The fantastic Julie Burchill once wrote that she'd deduced the prevailing philosophy of the Daily Mail. It apparently runs: "Someone somewhere is having a better time than we are, and it should be stopped as soon as possible." I'm fairly positive she wrote for them at one point, so she should know.
I'm recalled to mind of this when reading their diatribe about Facebook this morning, which ultimately is a little thing on the web you can use to message people and swap pictures. And despite the column inches consumed since we in the meeja discovered it and joined in our hundreds, it really is no more threatening to world peace than, well, my cat.
But the Mail sees it as a problem. People are spending hours on the thing, worries their writer. Girls check out boys on it, and vice versa! The paper tracks down a busy mum who writes and messages her friends on it, sometimes till two in the morning!!
Then in an honest admission, buried deep in the article, we find the real reason for the Mail's upsetness:
"...while these sites are often portrayed as having been created for altruistic reasons - to break down geographical barriers, to connect the world - the reality is that they are rapidly morphing into the most sophisticated forum for advertising ever known to mankind."
We can look forward to other 'Facebook led to drug addiction and suicide' type stories from Associated Newspapers in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment