Poornima Manco

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social media

The Mystery of the Missing Mentor

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Many, many moons ago, when I first began writing as a hobby, the only way I knew how to get any validation was to submit my short stories to various competitions. This was well before social media, and I’d scroll through different sites on the internet to get a feel for different competitions, their submission guidelines, and whether the price of the entry ticket included some kind of review or assessment of the submitted piece. Now these were the best bang for my buck. Whether I won, whether I even got an honourable mention, was immaterial, because I was getting something invaluable—feedback. To a novice, this feedback was worth its weight in gold. After all, how else was I to know if I was any good?

Amongst the very many competitions that I submitted to, there was one spearheaded by a retired English professor who, for a small fee, would give a breakdown of what worked and didn’t work in a particular story. Over time, and multiple submissions, I came to regard him as something of a mentor. He was a fair but forthright judge and his comments/suggestions always served to improve my work. Perhaps he developed a certain fondness for me too, as one day, quite out of the blue, I received a friend request from him on Goodreads.

Back in the day, when social media was a nascent entity, a multi-headed hydra that no one knew much about, we signed up for nearly every account going. If you’d asked me to distinguish between LinkedIn and Twitter, or Facebook and MySpace, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Goodreads was another one of the ilk. To someone who loved books, wanted to write books (however deeply suppressed the desire might have been), finding myself amongst other book lovers in a virtual world was a dream come true. This was where my mentor (who shall remain unnamed) reached out to befriend me. I still remember my squeal of delight in a bar in Budapest. I was on a family holiday with my husband and daughters, and when that little red notification popped up next to the bell icon, I clicked on it to discover that Prof X wanted to be friends!

Looking back, perhaps he was new to the platform too and was befriending every Tom, Dick, Jane and Joan on it. I might have been one of the many “suggested” friends that he clicked on. At any rate, I took it as a good sign. The next year, I signed up for his email course designed to help new writers like me improve our craft. The course was good and to my eternal dismay, I consigned it to the memory of an old laptop that crashed, and I could never recover the contents. Long story short, this man was instrumental in getting me off my mark and on the writing track, however slow a runner I might have been. (I remember him saying something about reining in the metaphors… hmmm!)

Anyway, as the years went on, and I got more serious about my writing, I began submitting (and placing) in more prestigious competitions. In the interim, Prof X had wound down his competition/feedback site. So, imagine my surprise when one day I received an email from him. When I opened it, I found it was actually a missive from his daughter who said that her father had had cancer and had passed away a few weeks ago. She was informing all his contacts and emailing all his previous students.

I was shocked and saddened. Prof X hadn’t seemed that old, but that doesn’t mean a thing with cancer, which is a cruel and formidable foe. For many days after, I would think of the Prof and the many pointers he had given me all those years ago. I prayed for his soul to rest in peace and hoped he hadn’t suffered too much.

More years went by. Now I was a published author, and long and winding as the road might have been, the destination had always been books. My own books of short stories and women’s fiction. Books that were sold on Amazon and Apple, Nook and Kobo. I was nowhere near giving up the day job (which I still enjoy very much) but slowly I was building an alternate career, one that I hoped would take me through retirement and into my dotage.

I was still active on Goodreads, but more as an author than a reader. I knew now that it was bad form to slate another author’s books or try too hard to promote one’s own. I refrained from doing both, only occasionally commenting about a new release, or liking a favourable review. So, the next thing that happened shocked the living daylights out of me!

One day, as was my habit, I wandered into Goodreads and posted a brief comment about a forthcoming release. Moments later, I noticed someone had liked my status. I clicked on to find out who…

Prof X had liked my comment!

What???

I thought he’d long passed on.

Had I imagined it?

I tried looking for the email from his daughter, but that had disappeared alongside the course and possibly my sanity.

Was Prof X alive and kicking? And if so, why had his daughter lied? If not, who had taken over his Goodreads profile, and why?

