Ridge Line

I am not going to join those criticising and ridiculing The Ridges. I didn’t see the inaugural programme and have no intention of seeking out and seeing any in the series. I am simply not interested in a contrived insight into the self-perpetuating B-List celebrity ilk that ilkees and a largely slavering media are trying to foist upon us. I have seen bits of Keeping up with the Kardashians with the horribly disfigured Bruce Jenner and the KKK (note no African Americans) and that’s enough. This is not “reality” television, there is more reality in The Simpsons, this is Junk television and whilst I am no cultural snob, I have better things to do with my time. Or at least I thought I did until I realised what proportion of my evenings was spent on Facebook. Now, here again, I won’t join the critical mass. Facebook has its critics. I am not one of them; I see its uses and its benefits though I worry sometimes that it is now the preferred method of communication for many, supplanting the phone and even emails. It is also highly addictive and has all the intellectual majesty of Mitt Romney. Nevertheless it has presented me with some new “friends” and restored others and that is something no other medium could do. It has also, this week, informed me that Bob Dylan has a new studio album, The Tempest, and that it may be his best ever. I bought it. It is. Facebook tells me that all three of my sons are doing outstandingly well in their respective careers and there is an adhesive love within a geographically fractured family. Facebook delivers on the impossible, giving us Oscar Wilde’s opinion of Fifty Shades of Grey: “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral Book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” And such it is with Facebook. Facebook is not moral or immoral. It is what is: a service, to amuse and abuse. And if it is overly replete with teenagers making silly hand signals to the camera, and too many inspirational motifs, it is still a warmly embracive community and, like it or not, it is the modern reality. Whereas The Ridges…?