasri in the only way it knows:

THE evil husband of stabbed cop Nisha Patel-Nasri plotted her murder during a day-long sex marathon with his prostitute lover, The Sun can reveal.

And the evidence for this is?

The lovers checked into the Alpine-themed Coppid Beech Hotel in Bracknell, where they romped once before.

Records show Nasri submitted the life insurance application to Legal & General at about the same time he and Mockiene watched two porn films.


Ah, conclusive proof! And just to show that there are no depths to which the paper won't sink, it's also got the "Say No to Knives" petition link on the page, which has now been signed by a massive 3,129 people. Classy doesn't begin to cover it.

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5/29/2008 10:20:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 

Scum-watch: Yet more bad news stories on Facebook.

The Sun's managed to get itself a quite brilliant story today on a "lag" who's managing to use a social networking site via a smuggled mobile phone whilst still in prison, detailing his conversations with his friends and his boasts about he's also got access to cocaine inside.

It's therefore incredibly lucky that Robert “Rug” Abrams, 23, uses Facebook rather than MySpace, as the latter would mean the story couldn't possibly be used, lest it give a bad impression of the quite wonderful Murdoch owned networking site. After all, it's only criminals and prisoners that use Facebook, right?

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5/27/2008 10:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 

Scum-watch: More wild rumours, thoughts on why some crimes get more coverage than others, and typical Facebook bashing.

Having spent yesterday speculating wildly and potentially tramuatisingly on the fate of Rosimeiri Boxall, the hacks on the Sun having seemingly decided that it won't do to just attempt readers to sympathise with her fate; no, you can't have open and shut, black and white cases when no one really knows what happened. To alleviate such a objectionable situation, the Sun today publishes yet more rumours, except this time on what Boxall had consumed alcohol wise:

VICAR’S daughter Rosi Boxall downed wine and spirits before she plunged to her death from a window, it was claimed yesterday.

Hostel resident Holly Dowse told how 19-year-old Rosi was drunk by lunchtime after boozing with two teenage pals.

Holly, 17, said the girls were sinking Lambrini — advertised as a sweet wine for "girls who just wanna have fun" — and strong almond liqueur Amaretto.

Holly, who lives in the flat below in Blackheath, South East London, said: "I went upstairs at midday to tell the girls to be quiet.

"They were in the flat with two boys. I could see they had bottles of Lambrini and a bottle of Amaretto.

"One was dancing around in a black corset while the other was being loud and giggling with Rosi. They all seemed well on their way to being drunk even then."


Ah, see, it turns out she was a binge-drinking yob all along! The point of reporting this "fact" seems to be to cast doubt on the initial picture entirely, as after all, if you're drunk and messing around you can quite easily fall out of windows. Is it really too much to ask for the police to be left to investigate what happens without the press publishing such contradictory churnalism? Of course it is.

On an almost related point, there's an interesting letter in the Grauniad today from a bereaved father over the lack of coverage of his son's violent death:

I, too, am puzzled by media reporting of killings (Brothers guilty of running down father-of-two, May 15). My 22-year-old stepson, Tom Easton, was stabbed to death in September 2006 in a recording studio, where he was helping disadvantaged young people develop their talents. Like Jonathan Zito, he was killed by someone with schizophrenia, who has now been committed to Broadmoor. Yet the national media coverage of Tom's death was virtually non-existent. This lack of interest can't be explained away by "black-on-black" killings, or by nasty people doing nasty things to each other, as Professor Peter Cole asserts. Tom was white, middle-class, at work and an innocent victim of a savage attack. As a family who have lost someone in these circumstances, we're certainly not interested in column inches. What we do want is more debate about what must be done to prevent these tragedies, and government action. That debate has been muted, which is why Through Unity, a coalition of families like ours, has been formed. Maybe together our voices will be heard above the din of press sensationalism and celebrity journalism.