Questions that circled in my mind like vultures. I nearly reached out to him, but then wondered how to introduce his demise in the interaction?

“Dear Sir,

Is it true that you died several years ago? If so, how are you performing this miraculous act of functioning on Goodreads from the Hereafter?”

Nope. I slunk back into my shell, terribly confused and forevermore bewildered by the turn of events.

I wish I could tell you I solved the mystery. I didn’t. I’ve had no further contact with the Prof, and one day I found he had disappeared from my friends list, never to be seen again.

But what I can tell you is this. Once a person has passed on, their social media handles need to be retired too. This instance was the first in what has now become the norm. I see my Instagram stories being viewed by the spouse of a friend who died not too long ago. I see clueless people wishing deceased friends on Facebook on their birthdays. I get jarring reminders of social media anniversaries with people who are well beyond the veil now.

Stop. Just stop.

Much as I would like eternal life for all my friends and family, social media is not the place to acquire that status. Can we all set something in place whereby once we are gone, our social handles disappear too? I’d like to do that for myself. I don’t want my grinning face popping up on anyone’s birthday reminders list after my demise. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to my dead self, either.

Meanwhile, Prof X, if you are reading this, please could you just sort it out once and for all? Are you still amongst us? And if not, does the great beyond have its own social network? If it does, is it as hellish and confusing as the one here?

Oh, wait. Maybe Fire and Brimstone are just alternate names for…

 

 

 

A necessary evil?

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So, I took a month off social media in June. This really meant no Facebook, Messenger, Instagram or Whatsapp for an entire month. I have done this previously when going on holiday, as a means of staying ‘in the moment’, rather than living with a screen permanently attached to my hands. Each time I have felt happy, grounded and carefree. And each time, I have wished not to come back to social media at all.

So why do I return? Why can’t I dispense with it altogether if, in the words of Mary Kondo, it is no longer ‘sparking any joy’ within me?

Social media was meant to be a way to connect us to one another. A way to reignite past relationships, reach out across time zones and continents and bridge the gap that time and distance may have created between families and friends. To begin with, it was hugely exciting. Who didn’t want to know what happened to one’s third grade crush? Or, have the ability to be able to call one’s dad for free at anytime, from anywhere? Who didn’t want to be able to display the pretty pictures from a fun weekend at the park, or show off (subtly, of course) the last exotic vacation one had been on? So far, so harmless.

Then it began to morph into something entirely different. Digital connections started taking precedence over real time relationships. What you put out there became more important than the life you were actually leading. Filters airbrushed you into perfection, Whatsapp conversations replaced real chats over a coffee, everything became marketable, fake news was touted as the genuine article and lines became blurred between what was true, real and important, and what was quite honestly, just a facade.

When did we buy into this myth without realising that we were trading our souls? When did what was going on in someone’s house two continents away become more important than what was happening in your immediate vicinity?

Biologically, geographically and in evolutionary terms, humans can only sustain x number of relationships. Those are with your immediate family and friends, and perhaps a few from an extended circle. It is humanly impossible to have over a 1000 friends and give to them the importance and attention that a relationship requires, without our minds and our means snapping.

I once read an interesting article on how social media, particularly platforms such as Facebook keep you hooked. If you take the example of a newspaper or a magazine, you might start at the front, then skim a few articles, read a few in depth and work your way to the end. The salient point being that there IS a physical end to that publication. Now, imagine yourself scrolling through a Facebook feed. You could keep going on and on without there ever being a natural end anywhere up until YOU decide to call it a day. How many times have we sworn to ourselves – 15 minutes – and found ourselves still scrolling an hour later?

Social media is designed to suck you in, keep you there, sell you something whilst you’re there and either reinforce or subtly replace your beliefs with whatever agenda is being pushed by whichever conglomerate or political party of the day. All the while, feeding off the data you provide them freely and willingly.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Nothing in life is completely free. So, how has social media sustained itself over the years without charging us a cent? The next time you are looking for a refrigerator, and multiple adverts pop up on your Facebook feed, think about what else they know about you?

