My thread about TV cliches has run out of steam, so let’s get bang up to date with the here and now. That’s right – I’m talking about 2024, baby! If you’re anything like me, the Malloryesque practice of watching absolutely anything on TV (Open University, Peter Donaldson’s Illustrated Economics, Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan) has been replaced with scrolling through the infinite social media video offerings – curated just for you.
Among these videos are those “influencer” types who make out like they are maverick guerrilla broadcasters, smashing convention and doing it *their* way. But they’re not, are they? They are just as embedded in their format as Brucey on the Generation Game.
1. Start with “Hey What’s up” or “Hey What’s Goin’ on?” – yet another reason why 90s band Four Non-Blondes were pioneering and not an annoying one-hit wonder.
2. Lighting is via of those circular lights so you can see it reflected in their eyes.
3. Subscribe here!
4. Saying “you guys” regardless of nationality.
5. Addressing comments as if there’s an overwhelming number of them.
6. “Live football reaction!” is a small, angry, pale-looking man in his 30s watching a game on a screen. He stares in silence, only breaking his glare to shout “FOR F***’s SAKE!” or similar. He is in the same bedroom he has slept in since he was eight. He sips his Gatorade in the sideways style favoured by athletes.
7. Subscribe here!
8. 99% of confrontation videos are staged.
9. Football footage must be soundtracked by deafening Ibiza doof doof doof
10. Subscribe here!
“I’ve been looking at your posts on Facebook and I would really like to be your friend” usually translates as “I’m a white supremacist who lives on his own in a shack in Arkansas, and I’m really into guns”.
Social media is a blight on all ou lives.
Just sayin…
TikTok was invented as somewhere that orange people can interact with each other.
Memes were invented for people unable to articulate a sentence.
Emojis were invented for people who can grieve for people they have never met, be angry at events they know absolutely nothing about, but who are completely unable to show adult emotions in real life.
IRL was invented as an abbreviation for people unable to differentiate between social media and real life.
IKR!?
An old man writes; through the medium of television, I finally now know the meaning of LMFAO, as a character helpfully said it out loud. I now feel twitter can have my whole informed attention, enabling me to know when to laugh.
An old man answers. I haven’t a clue what LMFAO means. Is it Largely Masculine Feline Alien Offal or maybe Lordly Mice Freak Alison Out?
I am so unhip to the jive daddio.
Let Me Find Another Obelisk.
Lost My Footing And Overbalanced?
Look, Mother Fucker – Aldi’s Open
Lawks, Mother, funny ‘appenstance oracle actually, both informative and reassuring for the IT agnostic.
I thought Appenstance Oracle were a lumpen prog band from Castleford. Learn something new everyday.
That was Appenlike Orrakle aktuaully.
Were
I Hereby Declare Facebook, Meta, Instagram and Twitter Must Stop Using My Personal Information for Business Purposes in Contravention Of The Abu Dhabi Act of 1989 And Any Such Flagrant Violation Of Privacy Laws and Regulations shall be Reported to the Government Police and Justice Departments and Thereby Arrested and Charged With Criminal Activity
Questions left in the Comments after being told “Leave any questions in the Comments and I’ll get to them” are routinely ignored.
Comments are either of the “that sux you blow” or “man that is freaking genius” variety for the same intermediate level cover of the solo on “All Right Now”.
Product support videos are either presented by middle aged know-all bloke (it’s always a bloke) or no one with AI generated voice (always female).
Announcing your emotional response to [bad thing] will substantially contribute to stopping [bad thing] happening. This is called ‘activism’
Twitter political discussions can be very enlightening. They generally go something like this:
Complete stranger 1: I think THIS.
Complete stranger 2: Well I think THAT.
Complete stranger 1: Educate yourself! (plus something about “cognitive dissonance”)
Complete stranger 2: Do your research! (plus something about a “narrative”)
Complete stranger 1: Racist!
Complete stranger 2: Fuck you!
There is also the “read a book” line.
Spot on. Not only on Twitter, but everywhere. Whereas in everyday encounters, people will more often than not treat each other with a degree of courtesy, online the descent into abuse is, too often, almost instantaneous.
The sanctimonious “You think X Y or Z? Do better”
To be followed by :
“I am tired. I am so tired. Of doing the emotional labour of educating people”
“Schools need to drop rote learning and teach critical thinking” (i.e. so then everyone would agree with me).
The sultry, pouting beauty with 8 followers who follows you on Twitter is, sadly, a bot. Block instantly.
I have 9 followers now.
I blocked you
“Why Trump behaves the way he does. A thread 1/213”
You won’t believe what happened next!
Just click this link to install some malware.
Written rule of social media posts: Never read any of them.
