The Critical Commentator

  The hyper-personalised nature of AI chatbots is drawing in teenage boys, who use them for therapy, companionship and relationships, according to new research. A survey of boys in secondary schools by the gender equity organisation Male Allies UK found that just over a third said they were considering the idea of an AI friend, amid growing concern about the rise of AI therapists and girlfriends. Self-Portrait at the Age of 14 Alfred George Stevens (1817-1875) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] Lee Chambers, the founder and chief executive of  Male Allies UK, said: "We've got a situation where lots of parents still think that teenagers are just using AI to cheat on their homework. "Young people are using it a lot more like an assistant in their pocket, a therapist when they are struggling, a companion when they want to be validated, and even sometimes in a romantic way. It's that personalisation aspect - they're saying 'it understands me, my parents don't....

  Cool people are desirable and in demand; others want to be them or be with them. That social clout  readily converts into capital as people buy what you're selling, hoping it will rub off on them. The trick, of course, is that it rarely does. "Cool" is fiendish like a riddle: it cannot be bought, though it's enthusiastically sold, and it can't be claimed without surrendering its benefits. The more you aspire to be cool the more uncool you are likely to be... A much publicised paper recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that cool people are seen as possessing six attributes: they are extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous and powerful... A Cool Retreat Henry Garland (1834-1913) Photo Credit: Leicester Museums and Galleries [CC  BY-NC-SA] "People can increase how cool they seem to others to a certain extent," says Todd Pezzuti, an associate professor of business at the Adolfo Ibanez University in Chile and th...

  Amanda Preisinger is anxious about her daughter's 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it's the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family... How she looks is, well, a little startling - her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new - and she's keen to stress, temporary-look - is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month... A Woman's Face Madge Gill (1882-1961) Photo Credit: The London Borough of Newham Heritage Service [CC BY]    According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s - well over a decade before most doctors' typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of "We treat ...

  When I saw the news story that a family was advertising for a £180,000-a-year tutor for their one-year-old son, I thought it was crazy - but I wasn't surprised. Tutoring has become a huge industry and at the top end there is an education arms race going on as some of the world's wealthiest people seek new ways to buy their children advantages... Kiss Me, Baby Frederick James Shields (1833-1911) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]  I have also worked for very wealthy people, living as part of their household, on their  yachts, or at their ski chalets or polo ranches... It is unusual for somebody to be advertising such a highly remunerated position to look after such a young child and shape their life so intensively. The advert... said that the family near London was "searching for a tutor to provide a comprehensive British cultural environment" for their child. The successful applicant will have attended "the best schools and universities" in...

  Sheep Richard Ansdell (1815-1885) Photo Credit:Grundy Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-SA]   What power haven't we handed to influencers? The list is rapidly dwindling. They affect millions of people's consumption habits, how we treat our work, relationships and health, and they are even beginning to win public office thanks to their followers... On 13 October, the world's most popular YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson - a 27-year-old American better known as MrBeast - filed a trademark application to start a bank app, MrBeast Financial, which will offer cryptocurrency and investment banking as well as potentially credit cards and other financial services. Now influencers believe they can - and should - directly control our money. It may be hard to imagine who would bank with a man whose qualifications begin and end with an ability to film stunts... It's already concerning that influencer and gurus determine so much of what we consume and even what many people believe about the world, p...

  The Serpentine Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) Photo Credit:Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]  On a cold Monday afternoon in Hyde Park, London, a small group of people gather by the Huntress fountain chatting softly among themselves. Nothing about the group would seem unusual to passing dog walkers and runners - until they huddle together and one starts a countdown. On three, a collective scream cuts through the park. It lasts only a few seconds before giving way to laughter. They were only meant to do it once, but end up screaming again - louder, the second time. It's not just about the noise but connection and finding new ways to cope with stress. "It's important to connect with others," says Barnes, a culinary  management student who also runs a micro-bakery. "In a city like London, people are constantly stressed. It's nice to be able to release your energy together. It's not only a scream club, but also a social club." Barnes says she start...