Even if none of the above bother you, let’s confront another grim reality.

I am of a generation that knew life before social media. I have my memories and some old photos to remind me of those good times. Today’s generation puts everything online. They know no different and no better. Not only are they creating a digital footprint that could come back and bite them in the future, there has also been a steep rise in mental health issues amongst the young. Their inability to distinguish between real and fake, their swallowing everything that they are fed online as gospel, and the constant comparisons they make with their airbrushed peers and their fabulous lives, have led to them finding their own, perfectly normal existences, as sub par. I am not even going to dwell on the online trolling and bullying that seems to be par for the course for the youth of today.

Having said all of the above, here I am, back on social media. Why don’t I just quit it altogether and go live in a cave? Because, even with knowing what I know, I understand its reach, its impact and its ubiquity.

In my month away, I knew I would be coming back to an avalanche of messages. In all probability, I would have annoyed somebody trying to reach me, and possibly missed out on a few social events. Even before re downloading all the apps, I started having low level anxiety about what would confront me once I signed back on.

Logically, I knew that if something was REALLY important, the person/people would find a way to make contact. After all, I was only off social media, I hadn’t fallen off the face of the planet!

What I have come back with is a renewed sense of what is important and what is not. Yes, I will skim through and I will post occasionally, but the moment I find my time being sucked up and my mental wellbeing being compromised, I will switch off again. With that as a mantra, I hope to strike the right work/life/social media balance that will keep me on an even keel. Amen to that!

 

 

The trouble with Brexit (Part 2)

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2. The ‘unique’ British media

When I first moved to London from The Netherlands in 1990, there were quite a few things that struck me as more than a little odd about the UK. Carpet in the bathroom? What was that all about? Separate hot and cold water taps? Weird…Why did some people leave a little bit of tea at the bottom of their cup? Who was Del Boy? And what exactly were Yorkshire puddings?

I also soon realised that, unlike The Netherlands, the UK didn’t really see itself as being part of Europe. If you were going to the continent from the UK, you were ‘going to Europe’ – as if you weren’t already in it! I reminded my English friends that London was not in Asia or South America, much to their amusement. It was also a long-standing British joke that Germans were Krauts, Italians were Wops and the French were Frogs. Even if there was no malice in these terms and it was meant to be funny, it still underpinned an underlying feeling of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. 

In spite of (or perhaps because of?) all of its eccentricities, I did fall head over heels in love with this beautiful country though. I loved the language, the “hello mate!” and “alright, darling?” greetings, the wit, the banter – and pretty much everything else! I even found myself an English boyfriend, and asked him what the British, in general, think about the Dutch. “We tolerate you”, my boyfriend answered with typically dry British humour.

His father read several British tabloid newspapers every day: the Sun (with its famous Page 3 Girl), the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. It was my first brush with something I found even more puzzling than anything I had seen before: anti-EU sentiment on a massive scale.

I couldn’t believe just how many hostile articles there were in these newspapers, and that pretty much all of them were blatant lies. Where I came from, nobody really talked about the EU – most people didn’t really have an opinion about it. But in London, they most certainly did – and it was all extremely negative! “Oh, it’s just a bit of a joke”, I was told, “these silly stories are not meant to be taken too seriously”.

Interestingly enough, I later found out that the origins of some of these so-called “Euromyths” – funny but completely fake news stories about the EU – could be traced back to none other than good old Boris Johnson. He had been hired by The Times during the 1980s (a job he got through family connections), was fired for making up two stories, and was hired by The Daily Telegraph almost immediately afterwards to become its Brussels correspondent between 1989 and 1994.

