#oneaday, Day 310: Don't Be Hatin'

Somehow I don't think that anyone who is reading this blog will fall into the category that I'm about to talk about, but I'll direct this at everyone generally just in case.

Have you used any kind of expression involving the word "haters" recently in a non-ironic sense? I have one simple request to you: stop it. You sound like an idiot.

I don't know who was the first person to decide that posting something along the lines of "I don't give a fuck about the haters" (or, more accurately, usually "i dont giv a fuk abt da haterz!!!") was a great idea and made them look Deep And Stuff™, but it's a plague on far too many people on the Internet, many of whom are clearly desperately wishing they were from a socioeconomic and/or ethnic group other than their own.

The latest person to come out with some such bullshit was none other than British Formula 1 racing driver, Lewis Hamilton, who earlier tweeted "To those of u who care, thanks for ur support, am on here for u. To all u haters…I jus don't give a fuck haha" [sic]. The tweet has since been removed, suggesting one of two possibilities: 1) McLaren got in touch and told Lewis to stop pretending to be 50 Cent (who tweets nonsense like that all the time, but inexplicably occasionally censors himself when he says "shit") or 2) the tweet wasn't by him in the first place. Either are entirely plausible.

But let's assume, for the sake of rantitude, that it actually was Hamilton. Twitter promptly exploded at the fact that a high-profile sports personality who normally came across as a nice, if rather boring, young man on television knows the "fuck" word. Some people even seemed to think that his "taking a stand" like this was somehow admirable. I thought it made him come across as a bit of a cock.

The thing is, in my experience, any time I've seen anyone coming out with the "screw u haterz" nonsense, they are desperately insecure and usually spoiling for a fight. Perhaps they like to post unpopular views, troll forums or simply act like a complete penis online. Never once have I come across someone who posts in full sentences and understands what punctuation is who has said "I don't give a fuck abt da haterz" or similar.

The knock-on effect of this is that it causes people like me, who put a lot of stock in the written word, to judge the people who say this sort of thing, perhaps unfairly. Nine times out of ten (I made that up) the people who post things in this manner online are white middle-class teenagers who desperately, desperately wish they were a street-smart hip-hop gangsta, yo, preferably packing a piece. (I feel extremely middle-class and very English just typing those words. Oh well. Fine by me.) Quite why they want to come across as a "thug" (their word) is beyond me.

So, then, consider it a warning. If you start talking about "haters" and your indifference towards them, I will judge you. And it will not be a favourable judgement.

And Lewis Hamilton? If that was you tweeting that nonsense, I now think you are a cock instead of simply a moderately boring person. Guess I'm a "hater". At least you don't give a fuck.

#oneaday, Day 308: Google Is Your Middleman Preventing Effective Communication

Ladies and gentlemen, we are afflicted with a plague of the Information Age. The plague of "Google/the search bar is your friend". A plague of laziness, if you will, as this is a catch-all response which makes it look like you're being vaguely helpful and/or knowledgeable when in fact all you're doing is being an arrogant asshole and trying to get out of answering a question as quickly as possible.

Google is wonderful, of course. It is generally possible to find the information you're looking for quite quickly, especially if you're familiar with some of those handy tips and tricks on how to phrase your search query. But sometimes—just sometimes—you want a human response to a question. So you ask people. You might ask them on a forum. You might ask them on Twitter. You might email someone and ask about it.

If you receive one of these emails/tweets/forum posts and instinctively go for the "insert 'Google is your friend' template", I have one request.

Stop it.

Sometimes when someone is asking a question, they don't just want an answer. They want to open a discussion. They want to find out who knows things so they can get a better understanding of that person or the community. They might be new to the community and unaware that the question has been asked before. Or they might—get this—have already tried Googling it, been confronted with "about 7,190,000 results" in "0.23 seconds" ("how to change a lightbulb", for the curious) and been understandably intimidated, or unsure which one of the often-conflicting pages to believe.

