Too much information

Charlie is currently on sabbatical in South America. Over the next few months she’ll be blogging about her travel adventures in the age of digital.

When you're far from home and home comforts, the web is a fantastic source of information you can access from anywhere - provided you've got the patience to wade through the e-crap.

This was driven home with miserable inevitability on day one of my six-month sabbatical. Day One.

Since I'm travelling alone for the first time, it wasn't the greatest news to hear, on arrival in Mexico City, that a girl in my dorm had just been held up and mugged at machete point while taking the night bus. Convinced I was also due for a slice-up-hold-up, I immediately rued abandoning my commute-desk-commute lifestyle for the lures of Latin America.

"That's just a bad route," said another girl, "I looked at it online, there are loads of posts warning about muggings on that road at night. You just need to check."

"Good old internet," I thought. There's nothing finer than immediate access to pooled information from people trekking the same path to help you avoid banditos. Excellent.

So, to play it safe, I posted on a traveller's forum describing my route and asking whether if it was, likewise, a well-known night bus hold-up area, or if it was a safe trip for a female traveller, going solo.
(FYI the route I described was NOT San Cristobal to Palenque.)

These were the responses:

"Did the night bus from San Cristobal to Palenque, again nothing of note? Worth noting that we were two men."

"I was robbed on a bus from Palenque to San Cristobal, only that was two years ago… I could only imagine how quickly things could go south if just one passenger got upset and refused to pay."

"If I were you, I would crawl under the bed and stay there. Leave nothing to chance."

"I lived in Mexico for five years about 20 years ago. I've driven 300 or 400 miles south of the border at least 50 times. Question: Should a solo female travel by bus at night? Answer: A solo female traveller in Mexico nowadays needs to see a doctor to get the head examined. Your parents must be worried sick. Use your brain for God's sake."

"You are less likely to get sick if you ride at the very front of the bus. Buy a seat in advance right up near the driver."

I'd call that an overwhelming electronic shrug. No one had any facts for me. What could possibly inspire them to take the time to write something so utterly useless? Especially No. 4's scaremongering slap on the wrist. Now I'm scared and I might have upset my mom.

A quick scoot through other threads revealed a similar pattern. For every one helpful suggestion, the poster has to endure dozens of smart-arse comments, dull witticisms and banter that descends into hostile exchanges, angry emoticons and a machine-gun splattering of exclamation marks.

Freestyle (and more significantly, free) publishing online has been amazing for injecting vitality into the arts and creative media by sidestepping The Man and, for better or worse, letting the people choose their creative heroes. MySpace gave us Lily Allen, YouTube spawned Bieber Fever and one of the earliest blogs, detailing the antics of a top-dollar prostitute, turned into a book deal, TV series and hamper of cash for real-life Belle de Jour, Brooke Magnanti.

But while it has created an opportunity for Billie Piper to get her kit off, unfettered online publishing can dilute one of our most powerful and useful resources. Especially when it comes to writing. Having access to WordPress does not a journalist make, just ask the reporters relegated to the second row, behind teenage bloggers, at New York Fashion Week, or any food writer cringing at their iPhone as Twitter announces a blogger's latest thoughts on why Ferran Adria is not actually all that impressive.

I might sound like another hack moaning, but there's more to the gripe than just having a strop at the new kids in town. Creating strong, engaging and, most importantly, trustworthy content online is a skill, and needs to be respected as one.

Brilliant an idea as an online traveller's forum is, I won't be poking those bears again. A word to the wannabe wise: if you don't have anything valuable to say, don't hit Enter.