Kylie-gate

I've never really done online forums. Sure, I have an account with one or two and participate in the odd discussion but the truth remains I have rather better things to do with my time than obsess about getting my post count up above 20,000 and making sure I have an incredibly cool avatar. I'm long in the tooth enough in internet terms to remember when all this was fields and usenet was the hub around which all online discussion revolved. As I've recounted before, part of the motivation for becoming James Masterton - Chart Commentator was a desire to make a positive online contribution to my favourite newsgroups. Back then, the debate was all, the difference in attitudes summed up by one comment I read a year or so ago on a forum somewhere from a poster who said "I looked at these newsgroup things and found them really limited. Just text, no features or graphics or anything".

Of course the problem with online forums is that they wind up being rather closeted self-selecting communities, populated by obsessed nerdy types who rail constantly against everything that is against their particular view of the world (in between checking their position in the post-count stakes). Stir in to that the fact that unlike the newsgroups of old, each board is administered by someone or somebody, the people who have taken the time to arrange the hosting and configure the database. This invariably results in power struggles when those in charge of the playground decide to impose rules for the sake of a quiet life, and thus prompt toy throwing from people who imagine they have a divine right to their "freedom of speech".

There is one such forum theoretically dedicated to fans of the radio station I work for, one which most people in the office will admit to having a sneaky peek of from time to time. The bizarre thing is that it seems entirely populated by people who don't like anything they hear there, so rather than being a discussion about favourite presenters and things they have heard, it is entirely taken up with whingeing, sniping and bitter complaints. In one of those strange ironies that only the online world can throw up, our most popular hosts are loathed with a deep seated passion that is truly a marvellous sight to behold. Anonymous individuals hidden behind user aliases, sitting long into the night to unleash torrents of what is often quite disturbing verbal abuse all because they have heard something they don't like on a daft little radio programme. Radio station wins an award? The ceremony is a joke and a fix. Ratings soar to record levels? They are flawed and wrong and should be ignored.

Nobody takes any of it seriously, and in fact among the producers it is kind of a badge of honour to have your show besmirched in this manner. It isn't a view I share, simply because none of the programmes I produce seem to merit a mention which always makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong.

I have to admit that I did once play God on an online forum. Way back when the old Pepsi Chart Show relaunched as Hit40UK and I was working for the production company behind the show, the brand new website created alongside it featured such a discussion board which was set up by the designers and kind of left to flounder. Although members of the production staff of the show were supposed to help run the place, none of them seemed all that interested, leaving me as the technical person with the administrator password as the only person who paid it any attention. Really this was a shocking oversight. This was the public online presence of a powerful new radio brand, listened to by thousands of impressionable teenagers with nobody taking responsibility for making sure that their discussion boards were policed. So I spent part of my working life keeping a weather eye on the whole thing, organising the forums into proper categories, ensuring that slanging matches between fans of different bands didn't get out of hand and making sure anything inappropriate was removed in short order. Imagine the PR disaster that could have ensued if it was left unmoderated.

This did of course mean I could mess with the obsessive types, one chap once taking particular exception to me answering a query about the show and then locking his thread as the end of the matter. I then got an impassioned and quite lengthy private message from him objecting to this editorial stance and saying that on other boards of his experience, people were notified why their threads were being locked and how monstrously unfair it was. Armed with background knowledge of who this poster was, I politely asked him why he, as a man in his mid-30s, was so concerned about the value of his contributions to a board full of 13 year old girls wetting their knickers over the latest Busted release and did he really not have more important things to worry about. I never had a reply.

Deep down though, my amused ambivalence towards the type of people who inhabit internet forums stems from an incident in 2002 which I talked about on the podcast last week and which is worth setting down in words. It shall henceforth be known as Kylie-gate.

It all stemmed from a rant I had in March 2002 when 'In Your Eyes' by Kylie Minogue landed on the singles chart. This is what I wrote verbatim, grammatical errors and all:

"To be personal for a moment, I must confess I really do not understand the cult of Kylie. Derided for years as a manufactured pop puppet, albeit with a great deal of camp charm, she re-emerged two years ago with some dizzy techno hits and a new wardrobe that doesn't quite cover up her slender frame enough. That it seems was enough to have the entire world falling at her feet and hailing her as the sex symbol of the decade. I suppose it would make more sense if I even found her in the slightest bit attractive. I've met the woman and without the makeup and with ordinary clothes on she is just a rather plain, ordinary lady who you would not give a second glance to if you got into a lift with her. So shoot me, whatever mystifying spell she has cast on many other men has quite the opposite effect here. Even the Agent Provocateur advert was more ludicrous than arousing."

As I recounted to friends at the time, the point I was trying to make was that by and large Kylie singles are 20% "this is a really good tune" and 80% "wow she has a nice bottom". All well and good, except that if you don't happen to think she has a nice bottom then what you are left with is rather insubstatial and uninspiring.

Needless to say that this besmirching of their idol was not going to go down well with Kylie fans, particularly not on the active and enthusiastic forums on the old dotmusic site. Within hours of the piece going online a spirited debate had ensued as to whether I should be allowed to remain in my job and what on earth possessed me to slander the goddess in this manner. Then the debate took an even more surreal turn:

"He doesn't fancy Kylie? He must be gay, end of."
"But hang on, don't gay men like Kylie anyway?"
"Yeah, and in any case, look at the guys website. He has pictures on there of him surrounded by glamorous women. No way is he gay."

This last comment was particularly entertaining, although it did cause me to spend the best part of an evening looking through every picture on masterton.co.uk at the time to work out where these "glamorous women" were. Then however came the killer conclusion:

"Look guys, it is obvious. What's happened is that he does fancy her and actually tried to pull her at some event. She's knocked him back and now he is bitter about it and so is lashing out."

It still ranks as one of the most brilliantly ludicrous conclusions anyone has ever come to about anything, and one that even six years later still sticks in my mind as a personal highlight and the reason why you should never, ever pay the slightest attention to what is written about you online.

The one fascinating postscript to this story is that a month or so later I was recounting the tale to an acquaintance who had experience in moderating message boards on his own site. I was halfway through describing the conversation when he stopped me and said, "let me guess, they concluded that you'd tried to pull her and been rejected which is why you were so bitter?"

Momentarily speechless, all I could do was shake his hand in admiration.

"I know" he said. "Forums are so predictable."