BEING BORING

I do think (with surprising regularity) about completely shutting down my online life and just disappearing from the CyberWorld which would, I suppose, be just as noticeable as when a sparrow falls dead from a tree in the middle of a forest, if the impact I seem to make on people’s lives during the average month is anything to go by. Despite the fact that I do seem to have the kind of “media disease” which finds me checking the computer far more often than seems healthy, it’s probably made even more absurd by the fact that I really do seem to exist here in such a way that I actually make no impression whatsoever upon the lives I’m allegedly touching.

Each and every morning, I get up, boot up the computer, and I do the rounds of the same half dozen or so websites. The routine is fairly predictable with few variations. First I’ll kick up the email account because otherwise it crashes the Safari software when it launches. Sometimes there’s a notification of a new comment on Twitter, or a dispatch notice from an online order, but more usually than not, the cupboard is bare. Then I will glance at Blogger to see whether the numbers or the list of comments have increased overnight, perhaps nip over to StatCounter to see how many of them were actual, genuine “real” people (usually none of them are), click onto Facebook to see whether there are any red flags (usually none), launch Twitter to see whether the “connect” column has any more entries in it (also usually none), and then head off towards Amazon to see if there’s anything new worth buying, and then across to Play just to make some pricing comparisons…

I might also take a quick peek at the BBC News website to see whether the world has been shattered overnight, or to make sure that whatever I thought that I might write about next isn’t too inappropriate under the new circumstances, but, other than a few regional variations, that’s about it for my online life, although that routine can also then be repeated at far too many intervals throughout the average day, which is why it gets dubbed a “media disease” although I am tempted to add the word “pointless” to the front of it and claim to be afflicted with full-blown PMD.

My Facebook life has been stagnant for almost as long as I can remember. There was a brief flurry of activity about six months ago when I discovered a few names that I’d once been at college with had turned up, but, on the whole, if I checked in once a month it would be just as effective. The red flags are as rare as hen’s teeth and I should mention that I will never EVER respond to a birthday enquiry, no matter who you are.

But then, that’s not the problem, is it...?

The problem is always that there might just be a red flag there desperately waiting for some kind of a response, and the fact that there rarely is, isn’t quite enough to dissuade me of that remote possibility actually needing my attention.

Sometimes I will just slink away to lick my wounds, but on other occasions, instead I will be tempted to leave not very witty smartarse comments in conversations that are nothing to do with me, and then hate myself afterwards for having done so. Either that or I will leave links to news stories that I’ve found interesting on the grounds that people who are interested in me might just also be interested in the things that I am too, forgetting, of course, the flawed logic that assumes that they might be interested in me in the first place.

Mostly though, I find myself getting more and more irritated by the inane banter and chit-chat, and the fact that everyone is living lives so fascinating that every aspect of them needs to be recorded and remarked upon in such detail, and that everything, it seems, is “liked” without question and is uniformly “brilliant” even when I know that it is not.

Better instead, I feel, to stop going there, but then a red flag from an old friend who is really happy to have finally found me again might just appear, and it would be such a shame to let that opportunity pass, even if its about as likely as space aliens landing in Washington and asking to chat to the President.

I should just walk away. I should just be more resolute and refuse to go to these places, but I find myself sometimes clicking away only minutes after the last time simply because someone might have said something new in the last five minutes, even though they usually and historically rarely have.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to be friendly, or tried to share the more mundane aspects of my life, but my life really isn’t all that interesting really, and the masses have indicated so by voting with their feet. Sometimes I look at the vast long lists of “people I might know” and realise that I don’t know any of them, or those that I do vaguely recall are hardly likely to be people who might be bowled over by a renewed acquaintance with me. Most seem to be people that other people know and it is assumed by the computers that, because I know them, I know all of their friends, too, which is patently absurd when, in the great melting pot of life, as we all stroll hand-in-hand towards the grave, there are few times when we’re all in the same room together at the same time.

