FAIL!

Thus far, I have been a total failure of a blogger. Please accept my humblest apologies. There are various excuses, from the true (essays, life) to the psychological (perfectionism) to the reality (laziness; lack of motivation). Regardless, I am prepared to hold my hands up; if I were truly engaged with current internet memes*then I might shout “FAIL!”

My research on the topic of ‘FAIL!’ is typically shallow, but the phenomenon is best summed up in this YouTube video from the (excellent) Rocketboom Institute’s Know Your Meme series: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fail. To summarise, ‘FAIL!’ derived from a genuine translation error in a 1998 video game, but grew into an image macro, such as the (also excellent) collection updated daily on FAIL Blog (http://failblog.org/).

FAILs are a hilariously callous and supremely modern form of Schadenfreude.** Essentially, a You’ve Been Framed 2.0; what it lacks in Harry Hill’s superlative narration, it makes up for in the sheer immediacy of the image’s impact. Admit it, Humanity: you love seeing other people suffer, don’t you? FAIL is the web’s response to this basic human instinct.

Originally, I (pretentiously) titled this blog ‘FAIL!: Harmless Lolz?’, like some self-satisfied documentary maker, simultaneously sneering at the ignoramii who use this language and the uninformed viewers who don’t understand it. But I clearly enjoy FAILs, despite an incredibly guilty conscience; my mind can’t help but turn over and over the implications for those involved. Regardless, the majority are simple acts of stupidity, and frequently harmless. My personal favourites are linguistic errors in signs (well, they would be, wouldn’t they?), which ultimately hurt no-one and are the direct result of ignorance or coincidence, rather than malicious malintent.

But ‘FAIL!’ has been absorbed into daily English language, at least in my age group. And I can’t help feeling that it is an unnecassarily cruel phrase to have bandied about in everyday usage. When removed from its online context, it seems to lose its innocence. Perhaps I am being naive – logically there is no difference between an individual being shamed in a photograph online and verbally in the present. I suppose both are just as hurtful. If anything, the former has evidence of their misfortune published to thousands of strangers, and they may be humiliated in their community. A verbal ‘FAIL!’, often from one friend to another, is a momentary joke, and usually the situation is far more manageable than some preserved examples.

Still, I can’t help but recoil when I hear someone shout “FAIL!” in reality. It is a word that makes sense on the screen, deriving its specific meme-meaning from video games and evolving into an internet phenomenon. But spoken English, as rapidly developing as it is, is slow to catch up to the web, and still holds too many connotations, for me at least, of ‘failure’.

Take, for instance, the phrase ‘I fail at life.’ It has seeped into slang and superficially denotes nothing more than wasted time. However, look at it deeper, and its poignancy is evident: Do we truly believe that we have failed to succeed? To take opportunities presented to us? To live up to expectations? To perform the seemingly simple task of living? Maybe I look too deeply.

Maybe I look too deeply. Perhaps my generally bleak and godless outlook on humanity means I am unable to simply accept an occasionally joyful and frequently harmless new usage of an old word.*** I should probably get over my incredibly pernickety reaction and learn to spend my time in more constructive ways than rambling on (and on) about mere words. But I can’t stop feeling uncomfortable when it’s used; this is the overarching reason that I won’t shout “FAIL!” in relation to my ability to reliably write a blog.

Oh, that, and I’m not a complete She-Cock.

* Read: geek with little to no life away from his broadband connection.

** Schadenfreude is a German word, literally translated as ‘harm-joy’, meaning a malicious joy in the misfortunes of others.

*** Earliest usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, being 1297.

Election Anxiety

I'm a little perturbed that my second ever blog is "just a quick one" but, nonetheless, this is Just A Quick One to tide you rabid readers over whilst I swirl around my hectic modern cosmopolitan life. Essentially, the General Election is coming up and I have even less time to decide where to cast my all-important vote as I'm doing it by post... So I used the below application to try and help make up my mind. I suggest you try it too. It's a clever little stick.

Anyway, I came out 62% Lib Dem, 44% Labour, 43% Tory and 41% Green.* I'm not surprised the scores for the big two are so close, seeing as they are practically the same party. I'm a little unsettled by the high percentage for the yellow team though. I've never even considered voting Liberal Democrat before. This has given me some food for thought.

(* If you're wondering about the absence of BNP and UKIP, I refuse point blank to consider them, as I know too much about them already. I might try the questionnaire again and include them, just to see how much of a bigot I truly am.)

The Future Tense

I’ve had one of those discussions with my mum again. One that begins with some idle chatter about so-and-so’s daughter, who has just dropped out of university to pursue a career in Burger King, or that boy from down the road, who has a First-class degree in Golf Course Management. One that starts with a smug sense of superiority that I’m studying my favourite subject at one of the best universities in the country. One that happily talks about all the wonderful opportunities open to me, and then all too swiftly moves on to all the plans I haven’t yet made. One that ends with my mum’s genuine concern that I’ve no more direction than the indecisive, burger-flipping employee and in no better a position for a career than the bunker-inspecting graduate.

At school, I was a very driven young woman. I decided I would attend university before I left primary school; I set my heart on the idea of studying English at Bristol before my teachers even started nudging us in the direction of UCAS. Although I saw my final A-Level grades as an end in themselves and was determined to get straight As anyway, I had only one goal – to earn my place at university.

But I never thought beyond this. My parents were happy because I was working towards my plan. The careers advisor was happy because I was going on to higher education. My teachers were happy because I was working hard and getting the grades. And I was far too terrified of the all-too-real possibility of utter failure to look beyond the next hurdle: the UCAS application, the conditional offer, and finally, August 20^th 2009 – Results Day.

When I was in primary school, I wanted to be a fashion designer or go to Hogwarts. Both were equally unlikely. When I realised I could neither make fabric into a wearable item or a small animal, I set my sights on journalism. I did work experience at my local newspaper and BBC newsroom, and threw myself into various school projects. My CV from the ages of 15-17 is quite formidable. For some reason, though, the more I saw of the news media, the less I liked. My views are too complicated and ill-formed to go into here. It’s a gut instinct and I’m not sure if my moral scruples will withstand my transformation from idealistic student to job-seeking graduate. But anyway, at this point, my career ambitions were superseded by dreams of higher education, and I didn’t put much thought into it.

I’m now less than six months into my university life. Between confirming my place in August and now, there hasn’t been much leisure to do anything else but adapt, very quickly indeed. Living in the present is a luxury that I have fully embraced and adore. But it’s not much use when you can hardly make plans for the summer vacation, let alone for the years ahead.

Many people like to set long-term goals. Mark Watson’s Ten Year Self Improvement Challenge is a laudable, if not slightly anal, mass attempt at refusing to ignore the impending future. For the future is a scary place and, by choosing a fairly arbitrary time unit like a decade, and setting achievable targets that can be worked on with the support of thousands of other like-minded people, we can attempt to control it. I was fully intending to take part, starting on March 4^th 2010, but, even in the long week preceding that date, I was wholly unable to think of one certainty, one single, definite thing I wanted to achieve.

My mum ended that conversation with a similar request: that I at least produce some options for my post-graduate future by the end of the summer. I don’t know whether it’s any more realistic to formulate goals for 2012 than 2020. But I assume I’m going to sort something out in the next two years. Worse comes to worse, I’ll just do what everybody seems to think is the only thing you can do with an English degree: if I can’t do, I’ll teach.