12 years of writing on the internet and a soul destroying waste of time
Mr Failure wails into the void
Anniversaries are a strange creature to tame aren’t they? Do you celebrate them? Perhaps have a moment’s reflection and move on? Mourn the loss of a loved one and wish they’d still make that damn telephone glued into your hand ring with a welcoming caller identification rather than a bored twenty something in a call centre trying to sell you a pyramid scheme full of pyramid dreams? The anniversary of a house move maybe and into the house you now own years later? Wedding day memories to celebrate? The birth of your first child and, let’s be honest here , your REAL favourite offspring? Perhaps it’s the anniversary of making a life changing decision to leave a job and start up on your own, the master or mistress of your own ship sailing the seven seas of life, maybe even for love, and all within the often dark walls in the void of the internet Matrix?
Is this man going to continue asking largely rhetorical questions?
Yes as a matter of fact I am, probably, and it’s almost certainly a contributing factor to my continuing anonymity in the market place of ideas that clearly doesn’t want my ideas and nor for that matter a man who poses his own rhetorical questions as well as fucking answering them.
There’s no place for this man in this brave new electrical world.
Returning to anniversaries and away from pointless rhetorical questions, I listen to a radio show and now internet podcast that today celebrates its 10 year anniversary. It’s a left leaning, somewhat radical show with music thrown in for good measure and considering the host is a Manchester United fan it’s not half bad! I’ve listened since its inception and to the host even before that when he had a previous show on a different network before going solo with his own show and now, 10 years later, here he is celebrating a rather important and indeed emotional anniversary. Between Stevie Wonder and “Happy Birthday” opening the show and “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton closing it I reflected, as I prepared this morning’s cooked breakfast of bacon, sausages, beans and mushrooms (with lashings of tea thrown in for good measure) that it’s 12 years to the month (give or take) since I began writing in earnest on the internet, and it’s all been a complete waste of non-existent fucking time.
Let me explain before I start posing some more rhetorical questions.
Since day one I’ve always regarded my writing as a proud singular creation. I am my own audience, my own editor, and if it passes the smell test for both, my writing is published. For good or ill. I write, incredibly narcissistically, for me, and in the main to stop the black dog of depression howling incessantly at the moon, full or not. My words. My creation. My style. I started writing exclusively on film and specifically on the entire careers of favourite directors and as individual collected works they run at anywhere between 20 and 50 minute reads and many tens of thousands of gushing words of praise. What started as a vanity project and something to occupy a fracturing and breaking mind in 2012 morphed into something altogether new in 2020 and a couple of years later still a personal project that excited me like no other: turning my writing into self-published books. Two years later and to bring us all up to date: I have 7 e-books and 9 published books for sale on Amazon. So far, so much a success story, right?
Right?
Oops, there goes another of those pesky rhetorical questions. So my Blogger account became my Medium account became my Substack account and through the magic of some dancing fingers as the rain teems down the window panes of a mid September Sunday in the beating heart of the English midlands you get a 12 year anniversary of writing on the internet, from obsessive film fan to crying into the wilderness in 2020, a determined drive to see my writing (my writing) in print, in a published book, copies of which sit proudly on my shelf and, depending on my mood, give me a reason to be damn proud of myself or hating the deranged weirdo who lives within my own skin, and 12 years of writing on the internet that has passed everyone by, a fart in a hurricane of despair. 12 years of fairly encouraging readership numbers on Blogger to the death suck that is Medium (aside from one kindly Canadian) and, to bring us all up to date once more, 21 (count ‘em!) 21 subscribers on Substack.
Makes the heart sing doesn’t it?
So from Blogger to Medium to Substack, here are the “scores on the doors” for 12 years of writing on the internet as per the reading categories in my library on Medium. It’s easier to use these bulk examples rather than Substack but every single article noted here appears within my SS account too:
“Reading List” — 131 articles of general interest that won’t fit into the categories that follow
“Liverpool FC” — 203 articles past and present on the greatest football team in the world. Sometimes.
“UK Travel” — 226 articles full to the brim of short stories, reminiscences and diary entries from local towns, cities, villages and hamlets visited in central England with accompanying images capturing more than a little of the essence for the world history crammed into a 50 mile radius of our collective human heritage.
“Film” — 538 collected articles from my earliest days in 2012 and the opus articles on the films directed by Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton and the Coen Brothers (my first 3 real, honest to goodness blog articles) through to the present day and spoiler free reviews of films in this calendar year or “blasts from the past” watched again and reappraised with cinematic love. Well over 200 films are now paired with my Youtube channel, also celebrating a first year anniversary and, like the remainder of my life within the internet, alone, cold and dead in its anonymity.
“Existentialism” — 27 articles on, well, existentialism, kind of, and a whole host of rhetorical questions and a poking in the eye of life.
