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

What is reality? On teh interwebs, it's a mutable concept. We can be whoever we want to be...an avatar battling mighty death trolls in a virtual elfworld...a temporary person whose only existence is a disposable e-mail-address...the designer of a virtual clothing range...a trader in non-existent currencies. There are people on hooto of whose sex I'm uncertain...and don't get me started on mesbians! ( Have I 'Revealed Too Much' again?)

Now I read that there are cyber-bullying children who pose as predatory paedophiles:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/pupilbehaviour/story/0,,2272283,00.html

So we have...children pretending to be adults who are pretending to be children?!

It reminds me or RD Laing's schtick (http://www.amazon.com/Knots-R-D-Laing/dp/0394717767) which goes something like:
"Imagine yourself sitting on a park bench.
Imagine that as you are sitting there, you're imagining that you're here in this room, imagining that you're sitting on the park bench.
Why are you imagining that you're somewhere that you are?
Why do you imagine that you are somewhere that you're imagining?."

I wonder if any of them will pretend to be police officers who pretend to be children who pretend to be adults who pretend to be children? And will they end up attempting to bully other children who pretend to be police officers who pretend to be children who pretend to be adults who pretend to be children?

If it wasn't such a serious subject, it would be way .

The first Amazon customer review of 'Knots' is also way

Do you mean the first review of Knots: Mathematics with a Twist by A Sossinsky?

Ah the internet, where men are men and hot 14-year-old girls are FBI agents.

Oh, I see you didn't mean that.

>>Do you mean the first review of Knots: Mathematics with a Twist by A Sossinsky?

No.

I don't always know what's going on in conversations because I ignore links.

Given enough time and white widow, you've got a great recipe for psychosis.

That review of Knots was easily the best review I’ve ever read on Amazon.

That's precisely what I tried to tell the reviewer...but it wouldn't let me 'cause I've only bought from Amazon.co.uk.

I can, what do you want to say?

What I said was:

'I'm not going to attempt Laing-speak - but that is easily the best review I've ever seen on Amazon. Clearly Mr Testani is as crazy as a box of crackers, and a crazy box at that.'


'round my way, it's quite fashionable to claim to have met RD Laing. Nearly as many people claim to have got roaring drunk with him as claim to have had ancestors in the Dublin's -like General Post Office or to have seen The Sex Pistols at Manchester's -like Free Trade Hall.

Oh - and

Feel free to use my name.

And then there's,
By the time we got to Woodstock, we were fifteen years too late.

Your comment has been added. It turns out you were savagely plagiarized by one K.Bishop – oops. I swear I’ve left comments on there before but it must have been a while because I got a message thanking me for my first comment. No doubt I lost my password some time ago and created a new account. I’m not good with keeping up with passwords.

If a fraction of the people who claim to have been at Woodstock were actually there they would still be trying to unsnarl the parking mess.

By the time we got to Woodtock we smelled like half a million camels...

We now have people pretending to be mothers of kidnapped children. It's a case of Pop Eating Itself, I guess. Coverage of criminality opening up opportunity to profit from the coverage, if only for kicks. We're all party to the horror and looking to be a part of it.

I remember during the Suffolk murders seeing one girl run into a bar excitedly, saying she'd just been interviewed by Sky. Given the subject, and the obvious tone of the interview, concerned with the general sense of safety around Ipswich that Christmas, I felt very uncomfortable that someone could get so psyched at an opportunity, and that I felt the same excitement. I guess it's a function of the interactive age that we're all entitled to be up against the window.

Hmm. Apparently someone from Rotherham tried to get money from the Mccann's. So possibly we also have mothers who are pretending to be pretending to be mothers of kidnapped children. What larks!

As for TV in general - my Charlie Brooker-esque wisdom, based on my own minor brushes with The Meeja is:

"TV is a crack whore. It doesn't care who it s to feed its needs."

to everyone at the BBC.