May | 2013 | Guy Portman's Blog

Controversial Authors

May 31 2013

Many authors have been branded as being controversial over the course of history. What actually constitutes controversy is of course a highly subjective matter and an author whose work was viewed as being controversial in one era may not be in a later one. Then there are those authors whose controversy may not be limited only to their work but also to their actions. The following blog post is dedicated to two authors, widely regarded as being controversial, who will always be remembered as being pioneers by the literary establishment.

Voltaire

(November 21st 1694 – May 30th 1778)

Notable works: Candide, Letters on England and Zadig.

Living to the ripe old age of eighty-three in an era with a life expectancy of about fifty, Voltaire is remembered to this day as being a central figure in the 1700’s intellectual movement, The Enlightenment. A prolific and witty writer, Voltaire embraced a variety of writing forms including poems, plays, essays, novels, scientific and historical works. Unrelenting in his criticism of the establishment, church and the order of the day, Voltaire can in many ways be viewed as a modern person, due to his opinions about social reform, his criticism of elements within The Bible and his preaching of religious tolerance. Voltaire’s beliefs and determination to voice them certainly didn’t endear him to many and he had to endure beatings, two stints in The Bastille and a period of exile in London. His most famous work is undoubtedly the novella, Candide, a satirical work that was widely banned at the time due to it being viewed as blasphemous and revolutionary.

William S. Burroughs

(February 5th 1914 – August 2nd 1997)

Notable works: Junkie, Queer, The Soft Machine & The Naked Lunch.

William S. Burroughs will always be remembered as being at forefront of the Beat generation, influencing the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. His works include eighteen novels, in addition to a number of novellas and short stories, many of which are semi-autobiographical in nature. Burroughs’s writing is characterised as being sardonic, dark and often humorous. Arguably his most famous book, the non-linear Naked Lunch was so scandalous at the time of its publication that it underwent a court case under U.S. obscenity laws. A controversial character with a penchant for rent boys and heroin use, Burroughs ended up killing his second wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico after attempting to shoot a water-tumbler, which she had balanced on her head. Even in death controversy continues to follow Burroughs. Only last year a Turkish publisher faced obscenity charges after releasing a Turkish translation of The Soft Machine.

Click here to read a review of The Soft Machine.

Social Media Addiction (Part 2)

May 24 2013

Social media has changed the very nature of the world that we are living in. Take the fact that Facebook alone has 1.11 billion users or that 21% of the world’s active internet users are said to access Twitter every month. Not only has social media usage continued to increase exponentially, but it has become more visible, with people accessing the internet by mobile phone having increased 60.3% to 818.4 million over the last 2 years. Everywhere we go we are surrounded by people Tweeting, sending Facebook updates, watching YouTube videos, connecting on Google+, networking on LinkedIn and much more besides.

(Courtesy of www.businessgrow.com)

Last Friday shortly after finishing posting Social Media Addiction (Part 1), I went to the cafe near my house. It was the usual scene, a lengthy queue of people, all fiddling with their mobile devises. There were Blackberrys’, iPhones’, Androids’ and a smattering of Samsung Galaxy S3s’. In front of me a teenaged girl was typing into her mobile. Leaning forward I could see she was sending a Tweet on Twitter. It said,

‘In Starbucks, so many choices :?’

A short while later the barista asked for her order. The girl, still typing on her mobile was oblivious to the question and the barista was forced to repeat the question two more times, before she finally looked up and turned her attentions to the menu board.

Over a minute had passed when I said to her, ‘In your own time.’

She glared at me and then ordered an ‘extra hot cafe latte with soy milk.’

After which she typed another Tweet, which I knew was about me. I knew this because I was peering over her shoulder, but she noticed and said, ‘excuse me,’ in a theatrical tone, shielding the phone from my view, as she continued typing and I was left wondering what the Tweet said, what smiley she used and the choice of hashtag – #somepeople, #rude or #goaway perhaps. Or some other colloquialism that has been trending recently, more than likely instigated by Justin Bieber.

From my table where I sit drinking a cafe mocha with normal milk, I can see the girl taking a photograph of her extra hot cafe latte with soy milk and then she’s on her mobile again, no doubt Tweeting the details before posting the picture on Facebook and Pinterest.

(Courtesy of ejiu111.wordpress.com)

All around me it’s the same story. School children crowded around a table, all typing feverishly into their mobile phones. A mother Tweeting incessantly, her toddler in a high-chair beside her mimicking each gesture, pressing imaginary buttons on the surface in-front of him with chocolate stained fingers.

It is at this moment that I find myself asking if we are all addicted to social media and I continue to contemplate this for quite sometime, whilst sipping my mocha and at the same time viewing my Twitter Feed on my iPhone screen.

