Getting social with Nathan Barley

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Bobbie Johnson from the Guardian has had it with social media. It’s easy to sympathise.

“Listen. I have blog. I use Twitter. I idly flick through lists of people I’d forgotten I ever knew on Facebook. I’ve even got a MySpace page, although I don’t like to talk about it. They are great ways of connecting people, and they’re very exciting when you start using them, because they allow virtual contact in ways that are analogous to – if not the same as – real life. You know, communicate with people. That old thing.

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This leaking story: perspective

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Gary Andrews

Anybody else ever get a bit irked over the incessant use of hyperbolic language in public life? Like the arrest of Damien Green being described as Stalinist by assorted politicians? If this was genuinely Stalinist, he’d have probably been sent to Siberia, or shot. And then airbrushed out of history. By this time next week, we’d have all been positively encouraged to have forgotten he ever existed.

One day we’ll probably have to invent a set of completely new hyperbole to replace the ones that have been killed off by repeated clubbing with mixed metaphors.

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The language of terror

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Gary Andrews

Moving off social media briefly (although I’ll be back onto the topic in the next few posts), yesterday’s ‘bombing’ [1] got me wondering how I would have covered the event if I’d still been in Exeter, specifically in regard to the word “terror”.

I’ve written before how unimpressed I am when the T-word is thrown around, and while there’s more justification for using it in relation to yesterday’s event, there’s still some debate to be had.

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