Okay, "how to change a lightbulb" is perhaps a bad example as there aren't many pages out there that helpfully inform you that the best way to change a lightbulb is to stick it up your arse and then attempt to fart it into the socket. But take a question about, say, philosophy or a political perspective. Tons of pages out there are biased one way or another, and as such it might not be clear which one is the "correct" perspective. True, asking a person the same question is also open to bias. But at least when you're dealing with a person, you have the opportunity to question their point of view and for them to justify it.

Actually, instructional "how-to" guides aren't such a bad example. Let's say you have a non-standard light fitting, as I did in the bathroom of my old flat. I was unable to work out how to remove the cover for it as I didn't know what the fitting was called. I posted a photo online and people gave some suggestions. Eventually, I levered it off with the help of a stepladder and a teaspoon. I now consider myself adequately qualified to be able to help someone else in the same position, because surely I can't have been the only person in the world with a light fitting like that. So if anyone asks me about it, I'm not going to ram their face into Google, which they've probably already done. I'm going to give them an answer, even if said answer is readily available elsewhere on the Internet.

If you're a "Google is your friend"-er, then try taking just an extra minute or two out of your undoubtedly busy schedule to help someone out. You might find they appreciate it, rather than getting arsey about you sounding like a big know-it-all. So stop hiding behind Google and help a brotha/sista out. You might learn something, too.

#oneaday, Day 307: Wait. Terry Wait. Overwait. Call The Wait-er.

How much time do you think you waste every year waiting for things to happen? Whether it's waiting for the phone to ring, the response to an email, the answer to a question, an alarm to go off, someone to call you into their office or for your delicious improvised curry sauce to thicken, chances are you spend a good proportion of your time waiting for things to happen or for other people to do things.

Just think how much more we could all get done without all this waiting. Consider how long it takes someone from any Government agency to write back to you, drawing out what is usually an unpleasant process (why else would you be writing to an arm of the Government, were it not to complain about something?) even longer than necessary. Perhaps your question was a simple one that can be answered with one word—the words "yes" and "no" were invented for exactly this situation—but no. More often than not you'll receive a letter back informing you that they're "unable to action your correspondence" or, in English, "not able to reply to your letter" and demanding further details that you've already given them at least fifteen times.

This sort of thing is annoying and, in this age of instant communication, bordering on inexcusable. Who writes letters any more, anyway, for starters? Wake up and smell the electronics.

The trouble with taking this attitude, though, is that it starts to filter into other parts of your life. You find yourself wondering why the text message you sent thirty seconds ago hasn't been replied to yet, without thinking that the recipient may just have better things to do than respond to a message that simply says "COCK! PISS! PARTRIDGE!" because they might, in fact, have a job to do. You forget the context of a reply on Twitter because someone replied to something you posted four hours ago. And in the meantime, you sit staring at your computer screen, iPhone or, in the worst possible scenarios, your wall or ceiling. Because you might get that response you need in the next thirty seconds/minute/half an hour/hour/day and you couldn't possibly do anything useful in the meantime. But of course you can't send another message following it up because that's pushy and rude and you don't want to look like an asshole.

Well, bollocks to it. We need an inversion of this situation, where "important" things get resolved quickly rather than are "endeavoured to be responded to within 72 hours", and where it's okay for your friends, family and/or that hottie you texted to be quiet for a few seconds/minutes/hours/days at a time. Because let's face it, staring at a wall is marginally less productive than staring at a toaster waiting for it to pop.

Because at least if you stare at a toaster, you end up with some delicious toast. What's your wall ever going to give you?

#oneaday, Day 301: I've Read It

I've been on Reddit before. I didn't find it terribly intuitive, and the sheer volume of information on it was daunting and offputting. Sure, I helped support friends' submissions when I could, but delving into the whole thing proper just seemed like a frankly terrifying prospect.

