Nothing makes me happier than reading stories about the imminent demise of ‘social media networking’, even when they’re published in my least favourite newspaper. But wouldn’t you know… just as everyone else is growing out of this puerile nonsense, the World Economic Forum (who are meeting for their annual shin-dig in Davos this week) are embracing it.
Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t written about the conspiracy recently – that is the one to make a mockery of editors everywhere, to turn language into meaningless noise, to pollute our every moment with confusing messages and meaningless drivel, to litter our lives with the pointless delusion that we exist for a purpose, when in fact we are all drones serving the smug and swanky who think they’ve got the better of us in some way or other.
No matter how much I bang on about plain English and stuff, well… it’s as if people don’t understand the words. This week my life has been plagued with people who think that writing web content clearly, and following accessibility criteria, will make their god-awful content boring. It’s enough to drive any right-thinking web editor completely insane. › Continue reading
You would think that after at least ten or 15 years of the web people would know that brief is good and justified text is difficult to read online. I don’t want to get sued, but I have to say it’s just as well this training company doesn’t teach web writing or plain English. And why are they called Sold Out Trainers – a name that suggests a faint tang of sweaty feet, without actually meaning old running shoes at all? › Continue reading
I went to a workshop on web 2.0 the other day, at my local library. I thought it might help me manage my blog. And I may have picked up a few useful tips (possibly). Time will tell.
In some ways it was a belittling experience. Of course it was run by geeks – self-proclaimed geeks who were incredibly proud of how geeky they were. They talked about web 2.0 as if they had invented all of what they insisted on calling ‘tools’. They spoke through self-satisfied grins and talked about going on a “social media journey”.