  Thirsty Middleton Alexander Jameson (1851-1919) Photo Credit: Brampton Museum [CC  BY-NC] The novelist Sir Ian McEwan has tackled many difficult subjects, from betrayal to trauma to death, but now he has taken on the biggest of them all: water bottles. The Atonement author, 77, said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival... that he was perplexed by the modern obsession with drinking copious amounts of water, describing it as "a derangement". "Thirty years ago, no one had bottles of water," he said. "You had a drink from the tap when you got home and suddenly we were persuaded that you can't go ten minutes without being thirsty. This is a derangement." The writer said he was appalled by the modern obsession with such receptacles. Being seen with a reusable bottle has become fashionable: celebrities from Adele to Olivia Rodriguez have been photographed carrying 1.2 litre Stanley flasks, which cost about £40... "I feel whenever I'm chucking out...

  When I was a Yale undergraduate, I hated being asked what my major was. "Medieval studies? What will you do with that?", was the inevitable question. When I went on to Oxford and studied Old and Middle English, the questioning continued. I usually answered, "I am opening a medieval shop," to shut down further discussion. A Medieval Female Statue John Flaxman (1755-1826) Photo Credit:UCL Culture [CC BY-NC-SA]  Anyone who studies the humanities, or "soft" degrees, will have faced the same judgemental, bewildered queries. The implication is that these subjects have no value. Indeed we've become so narrow and utilitarian that unless a degree leads specifically to a specialised career, it's considered by many to be a waste of time, money and resources. Kemi Badenoch [present leader of the Conservative Party] has pledged to end "rip-off" degrees such as English, anthropology and psychology because, in her view, they provide weak job prospects...

    An Abstract Drawing Madge Gill (1882-1961) Image Credit:: London Borough of Newham Heritage Service [CC  BY]                                                         Further and deeper into the jungle. Taunted by the quivering vines, mocked by the rubber trees, bitten and bruised by the asphyxiating vileness of nature. Ropes groaning, mud and rock resisting... The jungle plays tricks on your senses... Can you still tell the difference between the reality and the hallucination, between everyday life and the dream? Why haul a steamship across the jungle? Why bring the opera to Iquitos? But of course if you have to ask these questions, you shall never know the answers. Werner Herzog famously dragged a real 320-tonne steamship over the Andes while making his monumental, disaster-strewn 1982 film Fitzcarraldo... Jonathan Liew watc...

Trigger warning: this article may offend people who like trigger warnings. Lochiel's Warning Robert Inerarity Herdman (1829-1888) Photo Credit: Glasgow Life Museums [CC BY-NC-ND] A new study is the latest to suggest that telling people they are about to experience offensive content does not seem to change their behaviour - and could even make them want to watch it. Researchers found that during the course of a week, young people came across trigger warnings on social media dozens of times. Sometimes these came in the form of text, cautioning them that a post contained distressing content. Sometimes it was blurred images or video that they had to consent to see. Whatever the variety of sources of the warnings, the response to them was largely the same irrespective of whether or not people said they suffered from trauma, they were ignored. The study, published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, found that the 261 participants, 90 per cent clicked through...

 I used to think sobriety was boring. These days, I think getting wasted is. It might surprise you, but a lot of people in clubland don't drink or take drugs any more. It's not just a Sober October fad - the sober-curious wave is a full-blown cultural shift. It's simply not as cool any more to be face down in a club cubicle or face up in a skip at dawn. Boors Carousing Dutch School Photo Credit::York Museums Trust [Public Domain]  Back in my late teens and early twenties the club culture currency was drink and drugs. Later, I built a career behind the DJ decks in front of triple vodka and Cokes, sobriety felt like a door slammed shut on fun. But, spoiler: it wasn't. It was a door opened, a secret passage into something real... Frankly, there's something very rock-and-roll about revealing how "clean" you are, when you used to be  an absolute menace. I got tired of it all. The drinking. The preparing to drink. The things that drinking would lead to. The reco...