Tag: Facebook

Short Story Telling

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The Open University are celebrating National Novel Writing Month or #NaNoWriMo as is peoples want. They are running a daily flash fiction competition for the next eight days. Well seven as they started yesterday. You are provided with a photograph of something lockdown or Covid related and given a maximum of fifty words to write a story. It turns out to be quite challenging but that is as much down to the word limit as the fact writing stories are in general.

That is yesterdays photo and story. The photo at the top is todays so they’re going with some atmospheric and powerful black and white thing clearly. This is my entry for today. I think the end is a bit weak but I get lazy staring at something for too long and decided just to go with it. It’s all just practise anyway. Maybe not all of it but a large enough amount for it to be a thing.

“We call this one The Six Ages of Lockdown. You can see the evolution from oblivious to acceptance, and all the mischievous boredom in between”

“They look so lifelike, you’ve really captured something authentic”

“Yes, we’re very pleased with this installation”

“It’s as if the sculptor actually lived it.”

Having posted it in the comments section I’m now aware, and it’s been fifteen minutes now, that nobody has liked it. Every other has at least one, some several and there’s even the odd laughing emoji. Nobody likes to admit to these kinds of insecurities but it is enjoyable observing them in myself. We’re all human after all and we all just want a little confirmation that we’re doing something right or well. Arenas like Facebook simply feed this. Can it be seen as being part of the fallible human ideal I like to believe in I wonder. Potentially but perhaps it’s our response to our insecurities which can be looked on as the fallible part. Surely our insecurities are just some animal survival mechanism checking we did the right thing and aren’t about to get eaten. I doubt I’m going to get eaten. It’s the pit of hissing critical snakes, or even worse, the silent version which says nothing at all I’m more worried about.

The link in the hashtag at the top takes you to the actual celebration of writing month but you can enter on the Open Universities Facebook page if you too want to attempt being a short short short story teller too. I’ll see you there tomorrow, likes or no likes.

The Sun Shining Out Of It’s Own Arse

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Are you ready for me to state the obvious, because I’m going to. I’m going to do it now. The Sun newspaper is full of shit. Yes I know everyone knows it but some forget and it allows them get away with things. The danger with them getting away with things is that they are the number one read newspaper in the UK, owner Rupert Murdoch is a scumbag and also unfortunately people both believe him and vote the way he wants them to. The reason I bring this up is because Facebook‘s algorithm decided I might like to read this article on a man at a school who “could be 40”. To confirm the success of the algorithm I clicked on the link because it sounded ridiculous and because sometimes I have dreams that I’m back at school in sixth form and my mind related becoming curious in the process. It turned out not to be the silly article I originally thought it would be.

The headline – “Worried parents demand answers over new pupil who ‘could be 40’ joining school after moving to UK” – was not on the original link but the nature of the story becomes clear with it. The article goes on to pander to a narrative that child refugees or child migrants are not actually children or more precisely under eighteen. It would be worth mentioning that sometimes this does happen. I don’t deny it but it is important to understand that it’s not rife and it should not discredit the claims to refuge that minors, many of them unaccompanied, make. The article brings up the story of some Iranian who wasn’t under-18 who spent six weeks at a school in Stoke in 2018 before tests confirmed he wasn’t a minor. Without any proof it then uses this example as evidence of guilt in regards the second person with a thinly veiled implication that feeds racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Confirmation bias is a very real thing. We pay more attention to information that confirms our pre-existing understanding of the world. It is very hard to avoid confirmation bias because we’re all susceptible to it’s subtly. This unfortunately is simple and blatant propaganda. It reaches millions of people and the end result is things like Brexit and a majority Conservative government. The people voting for such things will not benefit from them but owners of newspapers like The Sun will. The independent media and the people are at war with powerful vested and influential interests, and themselves. You can’t overcome real power without the people, but first we need to overcome ourselves. I don’t just lay the blame on others, we’re all to blame. Just please don’t buy or believe this crap.

An Ideological Art Attack

Hamar Williams2 Comments

Starline Social Club in Oakland has gone up for sale. I have never been to this venue, and likely won’t ever set foot in Oakland let alone this club. I only know it is up for sale because it’s sale was shared by a friend of mine on Facebook. Why this is worth mentioning is because it is yet another venue in the long list of such places that have already closed and others that will. Pubs are struggling but can invariably stay open. Numerous clubs, live music venues, theatres to name but a few examples are likely to go bust if this continues much longer. People’s safety must come first of course and a solution without some kind of financial assistance is far from clear. What the arts do need though is some kind of support.

