Generation Emigration

How many times have we read about people from, say, Ireland leaving their country to start a new life in far-away places like Australia, the US or, like an acqaintance of mine who wasn't put off by the chill factor, and moved to the Canadian province of New Foundland because his academic career wasn't prospering at home!

Who would have thought that one day one would find oneself in exactly the same position. Whilst I've moved often in my life and am certainly no stranger to being an expat, I find this is now an entirely new situation:

Suddenly, ever since the beginning of last September, Germany (where I live) has changed. Within the space of  4 months, 1.1. million refugees have entered the country. Every single town in Germany has to accommodate vast numbers of mainly male Muslim immigrants.Container homes are being built. Twon centers are full of migrants who have nothing to do. And life has changed: You will all have heard about the terrible New Years Eve events at Cologne main station. Similarly horrifying reports have come up from other German cities, and are still emerging as I write. Today, it transpired that two teenage girls in a small town in the South Western corner of Germany were gang-raped by immigrants.

Life in Germany doesn't seem to be safe anymore - all of a sudden. And worse is to come: The forecast is for another 3 million migrants to enter the country in 2016. This would all be bad enough, as there simply isn't any room here anymore, and already newcomers have to be put up in shelters and gyms which are hardly fit for purposes.

Worse, or at least just as menacing, I find another terrible change which has occurred in Germany: The media, the police, officials etc. cannot be trusted anymore. Whilst this has been clear for a while (what for example with varying reasons for the chaotic mass immigration being given - Gemany needs young people, Germany needs qualified workers, oh no it's all a humanitarian imperative, and so on) the events of NYE have proven this suspicion to be fact-based without the shadow of a doubt. Police and media now admit to having neglected to report the real catastrophic extent of the events. Rapes, gropes, robbings, theft, assault, injuries were brushed under the carpet, and only came to light when the pressure of eyewitness and social media reports proved too strong.

So, one suddenly finds oneself living in a country where the dangers of uncontrolled mass immigration are being denied, and victim's are supposed to just get one with it whilst being urged to shut up so as not to "slander" innocent migrants. Germany, once again seems to have transmogrified into a totalitarian state where unpleasantness is being denied, coverd up, and where people who want to speak their minds will be intimidated.

I don't feel I can live in such a country much longer. And whils it will certainly not be possible to move overnight - jobs, family connections etc. standing in the way of rash and emotional decisions - I feel a normal life, such as people were used to here in Germany is no longer guranteedor even possible. I know for a fact that many many well-educated Germans of all ages feel exactly the same.

If Mrs. Merkel and her government can afford to lose people like us, and is happy to import unskilled, largely uneducated migrants from Islamic countries in extraordinarily large numbers, I wish her good luck. Meanwhile I'm thinking of where I shall be moving to. Stay tuned.

Twitter Abuse

Everybody has stories like this to tell. It really isn't special, and as far as abuse on Social Media goes, it probably was of the more harmless variety. Well, definitely - because murder and rape threats didn't come into it by any stretch.

But just because you didn't get threatened with rape...does that already make it harmless? Did you therefore get away lightly? Why should it not be possible to contradict somebody about a reading of an article in The Guardian of all places? Why should it not be permissable to defend the author of an article against blatantly absurd readings? Why should one not be allowed to point out what the author "really" meant, especially when it's done in a polite and non-offensive way? Is that already showing  too much female uppityness when dealing with a twitter-male? A twitter-male who has a lot of like-minded mates whom he is ready and willing to summon as back-up via copious RT's: "Look at 'er - getting above 'erself, having an opinion when I expressly stated what's what!"

I'm no shrinking violet on twitter, I don't withdraw into my mousehole just because some fat, bald uneducated male tells me to do so. On twitter, you learn to deal with people who think just because they're invisble, they can dish it out. And in my experience, the best thing is to look those people squarely in the eye and hit back. As soon as they feel your fear all hell breaks lose. Because, make no mistake  those people are without exception pathetic, deficient men (yes, men) with an inferiority complex. On Social Media they feel empowered, they feel nobody can beat them (unlike their daily experiences in real life where they probably have to kowtow, buckle and scrape).

