Limp old Cucumber

So, did you watch Cucumber - Channel 4's almost kinda flagship "gay" tv for the last 15 years?

Only it wasn't really, was it?

There was so much spout about how 1) it was a big, almost exclusively gay comedrama; and 2) that it was  Russell T Davies bring this about.

Somehow the gay community have Russell T Davies as our saviour, our solo commentator, our figurehead, our idol, our god. And it's a position he has not rejected - indeed, has almost created for himself with as much creativity as he has incorporated in his scripts.

Which isn't the case. There have been gay characters - indeed, every soap opera these days have gay characters; Eastenders has Johnny Carter and Danny Pennant; Emmerdale has Aaron Livesy and Robert Sugden; Coronation Street has Todd Grimshaw and Sean Tulley; Holoyoaks is practically all gay at one stage or another. They are in Casualty, Holby City, Broadchurch, Downton Abbey, all over.

(I had to Google a lot of these, I have no time for soaps)

But there are so many other dramas or comedies which involve a gay character which I'm not going to try to list because they are so many. They do however seem to ignore things like Beautiful People and Gimme Gimme Gimme (which ran around the same time as Queer as Folk) albeit both written by Jonathan Harvey.

The argument about Cucumber is that it is almost exclusive gay. This, apparently, has not been seen on British tv since Queer as Folk. We have to ignore Looking because it is American, and also only recent. We have to ignore the films such as Brokeback Mountain, A Single Man, A Beautiful Thing which are almost exclusively gay and very often British, but films. Indeed, we have to ignore "Vicious", an exclusive gay British comedy, presumably because it doesn't include drama. Or hasn't been written by Russell T Davies.

So, what we're weeding it down to is a tiny, tiny selection of British comedramas which are almost exclusively gay. Which is weird, because Britain isn't exclusively gay; no "real" community is exclusively gay; drama isn't "exclusively" gay. or "almost exclusively".

And the reason we don't need an exclusively or almost exclusively gay drama? Because we don't need an exclusively or almost exclusively gay drama. We are a part of society - or, at least in this country, nearly are entirely accepted. And what these comedramas do is reinforce our exclusion. Everyone has concentrated on how this is the first gay drama in 15 years - they haven't concentrated on all of those millions of gay characters or anyone that they aren't in love with as much as Russell T Davies - the Ian McKellen of the writing world; he who is so lovely and adorable and not at all as acerbic as Peter Tatchell.

Anyhow, this isn't a blog about media inclusions/portrayal of gays. This is specific to Cucumber and a comparison to Queer as Folk.

Because Queer as Folk was groundbreaking. So the expectations on Cucumber were similar.

Only ... it failed. Massively.

Let's be fair, it could never have been as groundbreaking as Queer as Folk, because Queer as Folk had broken that ground - the "gay" ground.

There is a question as to whether there is new ground to break, or whether the 15 years meantime mean that ground has been eroded. Let's face it, Queer as Folk introduced the nation to gay life and to threesomes, to underage sex, to drug use, to coming out, to going out to everything but normal gay life.

The problem that I have with it is that it does nothing that Queer as Folk doesn't do. In fact - one episode aside - it is a mirror of Queer as Folk.

They both start with this fantastically crazily absurdly fantastical episode which ticks as many of Channel 4's boxes as possible. Swearing - yes; nudity - yes; sex scenes - yes; drug use - yes.

And they aren't the only similarities. Unfortunately. They are so many. And it strikes a shard at Russell T Davies almost desperate reliance on his consistent shock factors that worked fifteen years ago but do not work today.

There is, obviously, the heavily reliance on Manchester - all that RTD knows. Canal Street. And - almost farcically - based around the most enormous loft apartments that Stuart could afford, but that there had to be some fantastical creation to engineer Freddie's predicament in the same space.

And the "age" thing. The worry about growing or being old - Queer as Folk barely went ten minutes without mentioning Nathan's 15 or 16 years old, or Stuart or Vince approaching 30; Cucumber has RTD's obsession with youth again with Freddie, Dean and Adam whilst obsessing similarly about Henry and Lance's age - how they are not scene any more. This age and age difference thing is omnipotent. Almost exclusive of any actual story. There are the underage sex references - Nathan, and Adam and Tomasz.

