Why people are so mean about 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

Ok so obviously you've heard of the sensation that is sweeping the world (or just where I live??), that of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by the classic British woman, EL James. Quick claim to fame - she lives in Ealing which is surprisingly close to where I live(!).

If you haven't heard of it (which you will have, so this explanation is pointless) it is a fan fiction that has been published. If you don't know what fan fiction is, then you simply did not enjoy your tween years. Fan fiction is a website where people write stories about characters from books. I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but I have got to say that I did have my own (very active, might i add) fan fiction account, where I wrote stories about Twilight. In fact I recently read them, and was struck by my own genius. No, not really, but to be fair to my 14/15 year old self, some of them are pretty hilarious. And lol no, I'm not going to give you my name. Not that you're obsessed with me to the extent that you'd actually care. 

Anyway, I apologise profusely for that massive detour that was just about myself, but FSOG was written originally as a Twilight fan fiction. If you are a true Twilight fan, you can see many similarities. But aside from that, the point of this thing was, was to say that it is unfair how mean people are about FSOG. 

Everyone talks about how it is anti-feminist, how it's a form of pornography, how it is terribly written and so on.

First of all, yeah the writing is appalling. I mean, she does talk a lot about her 'inner goddess' as well as constantly exclaiming, 'double crap!' and referring to her sub-conscious in weird ways. As a fellow fan-fiction-er I can tell you that it is written exactly like a fan fiction. I even re-read some of mine and they are written a bit like that, I think the phrase, 'I felt confusion ripple through my body' was used in one of mine. I dont know abut you, but i have never felt confusion ripple through me. But, whatever, it's just fan fiction. No one cares. And FSOG was written as a fanfiction. People just want to read more about the stories, they only care about the characters, so it simply doesnt matter to anyone if the writing is poor. I think it's so unfair when people are so mean about the writing, because it was not written as a work of literature. Plus, she's actually got a really good fanfiction talent in that when you're writing on fanfic, you've got to end every chapter in a cliffhanger. It's freaking hard. It's cus you've always got to keep your readers interested, as there's so much competition, and they can just click off you. The story also needs to be simple enough so that your readers (who are probably reading five or six stories) can always catch on to what is going on, hence the devastatingly simple storyline. Let me tell you, to keep people interested is a skill. You also need incredible skills in timing. But that's beside the point, I'm just saying, its not easy to get recognised on fanfiction. Srsly.

Then there's the pornography thing. I admit, I do not know a lot about porn, but FSOG is not porn. Yeah, Christian Grey is into, like, S&M, but the whole point is that Anastasia isn't! She doesn't like it, and yeah she does it for a while but that's because she's fallen in love with him (awwwwwwww). I don't want to give the intricate plot away, but there are complications regarding her... participating in the acts. This has got a lot more seedy than I first intended. I am sorry. Tbh, the sex scenes are not THAT explicit. Not in comparison to other ffs (not mine!!). If you want to check this, just go onto fanfiction.net and go to Twilight and click 'M'. In fact, I'll do it for you: http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Twilight/14/0/1/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/0/. Because, let me tell you, clicking on 'M' when I was 12 years old because I didn't know what it meant, scarred me a little bit. All I wanted to read about was Dr Who, and yet I still remember the one I read now... it was disgusting.

But anyway, I am not the authority on erotica literature (I am sorry to both disappoint and surprise you all!) but I wasn't really shocked by the sex scenes. Well, some of them are weird, but I had heard that FSOG was a disgusting book that you need ID to buy in Waterstones because it will corrupt your brain as soon as you read the title... And it didn't! Damn. Better read something worse...

And the anti-feminist thing. Eugh, I can't even be bothered with this. Before I read it I was all omggggg women have been put back two centuries by this book omgggg. I would like to tell previous me to stfu, because it's just not true. It's just what people who hate the book say about it to make others instantly hate it too. Obviously if someone says that a book is anti-woman and yet written by a woman and read by loads of women you'd be like, 'this must be stopped! It makes us look weak!' but it's not.

And now we get onto the people-hating it thing. I was discussing this with a friend, (fine, it was my mum) and we came to the conclusion that people are just jealous of EL James. She didn't even try to publish her book, and yet it became an instant success. I mean, an incredible success: it's sort of unbelievable. And when you see these interviews with her, you're like, this is so unfair! My stories on ff are witty and charming and intelligent and oh-so-well-written, and yours is written as though you were high, and has no sub-plots! I HAD SUBPLOTS, DAMMIT. 

