Yes, I admit it, I have done it - I have joined Twitter. I now stretch out my arms in a crucifix-style pose and wait for the painful rain of stones, flint, USB mouses and assorted detritus to whack me painfully in the metaphorical Blogger kidneys.
I mean, let's face it. Twitter was probably invented back in 1911 by a sprightly young man named Prof. Albert Ponsonby-Twitter who stormed into the printing presses and interrupted a meeting between some bigwigs in the press industry with a loud; "Forsooth, chaps! I have created a most splendid contraption known as a 'Social Networking Applicating'! All one does is stands in an immensely large edifice with several other of your dear acquaintances and attempts to shout out precisely which activities one is currently partaking in, however mundane and tedious..." Here, he stops to rearrange his cumberbund, "But here is the twist! One does not know whether one's acquaintances are even listening to one!"
Prof. Ponsonby-Twitter is then thrown out onto the streets, naked, covered in potato peel.
Yet...he is without SIN cast the first stone. Yes, SIN = Self-indulgent Internet Nonsense. Look at you all, you great, sweaty pasties. Staring at your screen, reading this drivel; drivel hammered out by a heathen unemployed Troglodyte with a bad sense of taste. I may be taking my interpersonal-relations skills from the School of Piers Morgan (loathe as I am to even mention that name without writing and foaming at the mouth like a snake that's just been fed Pepto-Bismol), so I apologise for calling you all sweaty. And pasties. But I do not apologise for calling myself a Troglodyte, for that is what I am.
I mean, come on. I have no claim to fame, I'm not distantly related to some Premiership 'footballer' or heir to a small chain of Little Chefs, I don't even have particularly good writing skills; mainly I come up with a fairly good argument, water it down a little, add five pages randomly ripped out from the Oxford English Dictionary, whisk together until creamy and then serve. That's what I mean. I don't have the face for glossy mags or even the voice for radio, so I blog. My opinion doesn't matter...yet that's where the internet comes in. You can be famous just by being incredibly opinionated and using the dreaded C-word a lot. There are no live feeds or watersheds to worry about on the internet. Comments can be deleted, friends can be un-friended and messages can be blocked or re-directed to spam.
You may be feeling slightly confused, my dear lovely perspiring meat-filled savoury companions. Why on Earth am I doing this? Why am I writing about how the internet makes exhibitionists of us all? Getting up on a slightly higher platform than the last bloke and shouting your opinions until even your vocal chord nodules have nodules themselves ain't particularly big or clever. Why does anyone even do it? Well roll up, roll up, read all about it and then Robert's your father's brother...there you have it. You're reading it. You do the maths.
Because somewhere, beneath all the violent opinionating that is the WWW, there is a reader for everyone.
2 comments:
My father has no brother. He has a sister named Judy, but no Robert.
It's true, no matter what you type on the internet or who you are, there will always be someone willing to read it, accompanied by about 7000 angry beavers.
The internet - If you can imagine it, it exists.
Including imaginging people read your blog - no, they really do read it!
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