I went to the Paramount Theatre, here in Seattle, the other day to watch Flight of the Conchords perform. Don’t get me wrong, I think Flight of the Conchords are great. In fact, that’s the main reason why I went to see them.

They ambled onto the stage holding their guitars, and sat down at their chairs. The audience all stood up, whooping and cheering and stamping their feet. A standing ovation? Before they opened their fucking mouths? What if it turns out they’ve spent the entire day doing crystal meth in Cal Anderson park and are just about to proudly unveil to the audience the body of the disabled girl they burned because they thought she was a demon? It’s too late now! You’ve given them a standing ovation already! The worst you can do now is clap a bit sarcastically at the end! You are sanctioning ritualistic murder, you crazy bastards!

Of course, they played a pretty fine gig. They didn’t seem to have killed anyone, and if they had spent the day doing crystal meth then they were at least experienced enough to cover it up. They got a standing ovation at the end as well, with some more whooping and cheering. How do they know if they played a good gig? Well, they certainly can’t tell from the audience. Maybe they could ask the promoter at the end, but the promoter would probably describe the gig as “awesome”. This word, “awesome”, is defined on some website I found thusly:

awesome: (adj) amazing, awe-inspiring, awful, awing (inspiring awe or admiration or wonder) “the awesome complexity of the universe”; “Westminster Hall’s awesome majesty, so vast, so high, so silent”

To the average American, the word is defined more like this:

awesome: (adj) not shit. “That was an awesome bowl of cereal”; “My brother got this awesome job stacking shelves in Target”

It’s impossible for the poor Conchords to find out whether it was a good gig or not, because Americans have adopted this unpleasant habit of using more and more superlative words and actions in everyday life, and therefore steadily deflating their significance. Faced with this problem, the promoter would probably have to say something like “it was so awesome I had a boner for the whole of the second half” and, in doing this, therefore contribute to the deflation of the word “boner”. The next time he wanted to explain to someone that he actually had a boner, he’d have to call it a “raging boner” just to make the point. And so, as you see, the cycle continues. After my notable lack of success in coining the phrase “antisocial networking”, I am going to attempt to coin the term “exaggeflation”.

exaggeflation: (n) the diminishing of emphasis by over-use

This problem pervades the whole of American society (and, much like most of the things I grumble about in these posts and try to fob off as American phenomena, the rest of the world). Think of the other words you hear kids using all the time these days. Gorgeous. Excellent. Amazing. Fantastic. Superb. What on earth are they going to say when something really good happens? Even “100%” now means “35%”. The actions are perhaps even worse than the words. Ten years ago, I remember aircraft passengers occasionally clapping when the pilot managed an unusually smooth landing in the middle of gail-force winds and a lightning storm. Now, everyone on the plane practically starts performing Mexican waves when the 7:32 from Spokane plops down in bright sunshine. Soon they’ll be clapping when the hostess successfully opens the door, or when their luggage arrives on the carousel.

I have done some complex calculations in order to find out how much exaggeflation modern society can take. The results, my friend, are disturbing. In ten years, audiences at Flight of the Conchords concerts will be forced to expose themselves as the band come on stage and then, if the gig was particularly good, ritually disembowel their first-born child using a rusty penknife. By August the following year, it will be a Samurai sword, and their first born had better be male.

Okay, I admit it. This is almost definitely not an American phenomenon. I suspect it’s a worldwide thing that happened since I got to America. However, my friend Ryan tells me that blogs are supposed to have themes and stick to them, and America is my theme, ergo this is a problem with America. Nobody said this was going to be fair.

Something new is happening in the world. Nobody had heard of it ten years ago, but now you’re doing it with almost everyone you know. That new thing is social networking. Social networking is the great electronic bringing-together of people. Social networking allows people to interact online with their friends, their family and their colleagues more easily than ever before. With a couple of clicks of a mouse, it’s now possible to learn that your ex-girlfriend became a lesbian, discover that your boss spends his weekends performing live-action roleplay and find pictures of your uncle Bill vomiting in a pint glass in a strip bar. How did we live without this?

A fascinating part of social networking is a feature called the “status update”. You can now inform your friends, family and colleagues what you’re up to at any given second. I am going to take the dog for a walk. I am going to work. I am at work. I am still at work. I am probably working late. I am working late. You can even do this using your mobile phone. I’m standing at the bus stop. I’m thinking about buying some chairs. I’m taking a dump.

This is great. We’re all in touch with everyone we know, all the time. Unfortunately, it is also the root cause of man’s very newest newest personality disorder. Let me introduce antisocial networking: the state of being more involved in updating your status message than in actually doing whatever it is you’re claiming to be doing.

Let me illustrate this principle by showing you a selection of Twitter posts.

 

Wow, that must be some great brunch they’re all having. I missed one hell of a time there. Why did I end up staying home? Well, wait. Let me show you a photograph of that brunch.

 

These people are not having a great time. They’re so interested in talking about having a good time that they have forgotten to have a good time. There are antisocial networkers reading this now. I know there are, because I mentioned this post on Twitter. Come on, guys. Come on, you antisocial networkers. The last time you actually had a good time, did you Tweet about it whilst it was happening? As you slipped between the sheets with Miss South America, did you lean over to rummage for your phone in your crumpled jeans on the floor? As you pointed the nose of the powerboat you’d unexpectedly been lent towards the setting Pacific sun and slid the throttle towards the bow, did you ponder which pocket your iPhone was in? As you opened the door to discover that your boyfriend had covered the entire house in rose petals, put up the sets of shelving that had been in the garage since 2001, smeared himself in honey and prostrated himself on the couch, did you look at the kitchen table to check whether you hibernated your laptop? No. You did not. This is because actual interesting stuff was really happening to you. Perhaps a good Twitter feature would be to add “and bored” to the end of every post.

 

So I’m something of a Car Guy, but let it be said that I like motorcycles as much as the next man. They look nice, they’re fun and they’re fast. My, they’re fast. Driving a car quickly is a fairly cerebral experience, whereas riding a motorcycle at pace is more like a test of virility.

There are fast bikes made all over the place. The best ones mostly come from Japan, but some of the greats come from Italy, Germany – even the United Kingdom, who appear to be less shit at making bikes than they were at making cars. The best way to see a bunch of fast bikes is to turn up at the Nürburgring on a Saturday afternoon and hunt around the car park. Ah, the smell of mineral oil and the rattle of those Ducati dry clutches. This is the life.

There is, however, one motorbike that you’re not going to see at the Nürburgring on a Saturday afternoon. That motorbike is the two-wheeled abortion known as the Harley Davidson.

There are two things wrong with Harley Davidsons. The first thing is technical. I’ve not ridden one, so I don’t know how they drive. Instead, I’m going to guess how they drive by comparing some vital statistics of the 2009 Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 Low (which appears to be one of their sportier models) with the 2009 Yamaha YZF-R6, one of the Japanese efforts. Perhaps the best way to represent this is in a table. Please excuse the American units of measure – it was all Harley had and I couldn’t be bothered converting them.

	Yamaya YRF-R6	Harley Davidson Sportster
Engine size	599 cc	1200 cc
Power	126 bhp	80 bhp
Weight	414 lbs	581 lbs
0-60mph	3.6 secs	5 secs
Top speed	165 mph	110 mph
Price	$9,990	$9,799

Based unfairly on these numbers and my own preconceptions, I’m going to guess that a Harley Davidson drives like a Dodge Durango. I bet I’m right. Anyway, either way it’s clear from this that the Harley Davidson Sportster wasn’t designed with sport in mind. But cars are more comfortable, drier, more practical overall – what was it designed for? Which brings me nicely to the second thing that is wrong with Harley Davidsons.

The second thing that is wrong with Harley Davidsons is that they are one of the greatest triumphs of marketing ever to exist. This is done in part by the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club. The Hell’s Angels is a group of unemployed misfits and small-time cat burgulars who are scattered around the world. Every so often they hit the headlines when one of them punches a woman outside a nightclub, or strangles his dog, or chokes to death on his own vomit. One thing they have in common is that that all happen to own Harley Davidson motorcycles. You have to have a Harley to get into the club.

Harley Davidson, of course, don’t officially have any relationship with the Hell’s Angels. Officially, they’re pretty angry with them. That’s the way it has to work. Harley Davidson knows that scattered all over America are bored dentists, middle-aged stockbrokers and lonely realtors who are sitting in front of the television watching their lives ebbing away. They have money in the bank, but they’ve already bought a house in the suburbs, a brown dog and a silver BMW 525. They can’t think of anything else to spend it on. More importantly, their wives are complaining about their rapidly receding hairlines and increasing levels of impotency. But wait! Breaking news on the television! Some Hell’s Angels have broken a window in a bar downtown! There they are on television, with their tatoos, and all that leather gear and their Harleys. I bet they’re not impotent! I bet their wives don’t talk back to them! And all I need to do to join that club is ten grand!

So the morticians and the lawyers run out and buy Harleys. They don’t join the Hell’s Angels. It would be too difficult to explain in church. They do buy leather jackets, and patches with skulls and crossbones on them. They do buy helmets with “ride or die” and such on them. They do meet up with other similarly-minded individuals, where they stand on street corners in their leathers and talk about the Dow Jones, or about  interest rates, or about how difficult Thomas is finding it settling in at Yale. One or two of them will sometimes smoke, and now and again someone will turn up with a beer. Passers-by cross the street to avoid these meetings, which gives the dentists a strange, inexplicably heart-warming sensation. They’re radicals. They’re on the fringes of society. They’re alive. Before they go home, they collect their litter.