Saturday, March 21, 2009

Self-pitying Whining, Not In An Amusing Way, Skip To The End, Do Not Read, No Seriously I Mean It

Yes, this is about Twitter. Of course it is. 98% of all internet-related typing now is either into Twitter or creating enormous sweeping great epic satirical tracts about how all Twitter users are self-regarding friendless twerps, endlessly spewing mundane details of their tiny, insignificant lives onto the internet, like a continual ticker-tape stream of tedium. It's Eddie the Shipboard Computer. And yet again Douglas Adams predicts the development of Web 2.0 with such prescience that I'm comforted, because clearly he did not tragically and suddenly die at a ridiculously young age, and instead ascended into some kind of human race control room, 100 miles above the clouds, where he gifts our mindless asses one big social networking craze every couple of years. He's halfway betwen Hari Seldon and Jesus Christ. He'd be the best Twitterer ever. Oh, I miss you, Douglas Adams.

Anyway, all those Twitter naysayers miss the point. And all the naysayer-naysayers miss the point too. Quoth the naysayer: "Who the hell cares what you ate for lunch and what you think of Red Riding? I don't spend any time on Twitter. I prefer to hang out in super-cool bars discussing the Nietzschen influence the latest Add N to X album with my real friends." Quoth the naysayer-naysayers: "It's so not about that, you prick! It's about connecting with new people who share your interests and loves and forming intense, long-lasting and earth-shattering relationships with them!" What utter bollocks. It's about stalking celebrities and showing off, as simple as that. Anyone who follows me and doesn't know me is very welcome and I love them utterly, but they're just gonna get me trying to be clever in 140 characters every couple of hours or so, and I can imagine that could get pretty tedious pretty quickly. So why do I bother? Why does anyone bother? Behold, the truth! I just want to be LOVED!

I don't write this stupid blog because I'm just overflowing with creative juice and it has to escape somewhere. I hate writing it. Every post creates a horrendous internal torrent of self-hatred, a constant nattering in the back of my brain telling me that I haven't got any ideas at all. Every time I sit down to write, I have to quell the ctrl-A, delete instinct that seizes my fingers, Dr Strangelove-style, every few words. It's frankly amazing that anything ever gets published on here. Not to mention the fact that I have got this far into this paragraph without pulverising my fingers by repeatedly smashing the laptop closed on them. So why do it? I write this blog on the tiny off chance that someone I don't know will happen upon it, and think it's funny. Oh, and then if they could pay me a lot of money to write for them as well, that'd be swell. Of course, I would have a completely miserable life if I were a professional writer due to the endless mind-fuckery detailed above, but I feel I'm nothing if not ridiculous.

I am ridiculous, though! Although I yearn for people to read this and like it (not this post, obviously. This doesn't count. Normal service will resume shortly), I'm also terrified that someone I know will read it and I'll be found out. Friends very kindly tell me they like it, and I crumple with embarrassment. It's anonymous, even though it doesn't need to be, because I'm no-one. But yet, but yet... Gah! I am trapped between frantically hoping for acceptance which should be rightfully mine because I'm obviously so marvellous, and not daring to make any pro-active moves towards being a proper writer because I'm obviously so shit.

Oh, man. I sincerely apologise. This is terrible, angsty, adolescent nonsense, and not something that should be published, really. But I'm going to publish it in the hope that it'll spur me on to blog again on something actually entertaining to push this off the top page. At least we can take comfort in this: it has turned out not to be about Twitter.

1 comment:

Kolley Kibber said...

Great stuff. Your entry perfectly sums up the dilemma of the shy writer. 'Should I? Who do I think I am anyway? What will people think? What if they don't think anything at all?' It all feels very familiar!

Just as long as you don't stop writing.