However, yesterday, I felt differently. Spurred on by this article, which several people had posted to Twitter seemingly independently of one another, I decided to give the community another look. I decided to just dive in and start looking at things, rather than getting analysis paralysis whilst looking at the front page.

And that, seemingly, is the way to do it. There is so much content on Reddit that it is impossible (and probably undesirable) to read it all. So you pick and choose the things that you're interested in.

Now, I know that there are several people amongst those who follow me who are still utterly bewildered as to what Reddit is and what its appeal is. So, with apologies to those of you who are already well familiar with what Reddit is and how it works, here is, erm, what Reddit appears to be and how it appears to work, after a mighty one day's experience of use.

Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about it is that it's the world's biggest forum. Users can post things, which are either links to other sites or "self posts", which are simple messages. Attached to each post are two things: upvote and downvote buttons, and a comment facility. Upvoting or downvoting something promotes or demotes the content, making it more likely to rise to the top of the page (or not, as the case may be). And then the comments underneath are threaded, just like on most blogs these days.

It's in these comment sections that the excellence of Reddit shows itself, though. A far cry from your average YouTube commenter ("u suck!!!!! lol!"), Reddit contributors and commenters appear to be, for the most part, mature, articulate, literate individuals with fantastic senses of humour and some of the quickest punning minds I've ever come across. It's a community that, after lurking for a few days, I certainly wanted to be a part of. Discussion is (from what I've seen so far, at least) mature, thought-provoking but not afraid to lapse into a bit of silliness from time to time.

And diverse. Good God, Reddit is diverse. If you have a particular niche interest, you can pretty much guarantee there will be a "subreddit" for it. Whether you're into gaming, gardening, FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU- comics, porn, music, Uzbekistani sledgehammer dancing… chances are you will find someone there with the same freaky tastes as you. And for those embarrassing questions that you really want to ask people, the creation of "throwaway" sock puppet accounts is actively encouraged to help everyone feel comfortable enough to say what they feel. Many Redditors use their main accounts, though, as the atmosphere of help and support in the appropriate subreddits is, at times, a shining example of what the Internet can be.

A poster I read earlier described Reddit as 4chan 3 days late with a filter for all the disgusting, gross and/or illegal crap. Which isn't exactly high praise, but I can see their point. 4chan, love it or hate it, originates (or at least popularises) many of the words, phrases and memes we take for granted on the Internet today. But then those who are too scared to delve into the murky waters of 4chan (like me… I'm not ashamed) can come across this stuff without unwittingly stumbling into gore porn via Reddit. Everyone's a winner.

Oh, just one tip, though… if you're not interested in seeing a wide selection of user peens (interspersed with a few boobies) then just steer clear of /r/gonewild.

#oneaday, Day 254: Be The First Of Your Friends To Like This

I remember back in primary school we were encouraged to never use the words "nice" or "said" because they were boring. There are always better words to use, we were told, so we should be creative and extend our vocabularies.

Fast forward to today and we have much the same issue with the word "like", a word which is rapidly losing all meaning thanks to its total domination over the social networking space. Every day on Facebook, it's a fair bet that there is at least one entry in everyone's news feed that says "Amber likes OMG!! Where did you get you're shoes LOL! on ♥." or "Bob likes I hate it when your trying 2 go 2 sleep and u cant on Likebook." Not only do these sentences make no sense, they're a symbol of a peculiar shift in communication styles that has taken place in recent years, particularly amongst teens and tweens.

Essentially, rather than just typing "I hate it when you're trying to go to sleep and you can't" and sharing that particular inanity with the world (not to mention spelling it correctly), it seems that it's now much more the done thing to go and find a website which lists hundreds of said inanities for the sole purpose of allowing people to Like them on Facebook. There's a kind of "distancing" involved. Anyone can click "Like" on something. As soon as you write it yourself, it becomes more personal, and harder to do.

