Nosemonkey’s tagged me with another tiresome meme. How I hate him and it. I’m to list my five favourite ‘social media‘ sites. I hate that term as well, it’s got a loathsome dreamed-up-in-Hoxton/New Labour twattishness about it. Considering I’m one of the least social people to draw breath and regard most of this social media crap (instant messaging, for example) as replacement-for-proper-interaction bobbins that office workers use to distract them from the fact they hate their jobs and themselves, I seem a poor choice for this particular waste of time.

It also gives them the opportunity to cultivate invisible friends who’ll they’ll ditch after the novelty of LOL, ROFL, IIRC and rest of the self-satisfied and exclusionary sub-culture of ‘clever’ slang they use for language wears off. People should try and remember they’re not characters in A Clockwork Orange or protecting the secret of the location of the D-Day landings. Bastards.

Anyway. Five social media sites? Well, I’ll give it a go…

1. WordPress. The blogging tool. Infinitely versatile and installs in seconds. More reliable than the erratic Blogger and much less of a pain in the arse than Movable Type. If you don’t fancy seeting it up yourself, get a Typepad account.

2. Moblog. Yeah, I know, Flickr or whatever. But Moblog let me set up, send photos from my mobile and link to them from my blog in about two minutes. My Moblog is down in the sidebar somewhere.

3. YouTube. My kids have nearly starved because of the time I’ve spent here instead of feeding them. You name it, it’s here. I was pleased to find a bunch of Luke Haines and Elvis Costello videos, and the kids like the cats and the jugglers. (update: The juggler is on Google Video. It’s the same deal.)

4. Last.FM. A clever little waste of time this. You download a little plugin for your computer’s media player (iTunes or whatever). Whenever you play music on your computer, the plugin then sends the details of the song to the Last.FM servers which then collate stats about your listening habits and makes recommendations about other music you might like. You can also put a little bit of code on your blog with displays the songs you’ve recently listened to, allowing you to belittle visitors with your superior taste. My list is down on the sidebar somewhere.

5. This pub. Great beer, decent and reasonably priced scran, and you can take kids in. Why do most pubs have a blanket ban on children? Parents are alcoholics too, y’know. Why not just ban the yokels who don’t have the decency or manners to bring up their children so they know how to behave in a pub or restauraunt. On the rare occasion my two play up, I ply them with copious amounts of chocolate. If that doesn’t work, then we leave and I buy a dozen Stellas on the way home. Simple.

Now I have to tag five other unfortunate sods. Please don’t feel obliged to play, any of you. I’ll have Jim Bliss (Who I imagine to be knowledgeable and interesting on this kind of thing), Gavin Ayling (who tagged me a few months ago, so here’s the promised payback), Rafael Behr (he’s a internet kind of guy plugged into what’s hip ‘n’ shit), Esther Wilberforce-Packard (if there’s a subject on which she hasn’t got an opinion she’s yet to find it) and… Please tell me you aren’t still reading.