Really, everyone has become wrongly obsessed with this book (or trilogy, should I say!) when it is just an ff like any other that women read because it's a romantic love story which (and I don't want to give anything away here) ends happily. WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE? That's all I want. Cry. This has now taken a turn for the awkward, soz. Interestingly enough, most of my ffs had depressing ends which may have been why people got upset with me. Insight, at last. In one of them, Jacob died. So controversial.

---- this is about FEMINISM.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post called, ‘I don’t understand why some women/girls claim they are not feminists’. This article struck a nerve with a girl I know, who wrote a pretty personal attack about it on her own blog, here’s the link: http://totesobliteration.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/why-i-refuse-to-be-bullied-into-being-a-feminist/. I don’t agree with what she has said, and so she told me to write a response. Here it is:

1. The first point is that, ‘People who are not feminists do not necessarily believe that women should all be housewives’. This is a fair and true point, however if you look closely at my article, you will see that I recognise this: ‘It’s the radical feminists that think stuff like this - most feminists are just pro-choice.’ So this point is unnecessary as I agree with it.
2. Most women ‘in 9 cases out of 10’ only claim to be feminists because they can’t be bothered to do anything about it themselves. Yeah, again, probably vaguely true that only 10% of feminists actually take proper hardcore action about their beliefs. But this is a bigger issue than just feminism, isn’t it? I mean, people say they are against the Iraq war and yet not all of them protested. Many of my friends were against the rise in the tuition fees, yet they didn’t actively protest. People are apathetic, but if feminism didn’t exist then not even this 10% would do anything about their beliefs. Then we wouldn’t have anyone protesting about sexism. And without anyone protesting we definitely wouldn’t have achieved some of the stuff we have e.g. Equal pay, the right to vote etc etc etc.
3. ‘When I don’t like something I don’t hide behind my gender’ - this is great for you, seriously. It’s great that you have the opportunity to put your gender behind you and sort problems out as an individual. But this is the problem, isn’t it? Not all women can do this. Sometimes we need people who are stronger than us to represent us and fight for us. Not all of us are as strong as you.
4. ‘People who say they are feminists are contributing to the gender divide just as much as misogynists are (not least because there are increasingly more feminists and increasingly less misogynists.)’ - I have to say with this point I have embarrassingly just copied and pasted what was written because I have no idea what it means. I hope it doesn’t mean that pointing out gender differences is making sexism worse, I really hope it doesn’t mean that. If we’re going to follow this, how about we just ignore racism? In fact, this is a great idea, lets ignore ALL problems until they disappear! That’ll definitely happen...
   I also have got to mention that it wasn’t first wave feminism that secured equal rights for men and women, it was second wave feminism. First wave feminism was in the early twentieth century with the suffragettes etc.
5. The divisions are purely social and so we should fix them by (A) dealing with them as individuals - again, this would be great if everyone was brave enough to call people up on sexism and demand to be treated as equals, but not all women are able to do that, and (B) waiting. This kills me. I can’t imagine anyone saying that about how to fix racism! ‘Social attitudes won’t change over night but they will change just as a wound will heal as soon as you stop agitating it and give it a little time.’ - WHAT?! Social attitudes and wounds are being compared?! This could have it’s own article on the aptly named ‘I don’t understand’. See, social attitudes for women have been really crap for centuries and centuries, the fact that proves this argument wrong is that attitudes have only started changing when women started agitating it!!! I am not into counter-factual history but I am very sure that women would not have got the vote in Britain if it had not been for the women’s movements (yes, that’s first wave feminism) which put women’s issues on the radar of the government. And I know, you’re talking about social attitudes and not legal issues, but again with second wave feminism, nothing happened until people started complaining about the situation that women were in!
6. This point is a rant about how I, in my ‘woefully inaccurate’ article, ‘seemed to suggest all feminists thought the same way and all anti-feminists thought the same way.’ I am going to reply to this quite simply: no I didn’t. I was talking about people’s personal reasons for disagreeing with feminism. Never did I say that all anti-feminists think this, in fact I don’t think I even used the word ‘anti-feminism’ in it. Actually I just word checked it, and I didn’t.