Trouble is, the word "Like" is being used so much that it stops making sense sometimes. Or its context is completely inappropriate. Take the latest "check-in" craze, GetGlue, which is actually a pretty neat idea. Users tag the things that they, yes, like as well as the things that they dislike and can then get suggestions of other things they might like based on other users' tastes. Fair enough. However, when a site offers you the opportunity to not only "Like" ebola but also check into it, you have to question if the correct terminology is really being used in this instance.

And where's the opportunity to dislike things? GetGlue is unusual in that it does specifically allow people to say "I don't like this". There's no opportunity to do that on Facebook. If a friend posts a status update that informs everyone that, say, their leg has fallen off and their family are dead and not only that, someone posted a bag of poo through their letterbox then the only things to do are to "Like" it, which seems rather tactless and inappropriate, or to actually leave a comment which will probably start with "I wish there was a Dislike button" and end with too many exclamation marks.

Perhaps Facebook is attempting to make us all more positive. Instead of writing "I'm so sad. My family are dead, my leg has fallen off and someone posted a bag of poo through my letterbox" which, let's face it, no-one is going to click "Like" on, perhaps you should put a positive spin on it. "My family are dead, my leg has fallen off and someone posted a bag of poo through my letterbox. But at least I found 76p in small change in my jacket pocket, Snickers later ftw!!!"

aplenty from there on, I feel.

#oneaday, Day 217: "Book? LOL!"

I forget the exact circumstances of when I came across the quote in this post's title. It may have been on some form of social networking website, or dating site, or something like that. But it was a good few years back now.

The context of the quote was in one of those sections you get on pretty much all online profiles that asks you to list your favourite music, films, TV shows and books. This person's favourite books were listed as "book? lol".

That struck me as rather sad, but perhaps a little unsurprising given the general attention span of most people these days. Why sit down with a book which delays gratification and requires active use of the brain when you can be immediately bombarded with information via TV and the Internet?

It's an age-old argument of course, and one which has probably been running ever since every new information-giving technology came along. However, it seems particularly ironic in the context of the Internet, given that much of it is, in fact, text. Sure, there are pretty pictures and buttons that fart when you click on them and pornography, but it's still fundamentally built on text. You're reading text right now. Is your head hurting yet?

The fact that everyone has a voice on the Internet is one of those things that is debatable as to whether it is a Good Thing or not. But as part of having that voice, everyone has the opportunity to give their thoughts and expand on them as much as they want to. The sad thing is, though, in many cases, people don't feel like they have the time to read (or write) a full, well-considered argument. Instead, they denounce it as a "wall of text" and choose not to read it.

It happens in video games, too. A friend of mine once said that he couldn't get through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney because there was "too much reading". It's a game about a lawyer. I'm not sure what else he was expecting.

As a writer, as someone who crafts language and bends it to my will in the name of pretentiousness, self-expression, catharsis and humour, this is sad. The English language is a powerful tool that can say many things. As, indeed, are other languages. But it seems that for many these days, the priority is for quick, snappy, "efficient" communication. And sure, there are situations in which this is entirely appropriate. But I say that shouldn't be the norm. People shouldn't be afraid to speak their mind in as much length as they wish.

My mind is particularly drawn to the early days of the Squadron of Shame. Long before we started producing our podcast, we ran lengthy discussion threads on a variety of games on 1up.com's Radio forum. We'd started as a result of one of the 1up Radio features, so that was our spiritual home. Many of the people who populated that forum were articulate sorts who agreed with my thoughts above, so there were plenty of like-minded individuals there who enjoyed taking part in our discussions and posting their own "walls of text".

But one day, the Powers That Be at 1up decided that it would be a great idea to merge all the forums into "Games" and "Not Games". This meant that lengthy, in-depth discussion threads from groups such as the Squadron were crammed into the same space as "OMG HALO IS BETTR THAN KILZONE". Naturally, this led to problems. In one of the last discussions we had on those boards—on the subject of the peculiar PS2 game Psi-Ops—the posting was almost immediately derailed by a particularly notorious troll who posted "OMG FUCKING MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT" in giant red letters. Said "wall of text" was maybe six or seven paragraphs long and was interesting to read, but as soon as troll boy showed his face, the discussion went off track, not helped by many people (including myself) rising to his bait.

