Yo Hailz! Tweet Me Kay? Thx

Apparently we Kiwis are one of the heaviest users, per capita, of Twitter.

Something I was not surprised to learn because let’s face it, we as a nation, love the sound of our own fucken voices. Twitter is just another in a long line of mediums that fool us in to believing as if somehow, somewhere, someone actually cares about what we think and say.

Think talk back radio, letters to the editor, blogs (mine excluded of course, because it is quite ace) and you have more bastards blowing than a windy day. Add to that Bebo and then Facebook and you have a whole new generation of loud mouths filling cyberspace with their innermost musings.

There’s another factor I reckon and it’s this other warped sense of importance we seem to collectively have in NZ, which comes, ironically, from being a small country on the other side of the world millions of miles away from anywhere. It’s this sense of missing out on something that makes many of us think that it’s vitally important that we unload our shit on everyone else, really fucken quickly.

Other countries similar to us in size just don’t care about stuff like that. The Nordic nations focus instead on making love to each other, smoking funky things and doing magical things with pastry.

Asian countries just get on with working their arse of for the man and doing sensational things with rice, which, by the way, is a great food if you ever want to eat a thousand of anything.

Speaking of which, do you think the Indians will sort their shit out in Delhi? To me it looks like they’ve just spread their shit out which is the crux of the issue really. I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but you have to wonder don’t you, just what kind of fucktard would award anything to Delhi but the Shithole of the World award?

Anyhoo. We’re big online gamers too, apparently. Sometimes, when I get bored of actually having a life, I wonder if I should’ve got into online gaming because it would definitely have been my thing many years ago.

I’d be the shit too. Whenever Coops and I went to the movies because we couldn’t get real girlfriends, we’d always stop and have a few games of Time Crisis and we were so good at it that they had to put up a sign after our first visit that read ‘No Professionals’.

Afterwards we’d be so amped we’d sit at the back of the theatre in the row with about five seats, hoping no one would notice our semis. Told you, I’d make a perfect online gamer.

As I alluded to in my last post there comes a false sense of security with all this virtual openness. It’s easy to start thinking that by being ‘out there’ unscrupulous cads will be put off stalking, stealing identities and other fruity things like breaking into your house just to leave you a dump in your toilet.

People don’t put their full name on things in the virtual world because they feel safe. It’s so that you can find them, realy easy and listen to what they have to say because opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one and you’ll find no bigger collection of arseholes than you will on the net (and I’m not just talking about the kind of sites that DougalMac frequents).

So tweet all you want New Zealand because I ain’t listening. Or reading. Or however the hell it works. I don’t care who has the most followers and I certainly don’t care that you think where you are right now is just so exciting you had to stop and tweet about it. Think again you tit.

I did like the tweet-nip-pic though Hayley Williams. Post more and I just might sign up...

I'd tweet that.

Justin Who?

I don’t know who the hell Justin Bebo is but I’d sure like to smack that cheeky, pubescent grin off his MyFace.

Actually I do know who is, how could I not?! One half arsed trip to NZ and it’s not just the pubescent girls who start acting like, well, pubescent girls. Stuff.co.nz, for example, confirmed my long held suspicions that it is actually Dolly magazine in disguise by acting like it the whole time Bebo was here.

And I know his name isn’t actually ‘Bebo’ but I feel it optimises the generation most likely to be screaming their itty bitty titties off at the mere mention of his name. What are all those tweens going to do when Bebo gets shutdown because it’s haemorrhaging money? They’ll turn to Facebook that’s what which, in turn will undoubtedly lead to an influx of closet sexos who will flock to their pages (and photo albums) before the text generation has a chance to work out just how to turn on Facebook’s complex privacy settings.

But then maybe the Be-bos crowd just don’t care about that shit. Justin’s mother certainly didn’t for it was she that posted clips of him singing on You Tube, the paedophiles’ other favourite free perve. That’s how he got ‘discovered’.

Some producer (or closet paedophile) spotted the clip ‘by mistake’ and tracked down the young blonde boy in about three easy steps. Now at this stage alarm bells should’ve been ringing in the Bebo household, but clearly they didn’t give a monkey’s. Quite the opposite.