I have to say, I am a little confused at the end of this article as to what it is actually saying, if anyone wants to enlighten me, that’d be cool.

how things get awkward so quickly

I don’t know about you, but I have an incredible talent/flaw of being able to make a perfectly comfortable situation devastatingly awkward within a few moments. People can just be discussing something random like which tube to take, and I’ll pipe up with a comment that sounded witty and hilarious in my mind, but comes out as a stuttering jumble of words that does not receive the laugh I anticipated - rather just a bemused look from the people I am with (or, if I am with my friends, the harsh truth that what I said was stupid.) I thought that this had been a recent development in my life, but in reality I remember being in year 9 or 10 and I would realise in the middle of an anecdote that it was neither funny nor relevant. There are two things to do when you find yourself in this position; either trail off and mumble something and hope no one says anything, or exaggerate the story so that although it is very funny, it is only vaguely true.

However, it has got worse recently, and I think this is because not only am I able to make things awkward (which I’ve been doing since I was about 6 and told my friend’s mum I watched a TV show that literally does not exist just for lols), but so are other people.

Like, last August when I was on this summer school thing for a week but I didn’t know anyone, and this one girl insisted on shaking my hand when we first met. When she had, she just said, ‘your hand is really cold.’ Instead of saying, ‘yeah well yours was uncomfortably warm, jerk’ I knew I had to be polite but, I mean, WHAT DO YOU SAY? I opted for a mumbly, ‘I’m sorry’ to which she said, ‘It was just an observation.’ We then both kind of looked at each other like, this is actually really odd, and I tried to incorporate myself into someone else’s conversation. The same girl later made a snide comment about my (hilarious) t-shirt featuring a picture of a raccoon on a tree with the words, ‘lets hang out’ on. That was unnecessary. She also made me list every single GCSE I took because there was a pause in conversation. I then had to ask her for hers. Whilst she was speaking all I could think was, ‘what am I doing here?’ and then it was awkward because I hadn't heard what she had said, and went on to say, ‘I’m just so glad I don’t have to do chemistry anymore!’ She was like, ‘I just said I do chemistry.’ I don’t know how you recover that. I hate that moment when you’ve been trying to make a passing comment and then it turns into an insult and the person you’re talking to is really annoyed (it happens more than you would think).

However, I must admit that I am particularly bad in some/all situations, for example, in year 10 we were taken to some place for a science talk, or something. In the break I was trying to buy some mini-eggs from the vending machine, but they didn't fall down. I tried to kick the machine, but then this boy came forward and bought another packet so that mine fell down with his. I am ashamed to say that instead of thanking this nice boy, I assumed he was trying to steal my mini-eggs so pushed him aside and ran away. Not metaphorical running or anything, I am talking about just sprinting away. I was meant to keep that anecdote on the DL because I come out of it as not only someone stupid, but also a jerk, but I have been forced by so many people to tell them anyway that I may as well publish it on here (no one really reads this anyway *crying*).

But it is really odd how the slightest odd comment can transport you and the people you are with (almost always people you don’t know very well) into a long-lasting silence of awkwardness. When you are included in one of these long silences you literally cannot think of anything to say - your mind goes completely blank. Someone then inevitably points out that this is an awkward silence, everyone sort of laughs, and then it’s just silent again. You rack your brain for things to say, and end up with something either totally pathetic like, ‘the weather has been nice, yeah?’ or something weird like, ‘did you know that although your nose and ears grow throughout your life, your eyes dont? Crazy, eh?’

However, awkward moments like this do not have to happen just with people that you do not know very well. One time in class I overheard a girl saying, ‘every blonde girl I’ve ever met has been a slut’. Of course, I then said, ‘I’m blonde’. The longest, worst silence ever then ensued. What was worse was that people told me that I had made it awkward, when obviously the claim that every girl you've met who happens to be blonde is also a slut (whatever your definition of that is!) simply cannot be true!

Or, what about when you’re trying to congratulate a girl you’ve known for years about passing her driving test, but accidentally instead of saying, ‘well done on your driving test!’ you say, ‘good luck on your driving test!’ She was too polite to say anything and I only realised afterwards what I had done.

Or, how about when you think everyone around you watches Peep Show, so start laughing about the episode in which Mark gets raped, and they all judge you for laughing at rape.

