Vole: Superachiever

As you may know, I'm a keen reader of Boing Boing, the essential repository of all things simultaneously geeky, nerdy, creative, intellectual, left-liberal and cool. Indeed, Boing Boing is a kind of forerunner of Plashing Vole in this regard, though I fear it lacks the mass appeal I've so carefully crafted. 

However, as an arbiter of taste, Boing Boing takes itself seriously, and its founder has kindly published '10 Tips For Building An Addictive, Compelling Website', excerpted from a modest book called The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do And How They Do It So Well. Let's see how Plashing Vole shapes up amongst the Superachievers, shall we?

1. Tap into the Zeitgeist.

I think can modestly claim to have fulfilled that condition admirably. The world has come round to wearing Doctor Martens and corduroy once more. Plashing Vole extols the joys of equal marriage, Welsh-language literary science fiction (here's a story about an armadillo having sex with an hotelier), apostrophe preservation, teasing no-hope small town journalism, posting pictures of birds or my friend Dan scowling at Nature, and bigging-up bands like Ectogram. I bought a history of street-lighting yesterday. Zeitgeist: I am in you. (Alernatively, you might believe that one can never willingly choose to be 'in the Zeitgeist': if you try, you're not there).

2. Be original. If you try to emulate a successful blog, you’ll just be a second-rate version of something already out there, and who needs that? Make the blog that doesn’t exist yet, but that you’d want to read.

As long as 'original' means cracking horse jokes with 36 hours of the story breaking, hounding my local MP for his obvious failings and moaning about my students – as well as the occasional obituary – then it's another big fecking tick for the Volester. God, this social media stuff's easy. 

3. Make the connection.

I've got readers. The stats are astonishing. Readers from several hundred yards away. And not all Googling for unmentionable sexual practices. There's a market out there for What I Reckon About Paul Uppal and the various books I've compulsively bought today. But let's not be hasty. I like knowing you're out there… rather than in here. Keep a respectable distance please. 

4. Get an attitude. Without a point of view, your blog is unfiltered mush. 

Manufactured outrage? One lump or two? I've got loads of the stuff round the back. Nobody disdains the Daily Mail with quite the hauteur, nay, froideur, of Plashing Vole. 

5. Don’t waste people’s time. People are busy. 

No they're not. I've got the site visitor stats to prove it. Anyone who comes here twice either has very low standards or an awful lot of time on their hands. (Or in the cases of Peter Rhodes and Paul Uppal, to prove to themselves that at least someone's paying attention to them). 

6. Mix it up. Posts that are easy to grasp in a couple of seconds--a bit of shopping news, helpful tips or gossip--get lots of hits and move fast. 

That's right, sheeple! You're all consumerist dummies who need your goldfish brains pandered to now and then with some patronising 'and finally' stuff because you can't cope with raw unadulterated screeds of My Genius. Here's a picture of a cat with some bad typography for you link-bait meatbags:

Happy now? Good. Now get back to Mail Online where you belong. 

7. Appeal to the novelty gene. It’s good to blog frequently, but the stuff you blog about has to be unexpected or people will lose interest.

Yeah? You reckon great works of literature, political affairs and pictures of Dan scowling at nature get boring after a while? Perhaps I should perpetrate some novelty crimes to blog about solely to keep this imaginary audience of adulterous blog-whores coming to my yard? Or replace a limb with a 3D printer for sheer futurist-comedy LOLZ. You'd like that, Boing Boing readers, wouldn't you? Yeah, everything's better with a 3D printer for all your role-playing needs. Oh, and endless stuff about Minecraft. Or, for maximum Boing Boing orgasm, a Minecraft 3D Printer. 

8. Let feedback change you. The community feedback has made me more aware of my insensitivities and the blog has evolved because of it.

Sadly, my commenters all slavishly agree with me, except the ones who don't, and who needs them? It's a mutually reinforcing circle. I read people who agree with me, nick their ideas, they read me, then we're all surprised when it turns out that meatspace where you lot live is actually dominated by horrible horrible people who wear jeggings and vote Tory. (Actually, I love getting comments and quite often find myself re-thinking my perspective). This is a good tip. Now we just need Guido Fawkes to learn from it. 

9. Think of a friend. To get over blog stage fright, when I post something I’ll often have a friend in mind who has the same sense of humor as me.

To my friend with the same sense of 'humor' as me: get help. You sick, sick puppy. And stop sending me those emails. I'll get the sack if IT ever find those pictures. Or the authorities find the grave. 

10. Keep it real. 

Keep it real? I live in a town which thinks cuisine is a pig's hide attacked with an oxy-acetylene torch and that peas should be grey. People vomit on my doorstep. Staples are a black-market commodity where I work. I agonise over fabric softener choices, enjoy ironing and bought slippers last year. I'm losing teeth, hair and keys. I had to email my landlord about a door handle yesterday. The other day, I told the students about talented typographer Eric Gill and beautiful Gill Sans. Then I told them that he had sex with sister. And his children. And his dog. Another student misread 'deserts' for 'desserts' and wrote about Shakespeare and Pudding, while another one thought David Cameron is a Labour PM. 

Keep it real? Are you mad? I'm on here to get away from all that stuff, not inflict it on you poor blighters. 

Thanks Boing Boing. I love you but I don't think we should move in together. We wouldn't last a week. 

Teacher's watching you!

It's the first day of Induction Week, or Freshers' Week if you're young, and American. So there are two things on my mind: what do we do about all the terrorists in my classes, and am I still cool?