Peter Sinclair
Chair, Tom Easton Flavasum Trust

It isn't an exact science working out why some cases make all the headlines and some don't, but it's difficult to dismiss the notion that it is (mostly) about class and race when there's some evidence to suggest that in most cases that is exactly why some are reported so volubly and others not. Jimmy Mizen is a case that provides a number of reasons why his death was so widely covered, and others, often involving either black youths or ethnic minority youths who died in different circumstances haven't: he was white; middle class; he was, in the words of his parents, a perfect son, a good Catholic, and already had an apprenticeship lined up; his parents were telegenic and more than prepared to talk to the media; and, which I also don't doubt was a factor, one of his sisters additionally has down syndrome, always likely to inspire further sympathy.

As to why Tom Easton didn't receive similar coverage, I do vaguely remember his case, so it wasn't completely ignored or forgotten. Why he didn't receive the same though, although he was white and middle class and filled all the other usual particulars for which cases usually gain coverage, might well be because of what he was doing. Unfortunately, cynicism is hard-set in for good reasons in most hacks, especially those on the right-wing tabloids, and you can bet that some would have thought, if not voiced, that Easton might have been asking for it for working with such hoodlums, or at least he was putting himself in harms way, unlike Mizen who refused to fight.

In a similar way, it's perhaps why Sophie Lancaster's mother hasn't received the overwhelming sympathy or coverage that Helen Newlove did; she happened to a youth worker who believed in compassion, letting live and and forgiving, and despite initial and understandable soul-searching about whether she could continue in such a job, she's decided she will. Contrast that to Newlove: the woman out not for justice, but for apparent vengeance, who gives the kind of quotes the tabloids adore, such as saying how she'd give her husband's killers the lethal injection herself, while demanding that new, deeply authoritarian and illiberal laws be brought in to stop such youths killing in the future. When met with individuals who don't want to pursue a vendetta, or even, God forbid, forgive their tormentors, as Anthony Walker's mother famously did, they don't understand it or consider it worthy of further coverage, except to ask how they possibly could do such a thing. The embittered and angry always make for better copy than the reflective ones who want to move on.

It's obviously clear why some of the apparent "black-on-black" knife crime deaths haven't received hardly any coverage beyond the initial reports; no one cares when "scum" appears to have killed "scum", not even the police, who might for other cases have issued press release after press release, as the Metropolitan police did after the murder of Tom ap Rhys Price, while the death of Balbir Matharu was met with little other than silence, from both press and police themselves, until Ian Blair opened his mouth about it.

We can't place all the blame on journalists, especially when they might well have got the story only for it to be spiked or not used later. Sometimes there generally is no reason why murders receive no coverage, apart from maybe the changing practices of the media, increasingly obsessed with the urban centres while ignoring rural areas. Even if not a particularly heinous murder is committed during a time of slow news or especially the silly season, it's always likely to receive more coverage than it might otherwise do. When cases do receive obviously less coverage because of the race or class of the victim, or as witnessed recently when involving less sympathetic figures such as Fiona MacKeown and the Matthews clan, we ought to speak louder. It is an issue however that does require a lot more study and research for any clear conclusions to be drawn; until then, Peter Sinclair's suggestions are wise ones which ought to acted on. Unfortunately, in the current media climate, it seems unlikely that anything will change.

Speaking of which, here's how the Sun reports the news that "crooks" are turning to social-networking sites to sell their ill-gotten gains:

Naturally, the fact that a certain social networking site owned by the Sun's proprietor is also doubtless home to such activity is nary mentioned.

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5/21/2008 08:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 17, 2008 

Scum-watch: Cocaine? On my Facebook?

The social networking sites are a boon to lazy, sensationalist tabloid journalists. Want to find a group that advocates something your newspaper doesn't much like? A couple of taps on Farcebook and it's done. Feel the need to scare your readers senseless after a particularly gruesome or out of the ordinary case, such as that of Natasha Collins and Mark Speight? Why look, all your children are on a social networking site boasting about their Colombian marching powder intake! Won't someone please save the children?

TODAY The Sun exposes the potentially deadly Facebook groups that glamorise cocaine abuse.

Parts of the social networking website have effectively become a handbook that have pulled people into drug use.


