Online comments - who are they good for?

On Sunday, I went to a Guardian Masterclass* for aspiring freelance journalists. It was a fantastic day run by industry professionals who were unbelievably positive and keen to share their knowledge. There was none of that "well, print journalism's a sick, dying horse these days, so if I were you lot, I'd stick to basket-weaving or whatever it is mere peasants do to make a living". I can’t fault the event at all, but there was one little thing that bugged me: a Q & A session with Guardian journalist Marina Hyde was derailed by at least four questions on the issue of online comments, and how writers deal with them. One question on it would have been fine, but four? I just don’t think they’re important enough to warrant half an hour of discussion. (A whole blog post's worth of discussion, yes, but no-one's paying for this. Yet.)

  *well, I say that. In order to be in London for 9.30am, I got to the station at half-7. Whereupon I was told "there's a broken-down train at Gatwick, so nothing's going further than there". Four hours, four trains, a brief car journey and seemingly all the stations in Sussex later, I got to Victoria. By some brilliant stroke of luck, I made it to the Royal College of Medicine - where the event was being held - at the first coffee break, so I didn't have to sneak into an auditorium and make a spectacle of myself.

Anyway, Marina Hyde’s perspective on below-the-line comments was fairly straightforward, and ran something along the lines of: “I don’t care, and I don’t have time to read them anyway… I think they should be there, because if I’m pissing on people’s opinions above the line, then they should be able to piss on mine in the comments” (I’m paraphrasing, but she definitely said “pissing”. You can ask her). She mentioned that some columnists don’t think readers should be able to comment at all, and as an aspiring writer, I can absolutely see why.

In theory, the comments section is a safe space for debating the issue being written about above the line, which is well and good and dandy. In practice, however, it seems to be flypaper for headcases. And I don’t mean the genuinely mentally ill, I mean the people whose opinions are a bit… Daily Mail on steroids. “This country’s gone to the dogs” and “back in my day” and the like. People write because they want to connect with readers, plant ideas, raise a smile, provoke discussion, and so to be a writer who is against online comments can be a bit of a contradiction. The trouble is, in the Venn diagram of “people who have the time and inclination to write comments on newspaper articles” and “people whose opinions are well-informed and logically sound”, there isn’t an awful lot of overlap.

There is a tiny voice in my head – and it’s one I’m working on drowning out – that keeps saying, “Is it absolutely necessary that we can publish our every opinion for all to see?” Yes, I’m aware of how that sounds – it’s a bit anti-free speechy, and a bit rich coming from a blogger. But if you look at Twitter, and the amount of abuse aimed at high-profile writers, then you might see what I’m getting at. It’s a related issue – from the safety of a keyboard, people feel they can say anything, and the notion of having to answer for your actions is forgotten. How else do you explain the bomb threats, rape threats and disgusting language directed at Grace Dent, Hadley Freeman, Mary Beard, India Knight, to name just a few? From a distance, it’s easy to say, “well, the people saying this stuff are clearly arseholes, and too childish to bother getting stressed about”, but if you’re facing it day in, day out, while simply trying to do your job, I should imagine it gets pretty fucking old.

I suppose there are measures in place – comments are moderated, offensive language doesn’t usually get through. But that’s only a small part of the problem; it would be lovely if before you could publish a comment on an online article, you had to answer the question: “will your comment improve anything for anyone today?" 

Unfortunately, there will always be ill-informed idiots, and the internet's just another platform for them. I'm still not sure online comments are a complete necessity, but maybe I'm missing something. I'd say I just won't read them, but everyone likes to feel morally superior once in a while, so I doubt I'll be giving up my Mail Online habit any time soon. Which is sad, really.

 

On the Brandwagon

...come on, what else was this post going to be called?

Just another excuse for me to ogle Paxman's beard.

I didn't really want to come in on this one. Enough's been said about it - either by writers going "oh, he's so trivial and stupid" but then proceeding to write 1000 words about him anyway, or by other writers going "yeah, you know what? I almost agree". Everyone else has already been far wiser and more eloquent about it than I have, I'm aware, but still. It's been nagging at me over the last week or so. Because the more I read about our current government - the more I hear about disadvantaged, sick, underprivileged people in the UK today having support taken from them - the more I think Brand has a bloody good point.

I don't agree with everything he said/wrote - his New Statesman essay did go on a bit - because for one, I think if you can vote, you should. People have fought bitterly for universal suffrage, so it seems a bit ungrateful to waste it. And what's more, I'm already looking forward to the next general election - I'll be bounding down to the polling station just so I can do my tiny little bit to ensure we don't have to suffer the Conservatives for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. It was telling that following the Newsnight interview with Russell Brand, Jeremy Paxman came out and said that he understood Brand's unwillingness to vote. And then called the Lib Dems' tuition fees U-turn "the biggest lie in recent political history". Mind you, as long as he's sporting a bit of a beard, Jeremy Paxman can say and do what he likes as far as I'm concerned...

Where was I? Oh yes. In short, voting is good. For now.

It's easy to knock Russell. In the past, he has been a bit of a knob, and he's admitted this. It's also easy to be seduced by him - not literally, though I should imagine that's quite easy too; as an automatic fan of anyone who can do skilful things with words, I do love the way he talks. He can go from silly and facetious to angry and impassioned in the blink of an eye, and is clearly in a torrid love affair with a very good thesaurus. But the fact that he raised the issue of "revolution" - or at least ripping up the current political rulebook and starting again - isn't relevant. The real issue is that someone said it, and it was someone "famous". Because it's what's being said everywhere else: what if we could just rip it up and start again? What if we could simply demand more?

I can't tell you the number of times I've sat with friends in the pub, or at someone's kitchen table, and we've all agreed that the people in power are not the ones with the smartest ideas. Or, to put it another way, the intelligent people who would make a decent job of doing the nation's admin wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole. You have to be a bit odd to want to be in politics.

Brand has managed to plant an idea in the heads of people who might not be that politically engaged, and that idea is simple: what if we didn't have to put up with this? What if we could say "enough's enough of this bullshit"? There's not going to be a revolution; of course there isn't. We're British, our upper lips are stiff, we're not about to kick off and party like it's 1789.

But if I have to read one more article about people on job seekers' allowance getting tricked into being sanctioned (quite a way down in that piece, sorry!), or hear one more story about someone too sick to work getting their benefits stopped or reduced to the point where they cannot afford to live, or read one more piece about some ludicrous thing Michael Gove* has dreamt up, then I'm going to lose my mind. And I know I'm not the only one.

*I Googled "Michael Gove sexting" to remind myself of the full story and find a link. You cannot imagine how uneasy that made me.

 So what do we do? I don't know. I do know that anyone who's ever brought about real, necessary change was called insane when they started, and a hero when they finished. I also know that the 10-point "Initial Statement" released by the Occupy London group in October 2011 makes an awful lot of sense, and that the Occupy movement was something that Brand praised in his interview. I do know that as long as people go on saying "ah well, nothing's ever going to change", nothing will change. Funnily enough.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, and given the haphazard way I'm typing here, I'm sure that's obvious. I think the reason so many columnists and commentators jumped on this "Russell Brand wants a revolution" thing is because it hit a nerve. It hit the nerve that feels, deep down, so many things are wrong right now. Corporations not paying billions of pounds' worth of tax, for a start. A generation of well-educated young people looking out on a job market that can best be described as "hideous". The most disadvantaged people in our society being demonised by the media (stop believing the Daily Mail, Mum!). The cold realisation that the people who are currently doing the nation's admin are doing it mainly for themselves. Christ, that's bleak.

How about some music? That usually helps.

These guys are really good.

And the wonderfully sinister-sounding new one from these guys.

On being stupid and right

Because you can be both, I'm told.

So, I'll cut to the chase, no faffing. This week, I got offered a job. Full-time, slightly more money than I was expecting, at a tiny company about a twenty-minute train journey away - tick, tick, tick. I didn't mean to get the job ("well, fuck you and your accidental job-getting," said a friend - quite fairly - in the pub the other night). I just saw an ad titled "document writer", thought "hey, I can probably write documents!" and sent them my CV. The advert didn't say what the company did, or what kind of documents would need writing, which hopefully explains things a little.

