Thursday January 26, 2012
Hello.
It's only day two and Roo's News has already been rebranded Roo's Letter. (Thanks to @chrislunch and @megpickard for the suggestion. Much better. It seems I've just about had the inclination to pun beaten out of me after 13 months at W+K, a place that doesn't like puns at all).
Anyway.
Today
Tom Watson's intern is probably regretting that she posted to @tom_watson's twitter account this afternoon, "I should log out of my twitter so that my intern doesn't twit-rape me..." (http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/162506941019590656). This 'cheeky' offering was followed, 15 minutes later, with a terrified apology, "My boss is in a meeting, i've made a terrible mistake, im very sorry everyone, it wasn't meant to be offensive! logging him off now! sorry!" (http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/162510753369305089). Twenty minutes after that, Tom Watson himself added "I sincerely apologise for the recent tweet. A lesson learned for a young intern. She's also very sorry. I will deal with the matter offline." (http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/162515586797158400).
There were a couple of things that interested me about all of this. The first was spotting the various waves of discussion and commentary as they happened over the space of a few minutes, from initial confusion about whether it was the MP or his intern who had made that initial post, to predictable anger about the trivialisation of rape, to defence of the intern (#savetheintern was soon trending globally) to questioning whether she was actually being paid (#paytheintern, which also gives me a chance to link to the excellent http://fuckyeahfreeinterns.tumblr.com/).
The bigger issue here though, I think, is the fact that a supposedly-intelligent-enough-to-work-as-an-MP's-intern young woman was prepared to use the phrase 'twit-rape' so lightly. I've heard (and shuddered at) the phrase "Fabebook rape", which is sometimes abbreviated to 'frape' (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Frape) meaning posting on a friend's Facebook wall when they leave themselves logged in. So that's a practical joke being described as rape. Words have power and, if I'm honest, the willingness to use such words so lightheartedly confuses and distresses me. I get similarly annoyed when I hear something stupid described as 'dumb' or something inferior described as 'lame'. All of which reminds me of Stewart Lee talking about political correctness in an episode of Heresy on Radio 4 back in May 2007, where he defended political correctness which he described as an "institutionalised politeness" and described its positive effects on society since the 1980s (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee). Let's be nice to each other, eh?
ACTA
What with Wikipedia and Reddit going dark recently, it would have been hard to miss the protests about SOPA and PIPA whichever side of the pond you were on. Another bit of potential internet regulation making people who care about the internet frown is ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/trade-topics/intellectual-property/anti-counterfeiting/). It's spent the past five years being fairly controversial, and gradually made less stupid, all while being covered very little by the press. Well. Over 10,000 people marched on the streets in Poland yesterday to protest the signing of the treaty (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16735219, mainly for the photo in which you can see protesters holding such internetty signs as 'Stop ACTA Like a Boss' and 'ACTA - It's a Trap'). As you'd expect, the EFF have covered it pretty comprehensively (https://www.eff.org/issues/acta) but why hasn't ACTA generating a bigger noise? Should I be afraid? I'm still not sure, but I did find this level headed analysis of the treaty from user justicia311 on Reddit entitled "I've read the final version of ACTA, here's what you need to know about it" (http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the_final_version_of) which, along with the comment thread beneath it, is well worth a read.
Facebook
Do you know what happens when Facebook changes something? I'll tell you. Users get upset (because change is always scary) and marketing people tense up and start writing nervous blog posts about what the changes "really mean for brands". Urgh. I know because I'm as guilty of writing that sort of stuff as anyone (cough http://wklondon.typepad.com/welcome_to_optimism/2011/09/what-do-facebooks-new-timeline-and-open-graph-really-mean-for-brands.html cough). The latest changes which make app permissions in Facebook more prominent (http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/633/) which will definitely get brands and marketing types tense, but for once I think users are going to think it's brilliant. Facebook (rightly) get a hard time on privacy so it's good to see them giving more power and control to their users.
Fact of the day *
You probably already know that you can double-click to select a word. Did you know that you can triple-click to select a whole line? (At least, you can on a Mac. I have not used Windows for ages.) I only discovered this last week and it blew my tiny mind.
* N.B. there may not be a fact every day.
Have a good evening. I'm watching season one of Weeds on DVD. It's quite funny. See you tomorrow.
