Ageing Bloke’s Naked Flesh Causes Twitter Outage Shock!
Apart from the aching limbs, I still feel and act like a 20 year old, but I will be 60 in just over a year. When I was actually 20, I thought anyone over the age of 40 was way past it. I never bet, but I did once have a bet with Peter Cam when we were about 16, and the bet was based on a prediction of the age at which each of us would die. No money changed hands, but he reckoned I am destined to peg it when I’m 64. It sounds a bit Sergeant Pepper to me, and I cannot recall what age I predicted for his death. So because I may be pushing up daisies in five years I had better make hay while the sun shines and make loads of music. And when you think about it, I only get his pay out if I survive longer. It’s probably 10p.
Back then, all people over the age of 30 had the air of someone approaching retirement. Maybe it was the National Health specs, the dowdy overcoats, the Brylcreem and the hairdos, but middle aged men and women rarely bared any flesh below the neck. That was left to male Adonis figures or girls with long legs. I remember walking through Woolworths in Blackpool in my early teens and as I made for the tills with whatever it was I had purchased I was confronted by a clothed Adonis. He was dressed entirely in clinging black clothing, and was clearly a body builder. He had a waist like a Geisha while the rest of his body rippled with muscle and veins, apart from the bits we don’t talk about because they were probably too insignificant to merit mention. Anyway we made eye contact and I just pissed myself laughing. Thankfully he was not the most mobile of body builders because his clothes were too tight, and I was a very fast runner.
Anyway, fast forward to the Internet age, and I find myself regularly having to block scantily clad painted ladies from my Twitter feed. These are very probably hacked or pernicious accounts targeting sad older blokes whose only way of feeling good about themselves is to connect with (Oooer!) young painted things, so I just report and block them and move on. I could not describe them as obscene, but they are not welcome.
However, my arms clearly ARE obscene. We arrived at the name The Folded Arms by accident, and the name was coined after my first gig in 34 years on 30th November last year. The Folded Arms consist of me, Kieran, Jad, Matt, Emma, Kate, and Ali is an honorary member because he just pushes buttons. That evening was the first time we had all been in the same room together so the main photo for this post was taken. A few weeks ago, I was thinking of innovative ways to promote our gigs and, for reasons that will become clear in a few more days, I had the photograph below taken of me folding my arms. Harmless so far? Read on…
I decided to use the folded arms photo on my Facebook music page and to post it on Twitter, which I finally did yesterday as I attempted to set up a secondary music Twitter account. My toasted crumpets were ready just as I had set up the basics, so I left my computer and went into the kitchen to have breakfast, returning no more than 15 minutes later to find that Twitter had locked me out of the new account. I opened up my usual @JohnWaldeaux account and that was working fine, so went back to the new account only to receive a recurring message about a password reset process for which I had to enter my phone number to receive a code that would then allow me back in. The code still hasn’t arrived 30 hours later in spite of repeated attempts. Then today I learned that Matt had also been locked out of his main Twitter account in exactly the same way. Technology eh.
Just before I was locked out of my new account I decided I would post something about my blog at www.waldeaux.com and used the photograph of my folded arms by way of illustration. However, Twitter didn’t like that and posted the a caution in its place. I just repeated the exercise to make sure I wasn’t dreaming this, and under the word EXPERIMENT, the caution reads: “This media may contain sensitive material. Your media settings are configured to warn you when media may be sensitive”.
Although this still has to be explained, I can only conclude that the reason Twitter have banned my arms is that the image contains too high a proportion of naked flesh. Thus my arms fall into the same category as Kim Kardashian’s arse or Beyonce’s overly and repeatedly revealed cleavage, making them possibly the world’s most obscene arms! Either that or someone took a look at them and decided they were really shit arms and should not under any circumstances be displayed.
Well Tough Twitter! I’m afraid me and the band like the name The Folded Arms and as far as I am aware have no problem with its imagery. I can think of imagery and words that would cause significantly more offence, but I don’t think they would help to sell my music much and I am quite a dignified chap really. But I don’t think I will go into that here – this post is clearly quite obscene enough!