We might be in a lot more trouble that we think.

It might just be the negative effects of social media. It might not be as bad as it can sometimes seem. But it might be that our democracy is being dismantled right in front of us.

Let’s start with America. It’ll be hard to catch you up if you’re new to this, but, to summarise, it seems with the recent indictment of 12 Russians for interfering in the election of Drumpf that the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller has uncovered some pretty damning evidence that Putin was heavily involved in installing the orange cockwomble in the Whitehouse. Cambridge Analytica appears to have been involved, stealing the data of many, many Facebook users. Hundreds of thousands of fake social media accounts were set up in Russia to spread untruth and cloud the issues. Twitter has, only recently, starting to delete these profiles – thousands of them at a time. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a bit late, and I expect they’ll be replaced before long.

Republicans have been warping democracy for some time however, and the most damaging of these arsemaggots has been Mitch McConnell. Mitch is, to put it mildly, a huge fucking arsehole. A hateful shit of a man so far in the pocket of the corporate and ideological interests he serves in place of actual people that if there is such as thing as a soul, his is no longer anything more than a wank stain on Bernard Manning’s bed sheets. The Supreme Court of the United States, when it needs to appoint a judge, has that judge selected by the sitting President. Obama’s choice was denied a place because McConnell had control of the Senate and delayed the hearing until after the election, which Drumpf won. The spot Obama was not allowed to fill has therefore now been filled by a Republican nominee, needless to say of a hard-right persuasion. I’ve heard a number of times that this is not legal. But I don’t get it – if it is illegal, why has it been allowed to go on, and why was nobody arrested. Is it illegal or not?

The Republican’ts’ (see what I did there?) dodgy tactics has meant some wins for them at the Supreme Court, not the least significant is the Court’s decision to allow them to continue gerrymandering. This means using your knowledge of what people are most likely to vote for in a geographic area and using that knowledge to draw constituency boundaries to give one party an unfair advantage. In many places, because of gerrymandering, constituency boundaries look utterly bonkers, Democrats require a great deal more votes to get elected, and the newly Republican-favouring Supreme Court shut down a motion to prevent it. Even better, one of the more moderate judges is now retiring, meaning it’s possible McConnell could get another hard right judge on the court, potentially paving the way to overturn the historic Roe vs Wade, making abortion illegal again. In 2018. Even better, the latest nominee doesn’t believe a sitting President should be investigated or impeached, and should basically sit there like some kind of emperor, immune to law and judgement. So Mueller’s investigation could be halted at any time, leaving the whole corrupt lot of them free from criminal prosecution. I keep reading people dramatically tweeting that the Republicunts (see what I did there?) will be remembered on the wrong side of history, as if at the end of all this America won’t just be an annex of Russia, with democracy and actual freedom and independence a thing of the past. They still assume they’ll win, but from what I can see, that is somewhat up in the air.

But why should anyone in the UK care? First of all, because that attitude of not caring about anyone except ourselves is what’s got us in the current mess we’re in. Secondly, like it or not, America does have a large impact on world events, and the current clusterfuck in the White House will have far-reaching effects for everybody, not just Americans and their brown-skinned neighbours.

But mostly, because there is some evidence that Russia also had a significant impact on the vote to shoot ourselves in the foot leave the EU. The same Russians that have been involved with the U.S. election, were involved with Farage and the Vote Leave campaign. Cambridge Analytica were involved, as was Facebook, who has recently been fined the maximum amount possible for violating the Data Protection Act during the time of the election. And then trying to cover it up. The only place this appears to be being investigated is at the Guardian, by award-winning journalist Carol Cadwalladr. It’s being picked up by American newsgroups but nobody else in the UK is covering it. I’d expect that of the Fail and the Scum, but not even Channel 4 is really covering it. It does appear that the Leave camp broke electoral law, but it still doesn’t seem to matter. So many people are so disengaged that either they don’t know or don’t care.