I didn't expect to be asked to an interview a matter of days later - you just don't, do you? Not these days, when all the odds are against the jobseekers. I certainly didn't expect the interview to go well - I'm scared of everyone new people, especially new people who are looking for me to impress them. When they gave me a writing task ("just a 150-word press release, use this one here as a guide"), I freaked out and my brain went Ican'tIcan'tIcan't, and then I realised how feeble it would look to leave them with a blank Word document, so I threw down some sentences and hoped it was a good enough attempt. The tone of it was excellent, the MD said in his e-mail the next day.

(And then he rang me, to let me know he'd e-mailed me, and I'd only just got out the shower and so wasn't dressed, and during the phone call I managed to whack my knee on the corner of my desk and only just managed to stifle a yelp of "Jesus Fucking Christ I think I've chipped my kneecap!")

And yes, it may seem like there's a lot of humblebragging going on here - "look at little me, getting a job by mistake!" - but I assure you, everything about this particular instance of job-getting was pretty much unintentional. I left the interview with a tension headache and a dilemma already taking shape - an odd feeling of "if I don't get this, I'll be disappointed, because I blagged that one reasonably successfully, and if I do, fuck, I'll have a Serious Decision To Make".

Of course I should have taken it. Of course. Because, well - do I want to get away from what I'm currently doing? Yes. It's not paying - almost literally - and my brainpower is slowly, slowly diminishing. Would it have been good experience? Probably. Once you can write press releases and bids and things, you can take that anywhere. Did it make financial sense? Without a doubt. Why did I not say yes?

Because it wasn't right for me. And how much that matters, I'm not actually sure. Given that I'm an arts graduate (an arts Master!), and it's 2013, I'm not exactly in a position to be picky, am I? I'm on the bottom step, I should be grateful for any opportunity that isn't sorting post and making tea. But I was worried that by doing this, I'd be taking myself out of the search for something that fits me better. And, as it's such a small company - and they seemed inexplicably keen on me - I'd feel pretty bad about joining them while the intention to find something better within a few months. They were looking for someone to commit to them for at least a year or two, and I couldn't bank on being able to do that. "But no-one gets their dream job right away," said the Boy's mother wisely, and no, there's no arguing with that.

And I DO feel like a fool for turning down something I know a lot of graduates would jump on, but something just wasn't right, and I can't take a job just because I feel guilty about being offered it. I don't want to say it was "gut instinct" that swung it for me - because it's a bit of a vague concept upon which to be basing life decisions - but there was a voice somewhere in the back of my head going, "there is something better out there for you". Obviously only time will tell if that's the case, but the "Oh GOD, I've made a huge mistake" panic hasn't kicked in yet*.

*Update: it did kick in, about 5pm today, while I was in Boots (which is normally my happy place as I have a make-up buying problem. Still, it's safer than crack, I suppose). I think my panic in the L'Oreal aisle was mainly triggered by the fact that I'd tried to do a whole day of errand-running on one croissant, a piece of cheese and a lot of tea - rather than any real post-decision regrets. Fingers crossed.

On a brighter note: I've been waiting for this lady to make a comeback for an embarrassingly long time. This track is from an album that was meant to be released in 2011. No news yet.

And I am so obsessed with this girl and her new album it's pretty much the only thing I can listen to right now.

It's a bit late in the year for this, but still...

Or, how to REALLY do a festival - a first-timer's guide.

Festivals are like sex – the first time is spent worrying that everyone is doing it more skilfully than you are; the bad times are vastly improved by large amounts of alcohol and drugs, and when the good times are over, you have to fight the urge to share every gory detail with anyone who wasn’t involved. 

