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I love social media, this is true. I could bore you to tears for paragraphs on the good it performs in modern society, but I am increasingly becoming frustrated and concerned by one particular aspect of it that the last few week’s of news has intensified.
Let’s call it the ‘instant opinion’ problem.
Much has been said about the ‘quick fix’ aspect of the web but it cuts increasingly both ways. Speed is of the essence and when something significant happens we all feel we must Have Something To Say about it and preferably before anyone else.
This leads to several issues:
What this leads to is everyone making a whole lot of noise about things they often don’t really understand. People have always had similar interactions - over dinner, across the water cooler - but in the past we had at least a little breathing space to gather ourselves. It concerns me that we are not only losing the desire (and ability) to consider, analize and chew over subjects but that doing so is in fact becoming almost stigmatised as a sign of a poor mind rather than an educated one.
I don’t have the answers to everything, so I plan not to pretend I do anymore!
It’s times like this when Twitter really comes into its own. As a truly democratic forum, everyone can get involved and have their say, and it’s easy to share information and ideas. And because it’s all so public, it’s very hard for companies to ignore public pressure or hide behind rhetoric. For every 5,000 tweets with a funny cat photo there’s a moment like this, when Twitter remembers what it can really do.
It was truly astonishing to see how angry all sorts of people were with the behaviour of the News of the World, and how eager they were to do something about it. To the Republic of Twitter, now finding its voice on this subject, it clearly wasn’t an ethical minefield, or a thorny legal issue, but a simple case of right and wrong. Morals, as they used to be called. The depths Rupert Murdoch’s paper has sunk to – and questions are now being asked about other police investigations, including that into the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – is extraordinary.
I could just do a regular report on gay pride like all the rest of the LAMEstream media. But this is fucking VICE fucking MAGAZINE, the publication that brought you that story about the Botswanan cowboy metalhead scene. Not wanting to disappoint, I decided to try and hunt down the nichest niche members of the LTGBTBGBQI scene at this year’s London Pride.

LGBT SCUBA DIVERS
“Sometimes regular scuba people won’t want to dive with you. So it’s nice to have a place you can feel safe, ya know?”
Minority rating:
- JAMIE LEE CURTIS TAETE
Oh I love VICE <3