I work with victims of stalking and I suggest you get cameras if you don’t already. Even purely as a deterrent. Who knows how serious they are (they haven’t even met you?) but good to have evidence should you need a stalking no contact order (I don’t know what they’re called in the UK).
EDIT: I should say that research shows most of this nonsense behavior goes away immediately after police involvement.
Good advice. Thankfully I live in an apartment block, so I knew they’d have a job actually finding me.
It all went away after the police got involved. I was that close to not bothering them, but I’m glad I did.
There are some absolute nutbags out there.
Paul Weller (going back to the original topic not the stalker)
WhatsApp groups are what the thumbs up emoji was invented for.
Passive aggressive apparently. 
Passive agressive?
Everybody in work must think I’m a right cunt then
I’m nearly 60, it’s quicker to say what I do get than what I don’t. Although TBF I have lent into it a bit, my work believe that I’m not very computer literature and that has saved me quite a lot of hassle. They have no idea I have a MacBook Pro at home rammed full of the latest audio production, mixing and mastering software that I’m very comfortable with. Anybody want a Werther’s Original? Can you read that dear, I don’t have my glasses …
Literature? Silly old sod.
who are the parents who buy electric scooters for their children who don’t know how to wipe their nose and why?
FUCKWITTERY OF THE DAY: THE LIFESTYLE INFLUENCER
There is a particular breed of cunt multiplying across Instagram at the moment, and apparently the rest of us are supposed to sit quietly while they explain life to us.
You know the type. Tango-tanned, veneers bright enough to guide a Hercules into RAF Brize Norton in fog, loafers with no socks, and a linen shirt open far enough to suggest that buttons are somehow a limiting belief. He is standing on the balcony of an Airbnb in Dubai, holding a cocktail, a cigar and a MacBook, while explaining that the reason you have not achieved financial freedom is that your mindset is keeping you poor.
Tarquin, mate, you are twenty-three. You have not yet owned a washing machine long enough for it to break.
Some of us have had direct debits older than you.
THE INTERNET HAS SOMEHOW CONFUSED VISIBILITY WITH WISDOM.
That is the bit that gets me. I have absolutely no problem with young people making money online. Crack on. Build something, sell something, travel the world, photograph your breakfast if that keeps the lights on. I worked in IT for twenty-five years. I am hardly going to start shouting at clouds because somebody discovered the internet.
What makes my arse twitch is the extraordinary confidence with which people who have barely completed the tutorial level of adulthood now instruct everyone else on how to live it.
Chelsea has been out of university for eighteen months, has changed her Instagram biography to “Lifestyle & Abundance Mentor”, bought a beige blazer, and is now explaining resilience to a woman who has raised three children, cared for an elderly parent, survived redundancy, buried people she loved, kept a roof over everybody’s head and somehow still remembered to put the bins out on Thursday.
Apparently she needs to “step into her power”.
Fuck me.
Then there is Tarquin, photographed beside the obligatory infinity pool because, for reasons nobody has adequately explained, entrepreneurship can no longer occur while wearing a shirt.
The photograph that started this particular bout of fuckwittery is almost perfect. Our aspiring captain of industry has a laptop in one hand, a drink in the other and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. The intended message is presumably wealth, freedom and complete mastery of his own destiny.
The actual message is that the silly bastard has rendered himself incapable of performing any of the three activities in the photograph.
He cannot use the laptop because both hands are occupied. He cannot drink because there is a cigar in his mouth. He cannot smoke the cigar because he would have to put something down.
It is less “financial freedom” and more a GCSE practical examination in poor resource management.
And these are the people selling productivity courses.
You could not make this shit up.
THE MORNING ROUTINES ARE EVEN BETTER.
Nobody in influencer land simply wakes up, has a piss, scratches whatever requires scratching and puts the kettle on. That would be far too ordinary.
No, Chelsea has to “win the morning”.
Apparently Tuesday has become an adversary.
She wakes naturally at 4.47am, although somebody has mysteriously already positioned a camera beside the bed to capture the spontaneous awakening. Then comes journalling, gratitude, breathwork, cold exposure, lemon water, meditation, affirmations, sunlight, ceremonial cacao and seventeen minutes of something called “somatic activation”.
By the time Chelsea has finished preparing to live, Dave from Coventry has already driven forty miles to work, discovered roadworks on the M6, answered six emails, replaced a hydraulic seal and found out that some bastard has stolen his yoghurt from the staff fridge.
Yet, according to Instagram, Dave lacks discipline because he did not spend sunrise writing “I AM ABUNDANT” in a £38 notebook.
There is also something wonderfully British about imagining these people trying their philosophy in the real world.
“Money is energy.”
Excellent.
