What would be more embarrassing than a hacker being hacked himself? Yes that's what happened when Paul McMullan, a former News of the World journalist and self-confessed phone-hacker was hacked by none other than actor Hugh Grant (remember Notting Hill?) at the instance of ex-girlfriend Jemima Khan. Read the more than extraordinary (I won't say gruesome, as I usually do, because it isn't in the least gruesome)
details here as reported in the Guardian. What happened was Grant visited McMullan with a phone taping device hidden on him and taped their entire conversation with the hacker about his exploits. The taped conversation was published in in The New Statesman. Apparently, the article was tweeted 10,000 times. I guess we live in the age of social media and a piece of writing is judged by the times it is tweeted. Hm.
Also elsewhere in the article there's a mention of Twitter and social media. Excerpt:
"Twitter has made an even bigger difference. Tweets grant unprecedented intimacy with the world's most famous people. After years of having their privacy invaded by others, famous people have started to invade it for themselves. In that sense, Hugh Grant has done in the New Statesman what Twitter is threatening to do to all news media: he has come here, and he has taken our jobs. Celebrities have become more human in their appearance; in their influence, ever more like gods."
So, dear reader, is twitter the judge of an actor's popularity, is tweeting the measure of a writer's talent? You tell this poor old blogger of nonsense taken to extremes. Zeitgeist, zeitgeist, dear reader. Wait till twitter is taken over by Google.
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