Finally, how about when you go to a party dressed as a pirate (long story) and your friend immediately says, ‘you belong in The Inbetweeners!’ I asked if she meant as one of the unreachable but desirable girls. She said no.

I don’t really know how to conclude this. Awkward silences are always awkward, especially when your 11 year old cousin says, ‘silence’ when there is a pause in conversation. Soo... Yeah.

Awkward silence.




ALSO HAPPY BIRTHDAY LYDIA MORRIS! OMG 18 OMG

why we have to end texts with Xs

A few years ago, one of my friends asked me why I sent such ‘mean texts’. I was pretty confused, as I had always branded my texts as ‘hilarious’ or ‘oozing with both wit and charm’, so was surprised to hear that people had been assuming I was 'mad at them' because a little letter was missing at the end of it. Ya, I am referring to the insane ‘x’ culture that we live in today.

It’s absolutely mental that you have to end every message you write with a few little xs, when really if you like that person, they don’t need to be told by a stupid addition of a letter. And if you don’t like them, then why do you have to pretend that you do in a text? Plus, when you’re made to write birthday cards and stuff to people when you’re like 10, an x means a kiss, and seriously I do not want people getting the wrong idea. Why can’t we just give a friendly o for a hug? That’s nice and safe, I’d prefer to go with that. However, I tried it once and the person just thought I was doing a surprised face. It was like, ‘I’m here o’ and then, ‘why is that shocking?’. It led to much confusion, as you can well imagine.

I only recently found out that the number of xs you put down actually matters, which is a little embarrassing because until then I had just been hitting the button and then sending whatever happened (i'm a crazy kinda gal though). In order to check that xs do actually mean something, I went to the good people at Yahoo Answers, who always answer questions both truthfully and with as much thought as they are humanly capable of:

Yes... I have blocked out my name so that you can't see all the other (hilarious) answers to qus that i've written...

Knowing this made me understand previous situations:

Hahaha the person is so mysterious. WHO CAN IT BE?

Of course, having found this out I, like any other confused person in the world, got confused about how many xs would be appropriate to give to people. This is because if you are going to deliberately give someone xs, you need to know how many they need. I mean, if I’m texting the woman whose kids I babysit, does she deserve an x? When you always send xs then a text message looks a bit sad without one. It looks like it IS deliberate and although the message is perfectly friendly you are venting out your anger by not putting an x. Additionally, I don’t want to give out my xs too freely, I mean, people need to work for xs. This is starting to sound weird so I’m going to stop, but you get me.

The worst thing about xs though, is that you don’t know what the other person means by them. FOR EXAMPLE, I do not equate how much I like you with how many xs I give you. In fact, most of the time I forget to give xs because I hit send so fast (fast typer problems). But, what if some people are directly showing how much they like you by how many xs they give you? What if they’ve got some creepy little list at the back of their pad of paper (because everyone sometimes needs paper) which says how many xs mean what. WOAH. Talk about subliminal messages. Forget about body language and all that psychological crap, the number of xs people gives you tells all (unless, of course, it doesn’t.)

Because you can’t just think that if someone gives you lots of xs then they like you more. Cor, if you were thinking this, you were thinking simplistically, my friend. What if they give you loads of xs and you think they are like in love with you, when really they are IRONIC xs? OMG. Who knew that xs could be ironic? Well, now you do. They can mock, too. And then if you reply with precisely 11 xs too, then jeez you should be embarrassed.

So, I have put together a scale (in order to put off revising for as long as possible) that should be used universally, of what each number of xs should mean:

[none]: this person either wants you to die a slow and painful death (possibly caused by them) or they forgot. It is your call, make the right decision though, because your life depends on it.

x: a sad little x, isn’t it? All lonely, standing there on it’s own. This person feels obliged to give you an x, because they’ve thought about xs, but they didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. This known in the trade as the ‘polite x’.

xx: a nice number to send to an acquaintance. This person is like, ‘hey man you’re alright, have two xs’. This is the optimum number of xs to send if you are confused about how many to send. The motto in this crazy world is always IF IN DOUBT, HAVE TWO (because we are obsessed with materialism).

xxx: this person is clearly a fan - well done getting someone to like you! Congrats, you’ve made a friend! Therefore, this is a friend number of xs.

xxxx: this person is a bit keen.

