Rage Against The Machine

When I was about thirteen years old I had one of those awkward, early teenage birthdays where people just don’t know what to get you. The days of bikes and cowboy outfits were long gone and I’d never quite got round to using my granny’s hand knitted balaclava with drawstrings.

But then I opened a fantastic present. It was a “build your own” Airfix model of a famously dour looking and unshaved grumpy man dressed top to toe in white. No, it wasn’t Andy Murray, it was Doctor Jekyll, and I slaved for weeks fixing together his arms and other body parts, glueing on his lab coat and then painting him in “glow in the dark” paint just to scare my brother when I placed it on his pillow and woke him up at midnight by growling in his ear.

I was reminded of that scary, foot high, statue this week when reading about Jordan in the tabloids. The parallels are easy to spot. Both are tiny models mainly composed of plastic with some bits obviously not quite fitting properly. They are both the creation of a strange mind, and you wouldn’t want to waken up and find either one of them on the pillow beside you.

It seems to me that Jordan can’t seem to make up her mind whether she’s a full time tabloid cartoon character just now or a part time mum, and so she has cemented her reputation in my mind as some kind of Doctor Jekyll and Mrs Hype.

This week she risked breaking a nail extension or two as she prised her phone out of her gold lame hot pants long enough to Twitter to the world about ex husband Peter Andre’s anatomy, specifically moaning about the size of his, er, shall we say, thing that makes men different from women. And I’m not talking about brains here.

I confess I was really, really surprised by her typing out this spiteful message. I mean who knew Katie Price could spell?

But this seems the way business is done nowadays with people using technology more and more to get their bitter messages across, whether it’s through celebrity Twitter accounts, Facebook, blogs, emails or Gordon Brown using You Tube. As an aside, whoever our Scottish Prime Minister’s adviser is he must be English otherwise he’d know that an often used insult north of the border for anyone who is seen as a complete waste of space is “you tube!”

News of Michael Jackson’s death was broken by a web site and spread like wild fire because of the internet and Twitter, but the technology was then used for nasty rumours and silly conspiracy theories, including one I read which said Jackson was really living in a bunker underground with Elvis Presley and Glen Miller.

Actor Matthew Horne gave up Twitter last weeks as someone was using it to defame his girlfriend and, as modern day technology has taken over as a way of spreading news but increasingly also silly, unfactual and downright nasty stuff, I was resolved not to let my two daughters get Facebook. They have been on at me for over a year to allow them to get it and I’ve resisted, partly because any loony out there can ask to be their friend, partly because for some it’s a substitute for a good social worker, partly because it lets socially inept outcasts waste their time sending bile while pretending that people really like them, and partly because I’m one of those outcasts and I got there first.

I’m sure my social worker would approve of my one, pretend, friend leading to many other pretend friends and I’ve had hundreds of requests from strangers who want me to join groups like Guppies Are Cool, or I Love Beatrix Potter Prayer Mats. Then there’s the clubs for afficianados of Latin Choral Chant, Victorian Lawn Mowers and any number of societies dedicated to bringing back Baywatch. This is all relatively harmless but the serious side is that I was also asked to sign up to a suicide pact site and others you just don’t want to know about. Anyway, if Facebook is so great, how come Megan Fox or Victoria Pendleton haven’t asked to be my friends?

After twelve months of unsuccessfully asking for the social networking pages to be added to their email accounts, my kids tried a different tack this week. I came home from work and was asked to sit at my computer where they had prepared a Power Point presentation entitled Why We Need Facebook. And not forgetting that a bit of flattery gets you everywhere in life, it was subtitled Remember We Love You.

The presentation made me laugh with tears rolling down my face as each page told how they were in danger of losing touch with humanity, suffering from terminal acne and ending up as old spinsters with nine cats. They are eleven and fourteen but already seem to have learned that if you want your own way, make them laugh. Deal done, I gave in and they now have Facebook but, after a week, the crushing thing is that neither of them has asked me to be their friend.

They only text me when they need money, any emails they send me are jokes about Scotsmen being mean, and they keep updating my Wickipedia page to say that I’m sixty five years old and gay. See what I mean about technology being nasty?

Sensitive and kind souls like I am don’t deserve this. People like myself just want to spread happiness and joy. So I think I’m going to leave something on their pillows one night soon. That’ll teach them.