The Thoughts of Captain Autumn

I had a friend request from Bebo this morning, from someone called Victoria Thomson. I don't know Victoria Thomson, and I have no wish to be her friend. In fact I have no wish to be on Bebo, which I only joined under unpleasant circumstances. A little over a year ago, one of my children was targetted by a group of bullies at his school, who set up a page on Bebo where people were invited to mock him. The page was titled "I Hate... " followed by his name. When I found out about it, the only way I could contact Bebo to express my concerns (fury might be a better word) was to join the site.

I sent a complaint, saying that I wanted the page taken down and I wanted to know who was responsible for setting it up in the first place. Unsurprisingly I got a stock response, saying that they were not able to divulge the name unless criminal proceedings were ongoing and they were asked by law enforcement. I understand that. I know that it is right and proper that they are unable to give out information without just cause. I am in agreement with the protection of such data.

But it did make me wonder to what extent the people who run sites like this fully understand their social responsibility. Not giving me the details I wanted is very responsible, but it is also enshrined in law. Where is the responsibility not to provide a forum for malevolent children to make other childrens' lives miserable? Why were they not able to prevent that from happening with the same efficiency with which they could rebuff me? Why is their position in such situations always reactive rather than proactive? I don't know how a site like Bebo can be expected to monitor every group that is set up for potential bullying, but, in all seriousness, that's their problem, not mine. If they can't do it, then the site shouldn't function the way it does. It simply isn't good enough to say that they take such abuses seriously and act promptly whenever they are brought to their attention. By the time we found out about it, the page had been up for weeks. Weeks. That's weeks of a 12 year old boy being ridiculed by his peers. Try and remember how it was to be 12, and how that felt. Remember how long weeks can feel when you're 12.

By the time I would have been responding to their answer, the page had been taken down by the person who had initiated it, so my ire dampened. I found the whole experience so demoralising that I don't think I ever replied in the end, preferring to obliterate the whole experience from my consciousness as far as possible. My son was incredibly stoic about it, and in fact withstood it all rather better than I did. I have tears in my eyes writing about it now, although that is possibly just self-pity at my own inadequacy as a parent for not taking his protestations of the treatment he was getting at school as anything other than the usual rough and tumble of school life. The bullying receded and my son has enjoyed a positive year at school. It all feels like a long time ago now.

Still, now and again I get these stupid friend requests, so I decided it was time to log on to Bebo and cancel my membership. Wading through their help section to discover how, I found the below:

If you decline a friend request or delete a person from your friend list that person will not be notified. They will just flounder around in their own unpopularity without ever knowing why. Your personal contact information will be removed from their friend list. Gosh, life can be cruel.

Reading that, it is hardly surprising that the vindictive elements of society gravitate to Bebo, where they clearly find a home.

Most of us, I suspect, have aspects of our character which we feel mark us out as different from the majority. Individual traits which, while perhaps not defining us as people, nevertheless distinguish us. Quirks, if you will.

I have a few. I don't like hot, sunny weather (this, though unusual, is actually more common that you'd imagine). I don't know how to drive (and don't want to - it frightens me). I listen to jazz. I don't own a mobile phone. However, none of these comes close to making me feel as estranged from my fellow man as not drinking alcohol.

Which makes this article quite interesting from my perspective. While some of it absolutely mirrors my experience, some of it absolutely doesn't. Each of the case studies makes an observation that I could have made myself (the first one is mystified by beer drinkers above all else; the second could tell you when a fruit salad is on the turn; the third doesn't understand the culture of excessive drinking; the fourth never grew out of finding it as unpleasant as when she was 14), and yet the overall picture doesn't reflect my experience of not drinking.

I've never had even the slightest suggestion that anyone thought I wasn't drinking because I was a recovering alcoholic. The man who says that that's the first question he gets asked can only be adhering to the stereotype of what journalists expect the teetotaller's experience to be. Either that or he mixes in some very odd company. (Seriously, can you imagine saying that to someone if they told you they didn't drink? Then following it up with asking if they were religious? Cobblers.) Nor do I believe for a moment that "drinkers envy the self-discipline and confidence required to abstain in our booze-soaked culture". Pity yes, envy no. For the most part people just don't know how to react, and that can show itself in lots of ways - generally men can't hide that they think it's plain weird, to the point that a lot of them are quite unnerved by it. Sometimes I get the reaction I imagine men must get when they tell other men they're gay. A woman I work with responded with "How sad", which annoyed me so much that I told her that was one point of view, as was thinking it was sad that some people aren't able to have a good time without having to drink. Which is not a view I really hold, but adopted in that instance.

What drinkers can't understand, looking as they do from the inside out, is that there is a culture of alcohol in this country that is overwhelming. It's not just the binge-drinking, vomit-rivering laddish element to which I'm referring, it's the all-encompassing association of alcohol with enjoyment that runs throughout every facet of our society. That's what makes people who don't drink feel so like outsiders, the assertion (conscious or otherwise) that it is simply impossible to have a good time or function as a fully rounded member of society without having a drink.

I don't drink for the very simple reason that I don't like the taste. The by-products of not drinking - not losing control of my senses through over-indulging, not being hung over the following day, not running the risk of becoming part of the 43% of violent crime attributable to alcohol - are just a bonus. I'm not one to proselytize about the benefits of teetotalism, but don't anybody try and tell me I'm missing out.