Communication and obligation

I would never have guessed that deciding to stay with my mobile contract or leave it for an attractive Pay As You Go option would cause so much trouble. As if making that decision wasn’t worrying enough, the consequences of it are enough to throw my whole social position into question.

I don’t use all of my monthly allowance on O2 and I spend £30 a month for that privilege. I don’t take full advantage of the contract deal because people never contact me and I rarely contact people.

PAYG would be cheaper because I have no friends.

But I’m thinking, what if I suddenly get friends? My monthly expenditure may shoot through the roof and because my credit rating is poor and I don’t own any utilities and pay their bills (why I want to own utilities baffles me), it’d be near impossible to get a contract again; I’m financially unreliable and the only way to prove I exist is unfortunately through an easily forged document.

But forget that for a second – what if I end up getting friends? I’ll be asked to parties. And because having so many new friends means I’ll be texting and talking more often, I’ll not have the credit to contact them and tell them I’m not coming, which means I’ll be obliged to turn up.

Maybe I’ll just throw my phone in the river.

People you may know

I must be really uptight because the slightest thing makes me chew on my bottom lip. At this rate, I’m due to look like Two-Face from ‘The Dark Knight’ within the week.

This niggle has been brewing for some time and I’ve so far been able to resist articulating what is about to be burnt into the memory of the poor soul who reads this. Yes. That’s you.

Facebook. Not the first blog-oriented vent concerning this wonderful medium of perpetual irresponsibility. But I’m not here to argue about the morality of a website that innocently sucks your day away through your eyeballs. Immanuel Kant does the same thing.

No, I’m writing about this thing, this beast with all its little pleasures hanging like bells from the belt of my fantasy nude because it continues to insist that I be sociable.

What do you use FB for? Chatting? Uploading photos? Feeling compelled to continue the diseased chain of chain notes? Spending good yet boring working hours playing the infectious and entirely worthwhile MouseHunt?

Telling the world who you are, how you feel, what you’re doing, where you are, how much you hate the guy who sat in front of you on the bus today, how annoying it was to have the best orgasm you’ve experienced in months being interrupted by a telemarketing company trying to con you into changing your gas supply when you live on a boat and have no gas line? Sure, I do those things.

But. I do them on my own.

My previous annoyance with FB was when I declined the offer of my privacy being invaded by someone I hardly know and had to put up with being asked several more times before the said someone managed to put their brain cells together and figured out I didn’t want to know. This time, my gripe is with FB telling me that there are people I may know… Really? How queer…

People you may know. Let’s pick this apart:

1. People; very good, we’ve established that the things we may know are something physical and bear a resemblance to us. Although results are going to vary. Drastically. For me, this is where it starts to fall apart slightly.

I don’t really like people; I like the odd individual I meet and get on with and have a laugh with, can work with and trust etc. but I do not like people. Why? Because I don’t trust The Collective. You think The Borg had problems with Captain Janeway? Try poking a Drone in the eye and see what happens; each digit is different and has multiple variations and combinations, and are subject to the random actions of a panicked individual. I’d like to see them adapt to that.

So FB is losing already by mentioning people. People? Well there goes my cognitive skills, my libido and generally, my will to live.

2. You; who me? Why are you addressing me? Do I know you? How did you get this number? STOP STALKING ME!!!! Don’t make me make the effort to go upstairs, grind some peppercorns and throw them at you.

3. May; I always think that when FB says this bit, it cringes as if to say ‘sorry, but in all likelihood you don’t know this person and by thinking that you do, you’re gonna message them, speak to them for like five minutes, make a complete tit of yourself and then never speak again’.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of uncertainty in my life, it keeps me on my toes, but ‘may’ isn’t uncertainty in this case. It’s stupidity. If you know them and like them, they’d be on your contacts already.

4. Know; I don’t know anyone. I only see and try to understand, and feel connections with someone I like. I wouldn’t want to ‘know’ someone anyway – where’s the fun? Where’s the potential in knowing that in three months time, this individual is going to hate me because I’m so analytical and find it hard to think/talk/breathe anything but the things that irritate me and their philosophical implications?

If I knew that the girl I decided to develop a friendship with last week would end up being the one I spend the rest of my life with, why the hell bother meeting, talking to and eventually hating anyone at all?

So. People I may know. I find it patronising. And the premise on which FB bases its assumption that I may know these people? We went to the same university. Bravo… braaaaaavo.

There’s something else too. What makes FB think I want to know these people? Is it not obvious that I’m antisocial, selective and cynical over everything? And this is where it starts to get annoying.

