There's no where to hide for the i-kids

I was unfortunate enough to find myself on the nightmare train to Victoria recently. It's not usually a nightmare, usually I read, daydream or write. But this train was befitting of a nightmare considering it had fallen victim to collecting all the unruly kids from each dank corner of England. I could laugh along with the hairy-nostrilled businessman opposite, at the toddler next to us yelling "Look mummy a pig!" at a passing herd of cows.

But the school kids - it was like sitting in a cage of chimps that had inhaled half a ton of M&M’s.

Still, I couldn’t help but turn my ears to the little snippets of conversation that were forcing themselves in to my personal space.

Mediocre popular kid/greasy hair: “Well we are gonna egg ‘em on Friday, I think it’s Friday, we’re be on half term?”

Lead girl/bit spotty: “Yeah, but check Facebook though yeah, ‘cos it like right near Emily’s birthday thing, she said to invite youz lot, in half term yeah,? Check the events list.”

Class clown: “We have half term?”

{General squawking laughter.}

These kids have so much room for social manoeuvres. Their diarys fill up over half term; they check dates, plan meetings and negotiate clashes. It might be for drunken birthday parties, shopping or even egging (Seriously?) but social media is giving them the chance to get to grips with juggling their personal life from a young age. Not a bad thing up to a point.

The build up to the event is significantly more important than the event itself. A head count of who is attending and the expectant commentary of the potential ‘carnage’-(apparently this is another new addition to the i-kids vocab. – I had to check at Urban dictionary before I felt suitably informed enough to use it)

These guys should stop and think though. All those you tube videos, Facebook photos and infuriatingly detailed statuses will come back to bite their eventually grown up, highly embarrassed arse.

I appreciate hugely that I am on the cusp of the MTV /Tamagotchi generation. I can still indulge in suagar coating the horrors of being a teenager. I can forget the questionable clothing during my hippy faze (purple flared cords, fish net tops and beaded trainers) and the dippy high school boyfriends who you never really saw ( guy at bus stop/ ‘stud muffin’/one with a yellow fetish). I can erase the bitchy girls that called me names, the uncomfortable feeling when your best friend is off sick and the constant immature banter. I can almost look back fondly. i have a few faded photographs and an agile memory.

But these i-kids. Man. They are going to have the stark, unforgiving video footage and photos, a documentary of all the bits in life you stumble through hard and often before you learn to tie your laces and re-route. Good luck to you. I reckon now might be the time to de-tag and delete accordingly.

The lost art of conversation

(… and yes, I know I’m completely contradicting myself, I continue to be an avid user and lover of social networking sites)

The bright greeting of my Mac book is a sound I have come to associate with getting in from a long day and finally relaxing. I mindlessly watch as I am ‘remembered’ by my various social networks. Bombarded almost immediately with a stream of identical greetings I barely acknowledge whoever is home inquiring about my day. This need to present a simulated image of our idealised self has become an addiction, we constantly asses our represented persona. Surely it is better to live in the moment and enjoy life rather than religiously worrying yourself with recording what are largely posed memories? Our relationship with a large amount of these’ friends’ is virtual and your only understanding of their true self is what they decide to tell you on their status updates or their Mr Men personality quiz results. So occupied are we with maintaining up to the second knowledge of everyone else’s lives, and making sure our thoughts are published, we are even beginning to tell people what, in reality, are very personal thoughts. It is all so idealised, so specific; the information given so considered and compromised. Yes of course its helpful to maintain work contacts and relationships and get instant feedback from targets for research and generally keep ‘connected’, but it has become, for many, an obsession...

(for full article please email christinepettman@hotmail.com)

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Let’s keep it short.

It has slowly come to my attention, more vividly than the usual acknowledgement and complaints from ‘adult’ observers, that I find myself on the cusp of a generation that cannot be bothered; to cook, (order fast food) to read, (skim the net) to wait for a film, (instant access online) to write, (just text) to talk, (just email) - it goes on, and the underlying thread of all this impatience is technology. What has fast paced living done to our language? What of the habits it has induced in an entire generation that no longer even care to articulate a full word, let alone a full sentence?

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inspired by long analytical conversations with the girlies, special thanks to K.B! XOX

Relationships. A wireless connection?

After a secret indulgent few hours of sex and the city re runs, I noted that even in the last series the importance of technology in relationships is completely brushed over. Yes that sounds clinical and inhumane almost, but it’s a rather guilty truth that rests beneath our sub-consciousness and supposedly moral superiority as women who ‘have it all’. Yet surely our adamant dismissal only re enforces our obvious avoidance of the fact, that we have more reliance than ever on technology to help us form and sustain relationships?

In life generally the ease of communication is so readily available, so effortless that we barely acknowledge our use of it. My grandparents’ generation waste hours in pre-arrangements to rendezvous at a later date, working themselves in to a bickering turmoil of potential times and places. I agonisingly listen, fully aware that this triviality of pre arrangement can be cut out completely through a simple text. Technology can make spontaneity more than just a thought in our crammed days, but a realistic possibility. An unexpected phone call and free window of time at the right moment can delightfully shift the flow of your day in to a new path. For general practicality then, it keeps things efficient and makes time for sudden opportunities to arise and experiences to be had.

But with relationships it makes things tricky. A generation that never turns off their phones and are constantly reachable through this permanently open portal of communication, leave little space for solitude and uninterrupted time with their own thoughts or even with a real person...

(for full article email christinepettman@hotmail.com)