19 Year Old Goes Backpacking...

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Thought people would enjoy this. Generic middle class 19 year old goes backpacking in India and has been commissioned by the Guardian to write a blog about it. Read what the kid writes and then read the replies.

Guardian Backpacking

 

Heh, poor kid. Which of the 500 replies are you thinking of, BA?

 

To be honest he (or whoever put him up to this - his father?) was asking for it. While some of the comments are unnecessarily abusive, I find many of the criticisms to be justified. First the nepotism issue - I'm sure someone in the Guardian must have noticed, and if they thought none of the readers would make a connection they were obviously wrong. Then there's the whole premise: rich kid (I wouldn't exactly call him "middle class") goes to Asia to get drunk and have sex. I'm not making this up - it's all in the article. The picture they had of him didn't really help either, which might be why they took it down so quickly (though you can still find it here. I've yet to determine if that article is actually serious or immensely sarcastic). His whining about things like visas and so on is pathetic - he spent a few hours getting a visa? Big deal, some of us spend weeks (some people I know had to wait months) getting visas. Sorry, no sympathy there. Then of course there's his writing. He might be a writer for Skins (whatever that is, I don't think I want to see it if this is what is considered quality writing there) but he reads exactly like a mediocre 19-year old would write - not atrociously bad, but not good either. I know several under-16s that write much, much better than this (and one isn't even a native English speaker), so I'm not "impressed".

To be fair I've nothing against a teenager going on a holiday at his parents' expenses, having a good time and starting his or her own blog about it. It's a free country, and it's not as if that would hurt anyone else. But having the son of the Guardian's travel editor be published in the Guardian and be presented as an "impressive" writer (when the writing two lines under clearly says otherwise) and when he doesn't really seem to have much to say strikes me as a stupid move by the editors.

 

Ok, so after seeing your reaction I went back and re-read that article I linked. I cannot believe I failed to see the sarcasm on my first read through. It is hysterically funny

 

Oh yes, whoever this John Brownlee is, I am now a fan.

 

This has got to be a joke...

 

A titan laid low...

Really, someone on the Grauniad should have seen this coming. I know it's not in the same league, but to make such fuss about the Conways, and then this... sloppy, very sloppy.

And to think, he might've got away with it if it weren't for the Wikipedia entry. "Top Gauardian travel columnist", indeed.

EDIT: obligatory w00t 2000 posts! Dammit, I'm getting as cliched as Max.