There doesn’t appear in that crowd at least to be any violence towards women… although the girls are all wearing ‘the uniform’, short one piece body hugging dresses… bags of makeup and getting just as drunk as the lads, I’m not hearing or feeling that they are being abused or taken advantage of.

There is definately a desire to be ‘popular’ much more so than I can remember… ok it wasn’t great if you weren’t in the ‘in crowd’ but it wasn’t life or death either! Today there is a huge pressure to be accepted, fit in.

I think with the Internet, Facebook, MSN and txts clearly the whole lifestyle has sped up, but… there is also with this closely knit community the fact that everyone knows everything about everyone a kind of transparency that never existed before. If you do something bad, everyone knows, if you sleep around or hit a girl… everyone knows…

So in this group as with I guess loads of others throughout the UK, if they are part of an online social network as well as the club scene then there is less risk as you are part of an ‘online / offline network’ it may well be those on the fringes of this that are the most vulnerable or those that are outside of it completely.

Ironically although the Internet and indirect (not face-to-face) contact has become the norm, I think this is just as responsible for de-humanising relationships and possibly responsible for the issues we are seeing taking place… By talking to an Avatar or an ‘idea’ (very often a fascade put out there by the individuals themselves) we are talking to an object not a person… you can say anything and project an attitude in whichever way you want… whether it is true or not is irrelevant… maybe this is the place which breeds the worrying behaviour being described in the media today.