Pinterest: Pinboard Wizards
Posted: June 3, 2012 Filed under: Modern manners | Tags: photo sharing sites, Pinterest, Twitter Leave a comment »
I’m hooked on Pinterest, the photo-sharing website for people who don’t take pictures. Pinterest is for magpies who enjoy browsing the internet and assembling virtual “boards” themed around anything from adorable pets to coronary-inducing pâtisseries.
While Twitter’s mission appears to be about giving spiteful egomaniacs a platform for their illiterate rants, Pinterest is warm, fuzzy and just a little bit old-fashioned. If you’re planning a wedding or giving yourself a fashion makeover, Pinterest is just like having your very own Cher from Clueless, to steer you away from a major faux pas.
The Pinterest mission statement is “to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”, a goal that is wildly ambitious and probably a bit daft, too. Some people’s “interests” definitely shouldn’t find their way onto a virtual pinboard any time soon. (No doubt there are other corners of the internet where they’ll feel right at home.)
You can get the measure of Pinterest by reading the laudable Pin Etiquette guide for users. Respect and good taste are valued here rather than the “snark” that seems to be the norm everywhere else.
I was particularly cheered by Pinterest’s assertion that “being authentic to who you are is more important than getting lots of followers”. Right now I have only two followers on Pinterest and not that many on Twitter either.
I should probably be feeling like a social networking pariah, but I don’t. Now that I’ve figured out that Pinterest is really a playground for bored sub-editors, I’m convinced that I can become a pinboard wizard — with a little practice.
As a teenager I had cork board on my bedroom wall, festooned with pictures of my favourite actors, singers and sports stars. They stayed up there until they were torn and covered with drawing pin holes and the sun had bleached everyone’s hair the same colour as Bjorn Borg’s.
Something was missing from my gallery of 70s icons — captions. Where Pinterest scores over blogging, is that you can assemble a picture gallery in just a few minutes by “pinning” images from other websites. (You can pin your own photos, too.) Then you can employ your journalistic skills to good effect with titles, standfirsts and captions.
Perhaps I’m just being lazy, but assembling a pinboard of “Tennis’s Greatest Headbands” turned out to be a lot less time-consuming than writing a blog post and uploading images. If I can overcome my growing aversion to Sue Barker, I may cover Wimbledon this year on Pinterest rather than WordPress.
I recently joined another new(ish) site for journalists called cuttings.me, which is a good way of assembling an online portfolio of your best work. (Not that good, actually, because as I tried to put the link into this post I found the site was unavailable.)
But I think, in time, Pinterest will be the perfect complement to my blog. I’m unlikely to spend much time lingering over other people’s wedding cakes or recipe collections, but I’ll enjoy curating and editing my “boards” for maximum visual and literary impact.
I’m sure I’ll live longer and feel more creatively fulfilled if I stick to virtual “pins” instead of eviscerating people on Twitter. This has been my 200th post on WordPress, so thank-you for reading . . .
Distinctly Miffed
Posted: April 25, 2011 Filed under: Modern manners | Tags: Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Colin Atkinson, Dick Bruna, Easter, Miffy, Neil Lennon, rabbits 2 Comments »
This weekend writer and comedian David Mitchell took issue with warring minorities of every persuasion, arguing that we spend way too much time listening to people who just want to pick arguments. He characterised those who spend their time bickering about the merits or demerits of provocative art like Piss Christ as a “tyranny of the argumentative, an unholy alliance of the unholy and the holy”.
Well said, David. Life in modern, post-economic meltdown Britain is simply draining the life out of me. No sooner have we vented our collective spleen over one outrage, than another piece of idiocy hits the front pages. The week leading up to Easter has given us a new Christian martyr in the unlikely person of Colin Atkinson. He’s an electrician, employed by Wakefield District Housing, and not to be confused with football referee Martin Atkinson, Sir Alex Ferguson’s current bête noire.
Colin’s crime was to compromise his professional “neutrality” by putting an 8-inch palm cross in the front of his van. It has not gone unnoticed that his hypocritical boss proudly displays a Che Guevara poster in his office. (I bet he wishes he’d just stuck with a nice Pirelli calendar.) But the good news is that even as Colin faces a disciplinary hearing, his plight has attracted widespread support from across all faiths.
If only common sense was a religion, then I could abandon my long-held position as an atheist. Sadly, no sooner had I decided to heed the wise words of David Mitchell, than I saw another story that made me really annoyed. It was the latest rantings from what, to borrow Mitchell’s words, I’ll call the “hooligan wing of the Church of Rome” that caught my eye. On Easter Sunday Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, went on the offensive to denounce the pernicious effects of “aggressive secularism” in Britain.