To help the older gentlemen in the snug – If the internet and Twitter/Facebook/Instagram was invented in the 50s, this would would have been the relative popularity of well-known people in the decades that followed:
Millions of followers – Diana Dors, Enoch Powell, Lady “Bubbles!” Rothermere, Gertrude Schilling, Jeanette Charles, Liberace, Two-Ton Tessie O’Shea, Bill and Ben.
Hardly any followers – Philip Larkin, Bertrand Russell, Malcolm Muggeridge, Samuel Beckett, Picasso, Dali, The Clangers.
An agreeable pair of lists save for the fact that The Clangers would be enormous on TikTok.
I think you’ve missed out Sabrina in the millions of followers.
You took Sabrina right out of my mouth. I can breathe again.
An image I’m trying hard to shake.
@hubert-rawlinson
What @leedsboy actually wrote was an “agreeable pair of lists”
🤣
Sooner or later someone – usually a man called Godwin – will mention Hitler and the Nazis
“I have cancer/had a terrible accident/lost my partner to cancer/ a terrible accident and here is my/our journey.”
While I’m sure it helps you on your journey and I wish you well I have zero interest so I’m not sure why social media algorithms feel the need to push so many on to my rarely visited feeds.
Alternatively on Twitter/x: “Following” not one single right wing nutter account or E*** M***. “For you”: here are lots of right wing nutters’ posts but above all E*** M*** because he is king of the world.
**** off.
A dead or dying relative/friend/pet is the gift that keeps on giving – you can post all the daft opinions and conspiracies you like, but you’re immune to criticism for as long as you keep playing that card.
Two ticks on the bingo card for when someone says ‘My darling boy was run over and killed last night’, and it turns out to be a dog.
The death of a relative (“My Gran died aged 96 of cancer and I am bereft”) also a staple of shows like X Factor and BGT. (“And I’m doing this for her…she always encouraged me to pursue my dreams wherever they might lead”).
“My REAL friends will share this post”
And…”I know who they’ll be”.
“Here’s a lovely picture of our fur baby”.
Viewers collectively reach for sick bag.
Both my local Facebook groups, in Oz and UK, are infested with fur babies. One day I’m going to crack and type ‘IT’S A FUCKING DOG, YOU MORON!’ and be banned for ever.
Handy evidence, if any more were needed, that we live in an age of abject lunacy. You will doubtless be familiar with the correlative roles of “fur mummy” and “fur daddy”, occasionally used by the pet owners themselves.
Not forgetting Beethoven’s Fur Elise.
Or a bazillion pictures if their human baby.
I DISKARD social media.
That’ll show it. They’ll miss this 63-year-old book reader and prog rock fan.
I don’t see social media making people happier, just more distracted and ineffectual in their day-to-day lives as they waste their time. Here and FB is about as close as I get. I have occasionally had to look at “influencer” content as some patients claimed to do this, and wanted to see what they meant. That was enough to keep me at bay in case it is infectious.
This type of thing keeps reoccurring.
Breaking News: Famous 80s star actress was found dead at four in the morning in an open field… See more
https:
I saw one today as to why Led Zeppelin can’t play concerts in 2025 and a link to a dodgy website.
Oh and bot links to tshirts that they bought at ……
Instead of ‘see more’ can we have ‘Now read on dot dot dot.’
You won’t believe what AW legend Hubert Rawlinson looks like today
You’ll be horrified by how AW legend Hubert Rawlinson lives
The tragedy that still haunts AW legend 40 years on
I know I have to look in the mirror.
You’ll never guess which AW legend this baby grew up to be.
[ginger baby pic]
Pic of pint of beer, in glass with name of brewery you’ve never heard of prominently displayed.
My expensive dinner!
..and oh look! A cat!
A full-frame picture of a cloudless blue sky as seen by physically unco-ordinated
“Influencers” who topple off a warning-laden clifftop and plummet onto that year’s list of Darwin Award-winners
Ginger baby pic? AW legend? It’s Moosey, isn’t it?
“Hey what’s up you guyyyys? Super excited to tell you about how you can make money on writing and selling books on Amazon just by using a few simple tools….”
This woman appears on my feeds quite a bit. She puts together books using mostly free creative websites and generates the text from AI. This turns this into a book using another site and then it is listed on Amazon. She freely admits the content is not written by her and she has no interest or knowledge of the subject matter. If there is a market for such books…why? Who buys the books?
The simple tools are the people who buy them.
@mikethep
Like death and taxes, Scammers have always been with us.
Remember one story about a bloke who ran an ad in the paper saying “
“Send me £5 and an SAE and I’ll tell you how to make a million!!!!!”.
There was another case involving an assaying “Get 50 cigarette lighters for
Just £10!!!!!!”
