JohnCarvinAs I’m writing this I am working my way through what must be the worst hangover in the world. This bad boy needs international aid and a UN resolution to even be deterred. I very naively, went to a friends ‘free house’ last night for “a couple of beers and xbox, nothing heavy lad”.
Lies. The last thing I remember is looking at an empty bottle of whiskey and trying to work out, who or what I was, why I was drinking whiskey & why my 15 year old brother was talking to me about lesbians. I told him to bugger off. I then spent the entire day in my den, plugged into Maude (my laptop, she’s a real dish) spending hours pressing F5 refreshing my news feed. Living life to the max.
A hundred likes later, a status popped up about how miserable the poster was feeling, I had no idea who on earth this person was, but nonetheless gegged the 106 comment long conversation she then had with her friends, all of whom seemed to be channelling benefit chic to the maximum (I’m allowed to say that because I’m on benefits too).
I won’t post the gory details on here, but let’s just say there had been a certain infidelity committed and it would seem that blessed Lauren was the last to know that Paul was not just friends with Bekki. Naughty. It was better than Jeremy Kyle. There were backstabbing best mates, an irate mother, threats of violence. It was great. I genuinely took my laptop into the kitchen when I was cooking lest I miss anything good! It got to the point where it felt like I was involved, I was taking sides. I wanted to get involved and offer up my services for violence like all the other boys were doing! Then somebody dropped the STD bomb. It was like Christmas. I cheered my team on, (that of the cheated on girl). After the admission/outing of the sexually transmitted problem, things died down much to my dismay. I’m presuming the shit had really hit the fan and it had reached inbox stage.
Despite being like a web based episode of shameless come fat gypsy wedding, reading it all did get me to thinking. I’m a very open person, I believe that sharing problems/ideas that have you is the way to better deal with/develop things. But if I was riddled, I wouldn’t be telling my social network. I mean I even know some of them in real life.
But with the advent of Myface, Spacebook and Twatter, are we now changing our ideas of privacy, what we should share, talk about and spread to everyone we know. Whilst I really did enjoy the show that was Paul & Bekkis love strife, I’m not too sure that I’ll be posting who I’ve slept with and infected just yet. (For the record, I’m not riddled. Yet. Jus’ sayin).
Now this change in what we deem private might just be me being a dried up old prude, but I’m not. Or is it an indication of how we, as a generation have changed and become accustomed to the explicit, sordid and crude? When we were on the playgrounds, somebody said sex and we screamed. Now, in my 20’s somebody says sex & my response is to ask if they’re offering. As my friend Alex put it “perspectives have changed as we grow older what we find shocking now might not be shocking in 10 years time to the people who are 11 now”. That worries me. I would quite like my children to not be accustomed to sex; blood and gore-whores by the age of foetus, and to, one day have to ask me a question that leads to THE TALK rather than find out via exposure, and not the flasher in the park kind.
Call me old fashioned, but I think we as a generation have become over crude, rude and sexualised. Don’t get me wrong, now, in the middle of it I bloody love it. But I think it could have real effects for the youth of tomorrow, they’ll end up tiny tarts and pocket sized prozzies before they even know where Colomendy/PGL is (insert generic school adventure trip, place..).