The Cardinal was echoing the dire pronouncements of His Holiness the Pope (aka “Cardinal Rat”), during his visit to these godless shores last September. It seems that when you preside over a Church with a long history of bigotry, bullying and bullshit, you still feel morally justified in denouncing all those wicked non-believers rather than addressing the evils within your own organisation.
I’ll admit that I haven’t read the full text of O’Brien’s Easter address. But I do find it ironic that he’s worrying about Christians being marginalised, in a week when sectarian hatred has yet again reared its ugly head in these shores. Even people who find the goings on in Scottish football marginally less interesting than Catholic dogma will have noticed that Celtic manager Neil Lennon is once again in the news. A decade-long campaign of threats against this fiery Irish Catholic has entered a new phase, with letter bombs being despatched to him and two others.
O’Brien, who’s never been in charge of Celtic or Rangers, also received a live bullet and a threatening note prior to the Pope’s visit in 2010. Was it those pesky secularists who were to blame? No, it was the twisted and ugly face of militant Protestants from the Ulster Volunteer Force. Next time O’Brien or his superiors attack all those nasty atheists, agnostics and heathens who are trying to “destroy Christian heritage and culture”, they might like to consider what a bang up job the Christians are doing of that all by themselves.
Since I don’t share the unhealthy Christian obsession with blood sacrifice and martyrdom, Easter for me has always been about the advent of spring and a new crop of cute bunny rabbits. Just as Glasgow football fans fall into two distinct camps, the humble rabbit causes a split between animal lovers who pine for a cuddly pet and those who just see their next meal.
I was delighted that The Guardian has chosen to honour my favourite animal with a blog about the top five rabbits in art, rather than a recipe for rabbit stew. Jonathan Jones drew a certain amount of ire from readers by failing to name the Playboy Bunny in his list and unwisely choosing Durer’s beautiful portrait of a hare, which as we all know is not the same as a rabbit.
For me, there is one literary rabbit who still enjoys an unsullied reputation for purity, innocent fun and simplicity of execution. That bunny is Dick Bruna’s Miffy, who remains my favourite image from childhood. The neat “x” that forms her mouth is one little cross that I’m always happy to look at — whatever the season.
Happy Easter!
Bin there, done that, got the t-shirt
Posted: August 29, 2010 Filed under: Modern manners | Tags: Andy Warhol, Facebook, Mary Bale, YouTube Leave a comment »Mary Bale has been transformed from that nondescript middle-aged bin lady into a “viral villain”, with more enemies than Osama bin Laden.
Somewhere in west London last week a cat had a very lucky escape. During one of those rare breaks in the incessant rain, a neighbourhood pet hopped into the flower bed outside my back door, and left me a fresh deposit of manure. I was not pleased.
I looked in vain for the culprit, but it was long gone. Things might have been very different for both of us had I located the offending animal anywhere near a large receptacle — say a wheelie bin — that also happened to be under CCTV surveillance. We could then have been starring in our very own YouTube video, with my face plastered all over the internet as Villain of the Week, just like Coventry resident Mary Bale.
The 45-year-old bank worker was filmed lulling the unsuspecting tabby Lola into a false sense of security with her well-practised “I love cats routine”, before tossing the poor animal into a roadside bin. Lola’s ordeal lasted more than 15 hours, before she was rescued by her owners. Judging by the Facebook furore and the screaming headlines, Bale’s notoriety is going to last a good deal longer.
Now, I wouldn’t dream of subjecting anyone’s pet to this kind of callous treatment, no matter how often it treated my property as its own private latrine. My “live and let live” attitude extends to all God’s creatures — even flies — though the neighbours who toss cigarette butts onto my gravel are on very dodgy ground. But Bale’s moment of madness, which provided another brief diversion during silly season, made me realise how easily an unguarded moment can turn into an international incident.
The corollary to Andy Warhol’s oft-quoted “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”, is that Facebook will allow their deeds to live on in infamy for days, weeks and perhaps even longer. Since Lola’s owners posted footage of the crime online, Bale has been transformed from that nondescript middle-aged bin lady into a “viral villain”, with more enemies than Osama bin Laden. (No pun intended, of course.)