Perhaps addiction is merely a matter of consumption vs communication and as communicating is not consuming it is not addiction. At any rate is it not better that people are kept busy fidgeting with their hand-held devices than fiddling with cigarettes, bottles of spirits and syringes. Though there are instances where people appear to have mastered doing both at the same time. A Youtube video (now removed) was an instructional video by a girl living in some remote Montana prairie town on how to Tweet with one hand whilst at the same time with the other preparing and smoking a meth pipe.

Social Media Addiction

May 17 2013

Social media addiction is an official condition. In London alone clinics reportedly treat hundreds of patients a year suffering from various forms of social media addiction. It is expected that in the forthcoming years social media addiction will become a pandemic. These addicts include Facebook fiends, Twitter takers, prodigious Pinteresters’, Google+ guzzlers and LinkedIn lavishers. Social media addicts are notorious mixers, rarely satisfied with merely one product, they frequently combine the aforementioned and other products in conjunction, in hazardous cocktails similar to ‘speedballs’.

(courtesy of SocialMediaGroup.com)

Researchers have found that social media features such as Likes and RTs’ result in the release of the potentially addictive brain chemical, the neurotransmitter, dopamine, in the same manner as hard drugs. This is certainly one explanation for why I’ve been feeling so high this last week, having got over a hundred new Likes for my Facebook Fan page, Charles Middleworth. I can only hope this won’t be followed by a come down.

We’ve probably all heard of social media addiction by now and if you haven’t I can guarantee you will be hearing lots about it over the forthcoming years. Personally I hadn’t given it much thought until by chance I found myself in a discussion with an individual, who informed me that he had been diagnosed as a social media addict. Keen to find out more about this affliction, I immediately began to quiz him about it. The following is an extract from the conversation:

Me: What forms of social media were you addicted to?

Addict: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+, with occasional LinkedIn benders.

Me: What’s the most addictive form of social media.

Addict: Facebook has the worst withdrawal.

Me: Your saying Facebook is the heroin of social media. How is it so dangerous?

Addict: Excessive Facebook is to the detriment of real meaningful relationships and connections.

Me: Like.

(The addict seemingly does not find my witty Facebook joke amusing).

Me: How are you recovering?

Addict: Abstinence is the key.

(Did I mention we are having this conversation on a social media platform).

The addict is getting restless now, his words are harried and there’s an absence of punctuation. He’s soon making excuses about having to go. But I want to find out more about his addiction and I know enough about addiction to know how to keep him there. I’m telling him I’ll Like his Facebook page and RT his Tweets. This promise of a dopamine fix has him communicating enthusiastically again. In no time at all he’s telling me all about the dangers of Pinterest.

(Pinterest for those that don’t know is a social media platform for sharing pictures).

‘Don’t be so melodramatic’, says I, ‘you make sharing pictures sound as dangerous as sharing needles.’

The addict is soon restless again and having made an excuse about having to check Google+, he’s off, but not before securing the promise from me of a ‘speedball’, consisting of a couple of Facebook Likes in conjunction with a Twitter RT.

(courtesy of VisibleBanking.com)

After the conversation I did some research about social media addiction and discovered that to qualify as a social media addict you have to use the medium for more than five hours per day, which brings tangible relief for me as well as a release of dopamine. However it’s bad news for all those social media professionals out there.

Do you think you might be a social media addict? Take the blueglass.com quiz and find out for yourself.

To be continued next week.

Facebook Likes

May 10 2013

Until last year I didn’t use Facebook much, but shortly after my book, Charles Middleworth was released, I set up an Author Page and begun exploring with enthusiasm, this, the behemoth of Social Media platforms (901m users approx). I realised that I Liked Facebook. In fact as I was soon to discover Facebook is all about Liking. One can Like everything from pages to posts, pictures and comments. All you have to do is click Like and I duly did. I Liked author pages, product pages and lots of pictures, including plenty of cats, dogs and people at parties.

In no time at all I was clicking Like repetitively time and time again. I Like this picture of a cat and that one and that one too and yes I Like that author page and that one, that one and that product page and that product page too and that picture of a tractor. But not you, I don’t Like you, I don’t know why I just don’t. So I bypass that one and I’m Liking again, incessantly now, Liking multiple pages, pictures and posts. On one page I see a comment that says ‘Phone me tomorrow Emma’. I don’t know Emma or who sent it but I click Like anyway. But then I asked myself if that is something you can even Like. However I had no time to dwell on this because I was back Liking again. Product pages, fan pages, pictures, remarks and the list goes on. But then I came across a Facebook profile page with a photograph across the top of a line of pooches dressed in uniforms, with the owner’s beaming face in the middle and this I don’t Like, so I look for the Dislike button. But there is no Dislike button anywhere on the page and there is no Dislike button on any other Facebook page either. So I go onto Google and search for ‘Facebook + Dislike button’, only to discover that there is no Dislike feature. And I find myself asking what is the value of a world without comparison and what does Like even mean in the absence of Dislike. Not much one might argue.