xxxxx: this person is probably in love with you. GO FOR IT.

xxxxxx: ^^

xxxxxxx: this person probably started doing xs and then forgot to take their finger off the button. It happens to the best of us.

xxxxxxxx: this is a symbolic number, because if you look carefully, you can see that there are 8 xs here. Obviously, this person wanted to tell you that they’re in love with you, but chickened out and so decided to tell you IN CODE. Instead of saying, ‘iloveyou’ they have said, ‘xxxxxxxx’ because they are hoping that your brains are so in tune that you will read the code and respond appropriately. If someone sends you 8 xs then there is NO WAY that they are not in love with you. When you tell them this and they deny that it is not true, they clearly have just not realised yet because it was subconscious.

xxxxxxxxx: this looks sarcastic. It’s like, ‘haha you think we’re such good friends so I’ll give you loads of xs but really I WANT YOU TO DIE.’

xxxxxxxxxx: this person is an idiot/ joker (depends who they are/what you think of them).

So we should all use this. OR we could just stop doing the whole x thing and go back to being normal?

Lovehearts BY CONNIE

BY CONNIE (my first ever guest entry - awesomeawesomeawesome)

Sooo... I’ve just opened a packet of LoveHearts (a small one, ‘cos I’m cheap and can’t be bothered to buy a large tube) because I haven't had one in a while and want to experience the awesomeness of reading them with all of you.

The first heart reads ‘WILD THING’. Would someone please explain to me why this is acceptable? I thought that LoveHearts were cute sweets that you could give to a loved one/friend/admirer/stalker/yourself as a little joke - however, this does not seem to be the case anymore. When I give a friend a LoveHeart I do not want them presuming anything about our relationship when they read it. 'WILD THING' is simply too out-there! For me, when I open up a packet to find ‘WILD THING’ written over my pink LoveHeart, the first thing that comes into my head is ‘Wild thing...you’re such a ... wild thing’ (It’s a song..- I think, anyway), this is not something I want to see. I wanted something cute that I could smile at for a second, before continuing on with my day.However, I decide to not lose all faith in humanity (and LoveHearts) just yet and look at the next heart, hoping for something a little more cute, and a little more mainstream.

‘CHEEKY BOY’. Could this get any worse? Since when were LoveHearts sexualised? I feel violated by a circular pink sweet. I am not a boy and I definitely don't want a LoveHeart telling me that I am 'cheeky'. Anyway, I move swiftly over this one and look hopefully at the third one – third time lucky...

‘EVER YOURS’. Ok so this is getting better. This is more like what I expected from my LoveHearts experience, although if a friend gave this to me I would worry that they would get the wrong idea. You'd have to accompany it with the message, 'I SWEAR I DON'T THINK THAT YOU OWN ME' and that would open up a whole new, unnecessarily awkward conversation.

The fourth one is the same: ‘EVER YOURS’. I think someone is trying to hammer home a point - the LoveHearts are getting a bit desperate for my liking. But, meh, I guess it’s better than two ‘CHEEKY BOY’ sweets in a row.

The fifth sweet is upside down.I turn it over tentatively – I love how I’ve managed to make this into a fun game for myself – ahhh procrastination at its best! ‘BE HAPPY’. Wow. I’m actually so pleased. This is how I remember the old LoveHearts, telling me things to cheer up my day. I will be happy, LoveHeart sweet, I will be happy because you told me to be so.

The next sweet is also upside down....’CRAZY’. Cool. Now the LoveHearts seem to have taken on a fortune teller persona. ‘You vill be happy, my child....however, I zee a verd [word] which sums you up...crazee. Zat iz you, my child.’ Why thank you my German/Russian fortune teller LoveHeart...pretty much summed me up in one word. Fab. – I shall move onto the seventh and last sweet in the packet (told you it was a small packet!)

‘HI LOVE’. How polite. Although this clearly does not have a particularly deep meaning my faith has somewhat been restored in LoveHearts. But I’d still like it explained why in a packet of 7 sweets, the messages are so random...and some of them are just plain weird, as well as the fact that there was a pathetic amount of variation.

The moral of this is: just eat the sweets, don’t bother thinking too much about the messages (unless, of course, you want to procrastinate, then lots of things that would usually be weird become acceptable).