OK, terrorism first. There are a few loudmouths around: last year one student wandered about with a t-shirt depicting a man gesticulating with an AK47, and the word 'Mujahid' below the image. When I was a student, I was also a loudmouth on political matters. I still am, to some extent, but I can now tell the difference between an attention-seeker and a committed radical, whether thinker or doer. Mujahid man is very unlikely to be shipping himself off to Afghanistan for weapons training.

However, there is a serious point. This august institution has furnished Guantamano Bay with several inmates. As far as it's possible to tell, they were all either innocent or stupid. Either way, they didn't deserve kidnapping, torture and detention without trial. Be that as it may, there's a sense that universities like these have reservoirs of potential recruits - a large Muslim cohort, an active Islamic movement on and off-campus and what politicians euphemistically call an 'urban' demographic, by which they mean an intake largely of poor, multi-ethnic students.

The question for universities is what we should do about it. It should be blindingly obvious that the security services will be active on campus, both through open liaison with the university management, and covertly through infiltration and informers. But as an academic, I haven't been urged to inform anyone of any suspicions I might have.

I've clashed with the Islamic society recently: they invited a notorious pair of liars in to preach creationism: my overwhelming impression was that academic credibility meant nothing to the students because nobody has trained them to think critically and independently. But ignorance is not a crime (unfortunately).

The government wants us to spy on our students.

One of the government's counter-terrorism strategies,Prevent, has started to once again home in on British universities with a particular emphasis on Muslims. Officials from Prevent have asked university professors to give them details of any Muslim who might be a "threat", especially those who are isolated or depressed.

Apparently, if a Muslim is depressed, he or she is vulnerable to radicalisation. University staff are also asked to report students that have poor relationships with their families, are disgrunted by the government, and access extremist websites.  

Would I inform on students who sympathised with Islamic terrorism? No, probably not. I'd argue, just as I'd argue with supporters of any kind of terrorism. More importantly, I'd contextualise terrorism by examining the conditions and cultures from which it grows. That's what universities are for: not to tell people what to think, but to give them a range of ways to think about any subject.

As to the idea that I should tell the secret services whenever I meet an 'isolated' or 'depressed' student: pshaw! I haven't got all day! Have they met any goths? The answer to isolation and depression is to talk to them, and point them in the direction of the counselling services. If particular student groups think that their teachers, counsellors and student representatives are spying on them, they're going to stop talking to us. They won't trust us, they won't respect us and they won't listen to us. Alienation is the inevitable result - and that's more likely to lead to 'radicalisation' than airing debates in public (not that I think 'radicalisation' per se is a bad thing: except when it comes to violence and Tory free-marketeers, and we're sadly not being asked to inform on potential Tory students).

I'm certainly not going to pick out my Muslim students as though every one of them is a terrorist in larvae stage. They're falling into the trap of assuming that all Muslims are beardy fanatics (even the women), when it's the same as Christianity or Judaism. For every ranting ringleted heavily armed Orthodox Jewish settler, there are at least a couple bacon-sandwich munching Jewish slackers. How many Catholics listen to the Pope's advice on contraception? Not quite all, to put it mildly. Similarly, there are plenty of Muslims who manage to wake up and get through to breakfast without strapping on a dynamite jockstrap. But the idea that most Muslims are idle backsliders - or simply interpret their scriptures more loosely than bin Laden -  like their Christian counterparts doesn't sell newspapers, political parties or sophisticated electronic spying devices. (Nor does pointing out that the EDL is equally, perhaps more dangerous, and yet we're not being asked to inform on fascists in the classroom.

If I were a student at this university, I'd be demanding that the Students' Union disavows any co-operation with Prevent, and pressures the university to do the same.

Anyway, on to the second question, on my relative coolness. This one's informed by a fellow academic's sudden onset of competitive coolness. It's relatively straightforward. I'm not cool. I wasn't cool when I was a student, even in the subcultures to which I belonged. I wasn't even in the 'anti-cool' group. I knew this, and accepted it: but apparently some people, working every day with the young, thin, fashionable, with-it and cool, fall into the trap of craving their respect for matters other than intellectual.

This is what the students see. Embrace it.

Do not try to emulate these people.

It's easy to resist. Every time you feel a pang of envy and decide to throw in what you think is a topical reference, think back to when you were in school or at university. Did you shudder with revulsion when your teachers mentioned something you cared about? Then have the grace to remain silent. It's like my dad, who refers to 'The Google'. He thinks it displays his techno-savvy.

You become a rockstar in the classroom. You play interesting YouTube videos in your lectures and are occasionally spotted at shows by your students. A mythology grows up around your sightings about town. Students want to follow you on Twitter.

I live two minutes' walk from the university. Every drink I buy is served by one of my students, and occasionally I accidentally see a band liked by the despicable youth. This doesn't make me cool. Nor, I should add, is the queue for the gents the place to discuss why I gave you a D.

There are ways to gain students' respect: by treating them as intelligent, independent people whose admiration means nothing to you. Your interests are not their interests, though that may change, and you'll definitely find that you like some of them, and vice versa. But you won't impress them if you try to blind them with clothes, hip references or obscure ideas - that's a pathetic form of intellectual and social abuse. Every academic needs to know this: students' worlds do not revolve around their teachers - and that's a good thing. You're deluding yourself if you think that your existence makes the slightest difference to their inner lives. That is also a good thing. Get your own friends and avoid appearing like some kind of vampire, leaching vitality from your students. And try not to inform MI5 when they look a bit down or say provocative things to get your attention. They'll respect you for it. Before you know it, some of the students will genuinely become your friends. And you'll be cool without even trying.

On the other hand, if your self-image depends on validation by some teenagers, you are definitely NOT COOL. If your resolve wavers, ask yourself this: what the hell do the kids know about anything? The cool kids were morons when I was the same age as them. They won't have improved since then.