Proof to back this up? The case studies of a whole two individuals who blame the site for their woes, even though they'd previously used cocaine or other drugs, the whole thing reading like a usual PR sting, asking for stories about cocaine use (with the promise of payment) they can then possibly mould, especially considering this is in the "Real Life" section. The churnalist behind this garbage, Samantha Wostear, then liberally chooses a few quotes from selected Facebook groups for her own evidence:

One dangerous entry declares: “This group is so funny!!! i like kate moss, and i LOVE coke!”

Dangerous? In the sense that whoever wrote it's stupidity is contagious? That's the only way it could possibly thought of as putting anyone other than the author at risk.

More young Britons have tried cocaine than those in any other European country.

Britain also has the second-highest level of active users in Europe, beaten only by Spain.

One in 25 British schoolchildren aged 15 to 16 admit to having taken cocaine at least once - double the average in Europe.


Ah yes, and this is clearly down to social networking sites rather than its availability and its attractiveness, right? Let's at least try and keep the moral panic at least somewhat sane.

And the cocaine craze sweeping the UK is at risk of being fuelled by the depraved groups that invite Facebook users to share their experiences of drug use and encourage others to experiment.

Graphic images of people snorting cocaine sit next to comments glorifying its use such as: “Nearly all my money goes on beak (cocaine), it’s f***in amazin and i’m helpin out poor little colombians by takin it, ha ha, plus if mossy (Kate Moss) can get away wid it why cant i?”

It was posted on the group If Kate Moss Does Cocaine, It Should Be Legal. This group alone boasts 716 members.

There are said to be 500 groups linked to cocaine appreciation, boasting hundreds of members.

Another group, Cocaine Is The Ruler Of The Brain, posts the message: “Nothing like that ‘high’ feeling to make a person feel goood-ddd and forget about ev-reee-thhhannnggg!!”

And another, Make Poverty History - Cheap Cocaine For Everyone!!!!!, states: “Prices are rocketing to all new highs so we all need to band together to stamp down the price and bring cocaine back to the masses.”


This sort of thing is hardly limited to Facebook - a quick Google search for "cocaine appreciation" pulls up a whole number of forum topics on similar subjects.

Of course, the fact that this article is in the Sun and deals solely with Facebook, which just happens to be MySpace's (prop. R. Murdoch) main rival has obviously nothing to do with the Sun's determination to expose these frightening groups for targeting our children. And, as you might expect, MySpace itself certainly hasn't got any similar groups, has it?

SHABHEADS AND MYSPACE ADDICTS UNITE ! (Public Group)
What is a shabhead, you say? It's another term for speed freak, methhead

Amphetamines, Speed; Dex; Adderall; Dexamphetamine; Bennies; Dexies; Black Beauty; Jollies.. simpler te

THE CHARLOTTE MAFIA (Public Group)
choking bitches and doing cocaine

Sugar Sniffers (Public Group)
in this little group we are addicted to sugar, sweets, candy of any kind, as much as we are to cocaine. nuff said, si?

chemicals are fun! (Public Group)
well this is for everyone who like anything from a ciggerette to crack cocaine... shit why not!>. well as i wish safe usage feel free to bend the bar or reality a bit when u please. and when u do.

cocaine cult (Public Group)
we do Ka-Ka-Ka-heroin

Cocaine Fiends (Public Group)
kjbfkjsdf

Cocaine Cunts (Private Group)
Whore Group

Will someone do me the honours of introducing the pot to the kettle?

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4/17/2008 08:50:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, April 04, 2008 

Why are we cursed with politicians this stupid?

Sex offenders' e-mail addresses are to be passed to social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo to prevent them contacting children

Under government proposals, offenders who do not give police their address - or give a false one - would face up to five years in jail.


Anyone spot any flaws in this plan? Oh, yeah, so we did, over a year ago. Unity said at the time:

The entire proposal is a complete shambles and clearly advanced and put forward by people who haven’t got the first fucking clue how the internet really works.

Back then this plan was put forward by John "Dr Demento" Reid, and it's now being continued by "Wacky" Jacqui Smith, whose advisers seem as ignorant and clueless as Reid's previously. Surely they realise that you can get a new email address within minutes, thereby bypassing any blacklist? Anyone could give their real first email address happily to the fuzz and then use any of however many different accounts to set-up separate profiles on social networking sites.

