The Age of Convenience and Zombies

As a person who is convinced that Coca-Cola are taking over the world, business by business, I never thought I'd be the one to say that I own an iPhone. The story of how I purchased it is quite an amusing one...

It was a dodgy dealing. A GumTree, bargain-bucket special. I saw an offer, proceeded to text a man and then at quarter past midnight on a Thursday evening I went to the local high-street and awaited for a dark looking car to show up and give me my not-so-brand-spanking-new phone. It was cheap and cheerful. I like cheap and cheerful.

Now despite how fun that little adventure was and how attached I am to my selfie camera - I hate the culture that iPhone has created in Britain. People going out together and spending half the time staring at their phones telling the world what a great time they're having. More than half the population use iPhones or some other Android do-it-all-quicker-than-you phone, it's just not healthy. It isn't even an exaggeration anymore, it's the cold hard facts. People use them for all sorts of things, we all know that. Want to know something? Quickly look it up on the Google App. Need food? Quickly do a shop on the ASDA App. Need to meet a girlfriend/boyfriend? Go on Tinder and find all the other lonely hearts near you.

Unfortunately it has actually gotten to the point where it's affecting people's communication skills. I know it has for me! When I was just a wee bairn I used to call my friends up all the time like “Oh hey guuuurl, you wanna build a space rocket with me?” but now if the phone rings I either ignore it or pull this face 

because I'm just not used to actual human interaction anymore.

Convenience; that's all it is. People have become lazy because technology does everything for us. In a social situation it's easier to pretend you're busy on your phone than face the harsh reality that you are sat in a rotting cesspit of awkward silence. It is also easier to send someone a WhatsApp than call them or meet them in real life because it's easy to fake emotions in texts and messages, real life emotions are just so difficult.

I was at the gym the other day (a rare occasion in itself) and casually happened to glance around as I plodded my merry way into the first kilometre on the cross-trainer. What I saw was a little bit terrifying - every single person had headphones. Now this may not seem like a big deal but when you've read as many dystopian novels as I have, all sorts of crazy ideas begin to formulate. Not a single person was looking up, talking or even smiling. They all had their headphones in and were all staring blankly ahead. I mean, obviously, they might all have a lot on their minds. They might have been using the gym to escape a domestic situation or have been in the middle of a mid-life crisis.

What did occur to me, however, was that most of those people would be listening to music through an Apple device. What if Apple was using their devices to send death rays into our brains? What if Apple began to send messages into people's subconscious minds about something unholy? There would be no way to control it because Apple has essentially monopolised the industry (I won't go as far as to say the world... yet).

I would go on to say we're all going to be brain dead in 20 years because all we do is listen to music on Apple products through headphones, never communicating with each other, but I won't. All I'm saying is that I thought the gym was meant to be a social place. You know in all the American movies where all the yummy mummies go to meet other yummy mummies? Or the riled, depressed twenty-something meets a gorgeous gym instructor and they live happily ever after? 

Well suffice to say that when I looked around that fateful day I had a horrendous moment of fear that I'd become an unfortunate extra in the real life version of '28 Days Later'. Have you seen that film? It's about some disease that turns everyone into cannibalistic, flesh eating, Zombie monsters.

I can't really talk though, I love my iPhone and I love Instagram... I really do.

A SMILE A DAY KEEPS THE DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND GENERAL LAZINESS AWAY

It's a little (pixelated) seal

Herpaderpaderp

I'm angry because I'm fat

He's no actually sad, it's just so darn cute

Mmm yeah right there

The not-so-trustworthy BBC.

I want to write something about, what I would call, the “selective hearing” of the BBC News broadcasts and newspapers. As you may have already guessed my blog is very opinionated so this post will also be very opinionated. Prepare thyself.

First of all: I do not trust the BBC as far as I can... throw it (is that possible?!). I've come to realise over the past year, as I attempted to become more worldly and knowledgeable, that the BBC coverage about news across the globe is nothing other than piss-poor. There have been so many times when I've had to reign in my swelling anger and stop myself from writing a strongly worded letter to the Big Bosses.

Let us go deep into our mind palaces and recall the Scottish referendum (well shit! That really does require some effort). Most immediately, what has happened to that? Where did it go? I try and read the news extensively everyday and although my memory is terrible, I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen the words “Scottish Referendum” in the news for months. Now that could just be due to Cameron sweeping his dirty little political promises under the carpet in the run up to the election, I admit that. What I want to remember, however, are the protests that happened around the time of the Scottish referendum. I cannot find in the archives of Google the article that I wish to cite but here's the upshot: The BBC reported about a march/rally/protest that took place in Edinburgh (I think) stating that “a few” or a “few hundred” people showed up to the “Vote Yes” campaign thing. What actually happened was that thousands of people showed up and the BBC just failed to mention that. A little while after that hundreds of people gathered to protest against the bias of the BBC towards the “Better Together” campaign. Obviously spokespeople for the BBC scrambled to attention saying that they were following «the guidelines”

I suppose that situation was quite a long time ago and maybe people don't care so much anymore. Nevere fear! There is another thing that I would like to rant about and it is the coverage of the Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria. Now although there are reports on the BBC website about these militants, it is rarely ever on the front page and you really have to search for it.

