Let teenage boys discover the English countryside |
When I was four, the progressive teachers at my primary school thought it would be wise to teach us how to type on a keyboard. When it was my turn to key out the phrase ‘Biff and Chip’ on the computer, they discovered, to their horror, that I was already capable of effortless touch typing.
I have been using computers, and by extension the internet, since before my earliest memories were formed. Not only did I grow up online, I did so during the early 2000s when there were virtually no safeguards or restrictions on what children could access. I pirated my first film, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, at the age of seven and bought my first (sadly wasted) bitcoin at 13. Such was my use of the predominantly American internet that at secondary school I had to make a conscious effort to unlearn US phrasings such as ‘trash’ for rubbish and ‘pants’ for trousers. To this day I double-check the spelling of ‘defence’ and ‘colour’.
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In the worldview of people who watch BBC shows about incels, I should be a gibbering freak who cannot look the opposite sex in the eye, and who spends every waking moment in my bedroom with my trousers round my ankles, getting angry at AI videos of migrant crimes. And yet I see only a sprinkling of myself in this crude characterisation of people who........