So, it isn't as if I was dumbfounded by this particular reaction, not as if I didn't have my defences in place. I hit back, of course I did. With the sort of thin sneer which drives men like that into paroxysms of fury. They would kill you then if they were physically there. But they're not.

So far, so bad. But it made me think: Is it all really worth it? Is it worth my time defending freelance Guardian writers at the cost of getting abuse form a totally irrelevant person whom I don't know and will (fortunately) never meet? Why bother? Why tweet? I don't tend to get abuse in my daily life, I don't have encounters with pond life telling me off, telling me what's what. So...why go online to meet abusers, clueless, hapless human beings with a huge rage, a sense of entitlement and an axe to grind?

I don't know, but I don't think it's fundamentally a good idea. I will have to think about it. But it definitely can't carry on like that.

Good-Bye to All That (Social Media)?

I've been on twitter now for four years, and when I joined it didn't feel all that new. I was aware of it long before I decided to sign up. So as an old hand it's perhaps not surprising that I have a slightly different perspective from people who only started out on it recently.

You go through phases, and with Social Media there are always phases, and fads, and moods... just as, I suppose there are in real life. Only you can act on them faster. The wordless "Unfollow" button is something that is (fortunately? sadly?) lacking in real life relationships. But even accepting the fact that things change and have their own dynamics, I often feel that I've come to the end of the line with Social Media. I can safely say there won't be any more surprises left (other than the radical monetization of a site). It could go its merry way for another 4 or 40 years, Twitter settling into an ever more boring routine of links posted, RTs received, hashtags followed, people followed and unfollowed and so on and so on. Facebook? I left that a year ago: Cat photos, baby photos, interspersed with un-targeted ads. Old school friends, now unrecognisable, inviting you to play farm games...

So what have I learned, and why am I now less than enthusiastic about Social Media in general? I've learned that Social Media is a great enhancer of things. Suddenly you're in touch with all those people! Having conversations about...well whatever floats your boat, really. SEO? Translation? Sex in dungeons? It's all there (The last item I can't be sure about, actually). Only a month ago I remember having a conversation about Hugo von Hofmannsthal's poetry just before midnight on a Wednesday.These things don't happen all that often in real life. But "enhancement" is the operative word. There is no essence to it. No substance, no core.There is confirmation, entertainment (sometimes), there is a lot of redundancy and routine. And never anything solid, anything you can hang onto.

Social Media is inconsequential. It goes on for ever - if you let it -but nothing will ever change on account of it. Whatever you thought you might get out of it (and I'm talking about the long run, not your giddy first year) - you won't. It won't enliven your life, it won't sell you more copies of your oft-rejected and now self-published e-book, it won't put you in touch with Justin Bieber, it won't launch your model career, and if you're a company it won't sell you more products, despite what all those studies may say - they are there for a reason, after all: To get more companies in on the social media act.   

Of course there are good things happening there - speaking for myself, I backed a very worthy cause for years, and brought it to a satisfactory end, I unmasked a spy, I won books and competitions, got to know (and unknow) fabulous people and resurrected old contacts. Sure.

But Social Media (whatever your favourite site is) will carry on and on and on, like the next Sudoku puzzle, and the next crossword. And that's fine, as long as you're aware of it, and don't expect anything else.

No Talking, Please! Germans on Twitter

I've written about the differences in intercultural social media usage before (interculturalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/intercultural-differences-in-social.html) but a recent news headline that Twitter is growing exponentially in Germany leads me to dwell on the subject a bit more.

So after years and years of saying "Twitter - clearly overrated" and "That won't last" (their favourite standard put-downs to any new development) they've finally tagged onto the (somewhat spurious) idea that being on Twitter gives you social kudos, makes your "trändy", and lets you show off amongst your peer group.

