I saw a movie over the weekend... Here’s a poem I’ve written

"I've often thought about making my own website, but you know, I don't really have anything to put on it." "And THERE, you have the problem with the internet."

In an attempt to balance the cruel scales of secluding myself in my room for days on end on the one hand, and having no attention span and being easily bored on the other, I've been spending a lot of time with my computer over the last wee while. I've visited as many sites and homepages I've come across links to. Sites for ranting, sites for essays, sites for journals. This experience has lead me to one overriding conclusion - There are a lot of people out there who aren't as interesting or clever as they think they are.

(Yes yes, very funny, now shut the fuck up)

I mean, I don't want to stand too far up the moral highground - listening to me whine is not likely to be the most orgasmic experience of your day (for your sake I hope it isn't) - But why do people assume we're interested in their day-to-day activities? I'm not even interested when my friends volunteer the banalities of their "lives".

Look at www.blogger.com. Now, I know that you go in knowing that these are just web logs - diaries, in essence. But I've perused dozens of these things, and they all seem to believe that the casual reader will find their lives enthralling, and their trite musings profound. Yes, you went to the movies. Yes, you watched tv. Heartpounding, I'm sure. I do not assume that people are interested in what I did on any given day for one very good reason - What I do is not interesting. I fuck around on the computer, watch some tv, and more often than not wander into the city, which stopped being any more stimulating than my room three years ago.

There are a very few people out there with something worth saying, or at least something entertaining, but I've read a whole mess of things where people go and on about how they're so much cleverer than you, how they're smarter than you, how they are the epitome of cool and you are not. And they back this up with the "proof" of poorly written essays about how they could have done Battlefield Earth better - oh, and here's a link to their Star Wars fan fiction.

These sites are devoid of point. Now, I'm what men of science refer to as a lazy whining bastard, and I'm not a great deal smarter than the average bear, but I'm not entirely inarticulate, and, most importantly - I don't think I'm interesting. I don't assume that having a computer and too much free time makes me worth listening to. I have certain opinions on certain things - things I think are at least a little relevant to people around me. This doesn't make me a mad web prophet, it makes me, to quote a fairly pedestrian movie about the Marquis De Sade, "just a malcontent who can spell". I think my views on said certain things are the correct ones, and I like to think I can express them in a way that isn't hideously painful to read. Me and Hewligan hanging out in a bar bitching about our friends then going home, while fun, is not interesting, and does not warrant mentioning at all, let alone in the context of "look at us, we're special and clever". Our ideas are good, and our opinions are valid. My everyday life is NOT interesting. If something interesting happened to me, hell yeah I'd write about it (once I'd recovered from the shock, anyway) - but no one is interested that I saw Rush Hour 2 last night.

It's not like I demand strangely adjectived vitriol to spew forth in order for something to be considered good, but there are two problems:

1) Talking about nothing. I don't care that you went to see a movie - I don't care that you hung out with your friends. I have my own problems and my own friends (but I repeat myself), and I don't burden you with idle gossip about them. If you want to write something that anyone will be interested in, write about something. Anything. An issue, some piece of the human condition, something that's been on the news even. Like I say, I don't dare stand too far up the moral high ground, but all of my scribblings are aimed at people (in some cases specific people), and I'm fairly sure that at least one or two people out there can sympathise with me, and get what I'm saying.
2) Thinking that having a site named after you makes you clever. If you say that you're smarter than everyone else, you'd better actually be. Now, I'm a lot smarter than most people. I know how harmful most drugs aren't. I know that people is people, no matter what they look like or what flavour genitalia they prefer the taste of. I know that leaving an argument is admitting that you've lost it, and I know that guns and nuclear power were invented solely to kill people. This makes me considerably more intelligent than anyone who doesn't know these things. That's not bragging - It's a logical conclusion based on a body of evidence. However - I'm unemployed, I don't know how to drive, and for Christ's sake - I'm a qualified English Teacher, yet I don't know how to use apostrophes properly. I just ain't the most profound tarot in the deck, and I don't go around trying to convince too many people that I am.

If you think you're clever, and have something clever to say, you'd better be sure you're right. I don't think I'm some kind of shaman because I have a poorly phrased opinion on something. Sure, I think what I write is readable, enjoyable even. I think I say a couple of things that some people, not all, will find entertaining, and maybe one or two could even get something out of it, I don't know. But it's not exactly like I'm unique in the world - I don't see things more clearly, I'm not any deeper or more insightful than you (well, maybe more than you...).

All in all, I think Void Void is probably one of the better commentaries I've seen on such things.

Oh, and on a related note, a translation: Watch for anyone describing themselves in the following terms: Crazy, Mad, Insane, Wacky (yes, wacky). Anyone who claims to be a total nutter is, in actuality, so boring as to be able to physically kill a party simply by coming within half a kilometer of it. If someone alludes to not being sane - They're boring. If someone refers to crazy antics - They're boring. People who are actually interesting, and could conceivably be described using the aforementioned adjectives, don't bother trying to classify themselves in such a way - They're too busy going out and being interesting.

Going out for night on the turps doesn't make you interesting. Dying your hair doesn't make you interesting. You want us to be interested? Do something that the rest of us don't do - If you go on about how crazy you are because you invited five of your friends around on Saturday and you had a couple of drinks, I'm going to find you and replace all of you blood with bad heroin just so you can see that the definition of being a hard substance abuser is NOT forgoing beer for a shaker.

In conclusion - If I want emotionally sub-normal cretins boring me with the minutiae of the hobbled, moribund detritus they optimistically refer to as lives - I have my friends. I spend so much time on the internet because I DON'T LIKE talking to them - So stop polluting my computer with this banal trite, dammit!!

--Apathy Jack