h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I heard (and then read) a news piece this morning about Malaysia Airlines and a competition they've begun, originally called 'My Ultimate Bucket List'. Suddenly this has blown up all over the internet and the news because of the connection with bucket lists and dying, Malaysian Airlines having lost two planes this year killing many hundreds of people.

Unfortunately, it's become the nature of modern life, thanks to the childishness of both social media and news media, to inflate stories involving someone's mistake out of all proportion to their actual importance, and pounce upon them with headlines shouting 'gaffe', 'blunder', 'bungle' and other similar adjectives, and then hunting for someone to make an apology.

When this happens I despair for the decline in the decency of human beings rather than for the company or person who made the mistake in the first place. As this predatory style of news becomes more prevalent, and 'the norm' in some respects, the kids growing up with it will see it at an impressionable age and come to think of it as the way *they* should behave too. Anyone who spends any time on Twitter or Facebook will have seen evidence of that already, and perhaps, like me, wondered at how people can be so judgemental, wilfully ignorant and dogmatic.

Social media is the equivalent of the school playground, and we all know what a bearpit that can be, with stronger kids bullying weaker kids, and kids who consider themselves 'normal' taunting any kid who has a perceived difference of any kind. I expect better from the news though, because the news media is run and operated by adults, but that's just crazy talk really, isn't it. Optimism so strong you move a mountain with it. News organisations being irresponsible is part of the job description and nothing new. Just watch a film like Billy Wilder's Hold the Front Page (I think it was Billy Wilder). Or the documentary I saw recently about mods and rockers, and the Bank Holiday punch-ups in the 1960s.

It turns out that the first few were nothing more than damp squibs, a few hundred pounds-worth of damage caused, a handful of black eyes and lost teeth, and it might have withered on the vine right there, but for one thing. The papers blew it out of all proportion and splashed it all over their front pages with scare headlines. You've probably already guessed what happened next. Over-reaction by the authorities when the next Bank Holiday came around, and a huge invitation for more kids to jump on their scooters and Triumphs and head down to Brighton. Naturally, the next one was far worse, and solely because of the exaggerated newspaper coverage.

So when I read stories like the one about the Malaysia Airlines competition, I sigh, and move on.

Oh, I give up.

Perhaps I should add that the reason this story has irked me particularly is that, as things stand right now, Malaysia Airlines is more victim than perpetrator, as far as the two crashes are concerned. We still don't now what happened to the first one, the one that disappeared without trace, and we may never know. The second one was shot out of the sky in what many see as an act of war. That's not something that happens very often - a civilian airliner being targeted by a military weapon - and in those circumstances I consider it mean-spirited and churlish to round on the company the way so many people have.

Hey, I posted this story to my "stupidity" thread, not to "round on the company", but just to point out that it was an amazingly "stupid" thing to do precisely when the company is in such a dire situation. I feel very bad for Malaysian Airways, but whoever was in charge of this ad campaign was tone deaf to say the least. There is a long list of really poorly thought out ad campaigns and I must say that I usually do enjoy a bit of schadenfreude when I see them, especially when they are for big behemoth companies. This one rather astounded me though. Not in a gleeful way, but in a sense of astonishment.

Ah, I've seen that now. I hadn't read your post before I started this one - had to knock it off in a hurry before heading off out to buy tea. No insult was intended.

Come to think of it, maybe you could add this to your synchronicity thread

Nah, it's not out of the blue. It's just in the news. To be honest, I've only come across this story once on Reddit so far.

Ah well.

I've actually modified my pessimism a little after listening to this just now http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f9r9k 'Is the Double Entendre in Rude Health?'.

Donald McGill, the bloke who did all those saucy seaside postcards that so many of us sent from Blackpool, Southend, Margate, Scarborough when we were kids was actually imprisoned on a charge of indecency in the early 1950s for this one http://50.115.175.97/sites/pillars/files/kippled_1.jpg

We're definitely better than that today, despite the neo-Puritans.