But such things are a two-way street. My humble efforts to communicate are seldom replied to. Those whose email addresses I have requested over the years seldom find the time to reply to my efforts, and so my personal email account is also a pretty dry well, and although the spam folder can be quite entertaining, it’s very rarely that a genuine message from an actual person shows up. Now, as far as I can remember, like telephones, the internet has access for both parties, which can only lead me to the inevitable conclusion that I always was far too dull to be bothered with and never had much to say that anyone found all that interesting.

In the end, I can only come to the inevitable conclusion that I really am very, very boring…

There’s a great description of Scrooge seeming to be totally unapproachable as he passes through the streets of London in an early section of “A Christmas Carol” and every time I read it I think “That’s me!” and I oftentimes find that I am more drawn to his pre-transformation persona just because it seems more familiar to me...

Sometimes my Twitter life seems even more pointless, although I will chat with anyone who talks to me, my main purpose in doing that seems to be to play word games, and make more witless comments to people who really don’t care all that much.

Which brings us to Blogger, this mighty organ where I do my level best to bring some kind of order to the chaos of my life whilst having quite a lot to say about nothing much of any interest whatsoever. It is perhaps hypocritical to be bewildered about people’s needs to prattle on about the minutiae of their lives only to then do precisely the same thing and at greater length (the irony has not escaped me), but only in a place where anyone can choose not to read it, and find out more about someone whose life they’re already almost completely disinterested in - unless there’s an element of schadenfreude to be found. The other problem is that I’m becoming more and more irritated by finding myself doing that too, and, whilst I’ve not quite yet got to the point where what other people write in their own Blogs annoys the hell out of me, more often than not, the inane comments that are appended to the average page just make me really wish that I’d not gone and visited those pages in the first place…

How nauseatingly sentimental, twee and embarrassing some of them can be.

My own writing, in the end, is about dull things that very few people actually seem all that interested in, and, even when one or two of my “regulars” have made an effort to draw more people here, it usually makes no real difference whatsoever.

The plain truth seems to be that I’m not interesting enough, and the things that I write about are either far too dreary, or far too inane, or just far too pointless for that many people I know to be bothered with reading them. Perhaps I use far too many words, or just write about things that nobody else very much is all that interested in, it’s so hard to tell when they stay away in their… dozens…

So, in the end, why haven’t I pulled the plug yet…?

With Blogger, the answer is easy. I like the process of creating the writing almost as much as the world seems to dislike reading it, but it doesn’t really matter whether they do read it or they don’t, in the end I get the words out of my head and into a document and that ought to be an end to it. Occasionally, I do consider pulling the plug on both the “open to everyone to read” and the “anyone can comment” options but I don’t. After all, perhaps I still believe that there might still be someone out there who might just find something interesting amongst the vast swathes of chaff which I burble out.

Facebook remains, ironically, my own small beacon of hope, burning dimly away at the edge of the world. I genuinely like to think that there might just still be people out there who might genuinely want to re-establish contact with me and who might not have completely forgotten that I once touched their lives, however obliquely…

Twitter has also introduced me to some rather lovely folk whom I’ve never met but who indulge my little whimsies, so I have to keep that line of communication open, even if I usually leave there in much the same mood as I used to leave any social events I used to attend, i.e. Wishing I’d kept my big mouth shut and my opinions to myself… (Who is it that said Facebook is full of people I know but don’t like and Twitter is full of people I like but don’t know…?)

Those sites do also serve the function (along with the bizarreness pointlessness which is GooglePlus), in promoting these little morsels of dreariness which I continue to churn out, and, even though those links are all but ignored, it’s still a useful way of letting the few loyal and long-suffering people who do still read this stuff know that I’m still here, pouring it out for them to read…

I do also go through phases where everything I do in life seems utterly pointless and when things are getting that bleak, whilst it really doesn’t help to get confirmation of it by a simple lack of interest, and I know that sometimes things change and will feel an awful lot brighter  on another day, and I won’t feel quite so inclined to just jack it all in…