The moral of the story being be wary of ads with lots of screamers in the headline
I wonder if she is related to the guy with the annoying nasal voice promising you can make a fortune in commercial property (“one million pounds, tax free – there that got your attention!”) if you pay to go on one of his courses.
I wouldn’t have thought you followed Katie Price, BC. You live and learn…
“I saw a cat in my neighbour’s garden. I think it’s lost” OR “A cat has been coming into my garden & keeps mewing. We’ve been feeding it, but I think it’s lost”. Don’t these people understand how cats wander & will always try to scrounge food,
@Timbar
Good luck telling that to Mrs Jaygee…
@Jaygee
My neighbour had taken to giving any visiting cats some milk. He thought he was being kind, but since their stomachs can’t really take it, Tiddles & Co would return home & decorate the dirt box.
“Here’s our clever boy”.
… Picture of dog in garden.
Surely “furrever friend”
Oh God
And when they peg it, they ‘running free over the rainbow’ or some such bollocks…
Rainbow Bridge, if you please.
Bifrost?
If The Afterword is also social media, and I think it is even if we may not like to think of it as such, is there a special set of rules for AW posts?
And why wasn’t I sent them when I joined? (Because they’re unwritten, obvs). Maybe they can be written now.
U ok hun?
Imagine the Afterword rules are like Mornington Crescent rules but much harder.
Was ‘The Clique’ a Word thing or an Afterword thing? I recall it being just the Word…
They’d know.
Both, as you’d either know or read about………. There was certainly ire around frosty welcomes given to newcomers, duly frightened off by in jokes.
Duly Frightened Off By In Jokes – TMFTL
If you know, you know…(taps nose).
I’m talking total bollocks of course. There’s no cliquiness here as far as I can make out.
We did used to have an “ianess”, though..
Not forgetting the lovely niscum.
And is it safe to mention middlerabbit?
Afterword Rules:
1. No lists
2. Except this one
3. Does this count?
4. No
5. Ah.
It’s official! From 1st November Facebook will claim the right to use all your photographs. You need to inform them that they DO NOT have the right to use yours by copying the text below to your status… yada yada yada.
That one. Pops up every year. And every year one of my wife’s friends will post it. To be told yet again it’s cobblers.
I like watches and am in several FB enthusiast groups. This seems to trigger a few ads for ‘luxury’ watches from fly by night charlatans offering tat made in China at $3 a go and marked up to about £350. ‘Your watch, designed and crafted in Yorkshire/Cornwall/The Scottish Highlands by our new family run business’. My arse. Don’t touch them.
The “copy and paste this to your status” thingys are common, and all of them do f*** all (except clog up your timeline with other people posts of duplicate text with the line “try it, it really works!”
(no it don’t)
What’s surprising about these memes that pop up every year or so is that reasonably intelligent people seriously think that sharing a pompous sounding word salad of piffle will somehow inure them to a vaguely defined threat of their data being “stolen”. The phrase stable, door, horse, bolted comes to mind.
Indeed…and when challenged they claim they were doing it just in case it was true.
Yep. That’s what my wife’s friend says. Every time.
@slotbadger
Come on, Mr. Crosspatch! Quit whining about the storm and learn to dance between the raindrops!
@jaygee
Live like no one is watching
Laugh like no one is caring
Love like no one is dancing
*heart emoji*
Live Laugh Love!
Lift Lunge Lurch!
Left Left Right Left!
Loch Lomond Lurgi!
(That’s enough, Ed.)
And that’s Wordwang
Linked in is a rich source of corporate bollocks and estate agent wisdom. Also true life stories like this :
I was on a crowded train the other day and an old homeless-looking woman was sitting next to an angry-looking businessman. He moved away and holding his nose, saying he can’t stand to be near “smelly poor people”. I could see the tears well in the old lady’s eyes so I sat next to her in the seat vacated by the businessman. It turned out that old lady was Bill Gates in disguise and then he gave me a million dollars in cash. He said “you don’t judge a book by its cover, so this is your reward.” The businessman watched all of this and got REAL mad. And then everyone clapped.
It just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The old homeless lady you see on the train might be Bill Gates.
Those stories drag out a loooooooooooooottttttt longer than that, @black-celebration
I know, but I couldn’t do that to you all.
Talking of estate agent wisdom…this fathead is talking about 62 hectares of farmland on the edge of the rapidly expanding Gold Coast, on offer for $182 million and soon to be a major subdivision. Heartfelt my arse…
Disqualified as writer has omitted “journey”
“I know most people will scroll by/not respond”, etc etc…
Because you’re all heartless bastards who, by scrolling by, are ACTUALLY SUPPORTING CANCER.
It’s like Craig Shergold never died for our sins