Kissing With Confidence: Embracing Facebook

The Pope is to be confronted by a kiss-in - a "queer kissing flashmob" - when he turns up in Barcelona on Sunday. A gay and lesbian demonstration will involve two minutes of slobbering. "Avert your eyes, Holy Father. They're using tongues and all."

This is part of what is an ongoing collapse of Catholicism in Spain. The rearguard, die-hard Catholics are said to be outraged. Which is presumably part of the reason for the kiss protest. What the Pope thinks about it, who knows. Not that keen, one would imagine. He probably won't be videoing it all on his mobile and then posting it on YouTube. Does the Pope do the internet in this way, do you suppose? Doubtful. It's unlikely that he tweets or has a Facebook page. If he did, then he might have been invited to the kiss-in or been asked whether he liked it or to have even been asked to become a "friend". The notion of the Pope being poked by some gay activists is really not something one should devote too much time thinking about.

The demo has been arranged through Facebook. Ah yes, Facebook. Where would we be without it? With a lot more time on our hands to do something more productive, like lying down or watching the telly. We would also be a whole lot less likely to be invited to demos or to partake in some action, gay, lesbian or otherwise.

In recent times, Facebook has been used locally to try and arrange an alternative to the Can Picafort night party during the summer fiesta (i.e. staging it on the beach where it used to be held); to call to arms supporters of live ducks being thrown into the sea (also in Can Picafort, and a movement which furthermore featured a YouTube video with, coincidentally, a "Pope" enticing some Donalds from the Son Bauló torrent); and to post pictures of rubbish, graffiti and general unpleasantness in Pollensa and its port. I daresay there have been many others. Were I to spend my life hooked up to Facebook, I might be able to tell you about them, but I don't. I am ambivalent towards it.

A touch of citizen participation agitprop seems a pretty good application of Facebook. I am all in favour. There are plenty of other benefits. What I don't like is the controlling nature of Facebook, the control on time and the sheer impulse to use it. This stems from an irrational further dislike, that of having been steered in its direction by some nerdy geek who wasn't much good at getting his leg over. I can at least take satisfaction in the knowledge that a time will come when we all hate Mark Zuckerberg as much as we now hate Bill Gates.

The rotten thing about Facebook is that it can be so useful. And not just to the summer-employed population of Mallorca, now with so much free time that they can to go into Facebook overdrive when not standing in the "paro" queues. No, it's more useful than this and more useful than appealing to the agitating duck-fanciers of Can Picafort.

It has occurred to me to wonder quite why so many resources, mainly money, are piled into the creation of governmental and local authority tourism websites, especially as most of them are completely useless or are embarrassing in their use of English. Facebook's free. And there are all manner of people knocking around who do pages which serve a similar sort of purpose. Like myself. At least I was doing so until I started to get bored with it all towards the end of the season.

But with the Facebooks and indeed websites that are privately operated, there is an enormous resource that basically does the job of the tourism authorities for them. Moreover, they often speak to the audience in a far more comprehensible and helpful fashion than the "official" sites.

Of course, these alternatives would never be sanctioned as being real mouthpieces because they might - and do - say things that the authorities do not care for. You are more likely to get information and opinion, warts and all. This doesn't square with the default mode of websites and their descriptions of everything as "beautiful" or "paradise", the sea as "turquoise" or the natives as "welcoming and friendly". And you might also get, because this is the nature of Facebook, pages that are friends with or who like gays kissing in front of the Pope or illegally live ducks quacking in the sea off Can Picafort. Tut, tut, that would never do.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.