Hopefully, "they" do actually realise this and are only going ahead with it because the usual suspects on the Scum and Mail are just as ignorant about the internet as they are, providing an "illusion of safety" that'll shut the gibbering paedophile hunters up for a while. Quite apart from its effectiveness, it's also a draconian policy which will make it even more difficult for convicted "sex offenders" to rebuild their lives, and 30,000 of them will be affected by this, no doubt including such notorious perverts as the man who had sex with his bike in his room. Then again, perhaps an excellent punishment would be to restrict sex offenders to "just" MySpace and Bebo: that'd be enough to drive anyone crazy.

I also just couldn't resist this from the Scum's website:

Along with all the others in the pod, no doubt.

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4/04/2008 09:07:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 02, 2008 

Millions of girls using Facebook, Bebo and Myspace 'at risk' from paedophiles and bullies - and the Daily Mail.

Parents are alarmingly ignorant of the danger posed to millions of girls by social networking websites, a report reveals.

A study of sites such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace shows children using them can be at great risk from paedophiles and bullies.


As you might expect, this being the lead super-splash in today's Daily Mail, the Ofcom report (PDF) the article is based on says absolutely nothing of the sort. The closest it comes to anything near that is where its research finds that two-thirds of parents say they set the rules on the their children's use of social-networking sites, while only 53% of children say that their parents set those self-same rules. The executive summary on privacy and safety doesn't so much as mention either paedophiles or bullies. In fact, the entire part of the report on privacy and safety doesn't mention paedophiles or bullies. It's only where we get to the "Literature review of harm and offence in social networking" that we finally get any reference to bullying, but still there is no direct mention of paedophiles.

The only possible justification that the Mail could have for leading with such a headline and opening couple of paragraphs is this section from the literature review of the current research:

Smith used the Pew Internet and American Life Project (as did Lenhart and Madden above) to look at the contacts made by subjects who create profiles on social networking sites (Smith, 2007). Smith found that seven per cent of this American sample said they had been contacted ‘by a stranger who made them feel scared or uncomfortable’. Teenage girls (the sample was aged 12-17) are more likely than boys to say this (11% and 4% respectively).

Only a very slight more percentage then than 1 in 10 had been contacted by someone who made them feel scared or uncomfortable, and we're talking in this instance about research done in the US.

It's quite obvious however why the Mail has decided to go with "GIRLS AT RISK" angle: it enables them to scaremonger recklessly about what YOUR KIDS might be up to online; means they can moralise about our debauched youth that are clearly asking for it, as we shall see; and lets them then publish those self-same profiles with the girls flaunting their assets at the same time as crowing about paedophiles.

I'm not going to reproduce them here in full for obvious reasons, but here's the Daily Mail doing some own personal research on the reckless and feckless youth:

Last night the Daily Mail discovered some of the shocking content youngsters are putting up on these sites.

This includes a 14-year-old girl whose profile picture, which can be viewed by anyone, focuses on her breasts.

Another 15-year- old is smirking at the camera as she grabs her breasts.

She has listed her date of birth, her home town and name of school.

One has also innocently posted pictures of her ten-year-old sister half-clothed alongside lots of personal information, including full name and home town.

Another 16-year-old is seen posing in her underwear in dozens of photographs.

The Mail has kindly pixellated the faces of those it's decided to "sexpose", but it naturally hasn't done the same to their bodies, because that obviously would mean that the Herbert Gussets out there wouldn't be able to get their rocks off. This is the sort of classy, by no means sensational copy placed alongside the images:



Doubtless, I'm sure these teens were asked permission for their profiles, whether public or not, to be reprinted in a national newspaper. That they'll be easily identified by their friends and schoolmates themselves and therefore likely to be um, bullied or mocked as a result is obviously neither here nor there. That it also means that some individuals might now attempt to find the profiles themselves in full is also obviously not a problem - after all, the Daily Mail doesn't seem to mind being the newspaper of choice for men like Mark Dixie, who recorded himself masturbating to pictures of his young model victim in the paper.