Boris loved ridiculing the EU for his own amusement, and invented plenty of stories about it. His Euromyths always followed the same pattern: they started off with a tiny element of truth, but soon turned into completely made-up conspiracy theories – ones that were so crazy that it was almost funny! There was supposed to be an EU plot to ban prawn cocktail flavoured crisps, Brussels bureaucrats wanted to standardise condom sizes, and one of his most memorable headlines was “Snails are fish, says EU”. Years later, Boris was quite happy to admit that he enjoyed telling complete porkies about the EU: “I was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England, as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive ­effect on the Tory party. It really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.”

Over the next 30 years, EU bashing became a staple of most British tabloids, and Fake News became fashionable long before the expression was even invented. Here’s just a small selection of some newspaper headlines over the years:

  • “Bureaucrats declare Britain is ‘not an island'” (The Guardian)
  • “Eurocrats say Santa must be a woman” (The Sun)
  • “Scotch whisky rebranded ‘a dangerous chemical’ by EU” (Daily Telegraph)
  • “Domain names – .uk to be replaced by .eu” (Daily Mail)
  • “EU plot to rename Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Station” (Daily Express)
  • “EU to ban zipper trousers” (The Sun)
  • “2-for-1 bargains to be scrapped by EU” (Daily Mirror)
  • “New EU map makes Kent part of France” (Daily Telegraph)
  • “Corgis to be banned by EU” (Daily Mail)
  • “EU forcing cows to wear nappies” (Daily Mail)
  • “Brussels ban on pints of shandy” (The Times)
  • “Now EU crackpots demand gypsy MPs” (Daily Express)

This is just a tiny, tiny part of it – and these are just the headlines, so you can only imagine what the accompanying stories are like! Sadly, deliberate misinformation, half-truths and outright lies are still the order of the day in some newspapers. It is no wonder that the British press has been amongst the least trusted in Europe for years.

Hardly any British politicians challenged this negative portrayal of the EU in the media. Nobody said: “Hey, hang on a minute! How come we still have playgrounds, corgis and bendy bananas, if we’re constantly being told that they have been banned?” It probably suited them that the EU could be used as a convenient scapegoat for their own unpopular policies.

At first glance, all of this anti EU-ism may seem quite harmless, and even a bit of a laugh. However, it is probably fair to say that after many years and decades, the ‘drip, drip’ effect of this narrative did start to influence British opinions. And not just those of tabloid readers, but, as you can see above, also readers of more respectable newspapers like The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. A persuasive portrayal of an EU full of spoilsports getting rid of British playgrounds, double-decker buses and truckers’ fry-ups became a powerful ‘alternative fact’ in the UK: surely everybody knew what those patronising busybodies in Brussels were like? They were the enemies of common sense and the British way of life, so it was high time that the UK started fighting back against these oppressors. And this is exactly how some very influential Eurosceptic newspapers portray themselves: as noble representatives of the man on the street, fighting against those nasty elites in Westminster and Brussels.

You might therefore be surprised to learn that most of the UK media is owned by just a handful of extremely wealthy men with very strong ties to Westminster and the political establishment. One of them, Ukip donor Richard Desmond, sold the Daily Express not long ago – but that still leaves four billionaires with a huge amount of power and influence.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch owns The Sun, The Times, the now-defunct News of the World (shut down after the phone hacking scandal), and also pro-Trump Fox News in the US. His company News Corporation has subsidiaries in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. From 1986, News Corporation’s annual tax bill averaged around 7% of its profits. Anthony Hilton, columnist for the Evening Standard wrote during the referendum campaign: “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”

Identical twins the Barclay brothers are the owners of the five-star Ritz hotel in London, as well as pro-Brexit publications The Daily Telegraph and the Spectator. Currently number 17 on the Sunday Times Rich List, they have houses in both the Channel Islands and Monaco. In 2012, BBC’s Panorama reported that they had paid no corporation tax for the Ritz, and in 2017 the Barclay Brothers lost a £1.25 billion tax case against HMRC.

The Daily Mail is owned by the 4th Viscount Rothermere. His great-grandfather was a friend of Adolf Hitler, and supported the Nazis when he owned the newspaper in the 1930’s. He also wrote an interesting article entitled ‘Hurrah for the blackshirts’, supporting Oswald Mosley and the facist movement in Great Britain. The current Viscount Rothermere is said to be richer than the queen, he has non-domicile tax status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts.

So, not exactly ‘men in the street’, but billionaires with direct access to Downing Street, influencing opinions all over the country through their newspapers.

Regardless of their owners, does this mean that we should not have any critical Eurosceptic newspapers at all? Is the EU, in reality, just a perfect club of countries happily working together, holding hands and singing Kumbaya, that shouldn’t be questioned?

No, of course not.

There is nothing wrong with a healthy dose of scepticism towards the European Union. The Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, the banking crisis, problems in Eastern Europe: it has plenty of problems – some outside of the EU’s control, some within it. But this is about fairness and balance. The world is not black or white – there are always fifty shades of grey in the middle. So let’s be sceptical of both sides. Let’s look at the pros and cons of the EU, without painting it as some kind of one-dimensional monster.

Why, for instance, do British newspapers never write about the good things the EU has achieved: clean beaches, no roaming charges, the protection of children that is enshrined into EU law? Why does nobody mention that the British film industry has received nearly £300 million in funding from the EU in the past 10 years? And why do you never hear about about all the money the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund (ESF) have spent in poorer regions within the UK?

How about the £640 million it has paid to save old buildings in  Birmingham city centre? A £2 billion investment for Wales? £1 billion for South Yorkshire? €60 million to help repair flood damage in the UK, and a similar amount for Cornwall over the last ten years? Not a peep about any of this in the British media.

And while we’re at it: apart from some more balance, can we also have a discussion that is based on evidence-based facts please? I know that it it is not always easy to separate fact from fiction, but there are plenty of fact-checking websites out there these days. Take the famous fake Lisbon Treaty post doing the rounds on Facebook: “OMG!!! WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE LISBON TREATY THAT COMES INTO FORCE IN 2020??” Because it’s fake news, that’s why. And it is not just the Brexiteer side that makes things up, by the way. A recent claim that Nigel Farage was involved in the far-right National Front as a teenager is based on an old photograph, that is almost certainly not him.

Media bias, alternative facts, Russian bots, fake Twitter accounts: they are all a threat to democracy and our ability to separate truth from fiction.  Apparently, it will soon be possible  to make photo-realistic HD video, audio and document forgeries, even for amateurs, and some of these forgeries will be good enough to fool even some types of forensic analysis. Imagine what damage a Fake News story can do, when it’s accompanied by a very convincing Fake Video?

And whilst talking about media bias towards the EU, we haven’t even touched upon newspaper stories regarding some other groups of foreigners: immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. More about that next time.

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Johanna Brunt was born and raised in The Netherlands. She has spent half her life there on the continent, and half her life in the UK. After studying English and European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, she moved to London where she started working for an international airline. She is married to a Brit, and they have three children together.

The privacy conundrum

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There has been a steep learning curve in my journey as an indie writer, and everyday I find new and marvellous things to imbibe. There is one aspect though that has left me with a bit of a dilemma. Unlike trad publishing where the marketing was taken on by the publishing house and the author remained a remote entity, revealed only through the author bio in the book or via any interviews they may give, indie publishing works on a different premise.

You are not just the writer, but you are also the publisher, marketeer, blower-of-your-own-horn and general dogsbody. In this strange new world, you can only garner readers and followers if you build relationships with them. How do you do that?  By being authentic and coming across as a human being with a life (and without the sole agenda of profiteering by targeting your readers’ wallets). That is all well and good. After all, as a consumer, even I like investing in companies that have people I can relate to, behind them.

The problem lies in just how much of oneself does one reveal? I am a regular user of Facebook and Instagram, and am not shy about posting things. But my audience, in this case, are my friends, my family and my colleagues. Birthday pics, holiday plans and all other trivia of my life that I choose to share is with people I actually know. Do I really want strangers having access to all of me? Where do I draw the line?

My Facebook author page has information about my books, any new launches and a link to my latest blog post. My Insta business page displays pics of interesting destinations, funny quotes, inspiring people and the occasional photo of myself grinning vapidly into the camera. Is this not enough? Apparently not. As I delve deeper into the murky waters of social media, I am exhorted to reveal my ‘process’, my likes and dislikes, that ugly photo from when I was four etc. etc. Really! Must I?

In that sense, I almost envy the trad writer who can focus on the business of writing, and let all other shenanigans be taken care of by other parties. Yet, as I also know in my gut, in indie publishing lies the future.

I was watching a popular talk show the other day. It was quite amusing to note how these celebrities on the couch gave out snippets of information to the host, without giving too much of themselves away. The more he tried to extract, the more they dodged and deflected. Aside of a few sound bites, he came away with precious little. My heroes!

A friend complained the other day about a famous celebrity wedding where only a few pictures and scant details were revealed to the press. Why, she bemoaned, wasn’t the public given more access? After all, they were public figures, and had signed up to be scrutinised for an eternity. I nodded sympathetically while mentally high fiving the couple for doing the impossible: holding on to their privacy amidst the chaos and madness of public living.

Gone are the days of Greta Garbo, the reclusive film actress whose mystique was only enhanced by her need to ‘be alone’. These days, either you play the game, or consign yourself to being ignored. In such a scenario, what is an indie writer to do?

I would love to hear your ideas or suggestions. Drop me a line in the comments & don’t forget to have a look at my books!

mybook.to/PWell

getbook.at/Damage

 

What lies beneath

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We live in interesting times. Social media has given us a voice, a platform and an audience like never before. We are all armchair analysts, foaming at our mouths over social inequities and perceived injustices. Each of us has an opinion on politics and current affairs, and boy, do we air those opinions with glee. Our moral duty done, us fickle activists of the lowest order, move on with the more mundane business of living our fairly boring suburban lives. Till the next cause that tickles our fancy comes along. It is a moveable feast after all, with no dearth of succulent meats to sink our proverbial teeth into.

What lies beneath all this moral outrage? A desire for change? The seeds of a revolution? Or, a mere positioning of oneself at the epicentre of social recognition. This is a person with his/her finger on the pulse of what is important. Never mind that the frenzy over what is important changes from one minute to the next. The irony being that, that which is truly important is not sensational enough to warrant attention from the social media parasites.

Perception is King. If the appearance of giving a damn is enough, then why really bother to give a damn? If the headlines are eyeballs grabbing enough, why bother with the facts? We are shallow people with shallow agendas. Our motives are to lynch and demonise. To bring down, not build up. We hide behind our screens, trolling those whose opinions are different from ours. Mocking, laughing and sniggering at the people who are doing the real job of effecting change. Ignorance, impotence and ire are the rungs of this particular ladder.

Eschewing truth in favour of the flavour of the day, we jump on our moral high horses, and are surprised to encounter opposition. After all, isn’t the popular opinion the right one too? No? How dare anyone interfere with our version of the narrative!

The pitfalls lie in believing that whatever we are espousing this moment has no other variables attached to it. Cause, effect and circumstance have multiple facets and complexities, and in downplaying certain aspects to lend credence to others, we put on the blinkers of our biases.

So perhaps, in the midst of spouting all this wisdom, we need to take a moment’s pause and check ourselves. Check our facts, check our sources, check our thoughts, check our prejudices and check our knee jerk emotional responses. Check whether our outrage is rooted in principles or the shifting sands of social media’s topic du jour.

For, in refusing to do any of the above, we are in danger of becoming the very thing that we despise.