Why Web Fans Should Blog Off and Get a Real Life

By Fiona Ennys

I’M a product ofmy generation – caught between the old technologies (you know, pen and quill!) and the brave, newish world of iPods, mobile phones, and the internet.

I text only occasionally simply because it takes me so long to create any message – so much easier to pick up the phone; have only just bought a DVD player never mind an iPod, and use theweb simply to browse news sites and book holidays (although I do love my sleek, newiMac because it looks so pretty).

It’s not because of lack of interest.

Rather I understand how easily I could become entangled.

You see, I can spend hours just simply surfing the web – and that’s without me ever logging on to Facebook and YouTube.

But give me credit for recognising that there’s REAL life to be getting on with out there. If I spent too much time on the computer, then other things would have to play second fiddle: you know, little things like seeing family and friends, having a proper face-to-face social life, going out a bit.

And, like most office-based workers, I already spend more than enough time sitting on my derriere in front of a screen.

But for some people, real life is the web. And they’re well and truly trapped in it.

They can’t do anything without regaling us with their every move; they count their Facebook friends in their hundreds; they go on holiday and burble on it about it – posting the world’s worst photos – on Trip Advisor; they log onto forumsites and pontificate, using the most appalling grammar imaginable, about the dullest of subjects; and they blog and they blog and they blog – about their favourite shoes, favourite meals, favourite dogs …

The validation of their life comes via their computer but the ensuing trivia is simply endless and, often, overwhelmingly mindless.

Not only that, but some of it can be nasty – scurrilous, violent and gratuitously offensive. The world’s worst excesses presented for our entertainment.

The internet transcends global boundaries and, because of that, it is almost impossible to curb. It relies, to a large extent, on decency and common sense for its policing. Hmmm, big flaw there, then.

So it’s good to see Google-owned YouTube has now reacted to video postings that glamorise guns and knives by bringing in a UK- specific rule which will ban content “showing weapons with the aim of intimidation”; globally, it aims to out law material that “directly incites violence”.

Quite how-and if – it will work, I have absolutely no idea. But here on Merseyside, where we have seen some of the nastiest videos posted on websites, we can only welcome the move.

Come to think about it, perhaps that ‘favourite shoes’ blog isn’t quite so dreadful after all.

BY theway, a friend this week told me how an aquaintance of hers had suggested she become one of their Facebook mates. Her reaction? “I don’t want them in my real life, never mind inmy cyberspace.”

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