This is absolutely classic Daily Mail, having its cake and eating it, tut-tutting at the state of youth while condemning parents for having no boundaries, all the while engaging in the very strongest form of voyeurism that its readers will let it get away with, and distorting a report in order to do so in the first place. This just happens to be the same newspaper objecting to a tightening of the rules over the buying and selling of stolen information, citing "investigative journalism" concerns. Investigative journalism such as going on the social networking websites for the most "shocking" profiles they can find to titillate and outrage, presumably.

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4/02/2008 08:16:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 10, 2008 

Scum-watch: This issue is interesting to about two people but he has some fruity daughters...

I'm racking my brains trying to think out what exactly the greatest boon to society has been from the emergence of social networking websites, but I keep drawing something of a blank. Sure, they might keep you somewhat entertained when you're meant to be working, and that's something I'd happily encourage, but just what else have they done, except given us music which will haunt us until the end of our days?

Then I realised. They've enabled the media to instantly find every daft photograph you've ever taken of yourself and felt necessary to share with your friends either after you've died/been arrested/charged with a crime/after a relative has in some way made the news. It means they can wildly speculate about your state of mind on finding that you once dressed up as the Grim Reaper for a fancy dress party. They can label you a "ladette" or a "binge-drinker" on account of a string of sentences and one or two photographs.

That's what happened to the two daughters of the Rt Rev Carl Cooper, whom the Scum has exposed for their antics which have been posted up on Bebo. Perhaps if they'd chosen MySpace instead they might have been more circumspect, eh?

Anyway:

Lora and Emma Cooper, whose dad the Rt Rev Carl Cooper split last week from their mum Joy after 25 years, boast of their ladette exploits on internet social networking site Bebo.

Lora, 20, is pictured dressed as a bunny girl and as a “gangster’s whore” in sexy stockings.

She says she has tried pole-dancing, snogged another girl and once drank so much she blacked out.

She lists one of her favourite sports as “running away from the police”. Emma, 17, claims she loves lager “coz it gets me p***** well easy”.

This doesn't have even the slightest bearing on what their father's accused of, which in itself is about as interesting as whom's currently knocking boots with the Scum editor herself, but the Sun obviously can't let an opportunity to use pictures of fruity girls whose father is a vicar pass. Even more reason for you to either not to use Farcebook etc or turn your profile private...

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3/10/2008 08:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 04, 2008 

Pranked over Cameron's likeness to Obama, while Cameron himself sings from the same old hymn sheet.

It seems then that both I and the rest of the readers of Iain Dale's CiF post yesterday were pranked. Posting on his blog, he writes that the article was first intended for the Torygraph, but that he was then asked to write about Andrew Lansley instead, so he sent his original over to the Grauniad as to not waste it, with the intention of winding up "the Obama supporting fanatics".

Strange then that even after having posted the above on his site, he felt the need to defend his piece in the comments of my own dissection of it. Presumably if it was meant as a wind-up, he wouldn't really have needed to respond to criticisms of it at all. I seem to have got off rather lightly though compared to those on CiF who were rather more stinging in their dismissals:

Good evening and thank you for all your kind words. I especially liked the reference to me being in the Bullingdon Club. Strangely that didn't exist during my time at the University of East Anglia or even Saffron Walden County High School.

Can we really not get over this class ridden language.

And as for Tim Ireland. It will be a cold day in hell. I'm surprised they even let you comment on this site. Mind you, you're in good company among your own kind. Even fewer braincells than the LibDem front bench. And that's saying something.

[prepares self for more torrents of abuse from the self appointed guardian of the blogosphere who must be obeyed or you suffer the consequences]


Which seems like an excellent way of engaging with those not inclined to instantly agree with everything you say.

Speaking as we are of daft posts on Comment is Free, the site is today blessed with a post from the man compared to Obama himself, a certain Mr David Cameron. His main thesis is that politics is broken, and that there are deeper forces at work that underlie how it has come to be smashed to pieces. Both of these forces involve in the internet, the first being blogs and self-publishing, the second being that despite common conception, the youth of today are becoming involved in politics, just not in the "old" ways, but rather through campaigns using social networking.

