Being nice

Ok so re-reading last weeks blog I feel slightly foolish, I sound really quite sour and embittered. So to all the people I have lambasted over the last few weeks I'm sorry for giving into the temptations of internet anonymity and acting like a Heat gossip columnist. This week I'm going to do three things: try not to swear, try harder not to criticize people and hopefully avoid mentioning Michael Jackson too much. All I will say is that as I completed my entry last week, news began to filter in about his death and I thought about making a joke. But I didn't. 

One group of people who still rile me are those incompetent, vain, vacuous individuals who continue to update their facebook status' with completely 'random,' highly tedious snippets of banal information. My favorite web forum: Red Issue, a place for United fans to congregate and get angry ran a brilliant thread on this particular group of numpties. Here is my favorite anecdote: "A 'mate' who i now actually consider to be a complete f***k keeps updating his facebook status with tales of shopping trips in Manc city centre. His new profile photo shows him posing with an empty Vivienne Westwood shopping bag and is coupled with a status reading: 'Andy has just spent £600 on T-shirts." What. A. Twat.

In many ways this continual obsession with publicising one's personal life is indicative of society's obsession with outward projection and the trappings of wealth and fame. I'm no hypocrite, I will gladly hold my hands up and admit that I use Twitter and write a self-infatuated blog which no one reads, but I think there is a serious problem with people living their lives and making decisions based on how it will look on internet portals. When we come back from holiday the first thing we do is rush to 'the book' and upload our smugshots. When we begin a holiday our first move is to find a computer and update our status: 'Celia is in Goa and dancing to psy-trance.' Really, are you? No your fucking around on a computer in an internet cafe without air-con. Or possibly on a blackberry.

Ah yes the joys of the 'crackberry.' That's another addition to my arsenal of networking tools since I've returned from South America!  And it is a pretty beautiful piece of technology, far snappier than the I-Phone in my opinion, though clearly a very different piece of kit. By far the most important feature of the berry is the Instant Messaging application, allowing you to Ping fellow 'crackers' and then begin a totally free exchange of meaningless Hello's, What are you Up too's and Let link up's. Brilliant and completely awful at the same time. 

So basically life is becoming an endless stream of twaddle, friendships are constructed through artificial technology and the world's most famous man died alone in LA pumped to the brim with pain killers, opiates and alcohol, only to be mourned through social networking sites and television channels devoted to the cult of 'celebrity.' It's all very J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick but everyone seems cheerful enough and if I wanted to I could have written and posted this wonderful encapsulation of the post, post-modern world via my mobile! Happy days!

Until next week, General E!!xxxx

P.S Apologies to Georgie Greig, who I discovered today is in fact editor of the Evening Standard and no longer manning the desk at Tatler. My bad but I was away for 5 months. I'm sure however that he will still be forced into attending the awful summer season parties and wankathons and will probably end up having to watch Tracy Emin creating artwork out of her toilet after a night on the tiles. Oh to be a successful media man in 2009!