And yes - Adam. The nephew that gets used by RTD in the same way as the nephew in Queer as Folk outs Stuart.

There are the other basics - three main characters - Stuart, Vince and Nathan; Henry, Lance and Freddie. There are the add-ons - the Hazels and Cleos (we'll ignore Hazel's cameo in Cucumber, it's RTD basically jerking off in your face), the Camerons and the Daniels, the Dean and the Alexander. Let's not dwell to heavily on that - yeah there have been those such as Friends or Cold Feet that rely on many major characters, but even when you look back to Only Fools and Horses or Birds of a Feather they really rely on just those three major characters. So it's not exclusive.

There are the deaths - Phil and Lance. There are the "foreigners" - Cameron and Daniel.

There is the total lack of actual proper gay "masc" types. The closest that RTD has ever gotten to representing what are probably almost 50% of gay men is with Cliff - a barely seen character in Cucumber that adds very little except the occasional voice of reason.

And - similar to the age thing - is the desperation to show how down with the kids he is - how new tech. Remember Queers as Folk when an episode focused on him contacting people over the equivalent of chatrooms; then in Cucumber it has a brief Grindr reference with a massive vlogging reliance.

There are even two Lances - Lance who gets killed in Cucumber, Lance the emigrant who moves in with Romey in QAF.
I mean, for goodness sake, there are even two "running into the distance viewed over by cranes" moments; one where Vince runs away from Stuart's problem of Nathan; one where Henry runs away from Lance's place (there were probably more, I kept falling asleep).



And this ignores RTD's long, rambling elegies/eulogies/soliloquies/platitudes about how crap or amazing gay life is, about how coming out as gay is amazing or terrible, about gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay.

And it's boring.
There were differences - the older age matching RTD's; somehow he had managed to make the characters even flatter and unlikeable, the storylines even less believable or interestable. Sat the end of Queer As Folk you felt for Vince, you wanted good to become of him. At the end of Cucumber I didn't feel for anyone, I had no idea what, if any, story there was, I didn't understand what lesson or otherwise we were supposed to take away from it. I was just happy Tha it had ended.

The concentration on gay, the exclusion of almost all of the rest of society, is the absolute polar reverse of what gay society experiences. Maybe Cucumber was just trying to rebalance the previous imbalance, but that doesn't work in 2015.

What's worst is the gays didn't lap it up. Some did. Some of the gays loved it - almost exclusively because it was gay - they love gay things because they are gay things, irregardless of quality (those that fell outside of that loved it because of Freddie). And theirs were the opinions that got magnified, because that's what the media were desperate for - they had "bigged" it up so much, they were desperate for the success that it was all they could report - indeed because most tv reviewers are gay and desperate to advance their agenda. But - and this may be purely anecdotally - aside from the one episode where Lance got killed, all of the others were widely derided as being dated, fictional, farcical, unbelievable, unrepresentative and actually derogative.

Has it taken us further forwards? No. Has it advanced the cause? No. The risk is, it may have taken us back fifteen years.
And that's nothing to shout about.

Viral fluff

So, are are your social media feeds finally free of #weaselpecker?

You know, the photo of the weasel riding the woodpecker. It "went viral" so virally that it made the news. Which was odd, because it started out as an item on the nature section of news sites as one of those fantastic photos.

But then it went viral on social media firstly because of the fantasticness of the picture, but then because of the photoshoppability of the picture. Every single spoof, "new media", and eventually "real" media site went wild creating their Buzzfeed-style "look what the internet did with the #weaselpecker" posts.

But this came just a day after #TheDress. You know THE DRESS. The dress that went viral. Someone posted it to Tumblr and it got caught on Twitter. I was fully aware, it hit newsfeed just as I got in from the pub - by the morning it was all my newsfeed was going on about it. And by the evening, everyone in my timeline was bored by it.

The fact that it made evening news was revilled by some. My evening feeds were filled with "seriously, a dress is the news?!" type posts.

