Modern manners

Body dysmorphia, the unfortunate medical condition whereby a perfectly pleasant/slender person believes themselves to be ugly/fat, is a strange and sad thing. I’d always presumed it to be (like anorexia and bulimia) a primarily female problem, so much more importance being placed on the appearance of women than men. Respectable medical surveys indicate otherwise. Nevertheless, women tend to see themselves as less attractive than they are. A sizeable number of men, on the other hand, suffer from the opposite delusion. I call them Magic Mirror men, because they seem to possess an inner looking-glass which tells them that they are, indeed, the fairest of them all. Why else do ugly men not feel ridiculous passing judgment on the attractiveness, or otherwise, of women?

‘I’ve lost my phone,’ yells Trev. We’re in a club. He’s come charging on to the dance floor to tell me. He’s always forgetting where he’s left his phone and getting in a state. Trev’s phone is old and crap and the screen is the most shattered screen I’ve seen on a phone that still works. Everyone knows Trev’s crap phone. People pinch it for a laugh just to wind him up, then give it back. It’s value to an opportunist thief is less than zero. He generally loses his phone two or three times of an evening. ‘Where did you have it last?’ I shout back. It’s an obvious question, but not one that has occurred to him, apparently. The pertinacity of it stuns him momentarily.

What, if anything, should a moral, liberal-minded person think about the hacking of the infidelity website Ashley Madison? And by ‘liberal-minded’, please note, I do not mean ‘Liberal Democrat-minded’, for such a person would perhaps merely think ‘Can I still join?’ and ‘I wonder if my wife is already a member, though?’ and ‘But will I find anybody prepared to do that thing I like with the pillow and the chicken?’ Rather, I mean somebody who believes in the sometimes jarring moral precepts that ‘People should be free’ and ‘People should not be a bit of a scumbag’. Ashley Madison, you see, is a website claiming 37 million users worldwide that exists to facilitate marital infidelity.

It’s not quite as bad as we feared: Sealed Air, the company in New Jersey that makes bubble-wrap, is not yet discontinuing poppable bubble-wrap. But its newly designed sibling, non-poppable bubble-wrap, surely spells the end for the real thing: it’s cheaper to ship, because it leaves the factory airless and thus can be ‘flat-packed for your convenience’. The companies who receive it will need to buy an expensive pump to fill the reams of polythene with columns of air, and that air will be beyond the popping power of human fingertips. Panic broke out among the bubble-wrap-popping millions across the globe on hearing the news of the threat to their habit earlier this month. The pastime is universally adored.