Will people never learn? Despite the fact that there have been any number of incidents because of a party being broadcast on Facebook there has been yet one more. A silly teenager threw a party, whilst parents were away of course, and a hundred unwanted guests turned up to gatecrash and trash involving neighbours and police. ‘I just wanted to invite a few friends,’ she said. Well in that case, dear you don’t tell the whole world, at least not all those yobs who have Facebook and can tune in to your little invite. You asked for it. You got it. I don’t do Facebook, I don’t do Twitter and I don’t do Linkedin. It seems to me to be a pure waste of time as everyone I want to get in touch with has an e-mail address and if there’s’ anything I want to look up research–wise I go to Google; an absolute mine of information. I have never yet been disappointed when asking for something.

I haven’t the faintest idea who Bill Thompson is but this is what he says. ‘Online tools and services such as Twitter and Facebook create a social space that encourages informality, rapid responses and the sort of conversation that typically takes place between friends in contexts that are either private or public-private like the street, pub, or café. Unfortunately on-line interaction has other characteristics which are very different form those of a casual conversation in a café. Not least the fact that many services make comments visible to large numbers of people and search engines ensure that a permanent record is kept of every inane observation, spiteful aside or potentially libellous comment. Many people have regretted what they let slip via Twitter.’ So you silly silly girl and all those other teenagers hooked on the internet, in future beware. I have no doubt though that there will be more of the same, especially while the cats are away.

Another point to be made is that there has evidently been a growing number of cases of defamation over the internet so what with all that, and cyber-crime from small cons to those worth billions, hacking, acres of spam, incitement to riot and viruses, is it all such a good thing? Well, there’s no turning back the clock. For better or worse we’ve got it and that’s that.

Con artists have always been with us and I have no doubt always will be but it is amazing how people still fall for these scams mostly it seems either from greed (get rich quick with little effort) or from being lovelorn, hence all those who lose their entice savings to Nigerian con-men who have discovered what a wonderful tool the intent is. Nigeria does seem to breed them as well as various other extremely nasty goings on such as young girls being promised fabulous jobs in Europe only to end up as prostitutes, badly treated and with no protection.

I have to say though, being careful about what one writes, I never realised how vulnerable one is in writing a Blog until I took a certain academic lady (one I personally didn’t know) to task one day. ‘Get a life’ I told her and received a response from her going tut tut tut naughty naughty, thank you but I have a life! Oops! Sorry, Missus.