At the time of writing, the Facebook Mary Bale Hate Group had 9,286 followers. Let’s give them their due, some of these posters — ” 8 out of 10 cats hate Mary” — obviously possess the sophisticated sense of humour that is so lacking in Ms Bale. But the Death to Mary Bale page, with its calls for imaginative medieval-style punishment, has now been taken down. I’m sure that won’t stop the extremists masquerading as animal lovers from spreading their message of hate on YouTube and into the blogosphere.
Bale’s tragicomedy has provoked further hand-wringing among journalists who are still reeling from the Facebook love-in spawned by the life and death of gunman Raoul Moat. In a piece sparked by the Bale incident, The Independent’s Rhodri Marsden asks “Why are we consumed by this urge to hate?” His list of the UK’s “Most Hated”, which includes Bale, BP’s Tony Hayward and footballer Ashley Cole is the perfect summation of this summer of simmering discontent. I don’t know about you, but with all this time spent fulminating about England’s World Cup flops and feeling outraged at the demise of a once-great British company, I’ve barely had time to enjoy the season’s more traditional pursuits.
Marsden rightly points out that “Online anonymity or pseudonymity, coupled with the simplicity of airing one’s grievances, propels debate to levels of hatred that are simply not real.” But the specious analysis in the so-called quality press is as much to blame as the intemperate tabloids, in hyping these Facebook hate pages into a new and worrying social trend.
Pillorying people like Mary Bale on social networking sites is, admittedly, not an example of human nature at its best. It’s childish and a waste of time. As an outlet for hostility towards others, I still find it less disturbing than a willingness to turn up for public floggings and executions.
The truth is there’s nothing remotely new in the toxic combination of righteous indignation and vitriol that is inevitably generated by the perceived idiocy of others. In the 70s Mary Bale would probably have been immortalised on some funky t-shirts and badges. Now she’s a “star” on Facebook and her shameful behaviour has been accorded the ultimate accolade of a spoof on YouTube.
iEnvy: trivia, tantrums and tantalum
Posted: August 4, 2010 Filed under: Modern manners | Tags: iPad, iPhone 4, tantalum Leave a comment »
Personality defects not included
My seven-year-old nephew got an iPad for his birthday. As you can imagine, he’s pretty excited about it. After a lightning-fast recap of his holiday photos, it was straight into a Shaun the Sheep video, and then on to the delights of Cat Piano. Half an hour later, when the adults had resumed their usual dull conversation I saw him chuckling to himself. It turned out he was looking at us “upside down” on his iPad. Yes, when all is said and done, you don’t need Wi-Fi to enjoy the decidedly low-tech reflective properties of Apple’s pricey new tablet.
As the owner of a rather pedestrian iPod Classic, perhaps I should be jealous of Gadget Boy. I’m not. But the green-eyed monster has certainly been on the rampage recently, and I’m not talking about the latest instalment in the over-extended Shrek franchise. No, as summer holidays loom, and the news cycle lurches once again into “silly season”, Apple and its many fans are getting a pasting from some frivolous, irrational and very mean-spirited writers.
Unless you’ve been holed up in a Tibetan monastery, you’ll probably have seen last week’s screaming headlines about “horrible” iPad users being part of a “selfish elite”. MyType, a world-renowned purveyor of psychological insights for users of Facebook, revealed the results of a survey of 20,000 people about attitudes towards Apple’s new toy.
In the interests of research, I did look at the analysis of their “Elites vs. Geeks” survey. Unfortunately, pie charts have long been a bit of a turn off for me, and it turns out that a mere 1% of those surveyed actually owned an iPad. In blunt, unscientific terms, I thought this was a load of bullshit. I was also none too impressed by the half-witted, so-called journalists on one of the UK’s most right-wing organs who claimed: “A survey has revealed the typical person who has bought Apple’s latest gadget is unkind and has little empathy for others.”
The same piece went on, “But the next time you see someone sitting on a train smugly using theirs, take comfort from the fact they are probably not a nice person.” Hmm. If I find myself making that kind of snap judgment about someone who has the temerity to use an iPad in public, I shall be seriously questioning whether I am, in fact, a nice person.
But this wasn’t the end of the bad press for iPad users. A couple of weeks earlier, the usually serious Financial Times printed columnist Tyler Brûlé’s hilarious observations of holidaying iPad users, straining to see their (touch screens) in bright sunlight. Our fearless investigative reporter saw one couple almost come to blows after the woman accidentally squirted sunscreen over the screen. I’m sure there’s a risqué joke just itching to be made here, but I can’t be bothered.