THANK YOU CONNIE
Link to Connie's tumblr incase you've fallen in love with her (and just because her tumblr's abnormally good): http://that-kid-billy-loves-you.tumblr.com/

Why the Metro continues to be published

DISCLAIMER: I love the Metro, and I hope that it continues to be published forever.

Ok well I can only think of a few reasons as to why you wouldn't have encountered The Metro before:
1. You've never been to London
2. Your parents love you and drive you EVERYWHERE
3. You're too classy for it and prefer the 'proper' newspapers
4. You think you're classy and so read the London Evening Standard but really we all know that it is just a pretence and you are as bad as us Metro readers
5. You don't speak English
6. You get no pleasure from reading a terrible, terrible newspaper (LOL JK no one like this exists)

So, if you haven't read the Metro, then pick your excuse, because if you are not included in any of these six categories, then you should be ashamed of yourself. This is because you are fundamentally decreasing your chance of happiness in life, as the Metro provides hilarity every single day of the week. However, I am going to assume that at least ONE person hasn't read/heard of the Metro, so I better quickly explain what it is. It's a free newspaper that is provided at every tube station in London every morning, and because it is free, it is an absolute joke.

Throughout my many (too many) years taking the District line to school every single morning, the Metro has ALWAYS provided me with good memories. From when it reported Obama winning the general election a day late, to its constantly random news on page 3 (unlike The Sun it often includes a picture of a random animal?). Although, it must be said, that it has also caused me some problems - in 2011 I walked into school thinking I was up-to-date newswise and then it was like BAM, Metro missed the Japanese earthquake (first world problems). I also am constantly telling people the Metro weather report that is almost always wrong, as well as regurgitating facts about world events that appear to have just been made up.

However, after years of defending the Metro to almost everyone I know (due to some unknown loyalty that I felt) I've realised that it really is a shocking newspaper. I mean, in reality I only like it because it is such a joke. AND SO, here are a list of factors that make this newspaper the WORST newspaper of all time: (although almost all of these reasons also make it the best newspaper of all time)

1. So many news articles aren't really news:

Why yes, yes they are reporting from a report from NOW magazine. This isn't NEWS.

So this was about a dog that can supposedly type. To be honest, this is really kind of cool and it is understandable that you'd want to publish this. But really, PAGE 3?! How can this be the next most important thing to the front page?!

In all seriousness, this was honestly about an unnamed business man who was able to spend £200,000 on a night out, and yet didn't appear to be drunk to other clubbers. Seriously. I looked for symbolic meaning. There was none.

Again, page 3 for you folks. The first page was on the weather, too.

I can't lie I love this story. Also to be fair I was looking quite far back into the newspaper before I found this. But really, THIS IS NOT NEWS. After reading the photo (which looks like an extract - but don't worry, it is the entire article) you feel like you've lost about ten years of your life. What are you talking about, most 25 year old single girls would thinking nothing of jumping into a cab and going for a raucous night out?! JUST WHAT?! This doesn't have any consequences in the world at all! I don't have any more to say.

2. Oh God the puns

To be honest the categories for this are terrible because each photo could fit into basically every category. Not only is the pun laughably bad (not in a good way) but this also should not count as a news story. Again, WTF goes on on page 3?

Who thinks of these?!

I feel so conflicted because I love a good pun, but then again I wanted to feel intellectual, reading on my way to school. But really I know that my IQ is dropping.

Oh Hayden Smith you absolute joker!

 4. WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THAT?

In all seriousness they did not need to quote that some random person called Harry hot twice. It didn't need to be done, because it is not true.

Just why? Is this a joke? PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS A JOKE

First I thought this was sarcastic and sneaky, and was like 'woo Metro go you' but in reality they are criticising themselves because they were the ones who reported that there would be a drought.

5. They have eye-catching headlines (that often do not relate to the story):

Apparently exclamation marks catch someone's attention!!!!!!!

You can always trust the Metro to liven up a depressing, serious story with a bit of a rhyme in the title.

WHY would you choose this photo?! WHY?!

IN CONCLUSION, I don't really know. I love it, but it makes me lose faith in society at the same time. Then again, it's always good to have a sense of humour. but, having said that, it's not always good to have a sense of humour when reporting serious news, I don't think.

who goes on habbo hotel

So making a post last time about omegle was really fun, and I decided to do it again with another mysterious website: habbo.com.