“Book Promotions” — 119 articles on how bloody magnificent my books are.
“Television” — 21 articles on TV series ancient and modern that have taken and pleased my critical eye.
“Social Media” — 19 articles, mostly entitled “Twitter Watch” where I poke fun at myself as well as the madhouse that surrounds me on Twitter.
“Cricket” — 133 total articles covering two Ashes series between England and Australia as well as England’s tours to the West Indies, Pakistan, New Zealand and India. Day by Day narrations of the cricket but mostly daily journals of my life to colour the (boundary) edges around the grand old game. Now in the form of three self-published books too.
“Creative Writing” — 37 articles of largely free form writing and multiple mini-series style stories of characters I play around with from time to time.
“Music Appreciation” — 12 articles largely on the albums of The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and Radiohead.
“World Cup 2022” — 28 articles that became 28 chapters in my first ever self-published book “Diary of the 2022 FIFA World Cup”.
“Baseball” — 19 articles on America’s pastime. I must write more on this passion of mine. Maybe I will. Next season.
“Portsmouth FC” — 15 articles and a season by season breakdown in the fortunes of my home city’s football team and all via my childhood scrapbooks. A real treasure trove for fans of the “Pompey” Blues. See also the dozen or so similar articles from my scrapbooks on Liverpool Football Club.
So we have a grand total of 1,506 articles but let’s be conservative and, for the purposes of mathematics, rule out 506 of these articles due to either duplication or cross promotion (film) and the areas of baseball, football and music not fully explored. 1,000 articles spread roughly:
Film (40%)
Travel (25%)
Liverpool FC (20%)
Creative Writing/Existentialism/Social Media (15%)
OK not a particularly broad church but I’d guess four of the internet’s prime topics for discussion (film/travel/sport/social media) plus I naturally touch upon politics, life, family, children, the internet Matrix and free form fictional prose along the way too. My articles are all professionally presented (or at least I like to believe so) and where travel is concerned, a blur of real life images captured in the moment and presented along with whatever narrative I have in mind for that particular article. I also write every article as though someone is reading it and I try to personalise it in a way of perhaps persuading that same someone to buy a book or subscribe or follow or even, dare I admit, bloody engage with it and with me! All articles are thrown to the winds of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube as well as many of the hashtags and tags you’d expect and perhaps use yourself within Medium or Substack. I have a new found friend and someone who appreciates my writing on Substack who I shall thank, along with everyone else, at the end of this article, but I privately lamented to this person recently (a secret agent in the employ of Justin Trudeau’s Canadian Government is my best guess) that I’ve “blitzed” (my term) blitzed Substack since joining a year or so ago and, well, 21 subscribers is fucking laughable isn’t it? I’d also venture “pitiful” (a favourite word of my dear old Mum), “shameful”, “lamentable” and quite frankly plain old “pointless” and a pointless waste of pointless time.
The aim of the game is another word: “audience”, and I’m well aware of that. But if I’ve tried everything (apart from coming to your house and screaming “PLEASE READ MY HEARTFELT WRITING ON TWO SWANS WHO I BELIEVE HAVE MURDERED ANOTHER SWAN AND BURIED IT UNDER THE SHINGLE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER!”) and I seemingly have tried everything, so what next?
You’d get the above joke about the swans if you read my previous writing(s).
But nobody ever does.
So yet again I’m on the brink of giving up (and not just on writing — life is utterly intolerable at the best of times) but let’s finish with a few more rambling musings and perhaps even the odd rhetorical question or three. Let’s start with the majority of my written internet scribblings shall we and the topic of film? Using the above conservative mathematics I’ve penned 400 articles on a wide variety of films, genres and the directors who’ve brought these cinematic beauties to our collective screens, cinema big or home styled to suit your size satisfaction. I’ve used the appropriate bloody hashtags and promoted each and every one of these articles to the wider void of the internet and, incredible rare comments aside, nothing. Never have I been asked to submit any of my hundreds of articles to a film publication on Medium, a horrible place awash in such “publications”.
Never.
On my better days I wonder if they’re scared of the competition. In my more regular darker moments I want to tell them they’re sucking off the backs of others work and why don’t they just go and fuck themselves.
The same friendly juxtaposition can be found within my travel articles. No stock photos of the Taj Mahal or “7 reasons to visit Egypt” or AI generated claptrap written in blunt crayon by a 9 year old who can’t spell and who clearly has never visited Egypt. No, just generalised garbage either spewed out by chatgpt or, arguably worse still, just copied and pasted rubbish from the internet passed off as their own writing. Medium is again awash in such utter bilge and I fervently pray the perpetrators (and there are many thousands so give it time) but I hope these grifters are chased into dark alleyways by gangs of feral children and beaten on the kidneys until they piss blood for six months straight. They’re pissing in our gene pool, and the water could do with a stronger red colouring as a deterrent to others to perhaps engage their own brains and write from the heart rather than chasing the pyramid dreams of someone else’s pyramid schemes.