Take £94 worth of shopping to the till at Tesco and explain to Sandra that you do not technically have sufficient money, but you are currently vibrating at the frequency of wealth.
I suspect the security guard will vibrate you towards the exit.
Then we get the transformational origin story.
“Three years ago, I had nothing.”
Nothing, in influencer terminology, often means living in the spare bedroom of a five-bedroom detached house while Mum did the washing and Dad covered the car insurance.
I have condiments in my fridge that have experienced greater adversity.
That does not mean young people cannot know things, by the way. Age alone does not confer wisdom. I have met people in their sixties who have learned fuck all except how to become older. Experience only teaches you something if you pay attention while it is happening.
But there is a difference between having an idea and having lived through enough life to know whether that idea survives contact with reality.
At 58, I have seen enough of reality to know it generally does not arrive with good lighting.
Real life contains redundancy letters, dead batteries, divorces, funerals, illnesses, stupid decisions, sleepless nights, frightening bank balances, broken boilers, ageing parents, children who need you when you are running on fumes, relationships that go wrong, jobs that disappear and mornings when you are expected to function despite having absolutely fuck all left in the tank.
Nobody photographs those bits beside an infinity pool.
Yet that is where most of the useful lessons are hiding.
Not in “five habits of highly successful people”.
Not in a carousel telling you to remove negative people from your life.
Not in a reel where somebody points at floating captions while miming surprise at their own advice.
Life is considerably messier than that, and thank fuck for it.
The other giveaway is the props. There must always be props.
The laptop positioned so we can see the logo. The expensive watch placed conveniently near the coffee cup. The sports-car key casually resting beside the notebook. The passport. The sunglasses. The book by Marcus Aurelius with a spine so pristine you know Marcus has yet to be troubled by anybody actually opening it.
Nothing can simply exist. Everything must quietly announce status.
Even the coffee appears to have a personal brand.
And eventually, if you live long enough, you discover something almost offensively simple.
People who genuinely know what they are doing rarely spend much time trying to look as though they know what they are doing.
The competent bloke usually looks fairly ordinary. The resilient woman probably does not describe herself as resilient. The person who has actually rebuilt a life does not necessarily have a seven-step framework for it, because they remember how fucking chaotic it really was.
Meanwhile, Tarquin is beside the pool explaining passive income while his photographer asks him to move two inches left because the Lamborghini has disappeared behind the palm tree.
That is modern enlightenment.
Perhaps I am simply getting old. I am perfectly willing to entertain that possibility.
But if ageing means I no longer automatically accept life advice from somebody whose entire visual identity depends upon bronzer, rented architecture and owning trousers that stop three inches above the ankle, I can live with that.
So crack on, influencers. Enjoy yourselves.
Just understand that some of us have been around long enough to recognise when profound wisdom is actually a motivational fridge magnet wearing £400 sunglasses.
Now, if you will excuse me, I am launching my own £2,997 mastermind.
The first module is called:
PUT THE FUCKING GLASS DOWN AND YOU’LL HAVE A HAND FREE FOR THE LAPTOP.
I expect it to revolutionise the industry.
Phew, my only creative outlet these days! 
Said better than I ever could, 10/10
That is the best thing I’ve read on the internet in a long time.
I think I love you.
I can’t claim ownership. I nabbed it off fb, but the guy absolutely nailed it.
Edit: Maybe, I should have stuck it under ‘light relief’
this is pretty much how I feel every day about the TP crowd.
Went into a store called Manhattan 45 today - a very small and well curated store. Had a pile of 15-20 records ready to listen to and was told I have to pay $12 to listen and if I buy something I get a $10 credit towards them. Also, I have to pay $12 every 10 minutes. Yeah, no. I bought 3, if I had listened I’d probably have bought 10.
honestly, i wouldn’t have bought any. i’m sure they’ve dealt with some stupidity before and maybe even lost some expensive stock to clumsy-handed doofs, but paying to listen is a terrible store policy.
a better idea: don’t have a listening station - just have the ol’ shopkeep play the requested records over the house system.
Yeah, I had to wait for him to mix a record in before he would speak to me. Weird vibes all round.
They should consider being an online only business. I wouldn’t give them my money.
Interesting take on this from ‘WeBuyRecords’ podcast from the two hosts, both of whom run record shops. They get a lot of people who listen to stuff, take photos of the record for the 'gram and then download the track online, and talked about this deposit system some shops use to counter that. Seems like two problems rather than one solution but hey, thats the world now I guess…
I would only allow smoking hipsters buying Ravi Shankar (possibly?) records in my listening booth
Counter offer:
‘How about you listen to me call you a c**t for free?’
I would’ve laughed at them and/or told them to get fucked