It's a pity that to some people the desire to speak in detail, at length and to produce a coherent argument is seen as a negative thing. Personally I would have thought that a forum—by its very nature an asynchronous method of communication in which people can take their time to consider their responses—was the ideal environment in which to have these lengthy discussions. But apparently not.

This is perhaps an unnecessarily negative picture, of course. There are still people who read books. There are still people who like to post more than five words at a time. There are still people who don't decide to ignore all the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar "just because it's the Internet"—who came up with that stupid idea, anyway? It's just a pity that, at times, they seem to be declining in number.

Oh well. If you read through all that, you can count yourself amongst the élite!

#oneaday, Day 213: Intensity

There's an old saying, isn't there, that claims if you lose the use of one of your senses, the others become much more acute. Having never been blinded, deafened or whatever the equivalent words for losing your senses of taste, smell or touch are, I can't speak for the truth of this. Although I did have a nasty cold one time that stopped me from being able to smell very much, though a good curry sorted that right out, just in time for me to be able to smell the musty flatulence caused by the not-inconsiderable amount of spices therein.

But there is one sphere where pretty much anyone can get a taste of what this is like. The Internet. When you're talking to someone on the Internet, you might not be able to see or hear them. You're certainly not touching them, smelling them or tasting them, unless there's some exciting new Skype-compatible technology you're all using that I haven't heard of yet. But regardless, friendships and relationships form, grow, break, explode, spread, all the things that real relationships and friendships do, in fact.

Except for the fact that the lack of "something"—be it sight, sound, smell, touch or taste—makes everything that much more intense. For many people, cultivating a friendship in "real life" is a drawn-out process that takes some time of getting to know each other, getting a feel for one another, understanding what makes each other tick and so on. This process still happens between people who have met online, but at a vastly accelerated rate. The very nature of communication on the Internet means that responses can be considered more carefully and, assuming you're an honest person, made more honest than you might feel able to be if you're sitting in front of someone, their piercing eyes gazing into your soul.

Of course, the opposite's also true. It's much, much easier to be a bastard and a liar thanks to the wonder of the Internet. And, in many cases, without consequences. Some people find this fun. But the emotion and the hurt it can cause is just as real as the feelings of friendship, affection, even love that can also be felt in these relationships between people who have never seen each other, in some cases.

On the whole, though, the opportunity to meet and talk to people from all over the world is something which should never be taken for granted, whatever form it comes in. Whether it's posting on a message board, writing an email, using Twitter, checking out someone's avatar in Second Life, raiding with guildies in WoW; without the Internet, there's no way that a whole bunch of these people would be in our lives. Old friendships would be lost and forgotten. New friendships might never be made. Soulmates might never find each other. And you wouldn't be able to read the deranged, 1:30am ramblings of someone such as myself.

Some might say the world would be a better place for that. But, y'know, I kinda like it this way.

#oneaday, Day 199: Waving Goodbye

So, Google Wave is going bye-bye, huh? Can't say I'm particularly surprised. As cool an idea as it was, there just wasn't the buy-in from people that it deserved. Largely because a goodly proportion of the Internet population didn't seem to understand what it was actually for.

It's easy to assume people who didn't "get" Wave are just a bit slow. But the fact is, Google never did a great job of explaining what the technology was for in the first place.

"Yay, collaborative editing!" they'd say.

"Yay, we can do that with Google Docs!" everyone else would say.

"Yay, you can see people typing!" they'd say.

"Yay, who gives a shit?" everyone else would say.

"Yay, it's like a combination of email, Twitter and a word processing document!" they'd say.

"Yay, I've never wanted to combine those three things together!" everyone else would say.

