I was going to write something on Tumblr, but it got really long so I was going to just post it here. But I wanted it to be on Tumblr so I just copy+pasted it here for other people to read. Yay.
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When I decided that I was going to type that, I thought it was going to be a short little thing that fit nicely amongst the recycled garbage that is my tumblr. Then I was gonna tag it with some obnoxious shoulder-shruggy thing like I dunno why I’m even typing this cuz nobody even follows me, but then I’d just be an acting-like-he-doesn’t-realize-he-only-has-one-follower-whom-he-doesn’t-even-know cunt. Which opened up the terrifying chasm of self-consciousness that comes with assuming said follower is actually going to read your neurotic drivel.
Cuz see, there’s writing like you’re ejaculating your fractured ego into the pages of a journal you assume nobody will ever see (but secretly hope somebody will so that once you get over your self-righteous proclamations of broken trust and invaded privacy, you’ll have one of those “confidantes” people in Nicholas Sparks-esque movies are always gurgling about). And there’s writing an essay or a short story or a script that you know will have a specific audience that you constantly have to keep in mind; always hold its hand and stroke its hair while you tend to its every need. The clueless, needy audience.
But then there’s writing on the internet. You have to think of it like you’re releasing a cat with a note on its back into the crowd at a European outdoor metal festival. It might be a cat and just stand there unnoticed…it might prowl around quietly, drawing the attention of a few easily-distracted types…it might scratch a few toes as it dashes toward what it thinks is freedom…it might have rabies and hurl through the crowd, slashing and clawing and menacing hordes of angry metalheads, driving them away with obscene, beard-muffled shouts. Or it might write a boring, repetitive, longwinded metaphor that nobody cares about.
My stupid point, though—despite having become lost in the woods following a trail of what it thinks are bread crumbs but are actually the unfortunate leavings of a devastatingly constipated deer—is that while the writing itself can feel personal and private, you realize that SOMEBODY is going to read it and now you have to doctor it up for them so they’ll be impressed or sympathetic or entertained or et cetera and suddenly a piddly little comment about crying at work is a shitty, pontificating manifesto about a notion that nobody really even cares about that you read back and completely regret even thinking about.
Actually, I take back setting that last paragraph up to be my point. My point is that you have to wonder what this entire thing is. I refer back to the part where I introduced the matter of having a single follower. Does that make this a letter? If nobody else is going to see it, is it direct, private correspondence? Or does the mere property of existing in an open forum drag it down into the arena of something more akin to a “blog post”? I mean at this point am I addressing you as an individual taking part in an intellectual dialogue or am I still pretending that a loose collection of curious readers might happen upon this dumb thing and take the time to read and connect to it?
That being said…did I just want to share a maybe-endearing, maybe-amusing moment from my day with the voiceless ether?
Or did I subconsciously hope that I would be offering some kind of awful emotional fig leaf to a person that I don’t know, don’t intend to communicate with, and frankly have no interest in associating with at all?
You know what? Fuck this thing. Point. Click. Create post.