And, in the scale of wars and crimes and arrests and failures and reports and statistics and everything, it did, to some, sit uncomfortably as a news item.

Because it wasn't negative.

News these days has to be negative. Doesn't it?

Every now and again you get some heart-warming tale of charitable work with a positive end; ITV used to end their News At Ten with a 'light-hearted' story every night, but that's what it was - fluff. It wasn't news, it was just something to make sure you don't go to bed with a nightmare.

But #TheDress was news. If news is "current affairs" - well, it was current (it only went wild those few days) and it was what pretty much everyone was talking about. I don't know of a single office that hadn't discussed #TheDress by the end of the day.

Real media loved it - they could do real reporting on a popular theme. There was recent, actually really properly educational, scientifically important research as to why #TheDress might be see as #WhiteAndGold or #BlueAndBlack. It allowed them to fully contextualise a viral meme within education. So I think criticisms about it being "reported by the media" are perhaps a little unfair. Firstly it was a massive social media - and therefore general media - and secondly, it had that educational property.

But the criticism really is that 'viral' should not be 'news'. 'Viral' should be fluff. It shouldn't be 'news'. It should be one of those things that fills the "third media" sites.

The First Media being News - politics, business, crime, disaster the Hard Stuff.

Then there is the Second Media - Entertainment. Actual information as to who is doing what in the Entertainment Industry or who is being cast as whom, what is being written, by whom, and all that stuff.

And then there is the Third Media - stuff that may or may not involve the day's story; but can be nicely listed, or listicled, or aggregate relatively recent stories from various sites in a nice, light-hearted, almost clickbated manner.

Finally there is MailOnline. Which really falls between all of the stones of "media" and ends up scattered amongst the tattle and clickbait of the rest of the web. Who were equally as eager to report on the criticism of TheDress as they were to report on TheDress the day before.

TheDress happened within hours of the lovely Llamas that got loose and set media and social media alight. These almost kind of legitimately made the news because they were shutting down certain areas of the town. One town, in a very large state, one of just 50 states of the Country. But it was lovely because it was llamas shutting it down, not gunmen. No-one was at risk. Everyone actually wanted the llamas to survive. But this was one small town in a small county in a small state in America - it went global because it is what is needed now.


But it also happened within weeks - perhaps days - of other "stories" which are in no way newsworthy, other than purely because of how viral they went. The chap who - apparently - woke up back in his taxi driver's house watching Take Me Out; the chap who - apparently - replied to his own text message whilst drunk.

Now, there are two points to take from this.

Firstly, you'll notice that I repeatedly say "apparently". People are desperate for their fifty five clicks of fame. I recently watched the documentary Catfish. If you haven't, do. It shows just how easy it is to lie online, but also how the lies spin out of control. But photoshopped pictures of politicians, fake Twitter profiles, statuses purporting to come from people which don't, even fakely adding a 'verified' symbol to an account are rife, purely for that little bit of fame. If you get retweeted once; you get a buzz. If you get retweeted a dozen times, it is far more than a dozen buzzes. I've already commented on when something is or isn't viral.

But, the second thing to note is how many First Media sites I have linked to. And I've deliberately tried to avoid the Second Media or Third Media sites. In particular, the chap who replied to his own text message when drunk was covered by Australian news - the other side of the world.

And this is it, in the face of Third Media sites First Media sites are bringing themselves down to that level. It's the Buzzfeed effect of media. But, what is key, is how the First Media sites report on them. As you've seen above, some of them have made them actual real stories. What I love about the BBC (everything) is they have identified this risk. They have set up a separate page - sorry, 'vertical' to cover these stories, but not just as an aggregator or rereporter, but to analyse the story behind either the story, or the reason that it went viral. A bit of depth to the fluff.

Social media is doing everything these days - it is reporting the news, it is allowing people to comment on the news, it is making the news, and now it is defining what the news is. It isn't just reporting it, it isn't just your reaction to it - it's reporting your reaction to it. What social media is doing is telling the editors - the people who used to control what you got to see - actually what it is that we're wanting to look at, interested in, commenting on, actively involved with. Whether this was on their news agenda or not. And yes, we are commenting on the important, serious stuff; but overwhelmingly we are telling the editors that their running order is too heavy, too serious.