If this already seems rather dated and close to passe, it might be because Cameron himself made these exact same arguments on the exact same site back in late 2006. Then Cameron was also launching another venture, like he was today. That was the sort-it.co.uk site, which complete with a fake-tanned bloke in a garish suit was aimed at dealing with "yoof" issues and making them think about their "own social responsbilities". The joke was that the suited guy was "the inner tosser", someone who rather than thinking about saving instead urged you to splash the cash. This campaign was such a roaring success that the sort-it.co.uk is still going str.... oh, wait. Sort-it.co.uk now instead links to conservatives.com.

The exact same response to Cameron's arguments then is still mostly valid now. Of the hundreds of millions of blogs Cameron talks about, only a minuscule number are about politics, or updated daily, which ought to be the yardstick by which they should be measured. Of the 20,000 videos uploaded to YouTube every day, the vast majority are either television clips, music videos or the most inane shit that you've ever watched and will afterwards pray that you could get those wasted minutes of your life back. If someone really wanted to do a study, they could sort those videos into respective categories and go from there. My bet would be less than 5%, if that, would be related to politics.

I am however willing to give Cameron the slight benefit of the doubt on the social networking point now. Facebook was then still only open to college students, or if it had opened up to all and sundry it had only just done so. Facebook undoubtedly is a site where protests movements are increasingly being organised and coordinated from, although whether any of those that started off there have made any major impact as yet is certainly open to question. Again though, Facebook is mostly just a slightly more grown-up version of MySpace and Bebo, with those over 18 mostly using it, and the vast majority are the same self-absorbed individuals interested only in what their friends are doing every second of the waking day. The backlash against the site has also accelerated recently.

The Conservatives then, desperate to look hip and trendy under their somewhat youthful leader, are trying their very best as they were over a year ago to get down with the kids, this time by advertising on Facebook. That most of the web-savvy individuals on there will most likely be running Firefox with Adblock+ or some other combination of browser and blocker and therefore never see the ads seems to have passed them by entirely, but never mind. Of course, that most of those they're trying to target were growing up during the age when the Tories were at their lowest ebb, a collective laughing stock and viewed as the worst possible waste of a vote, not to mention achingly uncool, with nothing having happened since then to change that also seems to have flashed by them without it being acknowledged. The other Conservative wheeze, launching a ludicrous campaign for "friends" to donate to them in an attempt to become presidential candidates in the US, like Obama this time round and Howard Dean before him, who were funded through many small pledges via the web, is also laughable. That the Conservatives are hardly strapped for cash, being donated £2.9m alone by Lord Laidlaw, who just happens to be a tax exile who lives in Monaco, with the grand total donated last year clocking up at £26.4m shows that this is nothing more a PR stunt, with them having no intentions of weaning themselves off of their current sponsors, all while demanding that Labour's donations from the trade unions be capped. Their biggest howls would be reserved for constituency donations being capped, as that's how Lord Ashcroft pumps his cash into the party.

If Cameron really wanted to mend politics, he'd support the one thing that would re-engage the public and ensure that their vote was worth something: proportional representation. Instead, the Tories, unlike Labour back in 1997 who toyed with the idea of PR until they got a whopping majority that meant they didn't need the support of the Lib Dems, think that they can win big enough as to not need it. That is the true face of not just the Conservatives but of Labour too; only when they are not certain of power will they pretend that the public need a proper voice. At the current rate of developing cynicism and disengagement, a whole generation will have lost faith in Westminster before anyone actually acts.

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3/04/2008 11:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 

Scum and Mail-watch: "Cult" suicides and idiotic sensationalism.

Won't someone think of the children?

If there's ever a sign that the police are clutching at straws, it has to be in suggesting that the seven suicides that have occured in and around Bridgend in the last twelve months are somehow out of wanting to achieve "fame" on the internet by doing so. There are many reasons behind depression, and especially when it's at its most severe, wanting to die, but even when your thoughts are at their most twisted and self-defeating, I hazard to guess that gaining immortality on Bebo is not the foremost reason for ending your own life.

