Web 2.0 Finally Gets a Relevant Voice

Investment bank Morgan Stanley has published a report detailing the media habits of young people, to a “flurry of interest by media executives and investors”, The Guardian reported today.

The reason this report has generated such a buzz is because it was written by 15-year-old intern Matthew Robson. It was published on the front page of The Financial Times, which is going to do his CV the world of good, and I expect his mates who took work experience placements at the local cattery or leisure centre are kicking themselves now.

However, surely I’m not the only one surprised at how much of a tizz all these fund managers and CEOs have gotten themselves into over these ‘revelations’, which proved to be “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights [they] have seen.” Good grief. Anyone would think that they’d been presented with a map to Atlantis.

The simple fact is, they wanted to know the media habits of kids, so they asked one. Why this episode has proved to be so illuminating is beyond me. Had they not considered asking young people – the people more or less responsible for what’s hot and what’s not in Web 2.0 – for their thoughts before? Apparently, unbelievably, not.

Right, they declared in the boardroom.

The youth of today, they’re the ones in touch with up to the minute developments in technology. They’re the ones utilising all these social media networks that we’ve heard so much about. As the next generation, they will largely shape the future of this company. If only there was some way to find out what they actually like and don’t like.

The focus group leader bangs his fist on the table and mops his aching brow.

Think, think, THINK! How can we find out about the media habits of young people today?

And then Matthew walks past carrying a tray of tea and all these highly paid media analysts look at each other as the penny drops.

Good Lord! They exclaim. We’ve a young person right here! Let’s see if he has any suggestions for getting hold of this information…

Quite an impressive array of awards, have Morgan Stanley. Not so hot on common sense though.

Signing On

Dun dun duuuuuuun. It’s happened. I’ve signed on for Job Seeker’s Allowance. I am officially on the dole.

Despite all the propaganda depicting smiling, presentable women looking over the shoulders of smart-looking young adults as they fill in simple paperwork while sitting at ergonomically designed beech effect desks, I at best anticipated my first encounter with the Job Centre to be tolerable. And in fairness, it was tolerable. I didn’t storm out effing and blinding like the kid who was fifteen minutes late and subsequently missed his appointment. I didn’t stand in the middle of the room shouting my mouth off about the ’stupidity of it all’ like the fellow whose benefit had been stopped because he hadn’t signed on for two weeks. I didn’t even make a racist slur against the receptionist when she told us they were running late, unlike the young woman sat next to me with two mixed race children. The fact, then, that I emerged from the building without upsetting any of the staff or other ‘customers’ (that’s right, I’m a customer) would suggest something of a passable success.

However, if these fortnightly meetings with my ‘dedicated employment advisor’ continue in the same vein as today’s, I may well become that person standing in the middle of the room, shouting incoherently. Nothing personal against the lady in question; I’m sure she’s spent many years reeling off the same speech to disinterested mouth-breathers and bright, articulate folk alike. However, I did take slight umbrage with the disparaging look she gave me when I mentioned that she’d spelled ‘The Gardien’ incorrectly. And her stand-offishness when I told her I do most – nay, all – my job hunting online. ‘COMPUTER NEEDS A NEWSPAPER’ were her actual words (hence Gardiengate).

Then she gave me a sheet of paper with boxes to fill in every time I ‘do something proactive towards employment’. I told her that I complete, on average, three job applications a day and check all the relevant job sites, on rotation, from the moment I get up, to the hour before I go to bed (even though I know I won’t find anything new then, I just physically can’t stop myself). ‘Well you only need to do three things a week,’ she replied, to which I quipped, ‘If I only did three things a week I’d never get another job.’ Cue more disparaging looks.

Then we had a little chat about the kind of work I’m looking for – assistant editor, editorial assistant, etc. ‘So, sub-editor, then?’ she announced.

‘Um, not really no.’

‘Well, if not editor jobs, then something below it, right? So a sub-editor. I’ll put down sub-editor.’

‘Well actually, that’s a completely different role.’

More disparaging looks.

And finally, just before I left, I was told that if I hadn’t found employment within nine weeks, I would be required to attend a course that would teach me how to ‘effectively search for a job.’ Something in my otherwise stony-faced expression must have twitched then, because I got another disparaging look and was told, ‘We can’t all be sub-editors, you know.’

Is Everybody Having a Goooood Time?

Scream if you wanna go faster! Throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care! And so on.