Yours sincerely
Roo
It's only day two and Roo's News has already been rebranded Roo's Letter. (Thanks to @chrislunch and @megpickard for the suggestion. Much better. It seems I've just about had the inclination to pun beaten out of me after 13 months at W+K, a place that doesn't like puns at all).
Anyway.
Today
Tom Watson's intern is probably regretting that she posted to @tom_watson's twitter account this afternoon, "I should log out of my twitter so that my intern doesn't twit-rape me..." (http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/162506941019590656). This 'cheeky' offering was followed, 15 minutes later, with a terrified apology, "My boss is in a meeting, i've made a terrible mistake, im very sorry everyone, it wasn't meant to be offensive! logging him off now! sorry!" (http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/162510753369305089). Twenty minutes after that, Tom Watson himself added "I sincerely apologise for the recent tweet. A lesson learned for a young intern. She's also very sorry. I will deal with the matter offline." (http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/162515586797158400).
There were a couple of things that interested me about all of this. The first was spotting the various waves of discussion and commentary as they happened over the space of a few minutes, from initial confusion about whether it was the MP or his intern who had made that initial post, to predictable anger about the trivialisation of rape, to defence of the intern (#savetheintern was soon trending globally) to questioning whether she was actually being paid (#paytheintern, which also gives me a chance to link to the excellent http://fuckyeahfreeinterns.tumblr.com/).
The bigger issue here though, I think, is the fact that a supposedly-intelligent-enough-to-work-as-an-MP's-intern young woman was prepared to use the phrase 'twit-rape' so lightly. I've heard (and shuddered at) the phrase "Fabebook rape", which is sometimes abbreviated to 'frape' (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Frape) meaning posting on a friend's Facebook wall when they leave themselves logged in. So that's a practical joke being described as rape. Words have power and, if I'm honest, the willingness to use such words so lightheartedly confuses and distresses me. I get similarly annoyed when I hear something stupid described as 'dumb' or something inferior described as 'lame'. All of which reminds me of Stewart Lee talking about political correctness in an episode of Heresy on Radio 4 back in May 2007, where he defended political correctness which he described as an "institutionalised politeness" and described its positive effects on society since the 1980s (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee). Let's be nice to each other, eh?
ACTA
What with Wikipedia and Reddit going dark recently, it would have been hard to miss the protests about SOPA and PIPA whichever side of the pond you were on. Another bit of potential internet regulation making people who care about the internet frown is ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/trade-topics/intellectual-property/anti-counterfeiting/). It's spent the past five years being fairly controversial, and gradually made less stupid, all while being covered very little by the press. Well. Over 10,000 people marched on the streets in Poland yesterday to protest the signing of the treaty (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16735219, mainly for the photo in which you can see protesters holding such internetty signs as 'Stop ACTA Like a Boss' and 'ACTA - It's a Trap'). As you'd expect, the EFF have covered it pretty comprehensively (https://www.eff.org/issues/acta) but why hasn't ACTA generating a bigger noise? Should I be afraid? I'm still not sure, but I did find this level headed analysis of the treaty from user justicia311 on Reddit entitled "I've read the final version of ACTA, here's what you need to know about it" (http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the_final_version_of) which, along with the comment thread beneath it, is well worth a read.
Do you know what happens when Facebook changes something? I'll tell you. Users get upset (because change is always scary) and marketing people tense up and start writing nervous blog posts about what the changes "really mean for brands". Urgh. I know because I'm as guilty of writing that sort of stuff as anyone (cough http://wklondon.typepad.com/welcome_to_optimism/2011/09/what-do-facebooks-new-timeline-and-open-graph-really-mean-for-brands.html cough). The latest changes which make app permissions in Facebook more prominent (http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/633/) which will definitely get brands and marketing types tense, but for once I think users are going to think it's brilliant. Facebook (rightly) get a hard time on privacy so it's good to see them giving more power and control to their users.
Fact of the day *
You probably already know that you can double-click to select a word. Did you know that you can triple-click to select a whole line? (At least, you can on a Mac. I have not used Windows for ages.) I only discovered this last week and it blew my tiny mind.
* N.B. there may not be a fact every day.
Have a good evening. I'm watching season one of Weeds on DVD. It's quite funny. See you tomorrow.
Yours sincerely
Roo
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