Many people (surprisingly) haven't heard of habbo hotel. Again, it is a chat room for strangers, on which you create a habbo (a little cartoon person) and go around this virtual hotel talking to people and buying 'furni' (furniture for your room) which you pay actual money for (£1 buys you 10 credits - a sofa will cost you about 3 credits, just to give you an idea).

Quite disturbingly I was introduced to it when I was about 8 years old due to my older brother (who was only 11 at the time - no idea how he found out about it) who went on it to chat to his friends. Although I remember it as merely being a fun game where you could make a cartoon person and walk around saying things like 'you smell' to unsuspecting people, after going on it recently I have realised that this is not the purpose that it is most commonly used for.

Tragically enough, my first ever (and most beloved) habbo, 100SX (a name for which I was teased about because apparently it suggested that I had had sex 100 times - a really upsetting insult for an 8 yr old) was deactivated due to being cruelly hacked when I was 13, therefore, for the purposes of this blogpost I resurrected my third habbo (my second was one called Smiley6063, which got banned for some reason I can't really remember) called: millieXjrX, which was last signed in in late 2010.

To introduce you, this is what my innocent millieXjrX looked like when I began:

The first thing I am greeted by is a nice message from the staff saying:

Pretty damn nice. To get you acquainted with millieXjrX, this is my pathetic looking room (the reason it looks so bad is because I haven't paid money into my account and therefore cannot buy any furni, I just have shit starter gifts):

To begin my quest I went to the most populated room in the hotel: The Demi Lovato Star Lounge (because I happen to have signed in when Demi Lovato is chatting live with people who wait long enough.)

I was initially having issues because for some reason no one would talk to me. I fixed this by leaving after many a failed conversation and headed for the beach (more precisely a SINGLES beach - I knew people would talk to me there!!)

After being trapped behind some doors that wouldn't open for me for a few minutes, I realised a new thing about habbo: IT IS EXCLUSIVE. No one talks to you or even acknowledges you if you are not Habbo Club (Meaning that you've paid 25 credits, £2.50, to have special privileges for a month)

Also I don't know what was happening, but I was somehow accidentally spamming the room by sending out message after message, which I wasn't typing. 

Genuinely don't know what was happening there, so I decided to leave and headed for the classic habbo adoption centre. Habbo hotel always has lots of user-made adoption centres, where people dress up their habbos as babies and try and get adopted. Seriously.

^^ a classic piece of adoption dialogue. As is:

It is literally people pretending to be babies. The reason for it is usually so that they can be adopted by rich parents and eventually be donated furni to add to their collection. I have done it before (no joke, although to be fair I was very young at the time, judging by the fact that when I was trying to get adopted I tried to shorten every word down and once told a girl to 'f me' because I thought that 'f' could be short for 'follow'). Anyway, after realising how poor I was no one wanted to be my child (I couldn't even persuade someone to be my pet dog, tragically) and so I decided to mix it up a bit and go to a Bi, Les and Gay Bar. After being ignored by many people even at this event, I knew that I had to change the way I looked. From memory, this is what I remember as being attractive on habbo:

Ooooh yeah, who could resist? I then opted for a different tactic, which is instead of trying to talk to people and make friends that way, just add as many people as possible as friends and then continually message the ones who are stupid enough to accept you. This tactic also works in life.

Sure enough, within 2 minutes I had already made three friends, and been messaged this:

I messaged a few of these people, but the conversations didn't go very far as after admitting that I didn't want to have cyber-sex with them (who even knew that was a thing?) they stopped talking to me.

I then attended a kissing booth because I knew that my new look would go down a storm there, and sure enough it did. I immediately got approached (unfortunately this guy asked if I could help him look after his daughter and when I said only maybe he left me...): 

As cliched as it is, I then began to get lots of friend requests. I pointed out to a few people that how I looked on habbo wasn't how I looked in real life, but they couldn't seem to grasp the concept that this wasn't real life, so I left it at that. Of course the majority of the messages I was sent asked if I was 'dirty' or wanted to 'send pics' but I was pretty used to that having had the omegle experience. This was my personal favourite:

I thought I had struck gold when I found this person, but I don't really know what happened to them:

I abandoned this person after the strange response because I realised that someone had invited me to his room. Of course, being the journalist I am, I accepted the offer and went there.

