Monday, July 20, 2009

And So It Began.

I was chatting to my friend Rebecca this morning, when she uttered these immortal words:

“Blogs are like swine flu. The cool kids get it.”

Of course, having had it put in perspective so beautifully, there wasn’t really anything I could do other than abandon all protests, and start typing this post immediately. Which, in a last-ditch attempt to prove my point, is nonetheless a post about why I’ve never yet had a blog, and why I might never post on this one again.

The reasons in a nutshell:

  1. Facebook is already too much damn hard work; in fact these days I feel almost obliged to spend as much time avoiding work as I do working, which means that technically speaking, if time is money, I should be earning double my salary, but the world doesn’t work like that, and I’m just too inert to make the whole business any more labour-intensive;
  2. Whenever I think about starting a blog, I think about chucking back some gin and eating cereal out of the box while watching Kath and Kim reruns instead;
  3. I am technologically impaired (severely). Example: my friend Anna forwarded me a mail today to say that a friend of hers is selling his Cooper S, and I read the specs with interest, stopping only to ask her why anyone would want a built-in seat warmer for his laptop*;
  4. And here comes the real reason – despite being an avid reader of all my friends’ blogs, I think blogs in general are a bit…embarrassing.
There. It’s out.

Now, before we go any further, I should clarify that I have reason to read my friends' blogs:

  • My friends are a decidedly B.A. crowd, which means they write extremely well; and
  • They are my friends and I love them, which means that even if they didn’t write well, which they do, they could vomit out 20 pages of drivel on why they favour 2-ply, and I’d still read it with interest.

But seriously. I really can’t for the life of me comprehend the level of narcissism that would drive all the average Joes out there to post daily on the real, mundane details of their lives, and expect (virtual) strangers to care. I have one distant acquaintance (conveniently nameless) who is horribly guilty of this, and not only feels the need to update his blog every time he decides to have tuna for lunch instead of egg mayo, but actually looks up the IP addresses of his friends-and-relations every day, and if he notices that one of them hasn’t been visiting his blog lately, writes them a personal email to ask why they haven’t been reading it. (Or, worse – that Facebook disease – to ask why they have not yet become his fan.)

Which brings us back to Rebecca’s original question of why I have never had a blog.

Because the sorry truth of it is this: like my acquaintance (who, unfortunately, hasn’t realised it yet) I am just not that interesting. If I were to post the real details of my life daily, my blog would look something like this:

Day 1:

Today I didn't blog. Sorry

Day 2:

Go home

Day 3:

Seriously why are you reading this?

Day 4:

Ok you asked for it. Had bath

Day 5:

Gin

Day 6:

What?

Day 7:

Mmm. TV.

Day 8:

Day 8 already? Mmm. TV.

Day 9:

This TV thing is really catching on. Someone should advertise it.

Day 10:
Someone has already identified market potential of TV. Fuckit. Gin

Actually, all that stuff about digging TV is a lie, because in fact I don’t have a TV, so I only get the chance to dig TV when I periodically visit my parents and become too inert to leave for the next three months. Mind you, the stuff about not having a TV is a lie too, because to be precise I have two, but they are both unplugged until further notice, because I once, in a spasmodic fit of reform, scrubbed and rearranged my lounge; but in the shock of it all forgot how to plug the TV back in, and then I stopped to eat some cereal out of the box, and that was two years ago, and I didn’t really miss it, because like I said I have Kath and Kim and Buffy and Harry Potter on disc, and who needs anything else anyway.

And lastly, I haven’t had a blog because I have a very real fear that it will become a narcissistic addiction, and that I will, like so many before me, forget the social norms I grew up with, and begin to behave in a way that has for generations been cringeworthy in all mainstream circles but has – bizarrely – become the norm online lately, thanks to social networking sites. I am speaking, of course, of obsessive self-marketing, which to me is about as masturbatory – and Not Done – as taking photographs of yourself pouting in the shower and displaying them on the coffee table before your friends come round for tea.

Bottom line: I don’t think the influence of social networking sites should blind us to what we actually know, deep down, is antisocial behaviour. If we really want to write, shouldn’t we make like Real Authors and have the grace to let the experts, i.e. the editors of actual publications we submit to, decide whether our work is good enough to broadcast? Shouldn’t we keep our efforts professional, and shut up about it in public?

And if we are as presumptuous to self-publish, shouldn’t we just keep it on the down-low and leave the marketing at the door, the way we would at any normal social gathering? I mean, we’ve all had to ward off the dodgy Amway cousin banging on about his new pyramid scheme over Sunday lunch, and in an online context, how is blog-flogging to your friends any different?

I suppose a part of me just thinks: So you write. Bully for you. Now pass the potatoes.
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* A Cooper S is allegedly a car. Clearly not much has changed since I was in Grade 2, when a classmate told us in Show and Tell that her father had bought a Porsche, and I thought she meant a breed of brightly-coloured chicken.

11 comments:

  1. M-squeeze: welcome, comrade, welcome. You're right. Blogging is frikkin BLIND, man. And wanky as hell. But as long as we're all in this together, it's kinda sweet, right?

    I for one will be monitoring your blog daily for updates.

    No pressure.

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  2. Welcome! The convention is on Tuesday 29th in lower Obs (we're thinking Gandalphs). We all voted on the dark grey robes (so much trendier thsan those goths) and you'll get a letter in the secret post explaining the handshake.

    Anything else? Oh yes, the password is 'tuna salad lunch.'

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  3. Am guilty in the pestering friends to join my fan page, although am more obsessive about my side project blogs than my personal site. That said, I never have tuna or egg mayo, especially not for lunch!

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  4. Thank you, my dear ;) I suspected that much of your rant was a thinly veiled dig at myself! Another post please - I have been sending you much link love...

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  5. Noooo! I'd hardly have sent it to you if I had! Also, i thought i qualified it quite clearly in the beginning by saying that my BA friends who write well are exempt from my ranting because they, well, write well :) And because they are my friends, so I am interested to read THEIR blogs.
    ALSO, your blog isn't about the mundane details of your life; you write themed blogs. AND there's a difference between posting your blog up on your facebook so that people who want to can go of their own free will (which is what you do) and what he does, which is to painstakingly look up IP addresses and bug even the most distant acquaintances daily, PERSONALLY, about why they haven't yet read his blog.
    So. No, not you.
    The guy I was writing about is so busy writing his own damn (boring) blog that i can safely assume he will never read mine. So I could be as nasty as I liked.
    Anyway - no offence meant - I really didn't mean you - so apologies if I caused any ouch!

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  7. In short - my rant was not against blog-marketing but OBSESSIVE blog-marketing (there is a difference). The guy I was talking about is really in a whole different league…x

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  8. This was inspired.
    I particularly enjoyed the daily diary component of your post, as I could identify...especially the part about you bathing only one. Nice!
    I'll be back to visit
    DBAWIW

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  9. I had a really good laugh!!! Thank you, Mar - M-Squeeze :).

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