#uksnow yet another demonstration of time wasting rubbish

Yesterday whilst I was sat at the top of some monument in Rome, having taken a break from filming the MIR Show with Dan and Ben, we all sat back and checked-in.

For me this meant having a look at the mail, scanning the Twitterific traffic and so on.

I didn’t get far until I started noticing #uksnow Tweet messages.

Here’s what one looks like:

#uksnow Not much happening yet.

Or

A light smattering. PA1. #uksnow

Some bright spark — Ben Marsh — had nothing else to do last night and knocked up a Google Map hash from the uksnow tweets. And here it is:

I remarked negatively on this subject to Ben and Dan. They were, it seems, hugely in favour of this total waste of sodding time.

There is, I remarked, a weather service out there. The Met Office does a pretty good job. Enough to have been warning us about impending snow for the last three days.

Most of yesterday, a heck of a lot of people started sending frequent bollocks into my Twitter stream about their current #uksnow experiences.

This would be highly, highly relevant if I was 6 years old. I’d love to share your joy about the snow if I was 6. I used to regularly pop to the window throughout the night to see if the snow was still falling.

Now it seems, having got through another 25 years worth of living, I’m now being subjected to dozens and dozens of sodding #uksnow updates.

Almost every person I’ve subscribed to has given over to the #uksnow bollocks. I am even being sent INSTRUCTIONS on how to properly format my #uksnow Tweets in case I should want to also participate.

The instructions, in case you are wondering, are thus:

– Put the first half of your postcode
– Then put your ‘snow score’ (I KID YOU NOT… a SNOW SCORE) out of 10
– And don’t forget to include the hashtag #uksnow at the end

So an example Tweet would look like this:

CM12 5/10 #uksnow

Great.

Technically great. It is super to see the possibilities.

And that’s relevant to whom?

I suppose if any of my followers ALSO live in the CM12, CM11, CM10 or similar postcode areas, that Tweet might prevent them from having to look out the window. Although they’ll have to have more or less the same value structure for the ‘snow rating’ in order for it to be of much use.

But for everyone else — especially the people following from abroad — any #uksnow messages are a total 100% waste of time.

Stick up a Twitpic of the snow by all means. Like James Whatley did. Or Gerry Moth. Or Jonathan Mulholland.

That’s semi useful to me. It’s not polluting my mind. I’ve subscribed to your updates and I choose whether or not to click on the picture. Nine times out of ten, I probably will. I’ll have a look. And move on.

But sending me a #uksnow update every 8 minutes is ridiculous.

These hashtags are in danger of becoming wholly, wholly irrelevant — like the “@somebody yeah” Twitter messages that I’ve already managed to filter.

Last night I was getting so annoyed, I thought I’d join in with my own hashtag rubbish to see it would garner any response.

Here’s my first:

Absolutely stunned by the amount of banality on hash uksnow. 100s of pages of bollocks about whether it’s snowing. Is there a #UKrain?

Then I thought I’d try temperature:

#ukTemp quite cold at the moment

And then a Sunshine update:

#ukSunshine No sunshine here right now. It’s dark.

And then I got carried away:

#ukWatchingPaintDry I’m just waiting for the paint to dry now
#ukSunshine Still dark outside

I then Retweeted Dominic’s Tweet:

Thanks for the update Dominic! RT @DominicTravers: #ukmeterologicaltedium not much happening, a touch chilly

And Kip Hakes one:

RT @kiphakes: #ukwashingup – There were 6 cups, 2 plates and one of G’s bowls – more news as it happens

Ben Smith jumped in with his #ukwashingup update:

@Ew4n @kiphakes: #ukwashingup – Dishwasher loaded here. Not sure if it’s too full to run an economy wash. Twitterpoll?

And I asked Ben Smith to keep me updated:

@bensmithuk Agreed. Is it snowing where you are? Could you give me #uksnow updates in 30 second increments?

Tedium.

Tedium.

And thrice tedium.

Please THINK before you TWEET.

If you’re in the mood for some banality, get stuck in. Here’s the real time Twitter uksnow update page: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=uksnow

Knock yourself out!

Thanks to Jonathan for this bit of rather accurate humour…

Jonathan Mulholland:

Very funny! RT @shinykatie: “If the Germans had dropped snow instead of bombs, they’d have won the war” #uksnow