Ask Me, Ask Me.

Just scanned Facebook and zilch, nothing, well nothing of personal consequence, just reposts of video clips, pics of babies, growing numbers of ‘Suggested posts’ ie ads and Upworthy clutter etc. It all makes a hand written message on the back of a postcard look like the best advance in social networking since sliced bread. Yet I scan FB daily, almost compulsively, to supposedly keep in touch with friends. Well fuck ‘em they’re too boring. Which is of course not true, they’re fun, interesting, articulate and provoking in real life; it’s social networking that’s boring. So now like some druggie when the drugs don’t work I still scan it for the merest glimmer of consequence; a habit best forgotten. And then there’s Twitter the ultimate cognitive froth, micro splashes in a stream of consciousness best not even thought let alone written down because thinking on that superficial level is the jerky death throws of a headless chicken. To follow someone on Twitter is pointless because by the time you’ve read what they’re thinking they’ve changed their mind. And then there’s Ask.fm where the only difference is by the time you’ve read it they’ve changed your mind, and usually not in a good way. There is no real connection in text. A woman I knew finally met the author of several of her most loved books and found him an absolute arrogant shit. He was just a good writer. And curiously there is no anonymity in text either. One only has to imagine receiving an anonymous personal message saying, “I will destroy you!” One doesn’t think ‘ah interesting words on paper from I know not who’, one is struck by a sort of universality from not knowing who, it could be anybody, and not lessened by considerations that ‘it could be a joke, they might be drunk.’ Sure they might be but we, particularly the insecure, will always be drawn to its more sinister implications exactly because our brain is set up to protect us and focus on what is most threatening. If you ask me ‘social networking’ is a perfect example of doublethink, it can exist as being what it isn’t by one assuming it is being what it is. So go on ask me, ask me.