He, obviously, immediately lay in his bed whilst I stood awkwardly standing for a while trying to get him to get up. He asked me what I wanted to do, I said to talk and this was the short conversation that followed:

(jtlyk he has written sex with spaces in-between because in order to prevent any sexual behaviour on habbo the moderators blur out any words like 'sex' or 'cum' or any swear words to the appropriate word of 'bobba'.)
You can see from my face that I am extremely concerned about the matter as, I swear to God, I did not realise I was getting myself into this (I know this sounds terrible of me now but I am incredibly oblivious to everything and 90% of the time I don't know what is going on). When I did realise I lolled for a while and then got up because I'm not really into that (as I told him, sadly to his disapproval) he attempted to do whatever it was he wanted to do (hilariously started with something like, '*takes off both our clothes*') at which point I was like WOAH WOAH WOAH because, as my friend put it later, I was almost cyber-raped!! (a thing that I did not know could happen to anyone!)

Surely enough, he told me to leave, so we had this conversation: (Joey is his pet dog)

The only response I got was that he thought I was, 'boring ugly and dumb' and that I made him miss his habbo exe. Devastating. I pretended to cry and he kicked me out of his room. Obviously I went back in to hassle him, got kicked out again, and eventually our relationship ended like this:

The ending of this post is much like the omegle one, except it appears that people on habbo are meaner. Also the situation that I naively managed to get myself into is a lot like a situation you can imagine a girl getting into in real life on one of those videos you watch in PSHE at school where the moral is TRUST NO ONE and NEVER GET INTO THIS SITUATION. So we can safely generalise and say that all the people on habbo are the kind of people that you are warned to stay away from in PSHE. 

And so my Friday night came to an end. I'm just kidding, it was a Saturday night.

In conclusion, if you're ever on habbo, please harass that guy for me. Thanks. :(

Who goes on omegle.com

In case you don't know what Omegle is, it is a website on which you talk to total randomers - basically a form of MSN for strangers. After finding out about it a few years ago when I religiously read MLIA.com (if you do not know what this is then you have not lived) I have always asked myself the question, 'who actually goes on omegle?'

Obviously we all go on omegle from time to time to distract ourselves from pure boredom aka homework, or to troll it and have a laugh (awkward pause when I realise that this is, in fact, just me) but I have always wondered who the rest of the people are. If you log onto the website right now, there will probably be 10k+ people on it, and I'm sure we've all wondered, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

So, on behalf of the entire world (I like to think) I went onto omegle and tried to get a feel for the kind of people that genuinely go on it. Obviously a few of them could have been people like me (aka nerds who thinks they're funny and are bored) but by having about twenty conversations with people I think I must've got together a selection of data that is representative of the population of this sad, sad website (the fact that I spent my afternoon having 20 conversations with total, and lets face it very weird strangers also probably says something about me, too). My conversations (or most of them) are posted below. And no, reading them is definitely not going to restore your faith in humanity. In fact it may destroy it:

This was the first one I asked, and in response to the 'teenage drama' I was thinking, 'wow, omeglers really are normal people with pretty, generic and cliched problems! Woo, they are not freaks!'
I spoke too soon.

Again, pretty generic and much appreciated by me (just to add, I did actually have to go to supper.)

I didn't know what to say to this.

Pretty devastating but I got used to rejection...

I think that this is the most common of all the conversations.  I was new to the idea at this point and therefore could not think of a great response, so opted for just declining and thanking him for the offer. After all, I don't want to be rude.

Again, very boring, and I got asked, 'r u wet' by so many people that I didn't bother putting them in as they depressed me. 

Omeglers have feelings too...

I'm just hoping that this person has a really weird sense of humour.

After the pervious horrifying experience involving incest I decided to change the question so that I wouldn't get scarred again.

I admit it, at this point I was getting annoyed and creeped out.

That was not what I was thinking when I awkwardly brought up politics. Still, I learnt that omeglers think that pedophiles talk about stuff like that, so I left it out after this incident. I think what makes this worse is that he took about ten minutes to craft this message.

This restored my faith in humanity a little bit more, however the fact that this person (who actually turned out to be kind of normal?!?!?!?!?!?!) was surprised to find someone else normal does not bode well for the world of Omegle.

In conclusion, I feel that this link, which pops up when you've been disconnected from someone, really sums up the world of Omegle: