anti-social socialising

I came across this article earlier in the week about the anti-social networking sites Enemybook and Snubster.

I found the concepts of these two sites quite intriguing. Social networking sites that designed to provide a platform for anti-social behaviour. Are these just tongue-in-cheek parodies getting pixel-space on the back of the current Facebook-fad or are they a subtle indicator that all elements of human behaviour will find a mechanism for expression through t’internet, no matter how petty?

I raised the article with my colleagues on the Online MA in Creative Writing & New Media, who also raised the issue of employer-googling, which is becoming an increasing concern to those of us who actively engage in the web. What damage are these type of applications likely to cause? Will they be viewed as a light-hearted game or taken seriously?

What it all comes down to really is whether it is necessary to broadcast one’s frustrations and annoyances about those around us. You could argue that if people devise these applications, people must feel the need to have this type of feature, for whatever personal theraputic reason… so let them use t’internet for that purpose. Alternatively, you could adopt the stance that lables these as dangerous gimmicks (or just regular gimmicks) which only encourage out the worst in people. We already have plenty of examples of how t’internet can be used to feed the worst elements of the human psyche…

My personal view? Well, it makes perfect sense for these applications to exist and if there is a demand for them (beyond the hype and humour factor) then they will continue and develop along with that demand. They represent an element of social interaction that is just as real and valid as any other. Afterall, it would be naive (dare I say wishful?) to expect people to leave their hang-ups at the door when they come onto the net. I wouldn’t use them, and find the whole idea of anti-social networking quite repulsive – where it is genuinely meant. However, I do find it interesting to watch the discussion generated as people observe afresh elements of their day-to-day interactive and communicative lives from the real world translated to the online world. It is almost like looking in the mirror and seeing the enlarged pores we try to ignore each day illuminated with satirical disco lights – puss and all!

Gross, but life.

the word “enjoy”

Last week I went to see a local production of Martin Sherman’s harrowing play Bent, which aside from reducing me to tears, forced me to contemplate lots of issues about my knowledge of history and my understanding of the word “enjoy”.

The story focusses on the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps as early as the mid-1930s. What is almost as horrific as the theme of the play is the fact that this issue is almost completely ignored by the education system… I (a modest A grade History student) was completely unaware that this persecution began so early, or how the Nazis used a labelling system among prisoners to create a hierachy – with gay inmates at the bottom. The play deals creates a very vivid profoundly disturbing picture of life at Dachau, in which the desparate main character commits dreadful acts to survive and gain a coverted yellow star to label him as a Jew, rather than a pink triange, denoting him as a gay man, as he thinks he is more likely to get better treatment pretenting to be a Jew… that he is more likely to survive….

The whole portrayal of the treatment in these camps was sickening and the play has haunted me since – producing more than one bout of tears. It was an am dram production, but stunningly acted and very well produced. If it does not win a Rosebowl Award (or all of them!) I’d like to know what the judges felt was more deserving!

All that said (and you have no idea how difficult that all was to phrase… or how much I just couldn’t say!) I came out and had to say that I enjoyed the production.

Enjoyed was totally the wrong word, but there just doesn’t seem to be a better word. I had gone to see a friend of mine who was playing a drag queen – at which he was frighteningly fabulous. I wanted to come out and tell him I had really enjoyed it. I did, in fact. It just didn’t feel right saying it that way. However, after other friends went to see it as well, we were able to have a discussion about how enjoy wasn’t the right word. There just is no word to express the sentiment of something being a good and enriching experience, but not being a happy experience. Granted it is a complicated emotional reaction, but we have dedicated words for stranger things in the English language!

I think the whole experience of a play like this is an extremely valuable one, and it should probably make it onto the English Literature and History A Level courses, even if teachers do not feel comfortable teaching about it to younger students. Its absence says a lot about our remaining prejudices as a society and our discomforts at facing such representations of history. And our ideas about the truth of the history we are taught…

Anyway, despite my roundabout and lexical constipation over the issue, I must take my hats off to all involved in Bath Drama for a stunning production and some tremendously touching acting. Excuse me whilst I just go find another tissue….

the strangeness of this side of the pond

Where else in the world would they advertise a version of Monopoly that uses credit cards instead of cash? Or have tanks of liquid nitrogen standing innocently on street corners? Or pelican crossings that make a “cuckoo” sound as you cross? In America – of course!

Very strange. Possibly too strange for this tired little grockle mind. I thought I would share this strangeness anyway…