Rishi Sunak the British Chancellor recently suggested that artists and musicians who couldn’t find work should retrain. There wasn’t any suggestion that they should be supported through this crisis, they should simply become something else. Here he is below doing his best impression of Will from The Inbetweeners.

He may as well have just uttered the ‘get a real job’ statement because clearly he was thinking it. Who needs artists when they can design images for adverts or musicians when they can be creating songs for adverts or playwrights when they could be writing scripts for adverts. How is capitalism going to function successfully if people refuse to exploit others.

More concerning is how this is playing out in the culture wars. I read recently that while the right won the economic war, the left won the culture wars but clearly both are still being doggedly fought. It is telling though that if you were going on probable likelihoods, the arts would predominantly be a theatre for left wing ideals. Are we seeing right wing governments in both Britain and the US intentionally allowing the music and arts scenes to go bust. Is this lack of support and funding simply an ideological attack? It doesn’t need too much of an imagination to make that leap. How better to attack your opponents by watching them struggle, hindering their chances of attacking you in the future.

There is one thing they seem to miss though. You can lose clubs, theatres and art venues but people will always be able to find a way to express themselves. If you try to take away their means of doing so they will simply come up with other ways. They are creative, they will be creative. And most importantly by attacking this scene they are simply entrenching anti-Conservative or anti-right wing capitalist ideals for at least another generation. People don’t forget. If pain brings out the creative, the grassroot streets are going to become a scene of colour before too long.

A Momentary Coffee

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Have you ever got to the end of your coffee and realised you want more. That the desire you had for coffee hasn’t been satiated and you’re not satisfied. As you delve deeper into the thoughts of the moment, that you can actually barely remember drinking the coffee at all. If that is the case there’s a good chance you were also doing something else while drinking the coffee. Perhaps working on your laptop. Maybe drinking your coffee on a long road trip. Or even grabbing a quick sip while doing some gardening. Busy to such an extent we didn’t give even a momentary awareness to the thing we desired, merely hoping to absorb it’s energy induced benefits.

It can’t just be the need to fill the caffeine addicted desire that makes us crave the cup, there must be something else involved like experiencing the taste and the sensations that consuming it provide. If you drink your coffee while completing whatever task you are fulfilling then this lack of focus and awareness of the act of enjoying and appreciating the coffee will be missed and arguably while it may be in your body, you may as well have not even drunk the coffee at all.

You forgot to enjoy the moment you very nearly created, this lack of presence denies existence itself. I’ll have another please.

We live in a world that moves at such speeds that we often don’t allow ourselves the necessary pleasure of just stopping and taking that five minutes to really observe the coffee and appreciate the satiating joy it can provide. So busy we don’t even have five minutes. But we always have five minutes, no one is truly that busy. We just didn’t notice that we wasted that five minutes robotically doing something else. Facebook perhaps.

In the past when I smoked I would have similar realisations. You crave a cigarette but you desire the whole experience not just the nicotine. I would sometimes roll one ‘for the walk’ but while there was a different satisfaction from that version, you still ended up fancying another upon arrival at the destination. There was something that hadn’t been entirely fulfilling about that version of the cigarette, just as there is something lacking from the coffee you forget you’re drinking.

We are so full of distractions. Perhaps we can use things like coffee or cigarettes, both together even, to use as markers to just take that five minutes to bring awareness to our surroundings, thoughts and the moment we’re experiencing. Just five minutes, just the length of time it takes to drink the coffee. There’s thousands of years of wisdom on being present, it can’t all be worthless now we have smart phones.

Tories, Football & Poo

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

As I scour the worlds events in search of topics I discover little. Another Tory sex offender doing his best attempt at being a throwback to the 1990s. Usually they were having gay affairs but with being gay not an inhibitive issue anymore he appears to have just gone and sexually assaulted someone instead. I’m cautious of immediately believing every accusation but there’s often no smoke without fire as they say. In other Tory news the somehow not yet fully disgraced Housing Minister Robert Jennrick has made that favourite of Tory moves and cut red tape. This time it revolves around planning permission and all in the name of preserving the economy post-Covid-19, despite the fact we’re still very much present-Covid-19. It’s not like have no planning permission regulations has ever led to anything dangerous or slum like in the past, I’m sure this will definitely be different now that we have the Compassionate Conservatives in power. Is that still a thing or was it just the last incumbents who were compassionate enough to label themselves such. I forget.

