The Day We Had To Talk...
IT will probably go down in the history books as ‘The Day We Had to Talk To Each Other’.
Oh, yes, actually have a conversation, either face-to-face or over the telephone!
As opposed to the alternative of text messaging on Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram.
In years to come our grandchildren will be asking you, ‘Where were you when the great social media meltdown happened at 5pm on Monday, October 4, 2021?’ Boy, will you have some tales to tell them...
“The running club was a shambles as no-one on the Whatsapp group knew what time and where to meet.”
“Can you believe I couldn’t post that amazing sunset photo from Worm’s Head?”
“I couldn’t forward that hysterical Boris Johnson meme to my pals in the office.”
“It was more than six hours before someone answered my appeal for a plasterer/plumber/ electrician (delete as applicable).”
“I wasn’t able to strongarm the restaurant boss into a free meal because I couldn’t leave a bad review on Insta.”
“By the time I uploaded my ‘funny cat chases fly in kitchen’ video, someone else had beaten me to it . . . with a funnier one.”
Yes, the tales of woe will probably fill a book – or an online pdf! It just goes to show how reliant we’ve become on social media apps to (supposedly) stay in touch. Text seems to have become the default way of ‘chatting’.
Hands up those of you who don’t know your best pal’s phone number because your default way of keeping in touch is through Whatsapp. Test yourselves. And then try dialling the number. I am sure they will appreciate a ‘live conversation’ as opposed to ‘txtmsg’.
Monday’s teeth-gnashing (by many, but not by me, I hasten to add) was enough to leave many youngsters in a state of high anxiety. Many were questioning the divine purpose of thumbs and fingers when they are deprived of a screen to tap.
If this is what happens when three pillars of social media collapse because someone’s keyed in a few wrong digits into a piece of data centre code, then heaven help us when the internet crashes completely.
Such an event is probably long overdue as the web must surely one day collapse under the weight of fake news and inconsequential drivel.
Meanwhile, in the fallout of Monday, it was left to the Skewenborn Queen of The Power Ballad, Bonnie Tyler, to come up with the best Tweet of the day.
The 70-year-old singing legend, who splits her time between Swansea and Portugal and touring venues in Europe, mocked the Facebook global outage by sharing the lyrics of one of her most iconic tunes. On Twitter (which survived the meltdown) she posted a picture of the platform’s DNS problem “This site can’t be reached” message. As the whole world struggled to log on, Bonnie posted: “Every now and then I fall apart. #Facebookdown”
The lyrics were from Bonnie’s classic Total Eclipse of the Heart and by yesterday the post on @ Bonnietofficial (25.1K followers, BTW) had earned more than 400 replies, 24,500 likes and a total of 5,700 retweets.
The Bonnie Tyler songbook has a special place in my heart as (many moons ago) sports desk colleagues played a ‘game’ where we tried to sneak Bonnie song titles into the sports pages of the South Wales Evening Post. ‘Lost in France’ was an easy one whenever the Welsh rugby team were beaten in Paris. Others to make it into print (for various reasons which now elude me) included ■■ It’s a Heartache. Too Good To Last Sayonara Tokyo Rebel without a cue (clue) Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad This is Gonna Hurt and . . . He’s the King (which I recall was an attempt to Christen one promising rugby fly-half as the new Barry John).
It took a while for the sports editor to catch on to our ‘Bonnie Tyler playbook’, but he did see the funny side of it.
Finally, let’s fast forward again to today (also known as ‘now’). Do you think we spend too much time messaging each other on social media? Do you yearn for oldfashioned ‘Talking not Texting’ conversations? Please let me know and send me a message on Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. On the other hand, forget that idea ... next time you see me in the street, stop me and have a chat. I’m sure we’ll all feel the benefit of proper ‘human
interaction’.