Meanwhile, in the real world...

There are some fascinating people out there, who are more than happy to talk about themselves, look familiar, but don’t actually exist.

“Hi! I’m Gina. I’m 46, have two teenage daughters, I’m an Office Manager for a law firm, I read The Guardian and interior design magazines, I like keeping fit and supporting charities, and I spend time on Twitter and Facebook. I live in the North West and I would say the websites I visit most are BBC News and anything with kittens covered in salami and wearing lederhosen. Why? Because I’m not real, dummy!”

If you work for an organisation that sells something, has a website, or generally feels it needs to understand more about their customers’ “experience”, you may well have met Gina, or someone like her.

She might have looked like your burly marketing guy, or the barely-out-of-her teens social media whizzkid, but that’s only because they’ve been talked into making her up, then had to go through the excruciatingly embarrassing process of ‘being’ their creation so that you and your colleagues can discuss how best to communicate with them and fulfil their needs.

If the sight of Big Dave from Finance pretending to be a teenage girl called Kaz isn’t sufficiently awkward to make you wish for an immediate meteor strike, pinning your hopes on him getting inside the mind of his creation sufficiently to salvage some scrap of usefulness from the whole ghastly experience may be a request too big for the universe to deliver. And before coffee and biscuits, too.

You’re more likely to get “I like reading magazines and looking at my phone and hanging out with my friends.” than “I’m an Instagram-native and rock my own YouTube channel with 10,000 followers and I loooove a good selfie.” (and I’m probably seriously wrong about that too, for all the same reasons).

And that’s the problem. If we were all able to know exactly what any other person, of any age or gender, liked, thought, read, did or wanted to find on your website, then the world would function much more smoothly, and we’d all be e-commerce millionaires.

We may well have sorted world peace too. Imagine it – if we all knew what someone else desired, and could deliver it for them when, where and how they wanted it. Wouldn’t that be... well, kind of dull, actually.

Everything is easy to locate? Where’s the thrill in finding something exciting by chance? No new music needed – we already know what people like. We’d be stuck in a world of stagnation. What would be the point of risking coming up with something entirely innovative, when our customers already know what they need? No iPhones then – I already have a great camera, MP3 player, phone, video camera and a diary.

Maybe it’s best we still need to ask Kaz. Perhaps we should go outside and find out what she thinks. Big Dave doing the voice as well is too freaky.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 5th of February 2016. It's getting on for three weeks now since they updated the 'Opinion' page on their website, but just in case you feel like hanging around to see if any columns ever show up again, head here.

This post sprung forth after a tricky bout of roleplay at work on the day of writing. I'm naturally rather introverted, so this kind of thing is a full-blown horror-show for me, and the increasing irritation at having to pretend to know what my made-up person might think when they arrived on our website left me feeling particularly irritated by column-penning time.

Happily, rather than just vent about it, I was able to slightly justify why I think it's ineffective. And I felt better afterwards.

Another strange round of activity for this blog - after a couple of quiet months following the second biggest number of hits ever, just one week of February has majorly topped the Dec & Jan totals, and if it were to continue at the same pace would comfortably be the biggest month ever. And I still have no idea why, or how come the traffic is mostly American. Baffling, but nice...

( Temporary suspension of the CD A-Z to listen to a new arrival, a-ha's latest, "Cast In Steel". Great so far...)

Malaysian Grand Prix - Vettel hot, but not bothered

Malaysia. It's always hot, and it always rains. Except the 2nd part is no longer true (unless you count the drizzly bit around lap 14). Saturday's qualifying session had highlighted the fact that Red Bull and McLaren seemed well matched on pace, but also that Ferrari were struggling. Whilst Vettel bagged another pole, followed by Hamilton, Webber and Button, Alonso was only 5th, and Massa 7th, with Nick Heidfeld an excellent 6th on the grid between the two red cars. At this point, I would like to break momentarily for a small rant: How many times do I have to say Heidfeld is good? Why wasn't he given a top drive years ago? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! ARE YOU BLIND!!!?? Ahem. The Hispanias somehow managed to a) turn up b) remember to bring cars c) get both of them on the track d) actually get both of them within 107%. Pretty remarkable really. Oh, and it didn't rain. Race day looked a more likely candidate for a drop of the wet stuff. The start was exciting, with...

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Suffering from natural obsolescence

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

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