We actually like fluff and fun.

The death of Twitter

Is Twitter dying?

I recently read a very illuminating article on the perfect storm that lead to the collapse of Myspace. Now, whilst Twitter doesn't have half of the problems of Myspace, and whilst Facebook isn't a direct competitor, Twitter is struggling.

[interestingly - and purely as an aside - one of the complaints Mr Percival makes about Myspace is that it tried to do too much - have too many verticals - a complaint I have similarly made of Buzzfeed]

And I'm starting to notice it.

I can't say I was an early adopter; but for a chap living in the middle of England I was an early adopter. My London friends joined a couple of years before I did and have 30,000 - 70,000 tweets to their name; whilst I have a measly 13,000. That said, my 13,000 compares very favourably with my local friends - most of whom have yet to break a thousand. Just as it has taken the hipster beard a very long time to make its way to the provinces, so it has with Twitter.

But one of the problems with twitter - as identified by a number of commentators, including the BBCs Rory Cellan-Jones (I've struggled to find the article) - is that people struggle to get to grips with the Twitter experience. People join, follow a few accounts, and then wonder what else it does. And there are a number of reasons for this problem which spawn other problems as well.

The anonymity of Twitter can make it difficult to find your friends, unless you know their handle. And this allows users to have multiple accounts - lovely if you want one personal, one work account. Or, as is often the case, multiple accounts to troll.

And that's another problem with the anonymity - the trolling. A number of high profile people have quit because of the trolling. This is a problem that deserves an entire post in itself as to why this happens; but it does.

Some accounts are, very naturally, short-lived. We all remember CatBinLady? Or UKIPWeather? Or KatyPerrysLeftShark ? The things are very much a zeitgeist moment and - let's face it - as accounts are free to set up, why not? Let's have a little fun. Even some of the more established accounts - such as @queen_uk or @soverybritish run out of steam - usually after the first book has been published - and resort to far fewer posts, and recycling old posts again.

And then there are the fake accounts - the spambots that follow you. These don't really cause any harm (unless you're stupid and click the links) but they very much dust a thrill with ennui. Oooh, a new follower! you exclaim. And then you find out it's a spambot. And eventually you just don't care.

Now, people are very eager to predict the demise of Twitter. Analysts have had their fingers burnt by failing to predict other failures - most notably MySpace, but also Bebo, Friendster, Faceparty and others as well as non-SM failures, like Anderson accounting and Enron, Woolworths and many more. If you don't call it early, you're dead as an analyst. If you're wrong and it goes on to be a success; people will probably forget. But if you can hold your hand up and say "I called it first" you win - just look at Robert Peston's much lauded breaking of the Northern Rock collapse (and then subsequently the Bradford & Bingley implosion).

People have been a bit desperate for Twitter to fail, purely so they could call it first. They report problems generating profits, problems increasing or retaining users, competition (where really there isn't competition). Mostly it is the people who don't use it and don't understand it who are waiting for the fall.

But, as I say, there does seem to be a shift. The Londoners have gotten fed up with hipsters and shaved off their beards just as the fashion has hit the provinces. And so they appear to be shaving off their Twitter. Purely anecdotally, I have noticed some of the accounts I follow have dropped from posting five, ten, twenty times a day to going five days without posting at all. And some have dropped off Twitter entirely.

Now, this may be a winter fad - we all get a bit reclusive in winter, and that mood can spread to our online interaction too. It may be that as more and more stories of people getting prosecuted for online abuse; or losing jobs because of an inappropriate post, finally we are starting to learn a bit of SM etiquette. It may simply be a coincidence of personal circumstances - a number of my friends have recently changed jobs, and let's face it, when I changed my job 18 months ago, the first thing to take a hit was this blog.

And this is not confined to Twitter - the complaints I have seen about Facebook have increased, with more people ditching the site or at the very least posting considerably less to it. So it seems social media may have grown out of an anarchic adolescence an into a (slightly) more sensible adult. It could, perhaps, be the deflating of the second dot com bubble. It could just be a coincidental blip and that things will recover. Or it could be what is a busy SM market - with Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and many many more - consolidating into a more mature market with fewer, bigger players naturally swallowing or squeezing out those that just don't have the might.