Apparently unemployment isn’t all doom and gloom after all. In fact, it’s so not doom and gloom that this report by the LA Times (admittedly a little old now) has branded unemployment ‘FUNemployment’. Yeah!

Says the article, “It may not have entered our daily lexicon yet, but a small army of social media junkies with a sudden overabundance of time is busy Tweeting: ‘Funemployment road trip to Portland.’ ‘Funemployment is great for catching up on reading!’ ‘Averaging 3 rounds of golf a week plus hockey and bball. Who needs work?’

“Buoyed by severance, savings, unemployment checks or their parents, the funemployed do not spend their days poring over job listings. They travel on the cheap for weeks. They head back to school or volunteer at the neighborhood soup kitchen. And at least till the bank account dries up, they’re content living for today.”

Yeah we are! Woooo! Road trip anyone? I’ve got loads of time to kill! Oh, wait…sorry, my mistake. I was, in my deep pit of unemployment (UNemployment) related despair, busy fantasising that I was someone else because this is definitely not the situation I’m in at the moment.

I personally am ‘buoyed’ by neither severance or savings. I have accepted the charitable donation of rent-free accommodation from my parents, but they certainly don’t see me around the golf course three times a week, and tomorrow, for the first time in my life and after nearly three months unemployed, I shall be signing on for JSA. And I suspect, unless I’ve gotten the wrong end of this benefits malarkey, that my weekly payment from Brown et al is not going to support me while I go travelling on the cheap for ‘weeks on end.’

Furthermore, I’m physically unable to spend time away from the computer. Every minute that I’m not vigorously refreshing my email or scouring the web for jobs is time spent in a chronic state of anxiety and twitchiness; job related things could be happening and I’d be too busy flouncing around making margaritas and catching up on my reading to notice.

Perhaps this is indicative of the difference in attitude towards work between us and those crazy yanks, or perhaps that article was written predominantly on the back of interviews with kids whose parents all well off enough to buy them a golf course should their wee hearts desire it.

Perhaps though, Fifel had the right idea all along and the streets of America really are paved with gold. If society can, in the face of foreclosures and bankruptcy and redundancies, kick its feet up and think about hitting the beach instead of looking for a new job, then that’s a society I’d gladly make a pilgrimage to. If I can take my laptop.

Cheer Up, (Neon) Goth

Unable to deal with the claustrophobic politics of countryside living for more than four days at a time (See blog post entitled The Claustrophobic Politics of Countryside Living, coming soon), I fled back to Cardiff last weekend with the view to heading to Bristol to see the much acclaimed Banksy exhibition.

Unfortunately, the queues were so long and the weather so bakingly hot that we decided to give it a miss. It’s alright though, because what mine wretched eyes encountered not long before this was no doubt just as memorable. Outside Cardiff Central, dozens – nay, scores – of teenage lads had gathered, all wearing the most stomach churning rainbow of neon and fluoro. Initially I thought they might be part of a travelling theatre group, or possibly French exchange kids (you know how they are), but no.

And they all just lounged around apathetically, looking – in a ridiculous contrast to their super-cheerful attire – mopey and sullen. Which, of course, isn’t unusual for groups of disaffected youths, but they were just so shockingly bright. And they were wearing diamond earrings and had what looked like fake tans. These thirteen year old boys had fake tans.

Then I noticed one of them had a stereo; I suppose akin to what the older generations might have called a ‘boombox’. Certainly in keeping with the retro fluoro theme they had going on, I thought, until they turned it on and what trickled out of the speakers at such a pathetically low volume was not angry metal or sweary rap, but a happy hardcore remix of The Smurfs theme tune.

And they all just stood there, in their eye wateringly bright hoodies, with their fake tans and huge diamond earrings glinting in the sunshine, listening to The Smurfs and sighing occasionally as they stared at the floor, looking despairingly lost.

Internet culture, methinks, has a lot to answer for.

24 Going on 14; Moving Home

So I have, like the prodigal son, returneth to my parents’ abode. Given that we’re currently experiencing the hottest weather this year I think that the moving faff yesterday went quite well, all things considered.

However, I’ve been back for just over 24 hours and already I’m considering taking off to London and working in a strip club (probably more money to be had than journalism, chortle chortle). The reasons for this are already vast in number, but lest I regress entirely into my 14 year-old self I shall refrain from describing them in all their infuriating irritating glory. Nonetheless I will say the following: Don’t ever let your mother near your personal possessions, just in case she picks up something *ahem* private, and then you have to sit opposite her at dinner, not meeting her eye but listening to her berate you for having the audacity to smoke outside, when she herself smoked around you until you were 18. Just saying, is all…

Remember the Shire, Mr Frodo?