The whole assumption that I may want to know these people nestles itself smugly on the right side of my screen three times a day, displaying all of the wonderful people I may know who I don’t know, have never seen, have never heard of, never even knew existed, only to have to spend several minutes trying to get rid of the box containing the reminder of my bitterness by removing each and every one of those names I don’t recognise; you can’t turn it off. The repeated attempts at trying to get me to submit reminds me of a lazy-eyed klutz with a wonky grin and a runny nose, trying to give me a leaflet about something I don’t really care about.

Kudos for the perseverance of leaflet droppers; I used to be one myself. Kudos to FB for trying to spoon feed me more humiliating attempts at friendship. But please. Take the hint:

I say no everyday, click politely, refuse with a bow. Now sodd off before I get nasty.

Next time, I’ll opt for somewhere quiet

If I’d have known I was to spend my Saturday off subjecting myself to Bluewater, I would have stayed in bed. Or even better, just gone to work.

What possessed me to brave the vast interior is beyond me, but it resulted in approximately twelve minutes of terror as I was faced with the task of finding my way out of Marks and Spencer.

One wrong turn later (possibly at the handbags), I resorted to following two women back from the “Blue Car Park” (how I ended up there, I don’t know) which would have looked worryingly suspicious if I had continued to follow them beyond the French Knickers.
After finally spotting the exit into the shopping centre somewhere in the distance, I made a beeline amongst the throngs of shoppers, near clambering over trolleys and buggies in my desperation to be free.

It occurred to me, as I burst out of the shop front, that all the people I had passed somehow managed to make shopping look important. Their faces had hard looks on them, eyebrows knit together in concentration and eyes staring straight ahead at symmetrical patterns as fingers inspected sleeves and seams.

Could it be that Bluewater isn’t a shopping experience, but is actually a career?

It baffled me as I wandered past clumps of fashion that I could only assume to be people and felt sorry for the kids that were being dragged about by their mums, looking gormless. The truth is, that glazed expression may have been down the fact that every child I saw was eating a pot of frozen yogurt (a.k.a ice cream). These kids weren’t awed, they were stoned on sugary goodness.

I suddenly realised that this was how you make shopping look important. Put on your best drags and don your only pair of Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna sunglasses, and walk about with stylish paper bags for hours on end, as if you’re strutting up and down a catwalk (at this point, it helps to forget that you’re still in Kent and not London). Additionally, if you have kids, save yourself the embarrassment of being a parent by drugging them with confectionaries. They’ll keep quiet and you’ll remain gorgeous.

Adding fuel to the fire are the people who work there. I wandered into the O2 shop to look at my next upgrade – the Samsung U600. Yes, it is a commodity, but if O2 are going to give me a brand new, up-to-date mobile phone for free every twelves months in return for the pathetic £20 a month I pay, then I’m allowed to gloat. Little did I know that as soon as I set foot into the laminate-clad store, I’d be quietly stalked. Observed as I fiddled with grubby looking handsets on patches of plastic grass. Circled. Smiled at. Pounced upon like I was a juicy lunchtime snack. Do they not feed these people? Perhaps they’re threatened with thumb-screws or The Rack if they fail to reach their sales targets. Either way, the staff are no doubt there to make this the most important purchase of your life. LG Shine, or Prada…

In that moment, I came to understand that I was a form of anti-christ to these people. Why? Because I’m the savvy shopper. I don’t need someone to tell me about phones, because I have the power of the interweb at my command (apart from when my router crashes). Review it online and then brave the outside world to feel it in your palm, with Anthropophobia being the price to pay for a near life time of being able to make your own informed decisions without ever having to interact with people.

I politely refused assistance (by avoiding eye contact) and left before Bluewater Security were alerted to someone not actually shopping, but god forbid – browsing.

I had only been at Bluewater for half an hour before I began feeling doubtful of my role in existence. Chatham High Street employs at least two hours to achieve this.

My day was spent dodging Professional Shoppers with their armfuls of bags and fistfuls of buggies, and queuing – on a day when the seventh Harry Potter had been released. What was I thinking? Why did I even dare to consider indulging my bibliophilistic tendencies in Waterstones when I knew it would be packed with eager fans?.

I had gone to meet a friend for the day. A good friend. Unfortunately, having to spend so much time weaving, waiting and working through what we could manage in the ways of conversation made me long for the orderliness and isolation of MSN.

Popular as it may be, Bluewater does little for real social connections and even less for someone who just wants to sit down to a cup of green tea and muse over the tranquility at the bottom.
Needless to say, I won’t be taking any of my friendships there again. Unless I want to destroy them, leaving them to drown and shatter upon the rocks of hyper-consumerism.