Without the state

The decline of Facebook

Facebook usage declined in 2018 for the first time ever - at least in the US. It wasn't just a small decline either, but back to 2015 levels from 67 percent of Americans aged 12 and older to 62 percent of that same audience. This drop is seen in every age and gender demographic as well. It’s not as if only young people, or older Americans, or women are using Facebook less. Every studied group is using Facebook less. That's still a huge number of course, but it is significant. I'm not in the US but I'm a good example I think of why this decline is happening.

Their lack of real concern for privacy coupled with the refusal of Zuckerberg to answer questions in the UK about alleged interference in the UK referendum via Facebook (and possibly also in elections via Cambridge Analytica) came together to build a real suspicion of the whole platform. Of course I never trusted them fully in the first place, any more than I trusted any other giant corporation, but now that distrust is active, based on things I suspect they did, rather than passive and based on general suspicion about lack of action on their part.

The other factor in my case, that led me about a year ago to leave almost all the groups I'm in, was a substantial number of disturbing and distressing examples of racism and antisemitism dropped into ordinary discussion threads as if of no consequence. Add to that the increasing numbers of only just literate posts on almost any topic and the apparent inability of too many people to read more than a sentence without missing the point just led to a general stepping back.

I realised that my use of Facebook was also a factor in my failure to keep up this blog. It was easy to post a short paragraph or a link, but also too easy for vituperative arguments to erupt over nothing in particular or over some alleged slight in the choice of a word or phrase leading in the end to as much time being taken, but much less fruitfully, over that paragraph as would have been the case over a couple of thousand words in a blog post. I didn't reach as many people of course, but if a reader can't follow an argument over the equivalent of a page or two of text, they are quite frankly not my target audience anyway. We need to find a way to reach those people but I'm not the one to do it.

Length is not of course a guarantee of meaningful content as the vapid outpourings from the likes of Boris Johnson demonstrate. It's at times like this that I miss the likes of Christopher Hitchens

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the Supernatural and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

or my old blog contact Norman Geras

We should be, without hesitation or embarrassment, utopians. At the end of the twentieth century it is the only acceptable political option, morally speaking. I shall not dwell on this. I will merely say that, irrespective of what may have seemed apt hitherto either inside or outside the Marxist tradition, nothing but a utopian goal will now suffice. The realities of our time are morally intolerable. Within the constricted scope of the present piece, I suppose I might try to evoke a little at least of what I am referring to here, with some statistics or an imagery of poverty, destitution and other contemporary calamities- But I do not intend to do even this much. The facts of widespread human privation and those of political oppression and atrocity are available to all who want them. They are unavoidable unless you wilfully shut them out. To those who would suggest that things might be yet worse, one answer is that of course they might be. But another answer is that for too many people they are already quite bad enough; and the sponsors of this type of suggestion are for their part almost always pretty comfortable.

I can't claim to match either of these greats, but for the future expect me to spend less time on Facebook and more time writing or blogging.

What's new...

I've finally got myself organised enough to queue up posts with Typepad's scheduling feature, although for the moment I'm simply picking up pictures from my Flickr account. That at least will avoid the long gaps that have been appearing too often of late. I'm also using these flickr pictures to make yet another shift in the blog focus, to more explicitly include my own prints and other art work. I expect the more overtly political pieces will still appear, but with less pressure on me to 'perform'.

 

Image via Wikipedia

Probably foolishly, I'm also taking part in National Novel Writing Month again (NaNoWriMo to the cognoscenti!). That starts on November 1st, so anything I write will probably show up here, although I will probably put them on Pages, rather than as blog posts. I'm cheating slightly as I will be starting with edited versions of my alternate history 'A Frozen Spring' which is based around the idea of a German occupied Tyneside during the severe winter of 1947. This isn't based on the Nazis winning WW2 - in this universe Britain and Germany are nominally allies. You can read the background here. The chapters written so far are linked under More Information on the side bar. 

 

What if Gordon Banks had played?

From time to time I immerse myself in soc.history.what-if, a fascinating discussion group now archived at Google Groups, but originally on what I still think of as Usenet.

One of the all-time great threads was based on the unlikely Point of Departure (the point at which this alternative time line deviates from our own) that Gordon Banks played in the 1970 World Cup Quarter Final against Germany.

The Conservative victory in the 1970 election was far from inevitable.
The Tories entered the campaign trailing Labour in the opinion polls.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson didn't need to call an election until
April 1971, but he feared that the tide was turning away from the
Labour Party and, with decimalisation happening in January 1971, delay
would have left him without room for maneouvre. Despite warnings
against going to the country in June 1970, not least because the
election would fall in the middle of the football World Cup, in the end
he insisted on the date of 17th June.

England entered the 1970 World Cup as defending champions and, if
anything, with a stronger squad than in 1966. After meeting Brazil in
the first round Pele famously said to Bobby Moore that he would see him
again in the final. It was not to be. In the event England's goalkeeper
Gordon Banks<"> was taken ill on the coach journey to their quarter-final
<"> match against West Germany. Bankswas replaced by Peter Bonetti - but
> to no avail. Bonetti dived over a lacklustre shot from Franz
Beckenbauer and Seeler headed in a second goal while Bonetti was off
his line.

Germany scored a third goal in extra time and England were out of the
World Cup. Three days later Labour lost the general election. There
have been various explanations for Labour's defeat. Wilson blamed the
BBC, others blamed unexpectedly low balance of trade figures, others
the knock-on effect of England's defeat - in the words of one cabinet
minster "the bug in Banks tummy".

It could have been so different...

This was so entertaining that It really deserved to be published, so I am pleased to find that it has been archived here by the original author. Read it!

If you enjoy Gordon Banks, then you might also enjoy Thaxted, another 'what-if' based this time on the premise of a certain British female Prime Minister moving some 100 miles from Grantham to Thaxted as a young child and what the consequences might be. I won't spoil it, but Denis is displaced by a very  unlikely challenger for the hand of the young Miss Roberts...