Ugly Realities: Social Media and the New Internationalism

It is fascinating how closed-circuit television, mobile phones and the Internet are bringing nations together. By this, I mean building a visceral, intimate connection between countries separated by oceans and continents.

In the age of the legacy media – TV, radio, the press – sanitized images of nations could be presented to the world without contradiction. For example, most non-British people saw this country as a huge theme-park full of castles, stately homes and private schools reaching back into antiquity. The reality of Britain – the most uneducated people in Europe, a vast underclass, crumbling cities and mass unemployment – only ever emerged by accident. Last summer’s urban riots were a good example. Suddenly, the legacy media could no longer disguise these cracks in Britain's national facade – the truth was plain for all to see.

Similarly, countries with a sunny, healthy image – Australia springs to mind – often conceal a much darker reality. John Pilger’s classic study of Australia – An Unknown Country – exposes a country damaged by race conflict, nuclear testing and an appalling male suicide rate. These pressing problems seldom find much expression in Neighbours or Home and Away, however.

Now, as we all know, Anglo-American culture has a compulsive urge to 'pedestalise' women - a function of its underlying puritanism. And of course, this obsession extends to the Anglo-American media. In TV shows and films, American women are invariably presented as nubile, friendly angels brimming over with sexual charm – a far cry from the obese, frigid, deranged harpies actually prowling the streets of America. However, as has already been pointed out, the emergence of social media circumvents the mainstream media’s concerted ‘reality blackout’. A street scuffle can be made available to millions of viewers in a matter of seconds. And predictably, this unedited immediacy reveals a much uglier side to Anglo-American women than is ever permitted by the legacy media.

Below, we see several clips of English females spouting racist abuse with little or no provocation. I present these partly to confound the old pedestalisation agenda; partly for entertainment; but mainly to build trans-national understanding of the Anglobitch phenomenon.


 


 





I wonder what Fleming and Futrelle would have to say about this expose of their precious 'angels'? Since a hysterical hatred of reality pervades all mangina thought-processes, probably very little.