Of course, whether the police have suggested a link between the 7 suicides or not is up in the air: the Scum claims "cops" fear this could be the case, while on the BBC Tim Jones of the local police makes reasonably clear, unsurprisingly, that there's no link between all of them and no evidence of a suicide pact. Despite this, the Mail led this morning with the usual scaremongering garbage about "a suicide cult" and that "police have private concerns that youngsters may consider it fashionable to have an internet memorial site and are killing themselves for reasons of prestige." Teenagers on social networking sites might be fucking stupid, but they're not that fucking stupid. Copycat attempts are one thing, especially if those involved were close, but to suggest that it's a cult on the basis of that and because they all used social networking is ignorant beyond belief.

At the bottom of this appears to a basic misunderstanding about the memorial pages which have been popping up on MySpace etc when the owner of the profile page dies. They are then often turned into pages of rememberance, tributes and in the case of some of these Bebo pages, apparently putting bricks into a wall of rememberance. Madeleine Moon, who could only be an MP, seems to think that these pages are romanticising suicide, rather than paying tribute to those who died. If these pages are anything like the forum threads I've often read when a member of an online community kills themselves, the very last thing they tend to do is promote suicide; quite the opposite is usually the case. Some tribute pages, especially set-up to those who become infamous online, such as Mitchell Henderson, have been specifically targeted by trolls. I could be horrendously wrong, but to me it seems that those left behind are looking for some kind of easy explanation as to why and not properly examining the real factors behind each individual case.

Typically however, none of the above has stopped the tabloids from starting an instant search for social networking profiles that "romanticise" or "encourage" suicide. The Sun really ought to know better, but it seems that the hacks are on orders to take every possible opportunity to put down social networking sites other than MurdochSpace. Hence we already have this unconciousable garbage on the Scum website's front page:

TODAY we can reveal the shocking way suicide among teens is glamourised on social networking sites like Bebo.

The sad news that seven young people from Bridgend in South Wales killed themselves in an apparent “chain” of copycat suicides has led police to fear some hoped to gain "web fame".

Some of the dead - who all hanged themselves - had profile pages on Bebo, a popular site with school kids.

A quick internet search reveals one profile under the name Suicide Girls.

It carries a disturbing cartoon picture of a pink teddy bear hanging from a rope.

A line on the page says the site is, "For people who don't give a f*** and want a suicide lifestyle," adding it is "For Girls and Boys Who Love Tattoos, Piercings and Crazy Stuff."

In a discussion forum, user Amy Addiction posts, "For the people who keep asking what a suicide lifestyle is - well this is all to do with suicide girls, like the models, so yeah lifestyle like them ... glamorous, pretty etc."


Err, this wouldn't be a profile promoting Suicide Girls would it? The internet soft porn garbage site where anyone with suitably bad tattoos and piercings can become a model? Which isn't anything to do with suicide whatsoever but most certainly to do with making money out of women "outside" of the traditional model mainstream posing naked? This really is scraping the bottom of the barrel sensationalist journalism. And would you possibly believe that if you search Google for Suicide Girls that the second result is their MurdochSpace profile?

A spokesperson for charity PAPYRUS - which works to prevent suicide in young people - described the page as "extremely dangerous".

She added that the image of the teddy bear was "very disturbing".


Ah yes, Papyrus, the organisation that thinks banning any page about suicide other than their own or the Samaritans is a glorious idea. If she seriously thinks that page is "extremely dangerous" or that the teddy bear picture is "very disturbing", she needs to get out on the internet a bit more. Goatse to the left of me, 2girls1cup to the right, here we are, stuck in the middle with morons.

Elsewhere in the Scum, cross-promotion seems to be the order of the day. When Ross Kemp was married to Wade she made certain that all his television appearances were suitably puffed in the paper, but now with Wade off gallivanting with whoever, you'd of thought it would have come to an end. No such luck:

NEW series Ross Kemp In Afghanistan pulled in more than a MILLION viewers on Monday night.

The five-parter for Sky One, on Our Boys’ war with the Taliban, sees ex-EastEnder Ross, 43, train with the Royal Anglian Regiment then brave the frontline. A pal said: “It’s a brilliant start.”