The unthinkable is happening. I’m moving back to my parents’ house.

Thanks to a ‘clerical error’ by my housemate, it turns out that we don’t have the contract on our lovely house until the end of August. We, in fact, have to be out of here this weekend. And since I’m still unemployed and still unable to bring myself to start claiming benefits, I can’t afford more deposits and bonds and agency fees. So Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee have found themselves rooms in Cardiff with a friend of a friend, and I’m back to rural Herefordshire where the electricity is generated by windmills and ruddy-faced people look at you funny with their mad starin’ eyes.

As I write this, I’m surrounded by boxes and bags and all that superfluous crap you seem to accumulate without even realising it. The number of pencil sharpeners I’ve collected over the years is startling. The volume of novelty key rings is even worse. But it’s ok; I’m on top of the packing. Having spent less than a year in every house I’ve lived in over the last five years (all nine of them), I’m something of a packing wizard now. And it’s not the inevitable bureaucratic rubbish that I’m stressed about. Having spent a fair chunk of time on the phone to electricity providers, gas suppliers, phone companies and the like, I’ve found that any sense of fear and apprehension I once felt when in contact with them has fast dissipated and given way to continued irritation and indignance. And I do love being indignant. So that’s not the problem.

The problem is, obviously, the fact that I’m moving back to my parents’ house. There’ll be no more staggering in at 4am for drunken Wii battles, mainly because they live 25 miles away from the nearest nightclub (if you could call a room full of amply sized rugby shirt wearing farmers a ‘nightclub’), and public transport in the area leaves an awful lot to be desired. Two buses a day, but only if there’s an R in the month and the moon is in Capricorn. And anyway, I doubt very much Dad is going to be game for a Monkey Ball tournament at that hour. There’ll be no more popping round to friends’ houses for a cup of tea and an afternoon of Miami Ink, because all my friends from Herefordshire have, quite sensibly, moved away, or live in another village and as such ‘popping round’ necessitates a half hour drive. Plus, to watch Miami Ink you need Sky, which requires a satellite dish, which to the rah-rahs would ruin the appearance of their chocolate box period houses and to the serfs cause them to cower in fear of such technological witchcraft. And then there’s the proverbial ‘Where are you going?’ ‘What time will you be back?’ ‘Dinner’s ready NOW’ etc.

So, a complete lifestyle change; a regression into my teenage years coupled with this hideous sense of failure. They’ve only just gotten rid of my younger sister and now their eldest is shuffling home at the grand age of 24, tail between her legs, head down and mumbling apologies.

So until I get a job, blog entries from this point, then, will come from a more rural climate. Provided, of course, I can get my laptop hooked up to the windmill.

Cowboy, ilk PDF you later!

A couple of weeks ago I got a new phone. It’s touch screen. Swish, I know. So enamoured was I with its sleek body and technological prowess that I managed to throw it on the floor as soon as I got it out of the box. Still, unless that’s somehow fried its insides, I doubt very much that my clumsiness is responsible for the single, overbearing issue I have with it: its predictive text programming.

Unlike a lot of my philistine friends, I’ve always been a fan of predictive text, and my last phone and I got along marvellously in this respect. However, this new one? (Which is manufactured by the same company as the last). Not so much.

For a start, it seems to have really strange word preference programming. Type ‘anyway’ and ‘cowboy’ comes up first. I ask you, how often do you use the word ‘cowboy’ in a text?

Then it gets quite insulting and assumes you can’t spell, so tries to help you along a bit. Not happy with ‘the’? You must mean ‘tidying’. No? How about ‘undying’? Not that either? Come on come on come on, we’re texting here! ‘Viewing’? ‘Chewing’? ‘Undulating’?

It also seems to really, really dislike apostrophes. On most models you can just scroll through the options available from the symbol key (usually #1) and there it is, floating around happily waiting to mark omissions and possessives. Seems like Samsung (there, I said it) got no respec’ for this little fella since they’ve BANISHED him to the second page (of nine) of the symbols menu, accessed outside of the text box. And when you think about the nature of most texts – I’m going to be late / I’ve got a cold / It’s at 8pm / There’s a dress code, etc – this is a bit of a blinkin’ problem for people like myself, who find that the grating sight of an un-apostrophed ‘Im’ makes them twitchy and uncomfortable. I hasten to add, as well, that this isn’t just a predictive text issue. Even if you’ve got a lot of time to kill and fancy some old school input-each-letter-at-a-time texting, you still have to arse around finding the apostrophe.

