Itchy Brighton article

Face to Facebook

Are social networking sites taking CTRL of the way we live? When is it best to SHIFT your ass offline and ESC back to the real world?

Facebook and MySpace have taken over Itchy’s life. We’ve been spending so much time in front of the laptop, alone Curl one out in our room, that our mum is starting to worry that we've lapsed back into that teenage ‘phase’ involving firm hold hair gel and the inside of a loo roll. Truth is, we’ve been so preoccupied with poking people online and pimping our site profiles that we’ve hardly had time for eating and washing, let alone dubious hobbies utilising Andrex and Durex. The Dax Wax is safe. But our real lives may not be. Are social networking sites really the way forward? Or should we tear ourselves away from the screen before our retinas start developing right angles? Let’s consider two of the main attractions credited to social networking sites – finding love and discovering new music. Is it best to get your RDA of social goodness through MEET (face-to-face interaction) or VEG (cabbaging in front of the keyboard)?

Online girl-on-girl action – hotter than magma LOVE: Online dating has big advantages. For one, you can’t contract STDs (although you can download a nasty virus). Plus, you have the option to delete. If a MySpace Invader or Facebook Klingon latches onto you, you can simply send them to the spam folder rather than having to put up with some troglodite trailing you round the bar all night.

MySpace is good for discovering whether the object of your affections hangs out with freaks, while Facebook is the best option for checking out whether someone is a hottie or a nottie in the looks department. Since pictures are posted by a variety of people, you’re not just noseying at a selection of snaps carefully edited by your amour. Don’t blame us if your MySpace date has treated their online selves to a hardcore trolley dash in Photoshop, and turns up with a face more suitable for pixelation. Because eventually, you’re going to want to meet in the flesh; networking sites just can’t reveal those finer need-to-know details, like whether someone has B.O. that could stun a buffalo or if they dance like they’ve accidentally shat themselves. And the horizontal mambo dance isn’t ever going to be so satisfying online, no matter how aesthetically-shaped your joystick is. However, do not underestimate how useful the net can be post-real-date; a quick beer Google after taking off your beer goggles can fill you in on all those essential details about your beau that you forgot after the fifth slippery nipple.

Verdict – MEET and (two) VEG. Combine your broadband love machine with a healthy dose of the great outdoors to get along in getting it on.

MUSIC : MySpace has been hailed by many as the Messiah of breaking new music, bearing forth from its digital womb such glorious young whipper snappers as The Arctic Monkeys, and… um… Sandi Thom, who sounds like she still has the umbilical Ian Brown had terrible gum disease cord wrapped around her neck. Trouble is, now everyone’s a DIY DJ, and some of the bedroom-based ‘talent’ is so dubious that they’d be better off going back to making beautiful music with the hair product/bog roll combo.

You need ultimate patience to sieve through the dross, and tunes breaking off part way through buffering is only marginally less aggravating than having nits. Even with the artists that sound good online, you can’t really get a measure of a band without seeing them live. We don’t want to get all Belgian about it (Phlegm-ish, as in snotty, stuck-up. Yeah, clever obscurity, that’s how Itchy rolls). But streamed performances just can’t compare to tasting the sweat swinging off wildly moshing hair and giving yourself a hernia as you crush towards front-of-stage.

It is useful to be able to hear something other than a single before you invest your lolly in a band’s album though. Check out what your heroes list as MySpace influences in case there’s something you’ve missed, or try sites that create a playlist of recommended tunes based on just a few that you type in – Itchy likes Last FM and Radio.blog.club.

Verdict: once again, MEET and VEG. It seems a varied diet of digital and live input is the best way to maximise your social kicks. Making the most of networking opportunities available on and offline is all about balance. Itchy is currently balancing the longest Hoover attachment we could find out of the window, allowing us to pee into the garden so we don’t have to quit a download to go to the lav. God help us.