MANNERS AND OTHER MATTERS

My phone/camera is always with me... Christmas is over, and New Year celebrations are pending. Like thousands of people, I have taken tens of photos over the Festive Season so far, some with my iPhone and others with my camera and quite a few have been uploaded to my Facebook page so that I can share them with friends, near and far. An uploaded photo to Facebook...to be shared only with "friends" I read a news report yesterday  in the West Australian newspaper, and quoting The Telegraph. about the sister of Facebook chief, Mark Zuckerberg,  Randi, being tripped up by the company’s privacy setting.  According to Associated Press, a picture that Randi posted on her personal Facebook profile was seen by a marketing director who then posted the picture to Twitter and her more than 40,000 followers. Randi then tweeted that the picture was meant for friends only and that posting the private picture on Twitter was “way uncool”:  The marketing director...

Adele, singing Someone Like You After my recent post  Manners, Pen Pals...and Internet Friends  I have been inundated with emails from people with similar stories about negative internet influences on their personal lives with devastatingly painful effects.  Partners, be they personal or professional, deceiving, through a virtual life. I have explored with a psychologist how such duplicity can exist in otherwise quite reasonable  people. The condition is referred to as “internet psychosis”, brought on by the self absorbed behaviour in those who live, via the writing of blogs and chat forums, in a virtual reality. They are able to reinvent themselves to a certain extent. And with blog writers, the quality of the written word, true or not, becomes paramount, and in the most severe cases, becomes delusional.   It is increasingly becoming a psychosis seen by mental health professionals. Any breakup is painful.  But when the internet is invol...

The intrepid travellers. May 2011. (Photo courtesy our crew member) I have reposted this post (initially written in June 2011)  as I was contacted yesterday by a concerned previous client of the cruise operator who advised that my TripAdvisor comment on Suwarrow National Park and the cruise operator had been removed... It is a good story...reminding us all to be aware of internet descriptions...and deceptions. Our "cruiser"  sitting low in the water May 2011 (photo the author) The minute we saw the boat at the dock in Rarotonga, Cook Islands,  we knew that things were not as we had envisaged by reading about and booking our voyage  at the ship's owners website. http://mannersandothermatters.blogspot.com/2011/05/manners-mannerseverywhereeven-suwarrow.html When I introduced myself to the person I had been told was the captain he acknowledged me, didn’t give his name and pointed towards a young woman who was inventoring freight at it was put abroa...

Discarded  flowers in full bloom in Paris, October 2011 (photo taken by the author) I wrote a post a few months ago Friendships...Gold and Silver... , after giving a radio interview on the subject, about friendship and the rise of “internet friendship” in the last few years.  l I questioned the reality and honesty of communicating via an effectively anonymous medium, one in which regular checks and balances are difficult, if the “friends” involved have “covered their tracks” with pseudonyms.  Facebook and Twitter are certainly employed as search and discover mediums.  In earlier times, the checks and balances were made more simply through friends and work colleagues. I compared these modern medium friendships with the ones in our lives which are silver and gold standard relationships; the ones which are long standing and able to withstand sometimes critical and deliberating conversations, face to face over coffee or cocktails. I app...