You're a whatnow?

I had an email the other day relating to a computer issue, the contents of which aren't important. However, how the writer signed off the email is.
For the purpose of this we will call him Dan Dawanker.
It went...

"Blah blah blah, blah, blah bla bla.

Kind regards,

Dan Dawanker,
Solutions Architect"

SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT!!! WTF is that?
Obviously I wrote to the wrong person entirely, I just wanted to know if my OS was up to date. I mean I neither had a problem that needed a solution nor did I need to speak to an architect. - Its rare architects know anything at all about real world stuff as they spend most of their time looking out of corner window offices 'blue skying' radical new bridge concepts that wobble like a fat chicks hips in the slightest dog-fart of a breeze. - If he is a Solutions Architect then who does he work for f'fucks sake?, 'Holder of universal knowledge', Keeper of the box of All', 'Guardian of entirety'?

Solutions Architect suggests this dudes job is to come up with answers - not implement them just... I'm struggling for the right word... Create suggests ability and Design gives too much credit... 'think of', yep his job is probably to 'think of' an answer to then be initiated by some minion more lowly than himself, an answer that is usually one level tougher than "Have you initiated a power cycle?". - Which BTW, is now how we say "have you turned it off and turned it on again" but now we have Solutions Architects on the case we need fancier speaks.

And its not just here where I work, its everywhere. Years ago I remember seeing a stand-up comedian doing a 'bit' on his mate calling himself a 'Vision Technician'. He was a window cleaner. It was quite funny, the comedy came from the ridiculous idea that a window cleaner would see himself or want to appear higher up the ladder (see what I did there?) than he actually was. But somewhere along the line that idea has been taken seriously, have you noticed there are no more secretaries? we now have 'front of house operatives', there are no more Dental assistants, Good god no - way too lowly and demeaning - now they are 'Oral Hygienists'. Cleaners are 'Hygiene Executives' and recently at my sons school he had a day off for... 'Faculty development'. They used to call that teacher training but we daren't suggest they are lacking so much they need more training, so now they 'develop'. Why do we feel the need to pander to the egos of people who think their job is beneath them, if you are smarter, more experienced & more qualified than the job you are in, find the right fucking job, or knuckle down and clean my skidmarked bog in without complaint 'Bog cleaner'.

So Mr. Dawanker, have a word with yourself, you work in IT (Tech Support is acceptable), and if you put as much effort into actually doing your job as you do cruising the office perving at at chicks, if you put down the butty and stopped telling your fascinating stories of web discoveries or the app that cuts a slice of pie and feeds you via bluetooth you might actually live up to your elevated job title. 'Til then I'll buy my groceries from Sainsbury's NOT the 'Pantry solutions outlet', I'll drive my car NOT my 'Vehicular based human mobility solution' and if I want to slap the face of some self aggrandising web monkey for being a bellend I'll use my hand NOT my 'Organic quintodigital disdain delivery solution'.

Kind Regards

Matt D'Ego
Visionary Picto-typographical Solutions Innovator
and Implementation Virtuoso

(Graphic Designer)

Kitch

FU*KBOOK

Yeah OK, bad title.
(I had a quick google, there actually is a fuckbook, I don't think I have to explain what that particular social network site has to offer)

Thing is Facebook makes me want to say 'FUCK' a LOT, so the change of name, in my head, seems apt.

On paper Facebook sounds like a great idea, a place where you can communicate for free with friends and family, share photos, stay in touch with distant relatives and long lost friends, it's great. I mean, being able to show a picture of your newborn moments after it happened to your nearest and dearest despite them being spread across the country or world for that matter (as is more often the case), is one of the great things about modern living and a testament to simple ideas executed perfectly.

But the by-product of that - and this is where the swearing comes in - is that same technology, the same simple interface and ease of which you can post information (not to mention the solitary, even secret, silent way you have to enter said information) leads people to post the most miniscule and irrelevant detail of every part of their life in what seems like the most
desperate and self important way. It makes me want to say 'FUCK THIS'.

Did I miss a memo or some cultural notice? When did people start believing other people were interested in the minutiae of their lives? I mean the bile we consume, like it or not, about celebrities (we like or not) is enough, I'm not really bothered if Angelina Jolie likes marmite or not, I might read more intently if she were making a movie with Christopher Nolan or something so why should I be at all interested if you've just washed a bowl of blackberries? It never crosses my mind, while performing menial kitchen tasks, to take the time out and take a picture of said task and upload it to the world. Do people who do this think we are all waiting with baited breath for the next riveting, must-see, action packed installment of 'Summer fruit washing - part deux?
FUCK THIS.

What makes an otherwise intelligent man rush to his computer to upload pictures of a(nother - not his fault) car crash (third in 3 years - NOT HIS FAULT!) and write about it BEFORE he deals with his insurance company (2 days later)?
FUCK THIS.

By time you have posted "sitting in the garden drinking a mojito, listening to Adele" and someone cares to read it you have finished the drink, it's pissing with rain, the song is over and Fern Cotton is talking shit about shoes or some bollocks. Keep it to yourself, enjoy YOUR moment for the brief moment it is, we ALL have them, you AREN'T unique.
FUCK THIS.

When I recently returned to Facebook after months, maybe years away, within 5 minutes of logging back on I had an email from a girl in the office who sits within spitting distance (I know, cos I spat at her once) letting me know how rude she thought it was I had been away so long! Apparently her Facebook account texts her mobile with rolling updates when any one of her - get this, 400 plus - 'friends' makes a change or posts some shit or uploads some ratty-ass picture from a bar at 2am with a bottle of WKD in their pudgy little hands and it dawned on me I'm not really the Facebook type.
FUCK THIS.

FUCK FACEBOOK
FUCKBOOK

Thats why I have a blog.
No self importance there, eh?.