Way back in 2013, I wrote a brief throwaway piece about a day trip to Wroxham – ‘Gateway to the Norfolk Broads’ – a town entirely given over to those who like to mess about in boats and those who service them. I called it Roy’s Town because we were baffled by the dominance of what seemed to be some bloke called Roy – Roys Supermarket, Roys Pharmacy, Roys Toys, Roys Garden Centre, Roys Car Park. Note the missing apostrophes. Tut, tut.
Last week, the long dead and buried post attracted fresh attention. This happens now and again, usually without rhyme or reason. But not this time. BBC East – Auntie Beeb’s local news hereabouts – featured one of those newfangled ‘influencers’ who was also baffled by Roy’s riches. He posted about it on TikTok.
Riding on his coat-tails, my post got a few hundred extra hits. He got millions. Such is life.
I do get some weird and not so wonderful spam emails. We all do. It goes with the territory, I guess. Many are littered with schoolboy errors – sloppy punctuation, terrible grammar and lazy formatting. And some also promise riches only a fool would refuse/are too good to be true (delete according to level of gullibility) like this one…
Mrs. Maria Elisabeth Schaeffler, a German business magnate,Investor and philanthropist. I am one of the owners of Schaeffler Group . 25 percent of my personal wealth is spent on charity. And I also promised to give the rest of 25% away to individuals this year 2025. I have decided to donate 4,800,000.00Euros to you.
If only I’d known about this before our trip to expensive Gay Paree. A few extra Euros stuffed into my bum bag would have come in very handy.
The thing is, Maria Elisabeth Schaeffler really is a German business magnate. I wonder if the good lady knows about all this funny business going down in her name?
And then, as if things couldn’t get any weirder or less wonderful, this fake news dropped into my spam folder…
Really? Do I look like a bible belt trumpeteer or a redneck devotee of that other total fruit loop, the malodorous Musk? What have I done to deserve this?
That leads to a very tenuous link to the Pet Boys’ 1987 hit with the late, much-lamented Dusty Springfield. I was a huge fan of them both back in the day.
Well done to the Boys for giving Mary O’Brien one last crack of the whip.
Back in 2016, the people at Displaced Nation asked me and a few others about the election of Donald Trump. Now that MAGAmouth has his dainty little hands on the keys to the White House once again, I’ve been looking back at my reaction. This was my take at the time…
I first heard about Donald Trump’s victory on the morning news here in Britain. It was a wake-up call, but after Brexit, not entirely unexpected. I think we all know that both outcomes are a symptom of something deeper and more socially corrosive. There are a lot of people out there who feel marooned in poverty with little hope of rescue, including members of my own family. So it was okay to bail out the bankers but not the steelworkers? Really? If I was a praying man, I’d be on my knees hoping that Trump will be less incendiary in office than he has been on the podium, but I wouldn’t bet my shirt on it. Stoking up the darkest fears of those at the bottom of the heap is what got him elected. How a man born to enormous privilege can possibly understand the worries of the common man or woman is beyond me. But then I don’t understand the appeal of former merchant banker Nigel Farage, either.
So here we go again, another white knuckle ride on the magic roundabout of make-believe with Don the Con. But this time a posse of kiss-his-arse social media moguls and assorted tax-dodging billionaires are hanging on to his coat-tails. I wonder why?
From time to time the odd genuine email drops into my spam folder by mistake, so I check it regularly. Spam-wise, I get targeted with a load of old crap. We all do – it’s the price we pay for being plugged in and switched on. They’re a mixed economy, often amusing and frequently daft. If I wanted Viagra, I’d buy it over the counter from Boots. And why would I need dodgy cut-price US car insurance or bargain-bucket bullets?
Sometimes, though, my scam spam turns more threatening. Recently, some pond life with terrible, often pompous, English calling himself ‘Fergus Bateman’ claimed to have hacked into my devices. Allegedly, he’d been monitoring my activity.
Fergus wrote…
“I found that you’ve been a frequent patron to erotic websites. It seems you have quite a bold side when it comes to finding satisfaction through these platforms.”
And that he’s…
“… come across some adult recordings featuring you, displaying intimate interactions I have that you might not want publicly shared.”
Erotic websites? My bold side? Intimate interactions? Oh no, has Fergus uncovered my saucy seventies Polaroids? And, he says he’s also stolen my address book and social media IDs so I’d better pay him the ‘trivial amount’ of $12,000 within 24 hours* or else.
Twelve grand? Trivial?
Well, Fergus, the bedroom blackmailer, social misfit and all round shit with your silly big words like ‘cognizant’ (US spelling) and ‘elucidate’, extortion may be the name of your game but the only money game I play is Monopoly.
So do your worst. Or better still, get a job.
All joking aside, there’s a serious point to all this. Scammers scam just like muggers mug because there’s money in it. Online or on the streets, theft is as old as the hills. And with social media becoming increasingly toxic, who knows who the good guys are anymore? Maybe it’s time to unplug and switch off?
*Of course, the 24 hour deadline came and went and still no one’s had the dubious pleasure of seeing my wee willy on screen. But I do sometimes wonder what happened to those old Polaroids.