I am not a natural festival-goer, by any means. I have a zero-tolerance attitude to having greasy hair and leg-stubble, but I love live music like Robin Thicke loves being an unutterable creep, so for one weekend a year I’m prepared to go from being a massive princess who can’t leave the house without a blow-dry to a slattern held together with cider and dry shampoo. I’m also not much of a festival veteran – I’ve been to two, so far. The first being Oxfordshire’s lovely little Truck festival, which - as I've told you - is attended by about 5,000 people and is farmy and family-friendly, with barn-stormingly good bands (literally. One of the stages is in a barn. The acoustics are exactly as you’d expect – metallic). And the second was this year’s Bestival – attended by 60,000, it was a whole other huge, smelly, rainy ball-game. My companion this time was a total festival virgin, so it fell to me to be the voice of experience, which made me realise that to the uninitiated, the whole event can seem quite strange and stressful. So here’s a handful of things you absolutely need to know before you lose your festival virginity.

1)   The smell. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget. Picture the scene: you wake up on day two or three, and in order to escape the less-than-fragrant scent of your still-sleeping tent-fellows, stick your head outside and gulp some fresh morning air. Except it’s not fresh – the whole site has started to hum with the aroma of thousands of unwashed bodies. This is why if you’re a non-smoker, you become extraordinarily tolerant of smokers over the course of the weekend – if you stand next to one, you can inhale their fumes, rather than the smell of the unshowered people surrounding you. 

2)   And on a related note, the toilets. Back in the civilised world, going to the loo is usually a painless experience – unless you’ve got food poisoning or are naturally prone to constipation. At a festival, it’s an ordeal that doesn’t seem to ease up, no matter how many times you do it, nor how drunk you get. That smell would sober up Pete Doherty after a long weekend in Moscow. Be warned. And take some antibacterial hand gel.

3)   “Festival beauty” isn’t a thing. Magazines are chock-full of this stuff at the beginning of the festival season: how you can channel “Alexa at Coachella” with a handful of bits from Superdrug. Fuck off. You do not need to look your shiny, clean, photogenic best at a festival. It’s not even possible, given that you won’t have access to anything more cleansing than baby wipes. I mean, you can optimistically take your make-up bag, and just keep layering it on, but I personally wouldn’t want to risk the volcanic break-out of spots that will inevitably follow when you’re back in the land of hot running water. Leave the foundation at home and embrace the grime. And if you don’t feel anything but fucking beautiful when you’re hollering along to your favourite band as they storm through their set during a downpour, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.

4)   Sex. Having said all that in point (3), on the Isle of Wight that weekend, I did see a truly remarkable amount of young ladies who had bothered to do a full face of slap. I can only imagine that these young things were on the pull, which is, again, a stupid idea at a festival. You’d imagine that there’s going to be a pretty sexy vibe, with the music, the liberated approach to drink and drugs, the general atmosphere of hedonism. You’d be wrong. If, due a combination of vodka and time passing, you cannot reliably tell me when you last showered, then I don’t want to have sex with you. And tents aren’t the sexiest of locations, unless what really turns you on is a soundtrack of students vomiting and sleeping bags rustling. But if that’s the case, go for it.

5)  You won’t see about half of the acts you plan on seeing. You’ll pay a fair whack for a programme and gleefully rifle through it once your tent is up and you have a drink in hand. “Right, I definitely want to see them. And we can’t miss her. Ooh, they’re playing, I didn’t know that. Oh, and them.” You’ll memorise times and locations, but somehow only manage to actually be present for some of these, due to a sudden tent-collapse emergency, or getting too engrossed in one of those drunken, putting-the-world-to-rights conversations.

In short, music festivals can be hard work. But you’re missing out if you don’t spend at least one weekend of your life living out of a rucksack, laughing brazenly in the face of personal hygiene and going unselfconsciously nuts to your favourite song while it pisses it down. 

One final hint: don’t keep your wristband on past the day of your return to the adult world. No one likes a pretentious festival wanker, so don’t be that guy. 

Bad education

You know what distresses me? I mean, other than the price of Dermalogica products, the situation in Syria and people to whom the words "please" and "thank you" are alien concepts?

Well, this. (If you can't access it, it's a Telegraph article about the government's proposals to drop sex and relationship education from the curriculum for 11-13 year olds - under which, information on sexual health, contraception, hormones and adolescence would not be taught.)