It's a pity, as I've seen some genuinely interesting uses of Wave out there. One particularly cool Wave I was invited to took the form of a moderated "text adventure", where participants could direct the protagonist (played by the moderator in the role of an interactive fiction-style narrator) by inserting commands. Eventually, the non-linear nature of Wave allowed two parallel storylines to develop at once—one happening in the present, another as a flashback. Wave's ability for anyone to edit and insert new content at any point in the "conversation" meant that these two things could continue going on without becoming overly confusing.

Then there were all the possibilities for things like education. But then you have to deal with your average teacher's technophobia.

When I was working in schools, I had a grand idea that Wave could be used for the preparation of interactive resources. The fact that media such as YouTube videos, flash thingies, pictures, text, hyperlinks and even iFrames could be inserted meant that Wave could have been an ideal tool to use on interactive whiteboards during lessons, and also a good means of collaborative planning if teachers in question weren't able to meet and discuss things. As they frequently aren't.

As a result of many of these things, I had a Wave account which largely went unused because no-one else was using it. This is a shame, as I could see the potential in the service. But the fact the service was invite-only for so long, and then by the time it went public people were still scratching their heads and wondering what to do with it—these things meant that it didn't have a particularly "mass market" appeal for the average Internet user.

All is not lost for the moment, anyway. Wave is going to remain open—Google have just said they're stopping development on it. They've also open-sourced a goodly proportion of the code, so enterprising clever people with mathematics in their brains will be able to pull it apart and make it better, faster, stronger, I'm sure.

So it was a swing and a miss for Google on this one. To be honest, though, I think it's good to see them experimenting with different technologies as a company. It would be very easy for Google to just think "Right. We do these things. And we do them well. Let's just stop there and make bundles of money and stick them in our ears." But no; they seem to be on a constant quest to make the lives of the Internet's denizens better. Sometimes these things work. And sometimes they don't.

So raise a glass to Google Wave, the web app that couldn't. And start speculating on what they might be up to next!

#oneaday, Day 143: Formspring Durch Technik

I'm not sure what it is that appeals to me about question-based-sort-of-social-networking-web-2.0-nonsense Formspring, but I find it hugely addictive. I'm not the only one, either. High-profile online figures such as Leigh Alexander and Jeff Green seem to be having a blast with it, too, as are plenty of others.

The concept is simple. Anyone can ask you a question, either with their username attached or anonymously. Most people choose to ask anonymously. And it's actually more fun that way, because you then have the sort of metagame of working out who asked you what. And if you get a slightly questionable, err, question, it becomes all the more exciting to answer – was it one of your hairy male friends asking sarcastically, or was it asked by that hot chica you've got your eye on?

I think the most fun thing about it is that in coming up with creative answers to the very creative questions people come up with, you get the opportunity to talk about yourself. This is the very worst sort of narcissism that Web 2.0 brings out, of course, but it also gives you the opportunity to share things about your past, your personality, your hopes, your dreams, your tastes… all sorts of things that might not come up in conversation unless you blurted them out randomly like some sort of Fact-Tourette's sufferer.

A friend commented that the whole thing smacked of the sort of questions you get on dating sites. That's sometimes true, of course, but the difference here is that it all depends on what people choose to ask you. If people choose to ask you dating site-type questions, that's what'll happen. If people choose to ask you a series of increasingly-outrageous "what if?" scenarios, then that's what you'll get. Or in my case, you get a mixture of both until it becomes very confusing and you have no idea who asked what any more. Largely because for the most part you didn't know in the first place.

It's a service dependent on interaction, of course. If your friends are the sort of people who baulk at typing anything into text boxes, whether or not they have to bother signing up for a service beforehand, then you won't get much out of Formspring. If, however, you have creative friends who enjoy coming up with ridiculous things for you to answer, then you'll have a hell of a lot of fun with it. And your friends might even learn something about you that they didn't know before. You might even learn something about yourself that you didn't know before. Deep, huh?