Now I don’t know about you lot who have kids, but if my son caught his mother a) filming him singing and b) posting it on the Net he’d David Bain the lot of us and my god I hope it stays that way for a very long time. If, when he’s 18 he wants to hang out with his cock out on Chat Roulette then so be it. But at least it will be his decision and his alone.

Bebo on the other hand, loves the adulation. I had the misfortune of seeing an interview with him on one of those shows that purport to bring you the news but these days seem to be focusing a lot on movies, celebrities and other such bollocks. He sat there preening himself like a rooster and he certainly looked like a right cock the whole time.

I even forced myself to sit through one of his songs just to see what the fuss was and it left me confused how a 16 year old Christian boy could know so much about love and heartbreak when you and I both know that his experience of relationships to this point in time is likely to be confined to his right hand.

Maybe it’s just me. I am getting old and yes, a lot of things seem to piss me off these days. Hell, I even piss myself off from time to time. And maybe it’s just me reacting the same way our grandparents did when our mother got all moist over The Beatles, or how our parents got miffed with our sisters when they went all silly over the New Kids on the Block.

Maybe. Or just maybe I’m justified in thinking that that if some baby faced kid who looks like he’s twelve and sings songs written by middle aged men is truly the most exciting thing in the world, then we’re all fucked.

Yeah and up yours too, Bebo!

What's With All The Damn Photo's?!

Should I be alarmed that my son has come home from school with the words to an R Kelly song that they’re having to sing at assembly?

It’s not so much the song but if any of those poor kids was to type his name into Google they might get an education far beyond their years. Perhaps I’ll teach my boy how to spell ‘paedophilia’ and let him Google that instead...

Why is it that teenagers feel the urge to take hundreds of photos whilst doing the most ordinary of things? I spent the better part of my Sunday at the beach the other day which allowed me to partake in one of my favourite pastimes; people watching.

Unfortunately places like the beach are a Mecca for the young and desperate to be noticed, so it’s hard for a fella to sit there with his blu-blockers on trying hard not to look like a perv. I need not have worried though because they were far more obvious dirty old men than I on show but even that didn’t dissuade those gagging for attention from doing their thing.

I was watching a bunch of young teenage girls in bikini’s capturing each other’s every move on their phones and cameras. I wasn’t watching them in a ‘keep looking so I can have a wank about it at home’ kind of way, I did look at other things, but inevitably every time I looked back the cameras were a flashin.

Undoubtedly those photos would have been uploaded to the owners Bebo pages later that evening and everybody who was there on the day, tagged, so those that weren’t there could identify who was...just in case there was any doubt 275 photos later who had actually been there and who hadn’t.

Closer to me were two other similarly aged and clad young ladies who did the same with their cell phones, in between numerous, desperate calls to young men begging them to come join them. The fellas never showed and I wasn’t surprised, they were probably at home prowling through Bebo pages checking out photo’s of other young girls at the beach.

Nobody took photos like that back in my day. If you were lucky enough to have a camera – one with a film and a winder that you could never quite tell had worked or not – then it was unlikely you carried it with you on account of it being about the same size and weight as a brick. If you did take photos the chances were it would be several months before you saw them anyway because it took that long to take the 25 pictures you needed to in order to complete the film.

Once you got them back from the camera shop (where developing took days, not minutes) you would relive the memories the badly exposed shots would bring and curse the ones where you had had your finger over the shutter. And there was always two or three photos less than the 25 the bloody thing had said you’d taken...

Back then it was all about living in and experiencing the moment. Now it’s more about getting dozens of great photos that show you were there and fuck the moment. In a way it’s all about the self promotion that the youth of today seem to think they have to make of themselves in order to get anywhere with anyone.

Girls, who I’ve already discussed my theory on how they do things primarily to impress other girls, not fellas, treat every photo as if it was some raunchy magazine shoot. Look through any online album and there will be young women pouting, giving it their ‘best side’ and slutting it up as if their lives depended on it.

Not that making a tit of yourself is an all exclusive sheila’s club because the young men that they inevitably attract do a pretty good job too, doing their best to look right hard by doing the finger or tensing every muscle from the neck up every time a camera is pointed in their direction. Being surrounded by drunk, loose young women it would seem, is not enough for a fella to sit back with a smile as wide as his stiffie is tall.

