West Byfleet Pauper Lunatic Asylum

The Fry’s the Limit November 4, 2009

Posted by normanmonkey in Blogging and social media, In the news, Media.
Tags: Media, Stephen Fry, Twitter
1 comment so far

Newspapers are in decline. I’ve had that particular finger wagged at me by the digital arm of Cow PR for the last 18 months and yes, I know sales and therefore advertising revenues are plummeting, but it’s become patently obvious with it that journalism – or lack of it – is in freefall.

Having read newspapers avidly since I was a child and lapped up headlines like ‘Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster’, the papers were always a source of joy, fascination, titillation, tits, oh and an open door to events and commentaries on what shaped the world. Now they just leave me cold. Even the tits.

I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard the other day and flicked through it in several minutes. As a free sheet it is still shamefully overpriced. The problem is there simply isn’t anything in there I didn’t already know and much more I didn’t care about.

I start each day with a double espresso and an undemanding two minute digest of weather and footballing events with Rocco at his Italian deli in West Byfleet. That’s a relatively new experience for me and one I am sure won’t wear thin too soon. The constant in my commute has always been The Sun and The Guardian on the way to work and these were always eagerly anticipated.

Of late I’ve noticed that it’s not long before I’ve worked my way through the papers with impassive immunity to their wares and found myself staring out at the backyards of suburbia that stare gloomily back at you from the edge of the railway sidings (why is there always a child’s toy tricycle and discarded paint pots in every back yard – don’t these people tidy?).

This staring out of the window despite papers being merely skimmed is indicative of one or two things. Either the papers are genuinely boring or I’ve become a manic depressive. Having, until fairly recently, gone out with the latter for almost a year, I’m certain I do not fall into that category. It was pointed out to me that my happiness was intolerable and I found that a bit hard to stomach considering I’m hardly Coco the Clown at the best of times.

No, I can justifiably say it’s the media’s fault, but it’s not just the papers, its all news media. And maybe that is what depresses me. There’s genuinely little – apart from world events – that I genuinely care about or touches me in anyway and that’s because I’m not part of a mass demographic.

Most TV news is rendered unwatchable because there is the earnest belief that events can’t be relayed, but explained with the need for whizzy graphics and an agenda that is all about infotainment, assuming the audience is comprised of idiots. A possible consequence of this approach is that it creates idiots who need to be spoonfed. There are a few quality exceptions – Newsnight, The Today Programme, QPR.co.uk (and that’s hardly a barrel of laughs the way things are going there).

The real problem began when the media was opened up to the public or ‘democratised’ to comment on events. It’s near impossible to listen to a radio phone-in without wanting to pour boiling oil into one’s ears and hope it scalds the brain to see if it can still feel, yet this has become the adopted approach of producers. We let the people eat cake and they chose Mr Kipling.

This cheap, lazy, witless approach can also be found on the likes of BBC Breakfast and Sky News (GMTV, if it were a person would be wrestled to the floor and strangled slowly by any feeling, sentient being) where we have to endure the emails or tweets from Lindsay in Dagenham or Darren in Dudley, rendering it unwatchable.

The worst words in the English language that have permeated into news media is ‘We want you to have your say’. This ghastly phrase to signal the opening of the floodgates is usually uttered by some vapid young Shaz with perfect teeth who is otherwise only fit for the escort industry to gentlemen in the Heathrow area.

Imagine how intolerable life would be if you couldn’t go more than a few yards, even undercover, for every tosspot on the street approaching and tugging on your sleeve to give you their ill-informed opinion on paedophiles, Peter Andre, the exit strategy from Kabul, their theory on the afterlife or the price of a leg of lamb. Well, it’s happening and it’s happening every time you turn on the TV and radio or open a newspaper.

For those of us whose prime goal in life is to avoid stupid people this is the pits. In the words of Sid Vicious ‘I’ve met the man on the street and he’s a cunt’. I concur. So what of social media – perhaps this is the solution, the refuge of the bright young things building a better future.

I inadvertently, yet subconsciously, neglected Facebook recently having been a fairly avid participant for some 18 months where I’d been connected to many old friends from life and exchanged in gamely banter and Wildean witticisms.

I figured that as we’re all now reconnected and such great chums it would only be a matter of time before I heard from someone, potentially to carry on the conversation in the real world over cold drinks, but not a bleedin’ sausage and that’s all quite distressing for those of us who live alone in a five bedroom house in West Byfleet.

Essentially, the merry-go-round carried on without me and not one fucker called. Except for the one or two who normally do and that’s most commonly on a Friday around closing time with an opening that begins with ‘WAHEEY!’ and ends with the sound of a phone being dropped in a gutter soon after.

So what of Twitter? I must admit I’m in my second spell and this time I ‘get it’. I enjoy the twittering banter with colleagues (though I inifintely prefer their company in Village East of a Friday) and turning on Tweetdeck is the first thing I do when I get home after dropping the coat.

None of my oldest friends are on it (Wiggy only went online at home two months ago and is now lost in a digital fleshpot of filth). Yet the Stephen Fry quitting incident sent me into a catatonic fit of exasperation as I followed it in real time on Saturday afternoon with baited hangover.

The outcome was easy to predict. He throws a hissy, signs off and hand-wringing hysteria breaks out like a virus. It was like Madeline McCann all over again, but something much more trivial (not even a Cuddle Cat to throw into the narrative).

It is a worry how thousands people felt their lives and self-worth had somehow been disrupted or severely dented because they may lose contact not only with someone famous they felt connected to, but because it gave them a sense of collective belonging. Dare I even say it, a cause. Bloody hell.

The fervour grew as tweeters realised they were becoming part of the story. Papers ran it as a story, proving the symbiotic relationship between the two to create a mountain out of a dung hill. People have such little style these days. Lives should not be led vicariously.

When I started following Stephen Fry I think I was about number 3,600 and it was a bit of a novelty, a quirk of the information age. His tweets are innocuous, harmless, pseudo Noel Coward fare but there is a stalkerish element of his followers and their hopes he might read, or heaven forfend even reply to their tweets, like receiving a locket of hair, to feeling robbed upon being deprived of updates on his movements and schedule around the globe.

The distressed individuals formed a crowd and the crowd turned nasty. What is a crowd, afterall, without heroes and villains.

This was a tipping point for twitter, its Diana moment. and made it fair game for risible comment and analysis. There’s nothing wrong with Twitter – it’s the people who consume it who will eventually fuck it up and reduce all to mush (in less than 140 characters).

In the last week I’ve ditched the papers and started reading books on the train. P.G Wodehouse is funnier than a funny pet photo in The Sun; Francis Wheen has a more incisive, acerbic take on the issues of the day than Brenda from Basingstoke and ‘Hellraisers’, an account of the exploits and of the Reed, Burton, Harris and O’Toole is far more fascinating than Fry.

I can’t Tweet back to Richard Burton or Ollie Reed to fawningly ask them what they had for lunch or how the weather is in L.A and if I could they would quite rightly tell me to fuck off. I prefer it that way.

As for the real world Wiggy just called me to discuss what went on in Whisky Mist. Oh, and to ask what the hell my blog is ‘It’s just lots of paragraphs!’. Hardly a compliment. But I prefer it that way as well.