Boscastle

I’ve always lived in the city, so my visit to Boscastle was a nice change.

I’m not stranger to quaint villages such as this one; some of my relatives live in the middle of nowhere, and my sister got married in a pleasant little village called Stedham. This is, however, my first time staying at a village without family. I’m on a Writer’s Retreat with some friends at university, so I’m not exactly on my own, but having to pay attention to getting my own food and certain other necessities within this one village is a new experience.

There are certain signifiers I keep pointing out that remind me I’m in Cornwall. For instance, it seems that the only general store in Boscastle is a small Spar corner shop, and one of its main advertising points is the possession of an ATM that doesn’t charge you when you withdraw money. I’ve not seen another cash machine so far. Other signifiers include the sheer friendliness of everyone we encounter, everyone’s familiarity with each other, the word “Cornwall” being proudly plastered on most shop signs and the uneven ratio of the amount of tourists to the amount of locals wondering around. (Tourists win that one.)

One of the intentional features of this Writer’s Retreat is the lack of Wi-Fi and less-than-abundant phone signal. I mentioned in a previous blog post that being away from Wi-Fi for too long incites a strange loneliness in me, but that hasn’t been the case during my stay here. Or, so far, at least; I’ve only been here for a day. I’ll be posting this when I return. I think it’s the communal atmosphere of the hostel that prevents the Wi-Fi withdrawal. It’s relaxing and calm, but talkative and fun all at once. I’ve read a lot of the fifth Song of Ice and Fire book already, but there’s been Mario Kart 7 tournaments, a walk along the coast and just general nitter-natter. It’s cosy and comfortable and I wish it didn’t have to end.

We went on a walk at one point, out to the cliffs. The only place in the whole of Boscastle that had halfway decent phone signal was on the cliffs, so that was one reason we went there. Mostly, though, it was to brave the fresh air and hope that the sun doesn’t take vengeance on me for shunning it. It was nice. The waves crashing up against the rocks below reminded me of cream running down a portion of chocolate gateau. This may seem like a random observation to make, but chocolate gateau reminds me of when I was younger, when I took trips up to my nans’.

At one point, a third year read out a piece of writing for their dissertation. This was when I noticed that I still have a lot of work to do as a writer. Many people say that they have the problem wherein they abuse the show-don’t-tell rule by telling the reader too much. I’m entirely the opposite; I overestimate people’s imaginations and write my stories as if they were scripts instead. I think this has come from lack of practice, but quite often a character will pop up out of nowhere with no description but plenty of dialogue. I’ve found a frighteningly large number of times in which I hardly establish setting at all. This third year student, however, had perfected the balance between showing and telling and reminded me where I was going wrong.

I’m back home, now. I never quite finished this blog post, and reading back over it makes me want to go back to Boscastle. I feel like I’m living in a bit of a rut at the moment, and Boscastle was a brilliant way of getting out of that. But here I am again.

I miss the youth hostel. It had heated flooring.

The Impact of the Internet on Modern Society

I love the internet. Chances are, so do you, considering you’re here, reading this. I’ve always been against SOPA and all the other attempts governments have made to control this place. So believe me when I say that this blog post is not biased against the web.

I’ve heard it said that the internet as we know it today hasn’t been around long enough for us to assess what kind of an impact it’s made on society. There hasn’t been enough research to show any telling statistics; there hasn’t even been reason to prompt research in the first place. Not that I’m aware of, at least. This tells me that we’re still assuming the world works the way it did before we had troves of information in our pockets.

Before we go any further I want to stress that I’ve never done any kind of course in psychology or sociology, and I’m open to being wrong. This theory is based completely on logic.

One of the key aspects of the internet is anonymity. You’ll see this in the form of usernames; quite sensibly, people don’t want to tell absolute strangers who they are or where to find them. This does, however, give birth to a new kind of freedom. My favourite point of reference here is the Youtube comments section. Look on almost any video, whether it’s to do with music or gaming or even science, and you’ll get the same twelve year old children calling each other derogatory names with enough spelling and grammar mistakes to make an English student quietly shake his head in disapproval. Without any kind of reprimanding, people say what they want. Chaos reigns.

I have two favourite examples of this being different; Facebook, and Reddit. First and most simply, Facebook. You’re far less likely to find such unprecedented insults on Facebook because people are heavily encouraged to use their real names, and have to accept friend requests before they do. My other example, Reddit, is an interesting one. People can take on any username they want – causing interesting scenarios in which I’ve spoken to people such as I_SMELL_FARTS – but there is still less chaos to be found. This is because of the karma system. The clever way in which Reddit is designed heavily discourages those with less karma. You can either upvote or downvote what people submit and say, and generally this causes the atmosphere to become more controlled and sensible.

I may have gone on a slightly longer tangent than expected, but I’m getting there.

Anonymity combined with social networks is a strange phenomenon. More likely than not, you’ll find that the minority voice suddenly becomes the majority, for reasons which I can only speculate; I’d wager that the lack of regulation sees more like-minded people from varying locations able to communicate for the first time, and subsequently become more excited and driven about their previously solitary-seeming motives. I’ve noticed that websites which utilise a follow system, such as Twitter but more particularly Tumblr, are heavily important to this idea. I find that depending on who you follow, any minority voice can easily have the illusion of seeming like a majority. Ideas such as extremism and more emotionally-charged conversations will take place, and an aura of negativity and weight will surround the subject. As the user is sucked deeper into the minority voice, they end up following more users who are contributing, and none of those on the opposing side. This causes a kind of tunnel-vision, making certain issues seem more prominent than they really are.

The world around you changes based on your perspective, and your perspective is derived from the opinions of others.

Basically, my theory is this: In the long run, people’s perspectives are going to become more based on what the internet tells them than what the world around them suggests. Anonymity will cause these opinions to be more charged, whereas the nature of the websites themselves will cause the opinions to seem more widely supported. Whilst some may consider this a good thing, I can’t help but believe that the minority voice is a minority for a reason, and when given the illusion that it is major, may make the world seem like a much darker place. This could cause the general public to become more pessimistic as a whole, and perhaps crime rates and extremist actions will go up. What doesn’t seem like a pressing issue today might do tomorrow, and the world might change before it realises that what it thinks is happening for the greater good is actually happening because of a minority group who are emotionally charged.

I love the internet. It allows like-minded people to come together and create wonderful things, for an easier distribution of entertainment and a louder voice for world leaders to hear. But I can’t help but feel that everything I’ve gone over in this blog post is already starting to become true.

I’d like to reiterate one last time that this is nowhere near my area of expertise, so my wording may be questionable and my metaphors clumsy. I hope I’ve managed to write about what I thought I was writing about, and not something else by mistake.