Tag: Twitter

Tap Garden At Peddler Night Market

Hamar Williams

Saw my first grown man on one of those scooters made famous by Google today. I’m embracing market stall life at Peddler Night Market in Sheffield helping out a mate at his juice market stall. Let’s call this some free advertising for his tasty, healthy fresh homemade soda juices and punch, all non-alcoholic. Tap Garden it’s called and you can find him on all good social media…Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. #tapgarden #tapgardendrinks

It’s a pretty cool place, one of these old brick warehouses that can be found partly abandoned and partly reinvigorated by wealthy alternative hipsters. I realised after about five minutes that I should have worn my Dr Marten boots like everyone else, certainly feel I missed a trick by yet again being the only person in the building wearing Crocs. One day they will fulfil their destiny and find their rightful place as the only footwear of choice. Until then though I can continue to feel superior as the only Crocs related enlightened being in the place.

Apparently Sheffield is quite a cool city. Lots of students, cheap cost of living, a once vibrant city that didn’t lose its population to Manchester or London now become vibrant in a new way. They call it the Bristol of the north apparently. Bristol without southerners, it sounds perfect. It also has a canal running through it because of all the industry in the past. It actually appeals massively and I’m filing the place away in the ‘possibilities at a later date’ section of the storage unit in my mind. It seems to be the constant issue in life of finding the perfect way to exist. Be in a cool place with interesting people, beautiful, not too busy or crowded, close to nature, relaxed, close to the sea, etc. Sheffield doesn’t have all these thing so it is not perfect but then let’s be honest perfect doesn’t exist. It seems to be about finding some kind of contentment in life whatever that means. I’m sure it will make an appearance one day if I look hard enough, or stop looking at all. I’m sure the answer is somewhere, probably inside of me they say.

Anyway that’s all for today, it feels like a short piece but so be it. Today and tomorrow will be busy days so I doubt you’ll get much more than this again tomorrow but that magic 400 words of wisdom mark can’t be hit everyday. If I know anyone in Sheffield then pop down, come say hello…drink some juice at Tap Garden…the only place for fresh juice made with real ingredients and love.

A Manipulated Mass

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It is very hard in this day and age to know what is true and what isn’t. The internet is arguably the fount of all knowledge, and when we’re not looking at pictures of cats and stalking ex-partners we are quite simply blessed with the opportunity to discover – or to google which is a disturbing example of the evolution of language – the answer to any question we may want to ask. The problem here is that it seems very easy to get a variety of answers to one question. On the one hand that is great, difference of opinion will further debate and understanding within and of society. On the other though you have powerful financial interests manipulating which arguments are most easily accessible, the only inevitability is that debate becomes inaccurate and corrupted. There are few long term positives of such things unless you are the one doing the corrupting.

While this is all seemingly quite obvious, what appears to be the outcome are articles using public opinion to validate the argument, angle or narrative they are attempting to push. For example if you want to push a news story about public perception of an issue, it is very simple to go on the idiots validator – Twitter – select a few tweets – cringe – and post them within your article as proof of your argument. While it may seem obvious that people will dismiss the arguments of morons or people who are clearly not experts in the field – a corruptible concept too – people for one psychological reason or another seem unconsciously more likely to agree with the article if they believe it to be the majority opinion.

I saw an article recently describing how the left have disowned George Orwell because it had come out that he gave the names of suspected communists to the British government in 1949. The article was backed up by a few angry tweets criticising and disavowing him from people who clearly missed the point and didn’t understand the background to why he may have done that. This was in The Independent too which is a left wing British newspaper but it was total bullshit being validated by total bullshit.

The same could be done on the news. When a segment presents interviews with three people in the street for example, we often see two or three with one opinion that supports the overall message and one who doesn’t, how do we know that they only ever interviewed them and not ten others. The point is the media is as corrupt and untrustworthy as the politicians have always been yet we take what they say at face value. With eighty-three percent of mainstream media in the UK owned by three corporations, they can pretty much convince anybody of anything with enough coverage. They can be corrupt and it doesn’t matter. We have vaults of information online but who really looks beyond supposedly trustworthy news sources such as the BBC, or their equivalent in other countries and cultures.

Ultimately we’re as much a pack animal as dogs and if we believe the majority think something we’re more likely to go with it to remain part of the group. If you have such an array of opinions all appearing to validate something it has never been so easy to convince people even when it is in your interests and actively against theirs. The internet is arguable the greatest invention since the printing press, and with such knowledge comes the opportunity for rebellion and sedition live never before. Unfortunately it also seems to bring rise to the polarising and manipulating of peoples the world over. It is though early days, the internet is but a baby in the long history of information. There is still time yet.