In Search of Something
It's 11pm on Sunday evening, and I'm heading off over the horizon of the nearby internet in my trusty rowing boat (otherwise known as old PC in the junk room – affectionately known as “Trigger's Broom”). I'm off on a damn fool crusade to find interesting people to read – mostly caused by attempting to find anybody worth reading at Tumblr, and failing miserably.
Here's the thing (and quite a depressing thing it is too) – I think I may have already found nearly everybody worth reading at Tumblr already. Given the insular nature of the platform, and the propensity of a great many of the people there to re-cycle each other's content, if you spend long ehough there, you kind of find the edges of the community organically.
I guess half of it is my problem. I write a personal blog in much the same way that I did back when I first started over a decade ago. I just empty my thoughts into the keyboard, and hit the post button. Sure, I've had blogs all over the place, and I've been fooled into thinking one platform was better than another again and again – but I've used them all in the same way. I still see the internet as the same place it was in the mid 2000s, when blogging became a “thing” in the mass media, and everybody seemed to be writing. I remember writing a post towards the end of the 2000s questioning if blogging was dying – and several fellow bloggers begrudgingly agreeing with me.
But some of us are still here. And the fact that there are still at least a few of us still out here emptying our head somehow gives me hope. Hope that I will come to know one or two of them perhaps, and we'll have the opportunity to escape into the keyboard together from time to time, and avoid the real world for a few minutes every other day.
The internet has always been my escape. It probably always will be. Somewhere to go and hide when the real world becomes too noisy. Somewhere to run away, if only for a couple of hours now and again.
So yes – I've built my rowing boat, and I'm paddling like mad – trying to look cool as I approach the other boats I might spot along the way, and failing spectacularly. I'll wave enthusiastically, leave a comment, and then sit on my hands, wondering if they've read it – if they've clicked to go have a read of my rubbish – if we might one day be friends.
It's a funny thing, this internet. None of us really know each other, but in many ways we come to know each other more closely than any of the friends and family in our daily lives.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a boat to row.