You've won the Internet. Where are you going to put it?
Not a day goes by that I don't look at social media and feel aggrieved. Lately this is mostly because my little clutch of hand-wringing liberal friends feels the need to point out the injustices of the world, graphically, relentlessly and joylessly. Luckily the photographs of boiled dogs that used to periodically show up from hard-core dog "truthers" seem to be on the decline, but the other day the first thing I saw on turning on the computer was a black and white photo of a man holding his daughter's hand. The little girl was not attached. It was a story about Colonialism in the Belgian Congo where, if the black workers didn't meet their rubber quotas, the supervisors would amputate the hands and feet of their families. This was only about a hundred years ago and the story, as it unfolded with many, many terrible pictures, was horrific. The next story was a news report about the President of the United States suggesting that a 75 year old man being pushed to the ground by a soldier in armour was an Antifa agent doing it on purpose to make the chap with the gun shoving him look bad. We don't know, said the President. We just don't know. After this were stories about Brazil stopping bothering with Covid 19 and just pretending it didn't exist, the government knowing a lot of people would die and not caring. And then our Government doing exactly the same thing but calling it "kick starting the economy". Primark opens today. Nazis are everywhere. Black people are being choked on the streets. People are ignoring the lockdown. There's going to be a massive recession. We're all going to die again and again and again and Julia Hartley Brewer is going to be making disparaging comments from a circling helicopter while we do it.
I read all of this without even the safety net of a cup of tea. I really get that we should be having these "conversations" but its relentless, like opening the curtains and being smacked in the face with a wet bag of shit over and over again. I don't really post any more - my usual gambits of "things that I see when I'm out and about" and "what film I'm watching" seem a bit facile in these days when man's indignity to man is getting heavy rotation. No one gives two furry, fiery shits that I'm enjoying "A Private Function" when the world is on fire at the end of the street. And frankly if you don't feed the machine the machine stops. My direct messages have dried up. My notifications are for people's birthdays or friends "adding to their stories". The stories usually display no evidence of being added to. Or even being stories.
Social media isn't a laugh. The memes are dank and there's the told-you-so triumphalism of posting newspaper articles about cunts being cunts, the paranoid anti-vacs hippies misspelling their fears, the unfunny satire, the invocation of Godwin's Law on the slightest pretext, the people saying "Okay Hivemind - quantity surveyors: GO!" And the devil's advocates, or possibly the devil's inadequates, as Satan himself would want to socially distance from these poltroons. You've seen these men - yes, it is always men - on social media. They will post nothing of their own opinions on their own pages but will haunt the pages of others, alighting like a shit brown moth upon seeing a serious infraction of logic they must attend to. Got a view? They hold another view. They favour logic, distance, rationalism - they are not emotionally engaged no matter how emotive the subject matter. Its a game, a puzzle, a toy. They care nothing for your personal investment in a subject, they are here only to argue the toss, all day if necessary. They have have the patience and stamina of a middle-aged serial killer. They often have the words "gonzo" or "hard knocks" in their bio. By these words may you know them. They have 133 friends on Facebook.
But as depressing and tiring as all that is - and it is, most assuredly the thrill has gone - that's not what pisses me off the most about social media. What pisses me off the most is people saying: "Congratulations! You've won the Internet!" And not just because they never say it to me. Though they do never say it to me. I mean I don't want them to say it to me - that would mean I was the sort of person who had friends who said "Congratulations! You've won the internet!" But I always look and see why they've won the internet. And its always rubbish.
People are winning the Internet with borrowed ideas, weak memes, and thumpingly on the nose satire. My own whinnets of sparkling magic go for nothing, but if you put Ricky Gervais' buffoonish General Zod face next to any witless truism he may or may not have said, he wanders off with the Internet gong. Again.
I'm reading The Chronicles of Hernia, Barry Cryer's unusually selfless autobiography which contains reams of comedy nuggets from everyone you've ever heard of in British comedy. And I'm reading it thinking "Well, I said three funnier things than that yesterday" and "Where is my Barry Cryer? When I die my top jokes will be lost in time, like tears in the rain." As will my pop culture references.
I am a ruby in the dust, a diamond in the rough, an emerald in the aisle, a sapphire in the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I'm an uncut gem looking for a mohel. The saddest thing in world is saying "I'm funny - here's why..." Never apologise, never explain - unless you can find ways to make apologising and explaining funny.
Maybe now is the time for stupid jokes. We seem to have lost nuance and sophistication. In a world of scrolling you don't get context or the luxury of deferred meaning. Its impossible to properly satirise Trump - you can only do an impression of him and hope he doesn't do the ridiculous thing you had him do in the morning by mid-afternoon. If you show someone saying a bad thing to indicate that they are a bad person and all people hear is the bad thing being said and assume you must also think that because, after all, you wrote it, then I think you're in trouble. People want hammer blows. They want it easy. It has to be digestible, in simple language and in primary colours. A spoonful of sugar helps the easily digestible pap go down.
Doesn't matter. I'll carry on - away from social media - writing funny things that I will generously explain to people who don't laugh. I will drily explain the minutiae of my comic invention until they submit. One sour, barked, hollow laugh is all I require. I will be the devil's advocate for myself.
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| Hang about...no...this is actually pretty bad isn't it? God...I'm so self involved... |
I read all of this without even the safety net of a cup of tea. I really get that we should be having these "conversations" but its relentless, like opening the curtains and being smacked in the face with a wet bag of shit over and over again. I don't really post any more - my usual gambits of "things that I see when I'm out and about" and "what film I'm watching" seem a bit facile in these days when man's indignity to man is getting heavy rotation. No one gives two furry, fiery shits that I'm enjoying "A Private Function" when the world is on fire at the end of the street. And frankly if you don't feed the machine the machine stops. My direct messages have dried up. My notifications are for people's birthdays or friends "adding to their stories". The stories usually display no evidence of being added to. Or even being stories.
Social media isn't a laugh. The memes are dank and there's the told-you-so triumphalism of posting newspaper articles about cunts being cunts, the paranoid anti-vacs hippies misspelling their fears, the unfunny satire, the invocation of Godwin's Law on the slightest pretext, the people saying "Okay Hivemind - quantity surveyors: GO!" And the devil's advocates, or possibly the devil's inadequates, as Satan himself would want to socially distance from these poltroons. You've seen these men - yes, it is always men - on social media. They will post nothing of their own opinions on their own pages but will haunt the pages of others, alighting like a shit brown moth upon seeing a serious infraction of logic they must attend to. Got a view? They hold another view. They favour logic, distance, rationalism - they are not emotionally engaged no matter how emotive the subject matter. Its a game, a puzzle, a toy. They care nothing for your personal investment in a subject, they are here only to argue the toss, all day if necessary. They have have the patience and stamina of a middle-aged serial killer. They often have the words "gonzo" or "hard knocks" in their bio. By these words may you know them. They have 133 friends on Facebook.
But as depressing and tiring as all that is - and it is, most assuredly the thrill has gone - that's not what pisses me off the most about social media. What pisses me off the most is people saying: "Congratulations! You've won the Internet!" And not just because they never say it to me. Though they do never say it to me. I mean I don't want them to say it to me - that would mean I was the sort of person who had friends who said "Congratulations! You've won the internet!" But I always look and see why they've won the internet. And its always rubbish.
People are winning the Internet with borrowed ideas, weak memes, and thumpingly on the nose satire. My own whinnets of sparkling magic go for nothing, but if you put Ricky Gervais' buffoonish General Zod face next to any witless truism he may or may not have said, he wanders off with the Internet gong. Again.
I'm reading The Chronicles of Hernia, Barry Cryer's unusually selfless autobiography which contains reams of comedy nuggets from everyone you've ever heard of in British comedy. And I'm reading it thinking "Well, I said three funnier things than that yesterday" and "Where is my Barry Cryer? When I die my top jokes will be lost in time, like tears in the rain." As will my pop culture references.
I am a ruby in the dust, a diamond in the rough, an emerald in the aisle, a sapphire in the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I'm an uncut gem looking for a mohel. The saddest thing in world is saying "I'm funny - here's why..." Never apologise, never explain - unless you can find ways to make apologising and explaining funny.
Maybe now is the time for stupid jokes. We seem to have lost nuance and sophistication. In a world of scrolling you don't get context or the luxury of deferred meaning. Its impossible to properly satirise Trump - you can only do an impression of him and hope he doesn't do the ridiculous thing you had him do in the morning by mid-afternoon. If you show someone saying a bad thing to indicate that they are a bad person and all people hear is the bad thing being said and assume you must also think that because, after all, you wrote it, then I think you're in trouble. People want hammer blows. They want it easy. It has to be digestible, in simple language and in primary colours. A spoonful of sugar helps the easily digestible pap go down.
Doesn't matter. I'll carry on - away from social media - writing funny things that I will generously explain to people who don't laugh. I will drily explain the minutiae of my comic invention until they submit. One sour, barked, hollow laugh is all I require. I will be the devil's advocate for myself.
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