This in itself creates a whole world of text based drama, because after inserting the apostrophe, you have to type the remaining letters, which the phone doesn’t recognise, so it starts throwing panicked and ill thought-out suggestions instead. Example: I’m typing the word ‘they’ll’. This comes out as ‘they’lloyd’. If I want to type ‘I’ve’, Samsung thinks what I’m really after is ‘I’Tesco’, followed by ‘I’veggie’ and ‘I’technology’.

I suspect the ‘I’Tesco’ thing is my fault though, as I deigned to add a word to the phone’s ‘dictionary’. Similarly, I added ‘PDF’ and ‘HR’ to its bank of wisdom, and given their key correlation with ’see’ and ‘is’, they’ve now got preferential treatment over ALL OTHER WORDS. I guess it’s trying to be helpful, but I detect a hint of maliciousness when all I want to do is send off a quick 20 second text and I end up spannering around for ages trying to make ‘I’lloyd PDF how it goes. HR Dave coming?’ into something people might be able to understand. With hindsight perhaps it’s cleverer than I gave it credit for. Maybe it’s getting back at me for dropping it, after all.

Ink Yer Shoulder…? Pt 2

Props to everyone who voted for my new career direction. I have to be honest though, I get the impression that a lot of the voters were kindly old ladies who stumbled upon my blog after mashing the keys wildly in an attempt to dial up AOL, hence career suggestions like ‘Find a man and have children’.

Other eye-opening oh god it’s so clear why didn’t I think of that before? suggestions included ‘Be a poet’ and ‘Publish a book’. Both of which obviously came from people who live on air and daylight alone. Sadly, I’m one of those materialistic types that need food and stuff, and as such I don’t think these are immediately viable options.

Lots of suggestions for cake making, although I know who voted for this and they just want free cake, or were thinking about cake at the time, or had just had a piece of cake. Therefore results in this field cannot be trusted.

A surprising 15% of votes suggested that sticking with journalism would be the most sensible thing to do. Clearly voters in this category fall into three brackets: 1) People that have never actually read my blog before, or indeed any kind of news-based media, 2) People that are my parents, who ran around their village commandeering everyone’s IP address to vote for this option, lest I never actually manage to establish myself on any kind of career ladder, 3) People that are having a laugh. I also feel a bit insulted in that while 15% of people voted I stick with journalism, no-one, NO-ONE, has any faith in my tattooing ability. You have eyes, don’t you? Did you not see that picture?

Other great suggestions included: children’s TV presenter, drag racer and super hero. Unfortunately, I don’t really get on with kids, so I’ll have to veto the first one. As for drag racing, because I live in Cardiff and not near California’s NHRA, I think I might be a bit disadvantaged. Also, I drive a Rover.

However, I can certainly get on board with the super hero thing. If I take all the energy and effort I’m putting into finding a new job into learning to fly or shooting balls of fire from the palms of my hands, I’ll be saving the day left, right and centre in no time, right? Right? Oh.

Ink yer Shoulder, Gov’ner?

I can’t really say what masochistic impulse inspired me to do this, but just now I sat down and figured out how many days I’ve been without gainful employment. The answer is 46. That’s just over six weeks, which, when you’re a kid and on your summer holidays, seems like a lifetime. And when you’re sat within the same four walls day after day trawling through the same web pages you have saved in your bookmarks as ‘FML’, slowly being forced into one corner of your desk by an ever-increasing army of used mugs and bowls that once housed instant noodles, it seems like a lot longer than that, I’m telling you.

So, obviously I need to do something else – but what? Something that will indulge my creative side, while delivering some money (unlike freelancing, by the way. This video sums that up nicely). Luckily, it turns out there are innumerable creative jobs out there, most of which I’m already more than qualified for, mostly because I’m not a fuckwit. Behold:

TATTOO ARTIST
Now I’m no Leonardo da Vinci, but I can sketch my way around a variety of basic shapes and stick men. I’m even down with watercolour pencils! So, imagine my surprise when, after countless hours spent slumped on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon watching Miami Ink, I learnt there’s absolutely no skill involved in this craft whatsoever. See? I could do that with my eyes closed. Literally.

