Bob Dylan once sang, “The times they are a changing.”
I once sang, “I’ve got a combine harvester, it’s made out of kitchen spoons, and that’s why you’re a poo.”
Despite Bob’s bad grammar, he had a point and, somewhere, so do I. Because if I was a 10 year-old in this day and age, I probably would have tweeted that beautiful nonsensical serenade, or uploaded a video of it onto Youtube.
The recent birth of my sister’s human child got me brooding over the time and age that we are in, and how, at no point in the history of our planet, have events ever been recorded with such personable accuracy.
I mean, if only we could look back on John Wilkes Booth’s tweets and read, “Lol your beard is well silly, man, Imma kill you.” Or see George Michael’s FB status as “Interested in: Men.” Everything would have been different.
My brother-in-law decided to set up a Facebook account for my baby niece on her first day of life, with the idea that at some point down the line – especially with the new FB timelines – they could pass on the account to her for her own use. She would have a log of her whole life, right there for her to see, from conception to inevitable dysfunction.
This got me thinking about one day when I poop out a little Timmy, or however that shit works. Would he not be curious about daddy’s wanderlusting? I dread the thought that someday, at the click of a button, he would know everything there is to know about me. How would my kid respect me after seeing me wasted in a pile of my own vomit on the floor, swearing at the camera with knickers round my face? “Mummy, Mummy who is that girl daddy’s with?”
I once sang, “I’ve got a combine harvester, it’s made out of kitchen spoons, and that’s why you’re a poo.”
Despite Bob’s bad grammar, he had a point and, somewhere, so do I. Because if I was a 10 year-old in this day and age, I probably would have tweeted that beautiful nonsensical serenade, or uploaded a video of it onto Youtube.
The recent birth of my sister’s human child got me brooding over the time and age that we are in, and how, at no point in the history of our planet, have events ever been recorded with such personable accuracy.
I mean, if only we could look back on John Wilkes Booth’s tweets and read, “Lol your beard is well silly, man, Imma kill you.” Or see George Michael’s FB status as “Interested in: Men.” Everything would have been different.
My brother-in-law decided to set up a Facebook account for my baby niece on her first day of life, with the idea that at some point down the line – especially with the new FB timelines – they could pass on the account to her for her own use. She would have a log of her whole life, right there for her to see, from conception to inevitable dysfunction.
This got me thinking about one day when I poop out a little Timmy, or however that shit works. Would he not be curious about daddy’s wanderlusting? I dread the thought that someday, at the click of a button, he would know everything there is to know about me. How would my kid respect me after seeing me wasted in a pile of my own vomit on the floor, swearing at the camera with knickers round my face? “Mummy, Mummy who is that girl daddy’s with?”
I cringe at the idea of my kids going through my pseudo-diary Twitter
account, piecing together who I was and who they may become.
Thankfully, my tweets are
made up of random, surreal thoughts
and seem like gibberish to the
naked eye so the worst they can think of me is that I had Aspergers
or
something.
But I’ve come to a little gem of a realisation. In 10 or 20 years time, when we’ve all grown up and had Facebook for most of our lives and then reproduce, does this mean the end of social networking? I mean unless you’re a fucking hippy, how do you expect to educate your kids about right and wrong when their main influencers are seen doing and saying all the wrong things on a platform as accessible to them as a jar of cookies? This will probably lead, at some point within the next 10 years, to a mass privatising of accounts. Once we’re done with airing our dirty laundry in our rebellious years, we’re going to want to neatly fold it and put it at the back of our closets, with a child-proof lock on the door. The less accessible information available, the less users will sign up and eventually it becomes the anti-social network.
Could that be the end of Facebook as we know it? Makes a bit of sense doesn’t it?
Then again, by then we may all be telepathically connected to the internet and each other, and you won’t even have to open your eyes to see my rendition of Combine Harvester.KitchenSpoons.Poo.
But I’ve come to a little gem of a realisation. In 10 or 20 years time, when we’ve all grown up and had Facebook for most of our lives and then reproduce, does this mean the end of social networking? I mean unless you’re a fucking hippy, how do you expect to educate your kids about right and wrong when their main influencers are seen doing and saying all the wrong things on a platform as accessible to them as a jar of cookies? This will probably lead, at some point within the next 10 years, to a mass privatising of accounts. Once we’re done with airing our dirty laundry in our rebellious years, we’re going to want to neatly fold it and put it at the back of our closets, with a child-proof lock on the door. The less accessible information available, the less users will sign up and eventually it becomes the anti-social network.
Could that be the end of Facebook as we know it? Makes a bit of sense doesn’t it?
Then again, by then we may all be telepathically connected to the internet and each other, and you won’t even have to open your eyes to see my rendition of Combine Harvester.KitchenSpoons.Poo.