Research on the subject certainly suggests this. Performerinsider.com claims 99% of Facebook fans are useless. Yet companies marketing departments continue to court Likes. The world’s largest brands have many Likes. When I visited Coca Cola’s Facebook page I saw they had 64,357,439 Likes. Make that 64,357,440 Likes. I Like Coca Cola, I really do. So much so that I drink it regularly. McDonald’s had 28,451,803 Likes and I Liked it too, but only because there was no Quite Like button. Next up was Oreos, who had 33,234,940 Likes and I clicked Like again, though I’ve only had an Oreo once and can’t remember what it tasted Like. But we all Like cookies don’t we and 33,234,940 people can’t be wrong.

Whatever the value of a Like the fact remains that if we take the trouble to build a nice looking Facebook page that we want people to visit, it is going to look better with a lot of Likes than with hardly any or worse still none. So we too court Likes and the circle goes one. My Facebook Fan Page is Charles Middleworth. Feel free to Like it and I will probably reciprocate, although there may be rare instances when I cannot bring myself to press the Like button.

If you’re an author on Facebook and want more Likes you might be interested in the Facebook Like Literary Cafe.

What happens when Adrian, an actuary, has his banal and predictable existence turned upside down by sinister forces that he can neither understand nor control? How will he react to a revelation that leaves his life in turmoil? Will he surrender or strive for redemption in an altered world, where rationality, scientific logic and algorithms no longer provide the answers?

‘An insightful and humorous tale of the unexpected’ – Reader

‘A sardonic delight. If Thackeray had lived in the 21st century, then he might have written Charles Middleworth.’ – Reader

Charles Middleworth is available through most regional Amazons on Kindle (£1.96/$3.17) and in paperback.

United Kingdom – www.amazon.co.uk

USA – www.amazon.com

Twitter Annoyances

May 03 2013

It is estimated that about a third of the active global internet population now has a Twitter account. That’s over half a billion users worldwide. There are so many reasons for why mankind’s love of Twitter shows no sign of slowing down. We love Tweeting our friends, networking and getting breaking news, to mention nothing of the links to interesting articles and amusing quotes.

However as with anything in life Twitter can be annoying and anyone who uses the social media platform probably feels the same. In this post I will be discussing four of my personal Twitter annoyances.

#TeamFollowBack – Anyone who is familiar with Twitter will be aware of the scourge that is Team Follow Back. It has been embraced by those solely interested in building their numbers of Twitter Followers for no other reason than to have lots of Followers. Team Follow Back advocates do not as a rule interact with people other than through impersonal group messages such as the aptly named ‘Lazy Shout Out’. Team Follow Back is to many nothing but a infantile and futile exercise, which only gets one non-target Followers, who have no interest in what you have to say and vice versa.

TrueTwit Validation – This is when you Follow a Twitter account and get a message back asking you to prove that you are not a robot by going to a TrueTwit Validation service and typing alpha numerical codes in a field (see below). To start a relationship from a position of distrust is evidently a bad starting point. If you begun a friendly conversation with someone in your coffee shop queue, who clasped their handbag tightly to their body, as if you were going to steal it, you would probably not appreciate it and the same goes for Twitter. Perhaps it is just me but I find filling out the TrueTwit validation fields extremely taxing and it often takes numerous attempts, as they are extremely difficult to read in many instances. By the time I have attempted this several times and failed my relationship with the given person is already somewhat fraught.

Endless RTing – RTs’ are a fantastic way of forwarding information that we are interested in or amuses us, in addition to supporting other people. However as with everything in life moderation is the key not excess. Someone who only RTs’ can be perceived as idle as they never produce their own content. And then there’s the voluminous RT’er. One author I came across on Twitter had RT’d 120 instances of other authors’ books in their genre, in just one day. Finally there are the lists. What is the point I ask myself in RT’ing lists of Twitter accounts which end up going round in circles. Not much I would argue.

Bieber – Bieber has been described as being like marmite, you either love or hate him. There is no doubting however that Bieber is a true Twitter superpower. He has over 37 million Followers (known as True Beliebers) and at any one time around 3% Twitter’s traffic is dedicated to Bieber. Bieber is estimated to gain approximately 11,000 new Followers every day. Even the Bubonic Plague didn’t spread this fast.

‘I close my eyes and I can see a better day’, these are Bieber’s words not mine. They are from his song Pray. And in this one instance I have to agree with Bieber. For when I close my eyes I can see a time in the near future when Bieber is in terminal Twitter decline. A result in part because of his controversial recent behaviour, including allegedly smoking cannabis, bursts of rage at reporters, turning up very late to his own concerts and perhaps most pertinently the ill-judged comment he left in the Ann Frank visitors book during his recent trip to Amsterdam.

Perhaps you have Twitter annoyances that I have not listed.

Archive - May 2013

Controversial Authors

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