I've been observing German twitterers for quite some time now - and my verdict is stark: They just don't know to to deal with Social Media. They excell at Foursquare, they try any trick in the book to up their Klout score, they like having masses of followers (and never mind that they're all trade related or want to sell an e-book). It's numbers and facts that count in Germany. My Klout score is..., I ousted xx as mayor... I bought a new iphoen XS2YZ -that's the Social Media currency that Gemans understand.

What they fundamentally do not see and get is the obvious (another characteristic of Germans in my experience - not seeing the wood for the trees), namely that Social Media is about communication.

Communication/conversation is a dark hole in German culture. For Germans, talking first and foremost means conveying information. And from that starting point, it isn't very far to "showing off with information which I 've got and you haven't". Conversation as a bonding agent in any form of interpersonal encounter is literally a non-starter in Germany. (If you've ever been to an awkward German office party where people have no problem with facing one another without saying a word for, oooh half an hour, you'll kow what I mean.)

Even the word "Konversation" has an entirely negative connotation in German, meaning "talking for the sake of it, not genuine". Talking, exchanging ideas, witty, light-hearted conversation is just simply not their forte.

At the moment, all kinds of articles on "The Purpose of Twitter", "Twitter to Up your Career Prospects", "Should Politicians be on Twitter" etc. abound - but the simple insight that Social Media means linking up to people conversationally, I fear, will for ever escape Germans.

For more information on the Art of Conversation, have a look at my book: Animated Conversations. Pfaffenweiler 1992.

Intercultural Differences in Social Media Usage

Recently, I've taken to posting about half my twitter and Facebook messages in German. The majority of my folllowers is located in Britain, but Germans are the second largest group. I'd published some articles in German-speaking media, and after all - hey, I live in Germany!

So I feel qualified to tell you about some striking differences in German vs. British social media usage.

The first result (after about 2 weeks) was that my Klout score went down a whole point. (Let's leave aside the undoubted dubiousness of Klout, but in terms of pure numerics it can be trusted.) This prompted me to do my own research into the matter.

In the interest of easy access to my findings, I will abandon the narrative form and present my findings in bullet-point form.

• German twitter/facebook users are organised tribally. They often know each other personally and then form Social Media nuclei.

• A big reason for Social Media usage is to organize "Meet-ups" and get-togethers". Whilst these obv. exist everywhere, the German interest in them can almost be called obsessive.

• German users group themselves locally. Once you found acceptance into one such town/region circle, many other users will follow you. Membership has to be "proven" via heritage, immense interest in the region, or - best of all - personal acquaintance.

• German Social Media users are (in my experience) predominantly male. There are of course females but they tend to be even more tightly knit by interest or locality.

• A (at least for me) slightly off-putting feature of German female SM usage is the tendency to give oneself childish, overly sugary "kuschelige" nicknames. ("Wuschelchen" etc.)
  

• Internet technology is German male users' prime topic. (You might think this characteristic for men the world over, but it's definitely not true for British male social media users).

• Interaction is mostly limited to these tech subjects. Even the shared regionality serves more as a form of glue than an actual topic of communication.

• Germans hardly ever do RT's.
  

• If there are RT's these are limited to notifications about meet-ups. Thereby serving as a sort of "Flüsterpost" - an internal network.

• Germans (again this applies to males) are more prone to using Foursquare than other nations. There are users who hardly ever post anything but a Foursuare notification.

• A good number of Germans only post deliberately "absurd", out of context posts, and don't follow anybody. Again, like the Foursquarers, this inhibits any sort of dialogue and reverts back to an old "Read Only" profile.
  

I am refraining from interpreting these findings. I merely wanted to take the subject of Interculturalism which so often hangs in yesterday's world of "The are so polite, The English" into a more up-to-date context.