Around the same time as the Charlie Hebdo attacks, 2000 women, elderly people and children (and obviously men as well, but according to Amnesty International reports, amongst others, there were less men killed) were killed by Boko Haram in the biggest massacre in it's history. I read about this before I read about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The BBC didn't report about it on nearly the same scale as Charlie Hebdo, if at all. I'm not saying one should be prioritised over the other but 2000 people were dead. I personally cannot even fathom what that many corpses looks like.

Another example is in recent news Boko Haram have been rampaging through towns killing dozens and causing destruction everywhere. Innocent people are fleeing to the town of Maiduguri, however Boko Haram have surrounded the area and threatened that they are preparing it into a “big grave where there will be no mercy”. According to reports authorities have not helped. People are going to die.

That is happening today and do you want to know what the top stories are in the news?

• “Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) rushed to hospital because he has flu”
• “Students fury over impossible economics exam”
• “Teenager isolated over charity haircut”

I'm am an optimist (believe it or not) and I do believe that not all news should be bad news BUT SO MANY PEOPLE ARE DYING. Boko Haram have gone wild. There are mass murders everyday! I feel like if the BBC media was more representative of the situation in Nigeria there would be more chance of the people out there getting help!

Perhaps I am just being over-pessimistic about these particular examples but I can't help but lose my sense of trust in the great giant of news reporting. If anyone who's read this is looking for more places to get news I would check out the Reddit sub /r/WorldNews. That offers a lot more coverage and is actually very educational.

A late post about the Charlie Hebdo shootings.

All that I can really remember from the reports of the Charlie Hebdo incident is that 12 people were killed, and what is seemingly more important, that the attackers were Islamic or Muslim. Now, personally, I think that information has been the focus of too many reports. It's not the religion or ethnicity of the attackers that is important, it's the fact that 3 men went to Charlie Hebdo and mercilessly killed 12 people. Whether they were Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist (very unlikely that they would be Buddhist, I know) it shouldn't matter. They were men, they were human and the murdered 12 people. People are now ruthlessly using their religious status to attack innocent Muslims in "retaliation". 

There were dozens and dozens of killing sprees in America in 2014, with an average of 5-10 victims per attack, most of which were committed by white men, ranging from the age of 18 - middle age. Now that doesn't mean that everybody in America walks the streets in fear of every single white, middle aged man that they see. It doesn't mean that on the subway you sit nervously next to the white, middle aged man with his briefcase. It doesn't mean that to revenge the victims of the attack you go and start attacking, killing and destroying all white middle aged men and the things that they believe in. It just doesn't happen.

The focus on the fact that these men were possibly Muslim is being used as an excuse to attack a population for nothing other than because people are scared of things that they do not understand and will use any reason or excuse to jump on a chance to attack those people. Muslim people across Europe are now having to undergo the horrible experience of VALIDATING their religion as one that shouldn't be attacked and defending their beliefs. All this just because 3 extremists went out of control. Hundreds of Muslims are probably having to convince people not to hate them for their religious beliefs, a thing that many people take comfort from, just because 3 people who they do not know and have no relation to have committed a terrible crime. 

I think it's disgusting. If they had been 3 Christian men I don't even think their religion would've been mentioned, anywhere. I think the men that committed the attack should be sent to prison for life, with no mercy, but I hate the fact that so many people are now having to pay the price for a crime they didn't commit, solely because they believe in the same God.

#unilife #yolo #student #... oh wait it isn't actually that funny.

I just cannot understand or tolerate the way people treat and talk about students like crap. We have such a bad rep - and for what?! Paying £9000 a year to the Government? Getting drunk and being loud like most of the people in Britain do? Is it because we're young? Is it because we talk fast? Is it because we have overdrafts? Is it because we talk to loud on the bus? WHAT IS IT PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME SOMEONE.

Estate agents knocked on our door today announcing that they were here for a viewing without any prior warning (bearing in mind they are supposed to give 24 hours notice). We let them in because we are nice, polite people. Due to the fact that they haven't given us any warning some of the house hadn't had chance to lock/tidy their rooms. The estate agents and the random strangers start obviously looking around the house and going into peoples rooms, that were empty, without their permission. 

I politely said, "Can you please not go into empty rooms without people's permission". 

One estate agent turned to me and replied, pretty curtly, "Actually we are allowed, it's part of the house viewing process"

Probably seeing the look of complete and utter shock on my face, the other estate person starts spewing out some bullshit about why they're allowed to go into people's private spaces without any permission or prior warning.

I didn't listen. All I could think was; yes, it's very nice that you are allowed "by law" to go into people's rooms without their consent but I am asking you, as another human being, to just respect people's privacy. You can look at the rooms of the three people in the house who are actually here (which is plenty right?!). Needless to say they went into all the empty rooms anyway, random strangers looking at our stuff - seeing our little spaces where we are truly ourselves, probably making judgments.

If it had been an "adult" i.e. someone over the age of say... 21 who wasn't a student, I'm pretty sure she would've said "Ok that's fine, if you're asking us not to invade peoples personal space without their permission, that's ok". Suddenly because we're students it's like HEY YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING SO WE'LL JUST DO WHAT WE WANT AND TREAT YOU STUDENTS LIKE IDIOTS. Yip-fucking-pee.

New Year's Resolutions

My News Years resolution this year is to keep up a blog and (maybe) a vlog. So, fifteen days late I'm living up to my own expectations at last. It's usually around this time that people start breaking their New Year's resolutions but I've always considered myself a bit of a hipster, so I'm starting mine now.

I hope this proves interesting for everyone!