Or is it something else? Have I actually got nothing to worry about? Is it nothing more than a conspiracy theory that has snagged me and some of the people I follow on social media? Am I worrying that democracy in the U.S. and, by extension, here too, is being dismantled by a hostile foreign power and some collaborators in country unnecessarily? I kind of hope so. And you can tell it’s a truly messed up state of affairs if I hope my mental state is a bit off rather than what I’m seeing and reading being true.

But if it is true, and Rees-Mogg, Farage and BoJo force us to leave the EU without a proper deal (leaving them free to inflict all manner of right-wing ideology on us – has this been the plan all along?), and the band of reprobates over the water continue to push America to a lesser, more insular and racist version of itself, then hopefully enough people won’t roll over and let them do it, and will continue to resist.

Split personality disorder or just like everybody else?

I’m a fan of social media in general. I’m aware of both the positives and negatives; how it’s generally only as good as the people using it are (remember Microsoft’s A.I. personality Tay that Twitter managed to turn into a genocide-supporting, incest-promoting Trump and Hitler supporter?). And I know you should be careful what you say (perhaps I should practise what I preach more…) but generally I think the positive experiences I’ve had outweigh the just-want-to-bang-my-head-against-a-wall-until-there’s-blood moments.

The problem, as is so often the case, is people. Millions and millions of profiles with only limited clues for sorting through the gems, the funny and smart eccentrics and the complete wastes of skin. You need to remember that people usually put a highly censored version of themselves on display on social media. They’ll post pictures of the fabulously healthy-yet-delicious food they eat, or the awesome time they have with their kids. They’ll share videos of that time they para-sailed over the pyramids or base jumped from the Sydney Opera House. They’ll paint you a picture of a fantastic life filled to overflowing with momentous achievements and bucket list experiences. They won’t share the culinary fusion experiments that turn out looking like cat sick on a plate, or the days the kids drive them to the very edge of sanity. Then push them off. They won’t tell you about those times they just sat on the settee eating chocolate ice cream for tea while watching repeats of Inspector Morse because they can’t be arsed to reach for the remote to see what else is on. If you’re not careful you can start to feel like you’ve been left behind to rot behind your phone/laptop while the rest of the world is having all the fun.

I can change the way I feel about myself several times in a day. Sometimes I’m alright, sometimes I’m physically repulsive. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one in this world that can see the way things should be and everyone else is unforgivably stupid, sometimes I feel as dumb as a bag of hammers in the face of the blinding intellect of others. Sometimes I’m the coolest parent there’s ever been, sometimes I should never have been allowed to have kids. The truth is probably somewhere between these two extremes.

The way even the most ordinary of people portray themselves on social media can sometimes make it feel as though I’m the only one who swings back and forth this way, pivoting between self-doubt and self-confidence. But I’m not. At least, I don’t think I am. I think most people have the same issue. I think the trick is to remember often enough that you lie between the extremes; we all have grace, and we are all clumsy. We’re all intelligent, but with a simple change of subject we can all become clueless. We all have days when we can’t stand our stupid faces, and we all have days when we don’t scrub up too badly. This can be where social media can be harmful, where your own negative opinions of yourself can be reinforced by the face other people present to the world. We should all do ourselves a favour if this starts to happen and just unplug. Take a break. The world won’t end.

New occasional feature: ending with a song relating to the post:

Libertines – Gunga Din: “The mirror’s fucking ugly and I’m sick and tired of looking at him.”

Social media, soaps and me.

So, previously, my laptop broke, and I had to endure pretty shite customer service to get it fixed. Not the worst ever; that would be a certain well-known music retailer, but still pretty bad. I wrote about it here. The other month I managed to drop my laptop. I am a butterfingered fool. Luckily, I was forking out for some pretty comprehensive cover, and was able to, after an attempt to fix it, get some money to put towards a replacement. While the service was pretty slow, it was, on the whole, much better.

