Tuesday, July 03, 2007

status updates

A lot of my friends are from places in Europe which have more reliable weather than we do here. Or at least more reliably warm or reliably cold, as opposed to hopelessly ill-disciplined and changeable, which is what we seemed to be saddled with her in the UK. One thing myself and a lot of my friends have done recently is bowed to the inevitable and signed up for a facebook account. Facebook has an agreeable little status update prompt which works rather like twitter (currently lying dormant on my sidebar, I know) and enables facebookers to post short, regular messages which keep all and sundry apprised of their activities.

For my English friends, who are used to - and enjoy - discussing the weather, this functions as a straightforward method of continuing a conversation which we will engage with until we die. For friends from abroad I get the feeling that this little status update widget enables them to finally express their bewilderment at this rubbish country's climate and simultaneously finally slide with ease into the one conversational mode in which all Englishmen are happy. Finally on facebook we have complete synchronicity: we all declaim the weather, announcing that 'Jonathan is seriously considering emigrating to a country with less rainfall' or 'Anne-sophie is tired of this miserable weather' or 'Dan is wondering why Global Warming is working against his interests right now'.

All of a sudden I am tranfixed with fear at the thought that a real summer might be lurking around the corner, smiling in the sun and ready to crush our peaceful, ordered conversations.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

don't be daft...we'd all simply say, 'thank goodness for the sunshine, that rain was getting rather tiresome'

Stephen Newton said...

I put Twitter on my Facebook thining it might take charge of that status thing and enable me to update it by text... which only North American Facebook users can do. It doesn't so you end up with two status thingies.

But how many people need to know when I'm sitting on the toilet?

Jonathan said...

Stephen, the beauty of Facebook is that it reassures you that everyone wants to know when you're sitting on the toilet. I've never felt so loved.

Kat said...

May I give a piece of advice for when you should be faced with a "real" summer: a real summer is no problem for Austrians, we just start complaining about the "heat" (starting from approx. 22°C); there's almost no wheather an Austrian can't complain about. The "almost" was unnecessary. ;-)