These proposals do make you wonder if Education Secretary Michael Gove has ever actually been to a school - and I feel now would be the time to slip this in here. Thanks to the Boy for showing that to me. Mind you, Mr Gove also once claimed that if young people did well academically, they were less likely to "indulge in risky behaviours" - which made sense, until he used it as a basis for the suggestion that sex education lessons would no longer be needed. "They're bright and high-achievers so they won't be having sex" is one of the most bollocks assumptions I've ever heard someone make. No, no, no - if they're bright, and over the age of 16, and reasonably mature and responsible, then I bloody well hope they're having some sex.

I have a theory, and it goes thus: if you start educating people early - about anything, really - it becomes normal to them. Standard, everyday, unremarkable. Not a big deal. And as far as sex is concerned, if you teach age-appropriate material throughout the academic life, the chances are you're going to end up with a bunch of well-informed, clued-up, sensible, confident teenagers. Who can talk about sex without getting embarrassed, who feel secure and can communicate well within relationships, and who don't feel judged when they have problems or questions. And all this is a bad thing because...?

I suppose one could quite reasonably argue that it should be left to parents to decide how and when their children learn about sex and relationships. But that would put some kids at a huge disadvantage - there would be the nice, liberal parents that fixed a grin on their nervous faces and got The Conversation started, but there would equally be parents that bottled it and neglected to broach the subject at all. The children of the "bottlers" would have to pick up their info elsewhere - like the internet, or the school playground. Which are, as we know, completely reliable and accurate channels of information... The easiest way to screw up your children is to not address the issues that matter to them - to ignore their worries, either through fear or embarrassment, and to make them feel they can't confide in you. That is precisely how you drive them away, thus leaving them even more vulnerable than they were before. So let's not do that, yeah?

The other line some people like to take on this is the hysterical, "think of the children!" one: "if we teach them these things when they're young, they'll start doing it sooner!" Have these people MET any children? Here's a scenario I may or may not have plucked from the air: an eleven year old hears the term "blow job". He or she asks their best mate what it means. The best mate does their best to explain using their own limited knowledge. The eleven year old thinks "Ew!! That sounds GROSS." End of story. (For a few years, anyway.)

There are also the statistics, though - Britain has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe (or has had; it's fallen in recent years), and sex and relationship education is neither comprehensive nor compulsory, while the often-used example of the Netherlands has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world, and educates its youngsters from an early age. In short - people BENEFIT from being taught about sex and relationships from a young age, so it would be nice if the government made curriculum decisions that didn't fly in the face of all the actual evidence.

Maybe a small part of it comes down to that British squeamishness surrounding talking about "feelings". But when matters of health and self-esteem are at stake, we need to lose that squeamishness and get some practice in talking about the tricky stuff. Whether the issue in question is sex, mental health or bereavement - there are so many things that can be incredibly hard to talk about - every time someone says "no, we're not going to discuss that", or only talks about whatever-it-is in hushed, conspiratorial tones, they're taking a huge step backwards. Back to a time when personal things - things that still affected everybody, mind - weren't spoken of at all and people went half-mad with repression and anxiety that they weren't "normal".

Because that's the risk taken when the opportunities for safe, open discussion, and asking questions, are removed. Knowledge, as we all know, is power. Information - the correct information - is confidence. If we make sure that younger generations have all the facts and feel free to ask questions, they will be confident in making their own, well-informed decisions. Why would anyone NOT want that?

This song's rather fun.
And I'm back obsessing over Brontide again, because I saw them last Wednesday and it was wonderful. With their white-hot riffs and dapper drummer* who knows how to pound seven fucks out of his kit, they wouldn't know "boring" if it punched all three of them in the face. Here, have some of this.

*We met him afterwards, and I was able to rectify the impression I made when I saw him on the Tube a few weeks ago. I may have lost what little cool I had when I spotted him at Finsbury Park station, and blurted out "AreyouWilliamBowerman? MyboyfriendandIarehugefansofBrontide!" He took it well, though, and when we chatted to him on Wednesday, he was absolutely lovely. Well, the Boy chatted, while I stood there and tried to decide which one to propose marriage to first. I must have a thing for drummers.