As they say, the patient is not yet on life support; but whether it is healthy enough to discharge is another matter.

Bland designs

So, BBC News is rolling out a new look across the news site. It follows very strongly the theme from the main site:

Bland.

It's black and white and red. Even the red banner has lost any distinction - the 'news' globe that unified the BBC brand has gone. Other than pictures in the articles, there are no colours other than red.

It always did like a simple font, as clear a layout as possible, but this has stripped it back even further. Indeed, there's so much white space, that it ends up making it difficult to differentiate between the content; which seems weirdly crammed together.

It's somewhat different to the BBC Sport pages, which are so busy. They are positively cluttered - so many stories that to cram them in the headline has to be so similar a typesize to the summary. The article pages have info boxes and pictures scattered around disrupting the flow of the text. They obviously listened to that criticism when redesigning the News site.

Well, that and the people behind gov.uk. Have you noticed how similar the two sites are? Top banner, sans serif font, black and white, blocky, clear (bland?) layout.

And it's not the only site either. The National Lottery relaunched its website a month or two ago and it is similar - blocks, straight lines, angles, sans serif (though it does have much bigger, less necessary pictures).

And so has Outlook, although that is unifying the new Microsoft look - As Windows 8 launched, with it's square tile format for absolute, distinct clarity across a range of devices and screen sizes.

And that is part of the reason for the new websites - mobile. If you look at the beginning of the BBC URL, it starts m.bbc - indicating this to be a mobile redirect site. And that's the problem. Web designers are being asked to design websites for screens from 5 inches to 55 inches. But they are getting sloppy. It would be so easy to have two sites - one for mobile devices, and one for desktop. Tablets could direct to either. But they won't do more work than is necessary - or rather, the client won't pay for two designs.

There are some reasons for some of the decisions. Sans serif fonts - as well as being de mode at the minute - work better on pixellated screens; whilst serif fonts work better in print where the serif allows the text to flow, draws the eye across the word. Indeed, as the BBC's own justification behind their previous design change, the font has been picked for clarity. This distinction is becoming eroded as even small five inch screen start packing in 500+ pixels per square inch.

And again, blocky edges work better on LED/LCD screens as opposed to CRTs which used to be able to produce the rounded edges. But again, as screens have higher definition and refresh frequencies, the blur becomes less of an issue.

Some of it does come down to fashion - remember with web 2.0 where almost every single site - even the BBC - had customisable widgets or modules. They looked cool, modern. You told your client you were not just in touch with their users, but engaging with them - treating them as adults, letting them choose their content. They couldn't BE any more customer-focused.

Just as the BBC abandoned these, the local newspapers took them up. The problem being that people didn't want to customise the sites. Quite frequently they wouldn't land through the homepage, but click through from another site or a search result. Even if they did go to the homepage, a well designed and laid out homepage should give you everything you need without you having to select your own content. If you end up having to customise the homepage of each site you land on, that's a lot of customising, particularly as sites tend to refresh themselves every two or three years.

And big, bold, blocky is the latest of these fads. Curiously, whilst Apple usually excels at design, and whilst it's iOS phone operating system is widely regarded as probably the best - at least, the simplest - mobile operating system; the higgledy-piggledy design of the apps spawning (yes, another BBC article) discussion when it simplified some of the symbols.

Also, designers are taking award winning design advice. The gov.uk website (see beginning of this blog) won the Design Museum's Design of the Year Award for 2013 for "well thought out but understated design". They have been very open about sharing their Design Principles. And it's all lovely - a lot of common sense.

But the problem is that if everyone follows the same rules, they walk in the same direction. The redesigns may well have well thought out, understated designs; but one they don't have is distinction. Indeed, amongst those sites identified there is very little - aside from the 'brand' colour - to differentiate between the sites. With conformity they lose identity.

It's the curious paradox that as technology becomes more complex, so design targets simplicity; retaining the natural entropy.