On the internet, no-one knows you’re a village

There's a well-known cartoon from New Yorker magazine. A dog is sitting on a chair using a computer, whilst another dog sits nearby. "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog", explains the canine on the chair.

Two things strike me here. The first - and this is particularly shocking - is that the cartoon is around twenty years old, which is prehistoric as far as the world wide web is concerned. Come to think of it, when was the last time anyone actually said ‘world wide web’?   However, I'm also struck by how the internet has changed in those two decades. What was once almost anonymous has become very personal. Today millions of us are tweeting using our real names, telling Facebook everything we do and uploading photographs of every meal we eat.

Curious about what was happening locally, I turned to Twitter. (In the unlikely event you're not familiar with this, it's a web service that lets you send short messages. These can be sent directly to friends or can be posted online for everyone to see). Searching for "Ringmer" revealed a few unforeseen trends. Firstly, we're a surprisingly cat-friendly village. Not only do we have a cat-sitter, we're also worried about missing cats. No mention of dogs, though.

I can tell you that local residents are giving away a couple of tatty suitcases, a china pot holder, some bean bag filling (isn't that simply 'beans'?), a breadmaker and rubble. Before you laugh, let me emphasise the phrase “giving away”.

We're all pretty fit… and not just because we're out looking for cats. It seems Ringmer is keen on football, cricket, motorcross and zumba. One other leisure interest that's on offer locally - so Twitter tells me - is pole fitness. Despite the previous association with burlesque dancing, it's gone mainstream in more recent years. You could even have seen it demonstrated during a 'pamper evening' at the primary school last week. I definitely wasn't expecting that.

Yet all this activity doesn't capture the true spirit or the relatively small size of Ringmer. It’s easy to get carried away when you’re tweeting, as several high-profile people have discovered to their cost. Unlike the cartoon creatures, we shouldn't pretend to be something we're not. In fact, that’s at the heart of my favourite recent Ringmer tweet. "You act like your a gangsta but you live in ringmer". I might have that turned into a t-shirt.

First published on vivalewes.com 16th May 2013: http://www.vivalewes.com/on-the-internet-no-one-knows-youre-a-village/