A consequence of this enforced laptop drought was that I had to work a little harder for access to social media – either borrow my wife’s phone (I don’t have a fancy phone myself - you remember how much I love phone shopping) or frequent the local libraries. I love our libraries, as well you know, but for books, not for spending my time pissing about of the Book of Face. So, I took pretty much 6 weeks out.

The e-mail build up was truly horrendous – most of it shite. Amazon recommended some stuff I’d never watch in a million years because of something I watched, and there were many, many e-mails from Facebook frantically telling me of everything I’d been missing and all the wonderful people I could be friends with (let’s not dwell on the fact that some of them were people I had been friends with but had unfriended me previously), and Twitter wanted me to know all the interesting things people were tweeting every day that I was missing.

I logged on and…it was just as if I’d been on the day before. It was like watching Eastenders for years and then missing it for a few months. Coming back to it you find that after 5 minutes you’ve already caught up. Coming back to Facebook and Twitter after 6 weeks was exactly like that.

I am a fan generally of social media – it’s useful, it is a fantastic way to connect with people all over the world that you have more in common with than many of the people you know in reality, and it is a useful way to keep in touch with, well, whatever you want really. But, it’s worth not connecting for extended periods at times so you remind yourself that it isn’t essential and that life trundles on pretty much as it always did, even without you seeing what some dude had for breakfast one day.

Anyway, gotta go. I need to check to see if there are any new cat videos.

Can virtual social media spark real social change?

Yes. Trouble is, not always for the better. Social media is, says I as one more know-nothing who talks as though I am an expert, a strange thing. Wondrous, yet frustrating. I spend a fair bit of time on the various sites, facebooking, twittering, and to a lesser degree googleplussing (but I never go myspacing anymore). I do not live on these sites, and even should I wish to, having two young children and a wife in the real world makes it impossible. Same goes for gaming or reading or movie-watching. I’ve spent enough time on them to find some wonderful things. I’ve struck up virtual friendships with people I will never meet in the flesh who have more in common with me than many of my real life acquaintances.

I’ve been witness to social media (Twitter, in particular) saving lives and fanning revolutionary flames. When the earthquake struck Haiti, people were tweeting the locations of survivors buried in the rubble to allow the emergency services to reach them quicker. When revolution began to bubble up across the Middle East, Twitter became a real time instant method of communication, helping the movements to stay organised and allowing witnesses to report events to the outside world as they happened. News breaks quickly on Twitter. Too quick for Fox, BBC, Sky, MSNBC or any of the others to keep up.

Just recently there was the ‘invisible kids’ video which took off quicker and became bigger than anybody thought possible. But now here’s the problem. If something is presented in a certain way, it can allow something that has a suspect ulterior motive reach a much wider audience. I’m all for stopping dictators using child soldiers, but when the person telling me about it turns out to be attempting to build his own child army in service to his own dangerous religious agenda, it isn’t going to get me onside. Furthermore, getting caught wanking in public did him no additional favours. And yet, I wonder how many new recruits signed up to his cause. Too many, no doubt.

The recent issue around climate change is another example. Hacking thousands of emails and taking a few out of context ignited such an unfathomable fury of denial that the perception of science in general and climate science in particular, will probably take years to recover, despite the science being practically as sound as science gets. Nobody will search for the reams and reams of papers out there (try searching using Google scholar (select the ‘More’ drop down menu on the Google homepage, then ‘even more’, then ‘Scholar’) and searching not just for climate change, but some of its affects like ocean acidification, or glacier melt). Even now, very few people are aware that the supposedly damning revelation of ‘Mike’s Nature Trick’ relates to an interesting anomaly about tree rings and how since the 1960s climate data from tree rings has diverged from all the other data sets, and is nothing at all to do with a huge conspiracy involving every scientific institution (including NASA, for buggery’s sake!) and most world governments to, apparently, get rich from solar panels and electric cars. Or something.

So yes, a number of very real surges in public opinion can be attributed at least in part to the supposedly unreal online world, but, as is so often the case when people are involved, sometimes it is beautifully inspiring, and sometimes it makes you want to choke a donkey.