Giddy Social Whirl: Here is the News

This week, we present a bespoke selection of newsy fripperies which you may have missed on account of that other stuff you were doing.

We like to think we’re doing our bit for the Big Society, and that this is the 'Tensies equivalent of reading the newspaper to the infirm. Post-digital social-media fun, but with a retro, pre-realtime vibe. Light, and shade, my friends, light and shade.


I dunno. Do the emergency services really get social media? More pertinently, do we want them to?


This week, Greater Manchester Police tweeted every 999 call they received for 24-hours, in the hope of bringing to our attention the breadth of their offer at a time of public service cuts.

Super idea, and only slightly marred by the fact that the particular 24 hours they picked were dull to the power of Bergerac. Not only did not much happen, but so much of it didn’t happen that everyone’s Twitterfeed was jammed with ‘Call 424: report of loose dogs on a road in Blackley’ and similar, for much of the day.

The initiative spawned the inevitable spoof account, but oddly, the fake account lacked the combination of the ersatz and the banal which gave the authentic one its meagre spice. Contrast, for example the fakers' ‘Call 56: Complaint that "its not like the old days"’ with the GMPs “Call 3026: Suspicious man wearing cape in Bolton - police attended and no sign of man.”

Ach, it’s a tricky one. On the one hand, these kind of social media stunts need preparation, and forethought – they can’t just be rustled up out of nowhere when a day turns out to be jam-packed with heart-racing crime. You pick a day, you gotta stick to it. On the other hand, “Call 241: problems with a customer at a cafe in Manchester.”

Now, we all know that candour and sincerity should be the watchwords of any brand wishing to engage the public through social media. But chaps, that public is sensation-seeking, and accustomed both to high-octane thrills and social media vernacular; you need to gussy up your game.

With this in mind, let’s try that ‘man wearing cape in Bolton’ tweet again:

“SQUEAL, Batman! BATMAN is in Bolton! Big shout goin’ out to the Caped Crusader! #OMGtheDarkKnight”. You could probably skip the ‘no sign of man’ bit.

Or, if your social media team lacks the confidence for real-time translation, couldn’t you have waited until a day when the interesting stuff did happen, then back-tweet it? Oh, don’t look at me like that - who would know? You’re the police, aren’t you? You ARE the news.


*****

Which brings us neatly to the other end of the ‘law-enforcement does social media’ scale. Meet Toronto Police Constable Adam Josephs, better known to the internet as ‘Officer Bubbles’, because he threatened to arrest a bubble-blowing G20 protestor for assault if one single bubble touched his person.

Now before we dismiss the man as seven kinds of egomaniacal loon, let’s just pause to imagine where, on a one-to-ballistic scale of annoying, a bubble-attack would sit. I think pr-e-tty high, don’t you?

That, after all, is its raison-d’etre - the whole point, from a protestor’s point of view, is to say through the medium of bubbles, “Hey, The Man! I can get these bubbles in your FACE and you can do NOTHING! Nothing at all! If you do anything but smile community-mindedly, you will look a fool on YouTube. Because they’re bubbles! And not weapons!”

It’s about as aggressively passive as passive-aggressive gets. So although it’s my general habit to be on the peace-and-love side of things, I’m not, at this stage, unsympathetic to his plight.

But then, dear friends, Officer Bubbles takes a sharp turn to the wrong on the road-map of social-media success.

Some time later, he discovers that the protestors have (predictably) posted the footage of the bubble-off to YouTube; he registers that (again, predictably) he looks a little foolish up there – and that the footage has inspired a series of (now, sadly, defunct) cartoons which imply he might be over-protective of his own dignity.

What can he do to prove to the world that these criticisms are unfounded? Well, he could ignore, ignore, ignore – or he could engage his critics in a calm, respectful discussion. Or, he could file a $1.2 million defamation lawsuit seeking to compel Google to reveal the identity of the parody cartoon's creator. And the identities of the 24 people who left comments on it. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Social media and the police – d’you know, I’m unconvinced.

****

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

You may remember that, when it first took up the reins of power, the government was quite firm on civil liberties and the ‘surveillance state’ – indeed, the text of their pre-nup deal contained a promise to ‘end the blanket storage of internet and email records’.

But that was then and this, my dears, is now: the Telegraph reports that, hidden deep in the clammy folds of the Strategic Defence Review (which, if you are anything like me, you are unlikely to peruse in detail, if at all) is the sort of u-turn more usually accompanied by the smell of scorched tarmac and the sound of blues-and-twos. It seems that the government will later this year announce measures requiring all communications providers to store identifying details of emails sent and websites visited - for at least a year.

Hmm. Regardless of where you stand on the digital liberties debate - that, you’ll agree, was a turn on a sixpence.

****


Gosh I love the Swedes; they gave us Bjorn, Benny, Frida and Agnetha - ooh, and Wallander! And, apart from the odd lapse, they've generally led the world in that equality thing we like. Plus – for those of you of an aesthetic bent (not a euphemism) – they host some cracking modernist masterpieces.

Best of all, the Swedes tirelessly promote their brand of pragmatic liberalism - a super quality in a country, and one exemplified by this ‘and finally’ story, in which a man’s laptop is stolen by A Thief (despite their brilliance, the Swedes have not yet managed to abolish theft.)

In Sweden, this is how street-crime works. You are a backpack-wearing professor (remember, it’s Sweden we’re talking about). You put down your backpack momentarily – perhaps to choose, and pay for, a Wallander paperback - and someone opens it and nicks your laptop. Ten years of research is pouf gone. You withdraw to your apartment and bash your head against your midcentury-modern desk; you begin to understand why Wallander has such difficulty trusting humanity.

But wait! A week later, an envelope containing a memory stick arrives in the post: it contains your Life’s Work – which has taken the thief 2 hours or thereabouts to download from the laptop he stole from you.

There are many things to love in this story – the professor, the backpack, the memory stick - but two points stand out. The first is that the thief has a conscience. He is concerned that the owner of the laptop will be disproportionately affected by the loss of the information contained therein. The second is that his conscience is both relative, and rationalist. He will spend 2 hours downloading that info – but he won’t actually return the laptop. He’s a thief after all, and by definition, thieves steal things, and don’t give them back.

It’s crime. But it’s crime à la Suède. Superb.



A bientôt, mes amis!


For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for more general twittery, @KateVWilliams.