Actually, when I said “hilarious”, I was striving for what might be termed a Brûlian level of irony. This was a stupid piece that took far too long to make its not-very-insightful point, which was that only “twits” would persist with trying to read from an iPad by the pool when they could make do with a book, a magazine, or perhaps some of Mr Brûlé’s deathless prose.
The common denominator here is that “iEnvy”, helpfully defined as “The envy of another person’s Apple product, such as an iPod, iPhone, or laptop” appears to be on the increase. I attribute this to the recent launch of seductive new devices like the iPad and the iPhone 4, and also to the post-recession trend for attacking anyone who appears to be better off than you. I wouldn’t mind if this phenomenon was providing us with thought-provoking or humorous material. Sadly, it isn’t. This amusing skit sums up the sound of barrels being scraped:
Fortunately, my recent exposure to iEnvy has also proved to be educational. An article in The Spectator entitled “Rotten Apple” turned out not to be another puff piece examining the shortcomings of iPad users. Instead, I learned that tantalum is not a new App available from the iTunes store for a modest fee, but the name of a greyish blue transition metal used in the manufacture of iPhones and iPads. Who knew?
Writer Philip Delves Broughton cites the dubious provenance of tantalum — one fifth of the world’s supply is mined in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo — as one of several good reasons to take a hard look at Apple’s supply chain. He concludes that while these shiny toys are great, “the world was not a conspicuously worse place without them. The more we learn about what it takes to make them, the less blinding their dazzle”.
Yes, when it comes to iEnvy, the Central African state has assets that are considerably more covetable than a $500 dollar smartphone or tablet. In fact, as Newsweek explains “Its bountiful deposits — in everything from copper to diamonds — are brazenly plundered by corrupt governments and regional warlords.” Instead of recycling meaningless Facebook surveys, I think the British media should consider the true significance of the “conflict metals” being used in Apple’s products and the butchers who helped put them there. It’s no laughing matter.
(Article first published as iEnvy: Trivia, Tantrums and Tantalum on Blogcritics.)
All England expectorates
Posted: June 27, 2010 Filed under: Modern manners, More balls than most, Wimbledon 2010 | Tags: Victor Hanescu, Wayne Rooney, Wimbledon, World Cup 2010 1 Comment »It was all going so well. Wimbledon 2010 (that’s twenty-ten in BBC speak) had been bathed in sunshine and blessed with an air of gentility that only a visit from HM the Queen can bestow. Then, on Day 5, grumpy Victor Hanescu had to ruin it all by spitting at the crowd during his match on (where else) Court 18.
Ironically, Victor turned out to be the loser here on all counts. Despite holding four match points in the third set, the 31st seed ended his contest with Daniel Brands abruptly, when he retired hurt at 0-3 down in the fifth. Hanescu has now been fined £10,000 for committing two of the seven deadly sins of tennis: unsportsmanlike conduct and not trying hard enough.
Hanescu, who has since apologised, was apparently incensed by some drunken oiks in the crowd who were taunting him. It’s a good thing that England’s Wayne Rooney didn’t sign off from his “nice to see your own fans booing” tirade after the Algeria match with one of his trademark gobs. But given that “Wazza” has been so off-target during the World Cup, he probably would have ended up fouling his own misshapen chin.
Anyone who watches football regularly will be all too familiar with the sight of the highly paid stars of the Premier League leaving their sputum all over grounds up and down the land. Is this soccer’s equivalent of dogs marking out their territory? During the swine flu epidemic last year, the Health Protection Agency warned of the increased risk of infection from footballers doing what comes naturally to them. An HPA spokesman admonished our thoughtless stars: “Spitting is disgusting at all times. It’s unhygienic and unhealthy, particularly if you spit close to other people.”
Yes, as any good parent will impress on their child: spitting is disgusting. The exceptions to this rule might include a pugilist who had just had his front teeth knocked out and wanted to avoid choking. It is also permissible if you happen to find yourself in one of those situations — the dentist’s chair, or a wine-tasting — in which swallowing would be the stupid option. In these cases a purpose-made receptacle is provided for your convenience.
But there’s a big difference between routine expectoration on the playing field and spitting as an act of pure aggression and contempt. That’s why Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas found himself in a whole load of Hanescu-like trouble last year, when he was accused of spitting at Hull City’s assistant manager at the end of an FA Cup replay. Fabregas was cleared by the FA, but this wasn’t exactly new territory for the fiery Catalan, as he’d appeared to give Michael Ballack more than just a piece of his mind during a Champions League tie in 2005. The evidence is, as they say, inconclusive.
Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me has attracted a lot of attention for the protagonist’s merciless attacks on the women in his life. But with all the fists flying around, the moment I found most shocking was when Lou (Casey Affleck) coldly spits on his girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson) as the prelude to a merciless assault. In a film with many ugly scenes, this was the worst.
It’s too much to hope that England’s footballers will set some kind of precedent by scoring a hatful of goals and keeping their gobs shut for the duration of the World Cup. But, whatever the provocation, I do hope Wayne Rooney keeps his powder dry and doesn’t use his mouth to aim anything offensive in the direction of the referee, the crowd or the opposition.
Hell on Wheels
Posted: May 18, 2010 Filed under: Modern manners | Tags: Cycling, Iris Murdoch, London 1 Comment »
Originally uploaded by carltonreid
“Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity.”
Perhaps if Lord Charles Beresford (1846-1919) had been forced to navigate the overcrowded pavements of 21st-century London instead of patrolling the high seas he would kept this oft-quoted nonsense to himself. As John McEnroe once succinctly put it, “You cannot be serious.”
Now the wheel, of course, was a really great idea. I give thanks to the nameless Sumerians or Mesopotamians responsible for that particular “light bulb moment”. But if I am ever forced to prostrate myself before the Great God of Inventions, I think telephones, chocolate and the flushing toilet will be rather higher up my list than the accursed bicycle.
Cycling is a subject that polarises opinion. On one side we have the British government’s tax-busting Cycle to Work scheme and Beresford’s spiritual descendants joyously spreading the word that “Cycling is fun, fast, green and healthy”. In the opposite camp are the massed ranks of motorists and pedestrians who’d be happy never to clap eyes on another lycra-wearing, pannier-toting, cycling evangelist ever again.
I must admit that I’m a pedestrian and fully-fledged velophobe. I’m not prepared to go quite as far as The Times columnist Matthew Parris did with his call for litterbug bike riders to be decapitated. But I’m definitely right behind him when he asks: “Does cycling turn you into an insolent jerk? Or are insolent jerks drawn disproportionately to cycling?”
In the middle-class suburb of west London where I live, a weekend shopping trip involves running the gamut of clipboard-wielding charity workers, newsreaders and buggy-pushing “yummy mummies” with their scooter-riding offspring in tow. Add into the mix the increasing number of riders who feel it is their God- or perhaps government-given right to invade pedestrian space with their bikes and their bad attitude and you have a problem.
I have lost count of the number of angry encounters I have had with riders both male and female, of all ages, races and social classes when they squeeze past me with millimetres to spare, or come at me head on with a look that says “Get the hell out of my way!” The flashpoint tends to be my assertion that they have no right to be there. As the Department for Transport website helpfully reiterates: Cycling on the footway (pavement) is an offence under Section 72 of the Highways Act 1835 as amended by Section 85 (1) of the Local Government Act 1888.
But not only are cyclists repeatedly intruding into areas where they shouldn’t be, they can’t even be civil about it. In my experience, any attempt to challenge the right of the two-wheeled menace to invade the pavement will be met with a volley of abuse or blank incomprehension. I have yet to encounter a single offender willing to apologise for being where he/she should not have been.
Recently I’ve grown bored with this one-sided argument. I tend to stand aside and give way to encroaching cyclists rather than risk a situation where I might be driven to punch one of them. But a recent incident in which both my parents were mowed down by a speeding bike rider outside their home has reminded me that I’m not the one most at risk from their antisocial antics. No, it is small children, the elderly and those with impaired hearing who are most likely to get in the way of approaching bicycles. And iPod users beware: pedestrians with headphones welded to their ears are just waiting to be mowed down.
Now I know that motorists and cyclists have their own life and death issues to deal with, judging by some of the posts on the Raging Bike website. But that’s something for our politicians and law-enforcers to deal with. I’m just heartily sick of being caught in the crossfire between aggressive motorists and rude cyclists. The fact that cyclists feel, perhaps justifiably, victimised by motorists does not give them the right to make the pavements hazardous for pedestrians.
Perhaps those cyclists who feel the need to flout the law should remember that they, too, are pedestrians. We don’t all own cars or bikes but every able-bodied citizen has to walk sometimes – even if it’s just those few yards between their vehicle and the front door.
In her 2002 novel The Red and the Green, Iris Murdoch dubbed the bicycle “the most civilised conveyance known to man” . It seems to me that some of its newest devotees – flushed with their “green” credentials – need a reminder about the old-fashioned virtues of humility and good manners.
(Article first published as Hell on Wheels on Blogcritics.)