We live in a digital world of information overload with stuff coming at us from every which way, all day, every day. If you’re plugged in and switched on, it’s unavoidable. I like to think of myself as a savvy reader with mostly moderate views. I find it relatively easy to ignore the bile from the keyboard warriors and the bedroom bores – misfits, axe grinders and ne’er-do-wells, the lot of ’em (that’s me being not so moderate). And don’t get me started on the so-called social media influencers and make-believe ‘experts’ conning the gullible. But now, the ‘respectable’ traditional media is at it too, grabbing attention with sensationalist and totally misleading headlines. Clickbait, I think it’s called. A good example is a recent online headline from the Manchester Evening News:
“ITV Emmerdale regular sacked after harrowing abuse revelations come to light”
So some dodgy soap star has been up to no good? Sounds alarming, doesn’t it? Except it’s not true. It was a plot line for the show – not real life at all. A relief I suppose, but utterly cynical.
Earlier this week, I sprinted through the half a million barrier for pansy hits. When I say sprinted, it’s been more of a gentle stroll, and it’s taken nearly fourteen years to get there. Back in October 2010 when I published In the Beginning, my first ramble, the whole social media-verse was pre-big bang. Faceache and the Tweety Pie were only just taking off, and Instapout and Tik-Tac-Toe-Tok were still forming in the ether.
But things move on as they must – technology has become faster, smarter and more accessible. As a result, we now live in a world of information overload where separating the wheat from the chaff is too much of a faff. For the time-poor in a constant rush, it’s just easier to watch and listen rather than read and think. For many, vlogs and podcasts have become must ‘go-tos’ making instant cyber-celebrities of random nobodies. The fifteen minutes of fame we were all promised have been cropped to fifteen seconds to fit. And for the really attention-deficient, there’s a thin diet of cutesy pet pictures and short videos. And who doesn’t love a thirty second TikTok clip of a couple of hunky plumbers lip-syncing to Kylie while waving their heavy tools about?
So what that traditional blogging is old hat. Half a million hits in fourteen years may be small change to the new cyber-kids on the block, but I shall keep on scribbling my old nonsense, regardless – until I don’t, that is. ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ as they said in the War. Victory will be ours.
Spam is just like tax and death – unavoidable. Crafty spammers, scammers and crooks, enhanced by even craftier AI, are at it night and day finding even more ingenious ways to get us to part with our pennies. Sometimes, though, the attempts are just silly. I recently received this email from ‘Weebly’, a website hosting service. For a split second, it sounded plausible – I use Weebly for several websites. But then I looked more closely at the sender’s email address: sillysocklady@aol.com. What a silly lady.
Last year I acquired my very own online troll from across the pond who accused me loudly and often of conspiring with her ex in a sustained campaign of hate against her. She ranted at me, sent me porn, reported me to the CIA and said the sheriff will be calling round to lock me up. The poor woman’s really not the full shilling. In fact, we do have a sheriff round these parts, the High Sheriff of Norfolk. Historically, a sheriff was an official of the crown responsible for a shire, the term being a contraction of ‘shire reeve’ (Old English scīrgerefa). These days the role is largely ceremonial in feathered hat, fancy dress and chunky gold bling for civic shindigs, grand openings and village fêtes. I can’t see the present incumbent knocking on my door any time soon. He’s far too busy cutting ribbons.
Eventually the avalanche of abuse I endured for weeks became a trickle, then a drought. My report-block-delete strategy worked, or so I’d hoped.
But yes, you guessed it. Just in time for Christmas, my trollette is back on the line with a new incoherent rant of around 900 words – same old, same old but minus the porn and threats this time. Oh, Marsha, how I’ve missed you – not.
Our green and usually pleasant land contains an intricate patchwork of regional accents and dialects with a constantly shifting lexicon of words and idioms, syntax and sounds. Despite the endless yapping of mass media and the flood of Estuary English, you need only cross the street to hear a different voice. Vive la difference as they say in Belgium. I’m all for it.
But what I’m not all for is the laziness of so many users on social media. I don’t mean the use of text-speak and emojis – that’s the modern way. Nor do I mean the odd typo. That happens to us all. No, I mean people whose first language is English but who don’t know – or can’t be arsed to find out – the difference between two, to and too and there, their and they’re. It gets my goat and just makes the offenders come across as, well, a bit thick – or duzzy as they say round these parts.
Let’s face it, if you’re plugged into the modern world your privacy will get compromised all over the place. It doesn’t seem to matter what privacy settings you tick on Faceache, the Tweety thing, Instapout or those endlessly annoying cookie notices, your personal information will leak like a rotting condom and sold on to the highest bidder. I’ve got used to the tedious online ads for stuff I’ve already bought, pointless cold calls from India, threatening emails from crooks, futile come-ons from ladies of the night, blah, blah, blah. But then this popped into my mailbox.
Is this for real?
It’s bad enough some trigger happy redneck is selling dodgy gun licences without the boring bits getting in the way like proper training or checks, but the failure to spell ‘amendment’ correctly is just criminal. Tut! Tut!
Perking the Pansies 