My travel articles, on the other hand, are full of images taken by me, in the moment, at the site of these historical and heritage filled places of human interest, and all wrapped around music, anecdotes, a short story, a silly story about killer swans or old fashioned sweets or an old time festival on the banks of a river in a picture postcard world or, in previous summers, the canals, rivers, waterways, cathedrals, churches and centuries old ruins that pockmark the great central English county in which I live.
Response from the wider world? Someone may as well have spit in my eye.
It would arguably have been kinder.
No invites from Medium “publications” to publish my articles within their respective travel houses of fun either. Presumably they don’t fancy having the competition.
We’ll gloss over the love and life, memories and stories wrapped around social media and existentialism and finish with my sporting love of Liverpool Football Club.
Here’s a (rhetorical) question for you:
How many genuine Liverpool fans have contacted me during the past 3 years via my 203 articles and 2 self-published books on those oh so Mighty Reds of worldwide footballing fame? How many actual Liverpool fans have commented on my articles something akin to “Alright lad! (they say “lad” a lot in Liverpool). Alright lad! (they also say the shortened “la” too) Alright la! Brilliant article mate! Used to go the match (they say “go the match” in Liverpool) but haven’t done since the late 1990’s. Too many children and divorces la, you know what I mean? Ha! Good to see the Reds challenging again. Anfield looks a picture now and so different to when I used to go every week. So many away games too. Barely missed a game throughout the 1980’s and most of the 90’s. Great time to be a Red la! The books look interesting. I’ll try and persuade the kids to buy it for my birthday. Take it easy lad. You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Care to hazard a guess at how many times even a fragment of this fan conversation has taken place after I’ve posted over 200 articles on Liverpool and two widely promoted self-published books?
Would it surprise you to find out this has never happened, nothing even remotely like it?
So what gives here? 85% or 850 articles concerning major internet topics such as film, travel and one of the top 5 football brands IN THE WORLD, have garnered me a gale force gust of wind and a whole lot of tumbleweed.
Bit sad really, isn’t it?
So I watch on with green eyed jealousy as real writers on Substack gain real readers and numbers I can only attain in a ratio of one of their articles to a whole year’s worth of mine. And I watch with ever growing fury at the cut and paste generation of swine swindling and grifting their way to a few crumbs in their pursuit of Mammon via other people’s words (or AI garbage spewed from chatgpt) all whilst chasing, and trying to sell, their own pyramid dreams and crooked pyramid schemes. My writing, my crazy heart and soul ramblings and musings, are beaten into submission by a load of white dogshit even a child would be ashamed to say was their own creation.
Bit sad really, isn’t it?
So thank you David and thank you to a secret agent in the pay of Justin Trudeau’s totalitarian Canadian Government. Thank you John, Mark, another Marc (with a c) and whilst I wish there was a Luke and a Matthew to round off my biblical quadrilogy, there’s a “Marshie” and a “Brother Andy” (who isn’t my brother) and there may in fact be a Matthew but we rarely speak these days and I rather think he would worry for me and what has become of me. To steal from the late, great Bill Hicks I’m a “shadow of my former shell” these days which is both a wild understatement as well as being a shock to many people within my previous camp of friends and family. You see, the black sheep of the family and friend tree has written and published nine books, all for sale on Amazon, one after the other they’ve tumbled from this rogue agent of theirs and onto and into the void of the internet. He’s a published author they might say, even a show off who seems to have taken yet another direction in his life, gone it alone, found his raison d’être at last, become a writer.
I always knew he would.
Yet I can count my “readers” on the fingers on two hands, which is less than the years I’ve been writing and less than the total sum of books I have for sale.
Bit sad really, isn’t it?
Send word.
Thanks for reading. Bit of a rough one eh? Ho Ho! Anyway, here’s some books I heartily recommend written by a flawed and disillusioned human being, adrift from his own island and screaming “WILSON! I’M SORRY!” at a rogue volleyball as it drifts slowly out of sight.
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
"Ashes to Ashes" - link to Amazon
"A final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Stephen, I want you to know that you were one of the first, if not the first reader to read one of my articles here on Substack, and I am forever grateful. I tune in to your newsletter as often as I can, and what I see makes my day. I want you to know that despite the lack of numbers that you want, you have one person in your corner who was inspired by your relentless resilience. Thank you for inspiring me.
I like your movie reviews.
Your a Brit. Suffering is what you do. Dont fight it.
If you want to be happy, move to Queensland.