There was one other highlight to be seen at the beach; the foreign bird who stripped down to her bra and undies did a spot of topless sun bathing too. Or so my wife tells me. I missed it because I had gone to get the family lunch from New World where, unfortunately, no one had their Scandinavian nungas out.

What a pity my wife didn’t take a photo...

Now this is a photo...

Facebook vs Bebo vs Who Gives A Shit?!

People keep sending me invites to Facebook. It’s the site that ‘sends’ the invite of course but either way, it’s getting on my tits.

Facebook is the new Bebo which is nothing to write home about as far as I’m concerned because Bebo is quite stink. Facebook is the new way to annoy the fuck out of someone who doesn't subscribe to the 'you're not cool if you're not on it' theory. Maybe it’s that I just don’t get it but there’s something about sites like Bebo and Facebook that I don’t trust and it’s not just down to the fat paedophiles pretending to be 15 year old boys who frequent them. Call me frigid (my wife does) but I just don’t think it’s kosher to put that much of you on display to potentially, millions. It’s like the old saying, don’t put on the Internet what you wouldn’t feel comfortable putting on the supermarket notice board.

Which is a shit saying really because who puts anything on the supermarket notice board anyway?! But you get my drift.

Maybe it’s the anonymity of having potentially millions view your stuff that makes it so appealing. Read that line again and it probably doesn’t make sense a second time either but it’s actually quite breath taking and some of my best work. It’s called being poignant. Allow me to illustrate my point: A guy at my work has a Bebo profile that has revealed that he prefers a spot of rimming. News to us, the people he spends ten hours a day with but it sure does explain a few things and obviously for him, it’s easier to be honest in the face of a million strangers than it is to be openly gay amongst 20 colleagues. He’s a big fan of High School Musical, apparently.

These sites are a great way to communicate with friends people tell me. No doubt, but you know what, so is talking face to face over lunch or coffee. How about taking the time out from posting the latest pics of you pissed at yet another dead beat party to actually meet your friends, in person? Sites like these are the new text message, which was the new email, which was the new note passed in class when the teacher wasn’t looking, which was the new - wait for it - way of talking to someone face to face! That’s the IT revolution for you.

What’s the real point of these sites I wonder? Well actually, there’s two points. One is to deliver soft porn to those too cheap to sign up to a hard core sight. In my one and only visit to Bebo I was awestruck by how easy it was to click my way through an entire generation of adolescent girls and their personal photos. Now I’m as big a fan of girls in various stages of undress as the next guy, but afterwards I actually felt for once in my life, like a dirty old man. I wasn’t invited to view these photos, I knew none of the people in them but through the wonders of the virtual world I managed to view the intimate moments of most of them. About the only thing I couldn’t do online is leave a little something special in their undie draw.

The second reason is because all those girls want to be noticed. By someone, preferably by the hot guy at school whose name is all over their schoolbooks, but by someone, anyone. So they add photos of them with their mates getting pissed, or getting ready before going out to get pissed, or the morning after they got pissed, just so someone will notice. Someone will notice alright, they’ll notice that you get pissed easily and frequently. Is it any wonder with so much personal stuff on show that it’s not long before the one hand surfer comes a knockin?

I love the photo of possessions though. Here’s my cool stereo or here’s my cool shoes. Who gives a shit?! In my day, if a mate had something you liked, you pinched it. My mate Bruiser had his entire G I Joe collection decimated in roughly a ten minute period the first and last time he bought them to school. My collection conveniently increased by about a third that day.

Here’s the sticky tissue that really gets me about these sites though – how do they make their money? Everyone is in it for the money, that’s just life Jim, but these are free to join sites, so where does the income come from? Banner ads? Have you ever clicked on one? So then what do they do with all that info they have on all their members when no one clicks on enough banner ads to make it profitable? I wonder. I wonder a lot.

I’m going to sign up to Facebook alright, because a perv’s a perv and it’s always better when it’s free. But the only pictures I’m going to use on my profile are going to be of my genitalia. It will be all very tasteful though, I won’t cheapen myself. I’ll have a courtesy trim before hand and ensure I optimise the lighting to best effect and I’ll mix up the angles a little, a few undersides here and there, some nice point of view images. I wonder how many hits I’ll get from my friends. At least one initial hit I suspect and then as alluring as I’m sure my pink bits are, I suspect no one is going to be particularly interested in my profile. Which says it all really.

Except maybe the guy at my work.