Two Decades of Change?

It is nearly two decades since I got married.  How is that possible, I ask myself?  I mean, I got married last century for goodness sake! 1998.

So much has changed.  From where I live and how I work to having children and a dog.  We have sadly lost many people of course.  But we have also gained them - a wonderful sister-in-law and nephew for starters.  I think I lost myself for a while in the middle of it all.  I didn't mentally take well to babies and small children.  But essentially, I think I am now in a happy place.  I think I am carrying the twenty years okay.

Looking back, organising a wedding in 1998 was a very different experience.  No hotel websites, no travel planning, no Pinterest to plan complicated table decor or find the perfect dress.  Gift lists were done in person at shops.  Disposable cameras on the tables - no phone cameras or social media.  I have books and books of photos but nothing online to take reprints from!

But what about the state of the world in the last two decades?  Clinton was US president, Blair was UK Prime Minister.  Princess Diana had only been dead for a year.  Saddam Hussein was still alive.  The Twin Towers were still standing.  No such thing as smart phones and the internet was something you mainly used at work because the connections were so slow on home computers.  

And yet, when you Google '1998', the Wikipedia page is sadly familiar.  The details are different but the larger events are the same.  Massacres, plane crashes, 'authorised air raids', earthquakes, nuclear testing, North Korea, train disasters and tentative space exploration, to name but a few.  Even the 1998 World Cup final shows depressingly little difference.  France beat Brazil 3-0.  Same teams on the same merry-go-round.  And apparently fashion is currently having a '1990s moment'.  As if one go round at platform trainers, cargo pants and crop tops was not enough.

With twenty more years experience and twenty years of technological change, you would have thought there would have been more progress on the big questions like 'is there life in outer space?' or 'how do we deal better with earthquakes/floods/droughts?'  But no.  Humans seem to put more effort into arguing amongst themselves - often via violence - than working together to solve the problems facing our planet as a whole.  We still haven't even managed to feed everyone.  In fact the rich/poor divides are much worse in many places.

I'll be pushing seventy if I see our ruby wedding anniversary in twenty years time.  I may well be a grandparent by then.  I do hope we as a race have made more progress by then.  It's about time.

By the way, Friends was already on our television screens.  Do you like my 1990s 'Rachel' wedding hair...

The Influencers

And hopefully I'm back in the blogging game. It's not that I haven't been thinking.  I have all sorts of post ideas buzzing around.  It's just the habit/confidence to get them down.

Anyhow.  One thing I have been considering a lot is the concept of influence.  I have still been posting regularly on Instagram and on that, to be an 'influencer' is this whole career idea.  There are many people paid (or wanting to be paid) for posting pictures of clothes, travel, beauty and homewares on their social media and blogs.  They want the #freeshit (as one particularly grasping Instagrammer puts it).  They say they're 'real'.  And of course they all start 'real' because they start small.  But as they get more followers (influence), more opportunities present themselves.  So it all becomes less and less real.  Their chats about family, work and life in general are in themselves influenced by their new positions.  They are regularly photographed in cheaper brands they would now never wear in their own time or they post 'paid for' (not #freeshit) outfits which are way beyond the budget of most.  (£1500 Loewe handbag, anyone?) They moan about being busy but in actual interviews it transpires that they can now afford PAs and nannies.  It's the way of the world.  It's a new social media world but it's old world social climbing.  Personally, I have come to the conclusion that it isn't healthy for the rest of us to be constantly looking at what we 'ought' to have/dress like/look like.  Therein lies dissatisfaction (to say nothing of the credit card bill).

But the term 'influencer' is very interesting in these weird and worrying times.  'Influence' is claimed to be responsible for election results, Brexit, teen angst, male suicide rates, you name it.  Of course, influencing people is nothing new.  It runs the spectrum from basic advertising, through PR and social media to propaganda.  Electioneering.  Canvassing.  Manipulating.  Prompting.  Guiding.  Pressuring.  

Except it's not the same as before.  Because the influence is 24/7.  In our pockets or handbags, on our watches.  As we work, 'appropriate' ads pop up on our laptops.  And the lines are increasingly blurred.  Is that Instagram post an ad or isn't it?  Is that tweet real news or not?  And there are often global implications turning on one tweet or one post.

I recently read Travellers in the Third Reich.  An account of visiting foreigners' experiences in Germany prior to the Second World War.  It is fascinating and disturbing in equal measure.  The Nazis excelled at sowing doubt in people's minds.  In influencing.  'Fake news' at the top of its game.

And recent tweets by Donald Trump really got me thinking about the fascism parallels again.  He was ranting about 'bias' by Google.  He and other ultra right wingers claim that Google's search engines prioritise 'left-wing' material.  (Click here to see an article about this.)

What Trump did with this series of tweets was to water the massive seeds of doubt already carried by his main support.  But also to chip away at the minds of others unfortunately.  Not many people seem to know how these big tech companies really work but millions of us get our information from them.  Alongside Trump's attacks on the traditional media, he is now telling people that they cannot trust their main online sources of information.  Massive influence.  Immediate impact.  Fascism has previously been established with 40% support. His true believers will not check the sources he claims to use for his 'facts'.  But more importantly, the middle ground of undecideds will start to question their use of Google. 

So it's time we started to make better use of OUR influence.  Unfollow social media people who don't make you feel good or whose motives you questions is a small way to do this.  Without us, they are nothing after all.  But more importantly, start questioning the news.  Use fact checkers.  Read a broad base of media.  And check out The Perils of Perception: Why We're Wrong about Nearly Everything by Bobby Duffy.  You will be shocked.  And that's a true fact.