Reasons I hate the internet - vol.666
“Come on hold my hand. I wanna contact the living”
It was a Sunday morning recently and before the expected rain showers of a weekend afternoon and I was listening to the radio whilst cooking breakfast when “Feel” by Robbie Williams was played and I of course disappeared into a wistful reverie for reasons we simply don’t have the time for.
Not today.
I could describe why a certain line in the song tears at my soul but I speak a language that no-one understands and so perhaps it’s for the best that only 15 people ever read the written language that tumbles from my daydreaming mind on Substack and less than half that number pretend to read anything I post on Medium, and it’s a pretty sad state of affairs if I’m completely honest with you and so I’ll wrap this all up fairly quickly and get out of your way. You’re busy, I get that. We all live more and more angst and dread filled “Calendated Lives” (copyright pending) and what with the “October Surprise” due any day now (my money’s on Keir Starmer being replaced as UK Prime Minister by Kamala Harris and no-one noticing) and then the elderly have the piss scared out of them at Halloween and the endless nightly fireworks will send, on average, around 15 cats and dogs clinically insane every night, and all this is before the grotesque spectacle of yet another (s)election in the American wing of the Evil Empire before weeks and weeks of bilge and balderdash on a pointless popularity contest and all the while you’ll be reminded that it’s Christmas soon, the holidays are coming, spend, consume, spend, consume, and other wings of the Evil Empire (tentacles?) will be carpet bombing and destroying vast swathes of mother earth (with bombs signed by so called “Politicians — isn’t that lovely?) and then it’s the new year again but don’t be too happy or pleased with yourself for the whole calendar events of your life starts again and, lest you forget, we’re on the brink of nuclear war with Russia for the 80th year in succession. You’re busy. I get that. I just have one other issue to get off my chest, and I’ll be out of your way.
A tale of two tweets
The originator for my ire in tweet number 1 may indeed read this article on Medium and if so, please don’t take this personally. It’s squarely my hatred of myself and the internet and how I despise myself because I let The Matrix of the internet affect me so. I needn’t really add anything to these images but fuck it, while we here, I may as well. It’s all about gaining an audience you may be saying sagely to yourself and you’d be right. But by Christ have I tried to get that “audience”, prostituting my written wares at every opportunity to the point whereby I may as well have walked the neighbourhood streets screaming “PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE BUY MY BOOKS!”. Luckily for all concerned, and cats and dogs the world over not traumatised by the nightly fireworks rocketing into the sky, I didn’t, but that vaunted audience has in fact decreased the more I publish and if that isn’t the reason for finally giving up and going insane and trying to stop the tide from coming in at my local beach then nothing ever will. Apart from the scumbags on Instagram and Facebook trying to “sell” me a ready made audience (and making me feel even fucking worse for my abject failure at having to read these robotic cut and pasted offers of utter dog shit, probably from a bot account too, because if I was anywhere near successful in selling my books I wouldn’t have to be read this fucking nonsense against every one of my posts that luckily, no-one ever reads anyway but still…) I’ve posted tens of articles in support of my books (and other works) and Twitter ignores me, my family on Facebook believe the black sheep has finally gone over the edge into full blown insanity, and Instagram tries to sell me “pyramid schemes for pyramid dreams” (also copyright pending).
Rather than audience the word “compete” comes to my mind, and how can I compete with the vastly superior read numbers and comments against a single article on cricket (when I’ve written hundreds and turned them into three books from four decades of sporting love and near on 1,000 pages of my finest written prose) or indeed the experiment I conducted on Friday whereby I posted a picture of a plastic bottle top still affixed to the bottle (because here in the UK we’re treated like 7 year old children and we can’t be trusted to recycle the top AND the bottle in our lifetime battle to save an earth that doesn’t need saving because we’re a rock spinning gently through an unknowable infinity in the vastness of outer space we can never truly and utterly comprehend and don’t be scared by the nightly terrors spewed into your eyeballs about wars of conquest around the world as we bomb fellow humans with bombs signed by psychopaths but hey, don’t forget to recycle!) and I received exactly the number of likes or re-tweets I expected, namely zero. This my friends is the current topic of our times here in the UK! The frustration of having to deal with a plastic top deliberately now intended to remain firmly on the bottle. Boy you should just feel the heightened sense of injustice this has provoked on Shakespeare’s Sceptred Isle! The level of outrage is so palpable that by simply posting a picture of the said bottle top still attached to the bottle (as I did on Friday on Twitter) this ensures a tidal wave of likes and re-tweets. You are the King (or Queen) of the world! You’ve hit the roulette wheel with your favourite number and your phone is currently vibrating to an uncontrollable beat as the world tells you how funny and clever you are.
You’ve beaten the system! You’ve passed “Go”.
Now collect the crumbs from the master’s table.
I posed a question above and I seem to have veered away on dangerous tangents and if I haven’t, I soon will, so let’s answer the question in regard to competing and we can all go about our lives once more. The answer, plainly, is I can’t compete, I haven’t competed, and I never fucking will. These are just two facile examples I can be bothered with highlighting as the rain has finally arrived in middle England on a recent Sunday afternoon after listening to “Feel” by Robbie Williams and I’m thinking of telling God my plans, and I feel she’ll only laugh.
When I started publishing the books I’m about to shamelessly promote once more I had this pipe dream that a publisher might buy or read one of my books, be intrigued to read another and then offer me a deal of some kind to be my sole publisher or a deal for further books. It’s a pipe dream of the 1980’s as I have no real concept for the real world of today and whether this is still a “thing” any more. Sure I’ve self-published nine books but now? Well I’m an actual published author with a publisher and/or promoter don’t you know! Fuck my literary hero Hunter S Thompson and his American Dream, I have my own, and it’s kind of come true. I am a published author!
And I am and I’m not, despite the images that follow.
But who’s to know whether I am or not when I can’t compete with a single article on cricket or the inferno of rage building on Twitter because we’re not trusted with removable bottle tops on plastic bottles?
The answer is I can’t and I haven’t and I hate the internet for making me hate myself even more than I could possibly dare imagine.
The last time I wrote an article such as this was because someone had read an article of mine, commented, liked, etc, and when I went to reciprocate the only article on their profile was a brief recipe for a cheesecake which had such a voluminous amount of reads and comments it was laughable when in comparison to mine.
Beaten, smashed to smithereens in the Matrix Game of Life, by an article for a cheesecake recipe!
How long, O Lord? How long?
Thanks for reading whatever that was. I’m off to try and stop the tide coming in at my local beach akin to a modern day King Canute. Here’s a hat-trick of mighty fine books on the grand old game of cricket if you’re interested and have ventured this far down an article that started badly, gradually got worse before disappearing in a puff of pixie dust at the end.
"Ashes to Ashes" - link to Amazon
"The Spirit of Cricket" - link to Amazon
"Tea and Biscuits in India" - link to Amazon