CAKE MAKER
Obviously I’m not talking about being a baker. That’s hot, sweaty, back-breaking work. Not for me thanks, I’m a creative type. I mean this kind of thing. Can you believe that’s a cake? And the best bit? After a lengthy discussion with a soon-to-be-married friend, it turns out that as soon as you stick the word ‘wedding’ in front of it, you can whack the price up ten-fold. Lots of cashmoney potential in this one, and it would seem that I already fulfil the basic entry level requirements, in that I have eyes and am not a five year old child, unlike this cake wizard.

HAIR AND MAKEUP ARTIST
I used to know a girl who was adamant she was going to go to ‘beauty school’. In the event she ended up doing a journalism degree is now probably walking the beaches of Falmouth fighting seagulls for chips, but I do remember wondering what sort of thing could be taught at beauty school. If you’re a girl, chances are you’ve been twiddling with your hair for years – certainly since it was long enough to get it irrevocably caught around your mother’s cylinder hairbrush – and we’ve all been there with the ill-advised make up judgements. Beauty school ain’t gonna prepare you for that.
I put on make up and style my hair every day, so I don’t see why I can’t do it for a living. Pretty sure I could a better job on Pammers than this, and hell, if you’ve got enough hairspray then this beautiful, feminine and practical hair style is a breeze. Give me a job, Max Factor.

INTERIOR DECORATOR
Admittedly this one ’s likely to be harder to crack because my name is not Olivia and I don’t have a rich Daddy to finance my half-arsed attempts at redecorating the boutique apartments of all my trendy Chelsea friends. However, if someone comes to me requesting their living room be transformed into an unsettling political nightmare of the Savannah, I’m pretty sure I’d be able to pull it off.

So help me out. What’s it to be?

The Comeback Kids Aren’t Alright

If the continual cycles of bleeptro adorning every media facet of NME are anything to go by, it would seem that it doesn’t really take that much effort to create a decent track these days (check this out for hours of endless fun). Gone are the days when bands were famed for their instrumental talent – it’s all about crunkcore and horrorhop and electro now. Which is fine. I move with the times, you know.

However, it would seem that said bands are reluctant to accept defeat on the genre-trend battle ground. Bands like Green Day, for example. They’ve been kicking around for an unbelievable 22 years now. That’s older than most of the viewers that were tuned into NME TV the other day, when the channel (along with nearly every other ‘alternative music station’) seemed hell bent on cramming in as much Green Day as possible. Why? Because after FIVE years, the band have finally released something new. And it’s just so blah.

“Do you know the enemy? Do you know your enemy? Gotta know the enemy, wahay!” shouts Billie Joe Armstrong, over and over and over again. COME ON GREEN DAY. Yes, once you were a pivotal music force against ‘the establishment’, but Jesus. It’s like you’re not even trying anymore.

The same can be said for perennial oddball Marilyn Manson. In his glory days he held in his hands the fear and ignorance of thousands of parents everywhere. He was ‘responsible’ for the Columbine High School massacre, after all, and kids who listened to his music were dark and had problems. But now? He’s 40 years old, had an affair with a 19 year old despite (then) being married to extreme hottie Dita Von Teese and his new album is nothing short of an uncomfortable parody of himself. Pretty as a Swastika? Yawn. I Have To Look Up Just To See Hell? You don’t say. Unkillable Monster? So it would seem. Brian, your crazy shiz just doesn’t wash anymore, as you could probably tell by the sales of your last album, Eat Me, Drink Me. Time to bow out gracefully, eh?

Two examples, then, of the musical dead coming back to life. But three’s a trend, right? So, tempted as I was to include The Manic Street Preachers’ desperate clutch at straws with their new album Journal For Plague Lovers, I considered my current residency in Wales and thought better of it. Luckily though, a much more depressing option has come to light in the form of The Bangles. Yes, they of Eternal Flame, Manic Monday and Walk Like An Egyptian fame. Reports suggest that, as I write this, the band are busy squirreling away in the studio producing a new album.

Knowing your enemy and unkillable monsters are, at least, prevalent (and marketable!) issues on the social landscape at the moment, so unless The Bangles are gonna get crunk on the ass of the music industry – which I’m sure we can all agree would be an amazing spectacle that I for one would pay money to see – I suspect their efforts may well be in vain, and they will too be relegated to the ranks of once prominent bands who’ve had their day. Like the drunken uncle on the dancefloor at a wedding, perhaps they should just leave it to the kids now.