One has to imagine that the key words there are "Sky" and "One".

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1/23/2008 08:21:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 

Scum-watch: 1 compared to 29,000.

Remember how the Scum comprehensively failed to report on the news that MySpace (prop. R Murdoch) was found to be teeming with sex offenders, with 29,000 having their profiles deleted? Well, it finally got round today to reporting on how one man had used a social networking site for his perverted needs:

A SEX beast was jailed indefinitely yesterday for abusing two girls he met on the Facebook website.

Jonathan Percy, 29, posed as a 15-year-old to groom the girls, aged 12 and 13, then plied them with alcopops and took them to a wood for sex.

Percy, of Mannington, Dorset — jailed in 2003 for a similar offence — pleaded guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court.

He must serve at least three years before he is eligible for parole, and was banned from using a computer.


Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that this also didn't involve MySpace. Surprising, huh? The article itself is followed by the usual array of user comments about castration involving two bricks, etc, and about the length of the sentence, even though Percy has been jailed under an IPP. Judging by how the prison system currently can't cope with the number being given the new indeterminate sentences, with the courses that those sentenced under them have to complete before even being considered for release being hopelessly oversubscribed, with those unable to get on them likely to have to stay inside long after their tariff has passed, it seems unlikely that he'll be out within 3 years, even if he's no longer considered a danger to the public, something also doubtful, as it's his second offence.

Elsewhere, the Scum is having yet another go at Malloch Brown, Brown's appointment as foreign minister, who you might remember as being the man who gave Fox News a tongue-lashing and as result is person non grata in the Murdoch press:

TROUBLESOME foreign minister Mark Malloch-Brown wants Brussels to take Britain’s seat at the UN top table — and the sooner the better.

Downing Street insists this is a personal viewpoint, not policy.

But Malloch-Brown is no junior upstart who has not learned to guard his tongue.

He is one of Gordon Brown’s closest friends whose pungent views were known before he was catapulted into the Lords and ministerial rank.

He is a vain and arrogant man, accustomed to speaking as if he were in charge of British policy, not Foreign Secretary David Miliband.


Just one problem with all this: Malloch-Brown's comments on the EU taking a permanent security council seat were made last October, while he was still deputy security-general. Are he and Brown really so close? Not according to this Grauniad profile, which doesn't even mention his relationship to the new prime minister. Notice how the Scum leader also makes it look as though Malloch-Brown had made his comments now, rather than nearly over a year ago.

So while we condemn Malloch-Brown’s outburst, we must thank him for blowing the gaffe.

Gordon Brown is now exposed as the fervent pro-European it seems he has always been. Indeed there is not a sceptical bone in his Government’s body.


Please stop! It hurts! Could this fervent pro-European Brown be the same one that stopped Blair from taking the UK into the Euro with the five economic tests? The same one that went on the warpath when Blair acquiesced with Sarkozy's apparent attempt to water down the free-market aspects of the reform treaty? The same Brown that holidayed every summer in the United States, and had by far the most links with other politicos in that country? The same Brown that Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission last year challenged to set out his true priorities over Europe, because he and others feared that Brown was a natural Atlanticist because he rarely bothered turning up for EU meetings? The same Brown with a reputation for being highly suspicious towards Europe? The Scum isn't usually either this disingenuous or obtuse when it comes to politics, making one wonder whether the usual leader writer is away. Either way, the conclusion is the same as usual:

That, more than anything else, makes it essential for him to deliver the referendum he promised.

And give ALL sides the chance to add their voices to this crucial debate.


Yawn.

Finally, deport 'em all:

FOURTEEN foreign criminals are still loose after breaking out of a centre where they were “awaiting deportation”.

Why were they waiting?

Having abused our hospitality by committing serious crimes, they should have had their bags packed as they completed their sentences.


The most "serious crime" any of them had committed was robbery. As other reports suggested that some of those being held at the centre were in limbo, with at least one having spent a year at the detention centre, it's hard not to fault them for taking the opportunity to leg it once it had arose.

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8/07/2007 08:07:00 PM | | | links to this post

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