Hair Rebels

 I seem to have stopped posting on Facebook. I didn't intend to. I just stopped posting one day, and I haven't posted since. And the peace is remarkable. I mean I'd been stuck in the house for a year, sat at the same table, looking out of the same window. That's all I've done. The fact that I'd been able to post anything at all was remarkable. You can always spout off about politics into the howling chasm, so I did that. I have a podcast that no one else is selling, so I advertised that. (it doesn't work - no one wants to listen to my podcasts. It is, apparently, a fucking effort to listen to me telling you stories). But by the end I was mainly posting the name of the film I was watching, which wasn't massively interesting, or I was attempting jokes. 

I wrote a lot of jokes last year in my capacity as the head writer (only writer) of Zoomlanders - the online satirical animation that was slightly better than the Spitting Image reboot, but sadly out-manned and out-gunned in a world that is far beyond satire. Satire is inherently conservative - it works on a shared understanding of fixed positions which it then gently upsets. It uses comic exaggeration, generating ludicrous conclusions based on agreed first principles. It tweaks tics, stretches style, it places a frame around idiocy and high-lights ruptures in convention. For satire to work there has to be consensus, a social contract. To write satire in a global pandemic, in the jaws of Brexit at a time where the President of the United States commits an act of treason against both his country and the idea of democracy, shows how woolly and toothless satire is. It changes nothing and it doesn't want to change anything, because it needs the machine to kick against. A satirist is like a "hair rebel" at a public school: his hair touches his collar, which flouts the rules but does very little damage to the institution that surrounds him and nurtures him. We live in a world where truth no longer exists, so you can now say anything and it has no more weight than any other lie. We're farting into the oncoming storm. 

And, of course, I'm not funny. I was in a group chat with the Zoomlanders team and it became fairly obvious that they all thought I was the least funny member of the team, despite my being the writer of all the episodes. 

I was living through social media and I was expecting things from it, things it couldn't deliver: like friendship or human connection. That's not what its good at. What it's good at is showing you the same seven posts all day, trying to sell you things that look like the things you recently purchased on Amazon and divisive political commentary, so you can feel enraged and engaged all the time. Its also a fantastic format for people to set up dummy accounts to send you anonymous abuse. Thanks for that. 

It has also been very useful over the last year. But I think a year in a room with it is too much. We're on a break, Facebook. Its not me its you. 

Twitter is worse. And I don't even Insta. So, fuck it. 

In other, unrelated and therefore good news, Susan is due to receive her second jab tomorrow. She will be well, as she is a designated useful person. I'm very relieved. By the time I get mine I will probably be in a vulnerable age group.  

After March, then.