How we used to live
Sep. 21st, 2011 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezThey've made a right bugger of FB.
Anyway. While using a somewhat b0rked pub analogy earlier to describe what's going on, I recalled the following.
Before they invented mobile phones, there wasn't any useful way of finding out which boozer your friends were in. I mean, easy enough if one stuck to the village pub, but the people in there had the haunted look of people who'd given up[1] and were drinking to force merriment upon themselves. However, trips into Cheltenham of a weekend could turn into something like this:
Pick a pub to start in. Say the Duck & Pheasant. Some hair-metallers taking up space at the bar, but no bugger that you know well enough to speak to. Slurp down pint and beetle a block over to the Cotswold. Similar story, but with at least one goth reading a book of complicated poetry. Where can they all be? Another street over is the Axiom, but they want money on the door. Hm. Maybe later. Is it worth the trek up to the Old Swan? What if everyone you know is there? What if they're doing the same thing as you, but out of phase? What if they think 'might as well stop here and wait for everyone else to complete an orbit'?
Might as well piss off back to the village pub and join the haunted people who have given up.
Mind you, when I moved to Humblebee, things were radically different:
The phone calls would start at about five on a Friday evening. Ed Price would answer because he was In Charge and because he could lose his temper best. Every call would be someone or other asking what was going on tonight. Where were people going? When? Price would impatiently explain that they could fuck off and run their own lives, but then allow that I was going to drive us all to the Axiom. Or the Plough in Winchcombe. Or the Craven Arms.
Which means I don't know what I think about FB or G+ yet. Going where all the people are at the expense of my own comfort kicks off one too many unfortunate memories. However it would be best to avoid as much face-spiting as possible.
Perhaps I should just keep writing semi-interesting things and trust that people will like that. Yes. That would be best.
[1] What they'd given up was never made clear. I suspect it was akin to the running gag in one or other of the Newman and Bloodyhell series, in which Mr. Newman would justify yet another night on the piss with the phrase '... and to think if I hadn't gone into that bar, I'd never have met you'
Anyway. While using a somewhat b0rked pub analogy earlier to describe what's going on, I recalled the following.
Before they invented mobile phones, there wasn't any useful way of finding out which boozer your friends were in. I mean, easy enough if one stuck to the village pub, but the people in there had the haunted look of people who'd given up[1] and were drinking to force merriment upon themselves. However, trips into Cheltenham of a weekend could turn into something like this:
Pick a pub to start in. Say the Duck & Pheasant. Some hair-metallers taking up space at the bar, but no bugger that you know well enough to speak to. Slurp down pint and beetle a block over to the Cotswold. Similar story, but with at least one goth reading a book of complicated poetry. Where can they all be? Another street over is the Axiom, but they want money on the door. Hm. Maybe later. Is it worth the trek up to the Old Swan? What if everyone you know is there? What if they're doing the same thing as you, but out of phase? What if they think 'might as well stop here and wait for everyone else to complete an orbit'?
Might as well piss off back to the village pub and join the haunted people who have given up.
Mind you, when I moved to Humblebee, things were radically different:
The phone calls would start at about five on a Friday evening. Ed Price would answer because he was In Charge and because he could lose his temper best. Every call would be someone or other asking what was going on tonight. Where were people going? When? Price would impatiently explain that they could fuck off and run their own lives, but then allow that I was going to drive us all to the Axiom. Or the Plough in Winchcombe. Or the Craven Arms.
Which means I don't know what I think about FB or G+ yet. Going where all the people are at the expense of my own comfort kicks off one too many unfortunate memories. However it would be best to avoid as much face-spiting as possible.
Perhaps I should just keep writing semi-interesting things and trust that people will like that. Yes. That would be best.
[1] What they'd given up was never made clear. I suspect it was akin to the running gag in one or other of the Newman and Bloodyhell series, in which Mr. Newman would justify yet another night on the piss with the phrase '... and to think if I hadn't gone into that bar, I'd never have met you'
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:10 am (UTC)Is there really a place called Humblebee...or did you make that up?
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 06:50 am (UTC)Sensible English places with sensible English names.
http://hirez.livejournal.com/658.html
http://hirez.livejournal.com/1843.html
http://hirez.livejournal.com/2551.html
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:08 am (UTC)(sadly, no photo of the cottages)
http://www.cotswoldsaonb.org.uk/userfiles/file/publications/cotswold%20way%20circular%20walks/walk%204%20winchcombe%204%20website.pdf
(sited on this walkers map)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 08:24 am (UTC)Going to the pub on a Saturday night
instead of staying in and drawing on the sole of your slipper with a biro? Agree where you're going with your friends before you leave the house, even to the point of having a preagreed default pub if you decide to go out on a whim.Squirrelled away in our loft are the letters that
Of course, pubs are not social networking sites; you can be no more than one at the same time (the academic in me wants to call this property "non-rivalrous", but it's closer to having - and eating - all of the cakes).
As for myself, I have accounts on FB and G+, but my attention is primarily on LJ.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 01:06 pm (UTC)Humblebee...gotta love it.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:15 pm (UTC)But basically, if I`m literally just a mailing list entry, that doesn`t count as friendship, and if I don`t see you for ages because your relationship with me is just as an amorphous blob off of that there facebook (or not as it happens) that makes YOU the twat and you get precisely 1.5 goes at even suggesting I am a bad friend for this before I walk off mid chat and delete you IRL. It`s not like you`ll miss me. You`ve got a mailing list and everything.
On the other hand i guess if I hadn`t unexpectedly and worryingly achieved my ambition of being the scary old hermit that the local children were scared of several decades ahead of schedule, I`d probably think all of this was ruddy marvelous.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 10:28 pm (UTC)It's all gone a lot Ballard.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 06:37 am (UTC)