Too Many Fish In The Sea

Engaging with a couple of the workplace diaspora recently has alerted me to another kettle of fish.  That'll be him just over there.  You must excuse the sketchy nature of his death and his uncertain species, yet I enjoyed five minutes as a five-year-old!

Those of you that use social networking will be aware that it is a phenomenon of the modern age - rightly or wrongly. Indeed, two of my former colleagues have recently provided comments upon said ubiquitous phenomenon. One of the scattered is manfully wrestling with social networks as part of his mission to spread the good word of plain English; another is teaching me how to apply myself to modern job-seeking techniques.

I bow to their combined wisdom.  However, I struggle to deal with the inanity of Facebook, the banal brevity of Twitter and the outrageous mendacity of LinkedIn. Perhaps it's me?  Anyway, I have been recommended to reappraise these media.  Putting aside the scorn I so regularly keep for, well, just about everything and everybody, I engaged my soul.

I have, as have most people it seems, a Facebook profile.  Much of it is rubbish, some of it was added by others.  I therefore commend its soul to the devil.  It appears to me that FB appeals more to the female unable to keep up with EastEnders or the male desperate to show that he has no gainful employment.  I could claim the latter but only sympathise with the former.  Last time I checked, EastEnders was selling cheap fags outside  Calais.  But, of course, no-one on FB smokes: they don't have time whilst describing their trips to the lavatory. And anyway, according to the news that I heard as I walked past a television reception device, it could be dangerous to your future career if you admit your lap-dancing, cigar-smoking, weak-bladdered past to the viewers.

So, to Twitter.  I raised myself a profile and then sat and stared.  What could I possibly say?  What possible benefit is it to mankind, or indeed anyone I know, that I have just seen Stephen Fry?  Am I interested in joining a queue of tweeters arguing with Joey Barton about the next England manager, or perhaps the next Poet Laureate?  Would anyone take notice, anyway?  And could I be brief enough to fit into the Twittersphere? No!  So bollocks to that.

And thus to LinkedIn. OMG, as I believe the young expostulate.  What a pack of lies, IMHO. (See 'young' in a dictionary of your choice if aged as me.)  I understand from brothers, friends and ex-colleagues that this is the way to track down the next bowl of soup.  What I have so far trawled is jaw-dropping crap. It appears mainly to be a sink-estate for American and Asian career failures welded to an increasingly lazy recruitment industry using keyword searches to find candidates.  Or am I again missing the point?

Nevertheless, I dutifully remembered my chums' exhortations.  I'll leave you with my first pass at a profile:

Hugely experienced fabricator with a penchant for invention.  Can account for expenses to the limit. Sold down the line through the years.  Guarantees familiarity with current business practice.

There really are too many of us searching for Nirvana in these networks.  I'll have to be sensible and fit in but I really don't feel like doing so: is it just age?  That fish, by the way, is me.  Notice the lunging despair in its leap from the pan.  To the fire, no doubt!

The Marvelettes, 1964, if you're interested...first ever single produced by Norm Whitfield who went onto make The Temps the people's Funkadelic.  For more information please contact via Google+ Circles. Ha ha!