Chelsea lost the FA Cup Final yesterday which I was so pleased about I gave a little fist squeeze when I saw the result. I mention them losing over Arsenal winning because I’m reasonably indifferent to Arsenal, their manager Mikel Arteta is so far likeable and Chelsea are a relatively detestable club with detestable fans. They win too much for my liking, are improving their squad a little too much also for my liking and winning the cup could potentially have given them an unwanted boost. Long term is important but we enjoy that endorphin kick in the short term probably even more. With Manchester United about to kick off their Europa League re-start next week let’s hope there’s not some Chelsea fan sitting behind a keyboard writing similar about us towards the end of the month and the tournaments conclusion. There’s nothing quite like a bit of blind tribal irrationality to give us the chance to embrace our most basic of desires.

In local news, those familiar with past posts, will remember ‘Poo Gate’ in the local Facebook group. This group was closed down by the admin when the tourist bashing got a little strong, but a few weeks ago it was opened up again. Unfortunately the tourist bashing has resumed unabated, apparently the existence of motor homes that don’t stay in the overly priced and full campsites are a blight on society and one woman discovered four of those little black bags of dog poo beside a fence. Society is crumbling before our eyes it would appear. I was very close to leaving them a comment suggesting they were all idiots and that the group should be shut down again but thought better of it as not a single positive thing would come from my action. Cities may be at the forefront of progressive culture but there’s nothing quite like a small village to get to the heart of what is at our core as a people.

A Power Play

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There is one thing I enjoyed about not keeping an eye of the rolling news stories and it was that I got less caught up in the party political soap opera of Parliament. We live in a sensationalised world, not just the constant need to excite through 24/7 news channels but through the algorithms on social media that feed us constant anguish and thrills. They know what makes us tick and they’ve tapped into it. It’s so easy when writing this blog just to go onto a news website or see what Facebook has to say, and find enough material in one article on politicians and face masks for example to write something suitably scathing about dithering so called leaders bumbling their way to an end result we don’t notice because we couldn’t actually understand what they were saying. You see I’ve just done it there. It’s just too easy. They’re not inept, they’re incredibly good at what they’re doing, but it’s also obvious and therefore a treasure trove of things to write about.

At what point though do we stop listening and just get on with life. I’ve touched on all this before of course, it’s impossible not to bring up certain themes over again when writing every day. But when do we ignore the theatre of democracy, accept the demos are impotent and watch the shit show go on regardless. I feel powerless, these last five years politically have been incredibly trying and demoralising. Scotland voted no to independence from Britain, England voted yes to independence from the EU and England voted no to the first leader in generations who actually seemed to want to make positive changes to society for people. Instead we overwhelmingly got Boris. As you can see I think we are being dragged down by the English but I’m also wary of putting a single egg in a nationalist basket even if it is one promising liberation over subjugation. Politics has moved to the right and while there are signs of it’s coming back to, well, the centre-right, I am not filed with confidence.

Which means I am at the point of being defeated. Or maybe I already have, maybe that happened ten years ago when I naively thought myself an environmental activists and nothing changed. Of course I’m not defeated, I wouldn’t be writing this if I was, but this is no rallying call. I’m not all of a sudden going to build some ramparts and run up them. It is an acknowledgement though that there are people out there, people much smarter and with far more determination than me fighting for and enacting change. There’s a reason we don’t have a twelve hour work day and it’s not because of keyboard warriors like me. But then again everyone at all levels is important, even those blindly repeating lies and rhetoric in the cesspit at the bottom. If I believe in a holistic approach to the health of our bodies, why not believe it for the health of our societies. We are not just a series of strata within a hierarchy of power, that is not a healthy society. That is power, that is personal self-interest and that is exactly what we are hooked on with party politics. How can society nurture it’s people when it’s leader’s focus is ultimately themselves. While it is time to take the power back, it’s probably more the time to readdress our understanding and relationship with power generally. It is just a word and a concept after all, it’s down to us what we make of it.

Day Ten

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’m not sure if this is day ten or day eleven of my ten days without the news. For those with no idea what I’m talking about I decided to go ten days without looking at news channels or websites, I generally avoided Facebook except for emails and was left pretty confused and lost whenever anyone mentioned something going on in the world. I semi-accidentally saw a few news headlines over that period but generally avoided most things. The intention had been to avoid the sensationalised twenty-four hours a day news coverage and all the draining exhausting bullshit that goes along with that. I actually lost track of the days, I wasn’t even sure if it had been a week yet until I saw someones Facebook post about Donald Trump commuting his friend Roger Stone’s sentence and realised I really wanted to know what that was about. I haven’t actually found out because I don’t need to read an article to tell me everything that is already obvious.

It did make me want to check the amount of days without news I’ve gone though. So arguably and technically this is day ten if I wrote the piece making the challenge statement on the first of July. That also means I can’t check the news properly until tomorrow. All those little hints that something is going on with masks and shops, that Boris dug himself a hole with care homes yet again and that Jair Bolsonaro has caught coronavirus. This knowledge is all without checking the news once, it’s impossible to avoid everything. I also discovered that VAT on takeaway food is going to be reduced to five percent from twenty, which for someone who makes pizzas as one of his jobs is perhaps the best news I’ve heard all day.

I have enjoyed not knowing what’s going on in the world. It doesn’t create obvious amounts of anxiety in me but I’ve definitely noticed that I feel slightly freer without knowing whatever the latest ill facing the world is. Clearly I have to be realistic, without checking the news I’ve still been drawn to those updates above, amongst other things, which means I’ll never be able to avoid whats going on completely. I don’t see many happy people constantly glued to the world’s events. I doubt it brings out the best in us. We must find balance. The Royal We that is. This isn’t the time for grand statements about future intentions but hopefully I’ll remember this experience if I ever get myself caught up in the stupid bullshit once more. Here’s to liberty, forever more!!

What’s Going On?

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It hasn’t been too much of a strain not knowing what’s going on in the world. In truth I’ve quite enjoyed it. Being oblivious of all the bullshit is quite a liberating experience. I’m not sure how I’ll feel after ten days but I suspect this will be enough of a thing to make me limit my access to news channels in the future. It hasn’t been entirely easy admittedly as there have been moments when I’ve accidentally caught sight of a headline on a website or newspaper stand, or when I’ve gone on Facebook to check my email I’ve seen a little of the first post at the top of my feed. I have found out for example that something has happened with Giselle Maxwell or whatever her name is, you see I can’t go and check, and that Prince Andrew may be in trouble again for sexually manipulating under age girls. I wonder if he’ll give another car crash interview and incriminate himself further, I also wonder whether she has gone and committed suicide yet. Even having conversations with people, I’m trying not to listen to what they say too much as if knowing the news will harm me in some way. It’s strange not being able to respond with knowledge too, I enjoy discussing events.

I discovered that the pubs opened last night. I didn’t find this out from any news source but from having actual conversations with people. I knew pubs were opening soon and part of me actually thought they already were but with my desire for a pint not what it once was I hadn’t bothered to find out anything else on the issue. Living on the main street in this little village means I get to do my best Mediterranean grandmother impression and watch out my window keeping an eye on proceedings. Generally I’m a people watcher so there is a certain pleasure in it but last night I forgot how much watching drunks walking up and down the street was once a thing, and also how quickly we forget what was once normal. In truth it’s actually quite nice to see people in the pubs and being a little drunk, as long as they’re not screaming outside my window all night I’m fine, although that’s what ear plugs are for, and I quite enjoy the streets coming to life again. I loved lockdown in a way, there was such peace and quiet, everything was so paradoxically calm while the world fell apart. But it is nice for life and jovial frivolity to return. I may have just missed it. Maybe I should go and have a pint after all, see what all the fuss is about.

Ten Days Free Falling Tree

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

This then is day one of ten without the news. It doesn’t feel a great deal different from yesterday except I missed listening to the two daily Economist podcasts I would usually listen to while driving. Not checking the BBC feels like absolutely zero loss which is quite a pleasant and reassuring feeling and without access to my Facebook wall I am unlikely to come up with any articles from independent or alternate media sources. Life doesn’t feel much different then as I said after one day, but then I wouldn’t expect it to, it’s after five or six days that I’m curious to see the affects.

This is not my first time without any access to the news. There have been plenty of opportunities for me to be ignorant of the worlds ignorance’s when travelling and either being away from the internet or just with better things to do. It is probably important then to get this straight; there are many more important things in life than knowing what is going on in the world, or a version of the world people you don’t know want you to see. When I have been away from the internet for a bit though my first thought is not to check the world or local news but is to find out what the score in the football was. That’s my weakness, everything else is secondary.

These moments of no internet are incredibly rare in modern times. We have access to the internet in ways unthinkable just ten to fifteen years ago. I do remember a time before mobile phones let alone phones with all this infinitely accessible information. I have no idea of the figures and will perhaps expose my ignorance but I imagine the majority of houses in the UK have wifi or at least access to a neighbours. Failing that a trip to McDonalds is the norm for some and even public transport has wifi these days. We’ve come along way from dial-up connections and it taking a minute to download one image.

It is probably a good thing. Long term it is unclear but then what the people of the future think is good will probably be different to what I do now. We apparently have less ability to remember information because we have Google as a surrogate memory bank. Our lack of real face to face connection has been shown to create feelings of loneliness which is surely the opposite of what a world of connectivity is supposed to do. Maybe we need to refine our understanding of the nuances of connection. On the flip side, unless we switch off our devices which can genuinely be really difficult, we are never fully alone and able to relax in our own company. We seem to be in a middle ground that does nobody any favours.

But I started out with discussing taking a break from the constant barrage of news not a one-sided take on the ills of technology. The news then makes us excitable in all the wrong ways and feeds into some primordial survival network going on in our brain. It undoubtedly leads to increases in anxiety and it’s only real benefit seems to be in allowing for a good conversation with someone about, well, the news. Yet being able to share information of massacres, injustices and private and state corruption is invaluable even if it does get drowned out by all the rest of the bullshit. In these ten days though I’ll be fine, as will the world without my observations for I suspect it is true; a falling tree does make a sound in the woods even when nobody is there to hear it.

A Bad World With Negative News

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I read an article last night about the future of schooling in the UK in regards the consequences of Covid-19. It was after I had written yesterdays piece on returning to schools and the possibility of fines for those who don’t, otherwise it would have been included in the article. I thought of writing about it today though but I won’t. I won’t for two reasons, a quite important one being that while my gut feeling from what I read was that they were teaching this generation a certain necessity to be controlled and it scared me, I can’t find the article or remember exactly what it was that made me feel so worried. The other is that today I feel a bit tired of writing these pieces damning some politician, political party or whatever example of systemic corruption that takes my fancy. I will again for sure but today my mind is in a different place.

Why then do we keep coming back to these articles which do nothing but confirm our understanding that the world is a corrupt and bullshit place. The obvious would be that we’re searching for some kind of confirmation or negative bias. We hear of research that social media companies use suggesting we’re drawn to and spend more time responding and reacting to bad news over good. There’s also the instinctive scared animal within us which is constantly on the look out for danger in our quest for survival. My direct experience of the world is not that it’s a dangerous place, quite the opposite, of course that is just my experience not one representative of anyone else or any collective group.

My view of the world through my news, political and social internet search history is an alarmingly different one to what I have seen through my eyes. Don’t get me wrong I have seen some shocking things in my life but proportionally these are but a fraction of the overall experience. What keeps drawing us back then to following a different vision of the world. Perhaps we know that there is more out there than our small bubble, maybe we just want to. There is a chance we just want some more excitement in our lives. Could these bad world experiences draw us in because we’re actually collectively deep down unhappy and they appeal to that. Certainly I’m online less and care less about world events – football aside – when I’m having fun, travelling and living more in the moment. There just seems to be something unhealthy about it all. The news has not all of a sudden become a negative thing but we now have a constant live stream of it and with their need to keep our focus, there surely can be little beneficial about it. With that in mind I’ve just had an idea. I will avoid the news and therefore my Facebook feed too for the next ten days and see not only how I feel but what it forces me to come up with on here. Oh god, I’m getting the shakes already. What have I done?!