If you want to ask me a stupid question, I have a list of the last few ones I've been asked somewhere to your right in the sidebar that you can click on to see my responses. Or you can just go here. You don't have to sign up for the site to take part, but if you do sign up then you get email notifications when someone asks you a question or when someone answers your question, whether or not it was anonymous.

#oneaday, Day 114: Social Peril

My good friend Mr George Kokoris had this to say about people and social media earlier. Go read it. He has some very valid concerns, especially in light of Facebook's increasingly cavalier attitude towards personal privacy.

I used to like Facebook. I used to like it because it wasn't like MySpace – I remember saying this to several people. I tried MySpace and didn't really get it. It seemed to be a friend-collecting competition with some of the most hideous web design you can possibly imagine. Facebook used to be different, though. It used to limit you to people you actually know. In fact, you used to have to say how you knew the person you were adding as a friend, much like immensely boring but practical professional networking site LinkedIn still does. As a result, it became a great way for keeping in touch with family and friends. Everyone felt confident and secure in the fact that your information was yours, and that the only people you were sharing it with were people you had specifically approved. In short, it felt like a secure means of communication. I liked it for this.

As time passed, we all know the story. Groups. Applications. Pages. A dwindling sense of security. Employers using employees photographs of drunken nights out as grounds to mistreat them. Until we reach today, when a large number of people I know are seriously considering ditching their Facebook accounts altogether in favour of alternative, more secure means of communication. Or, ironically, Twitter, one of the most open and public means of communication there is.

But at least on Twitter it never claims to be anything other than public. Your profile on Twitter consists of your avatar, your username and 140 characters of "bio". Your conversations are public (unless you specifically choose to protect your tweets, which kind of defeats one of the main objects of the service) and anyone can chip in at any time. It's a simple, effective means of asynchronous communication which means that people speak frankly, briefly and candidly.

This gets people in trouble. Sometimes, a lot of trouble. Paul Chambers found this out the hard way.

"Robin Hood airport is closed," he tweeted as his trip to Ireland to meet a girl he'd been talking to on Twitter looked threatened by the UK's complete inability to deal with a bit of snow. "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

A flippant, offhand remark. But a flippant, offhand remark that recently landed him with a thousand-pound fine and a criminal record on the grounds that his message was "grossly offensive, or of indecent, obscene, or menacing character". A flippant, offhand remark that gave him the dubious honour of being the first person ever to be convicted of a "crime" (and I use the term loosely) in connection with remarks made on a social networking site.

I mean seriously. His comments weren't in the best taste. But by successfully prosecuting this case, it sets a dangerous precedent that has made everyone rather more conscious of what they say. In effect, it's stifling free speech, a concept the Internet is built upon – not to mention the fact that the life of Chambers, who was training to be an accountant, has now been devastated.

See also: Gizmodo's behaviour with regard to the new iPhone that was left in a bar. Gray Powell, the engineer who misplaced the phone, lost his job, perhaps understandably, given that he left an immensely valuable trade secret just lying around. Gizmodo reported on the new iPhone. They ripped it open and looked inside it. Perhaps not the best thing to do when Apple were already pissed off. Then they ripped open Gray Powell's life, using information from his entire Internet presence to make him a global laughingstock. Was it not enough that the guy fucked up and lost his job because of it? Apparently not.

George points out that there are people out there who hate success and will do anything to destroy the efforts of people with ambition. It makes me sad to think that in a world where our exchange of information should be free and open that incidents like the above can happen. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. The fact that we can communicate instantaneously with anyone in the world should be a wonderful, life-affirming thing that brings the global community closer together, builds bridges and draws us closer to a peaceful sci-fi utopia. But instead, shit like this just gets people paranoid and worried, until we're going to find ourselves even more closed off and isolated than we were before the whole social media thing started. And that's sad.

Is it just human nature to use things that should be positive for evil, deceitful purposes?