Who? Lol. Smiley face.

 You know who I don't want to hear from?  The British public. In that I'm the opposite of every magazine program, news bulletin, online periodical and podcast. They want your unqualified opinions, they need to feed off your hot takes, to guzzle up all the stuff "you reckon". I don't know why. I genuinely don't. 

This is not me. Honest. 

People prefer to insult and disparage on-line. They dissociate and dehumanise. Thinking someone is an arsehole and telling them, is somehow easier and more fun than liking or admiring them. It tickles our little lizard brains in areas too primitive to even process pleasure. The feeling of being part of a mob, of savaging some lonely, unlucky weakling certainly predates* humanity. It's been lurking in our little grey cells for a very long time. 

That suits journalism. Somehow clicks equate to money. People piling on to put the boot in is a kind of audience, after all. The fine art of milking the mob. It's democracy in action. People have to have their say. They know their rights. 

I've had enough. I'm not at home to the below-the-line commentariate. It's not even the poorly spelled attempts at cruelty, it's the sheer witlessness of it all. I once read the comments beneath the obituary of a well loved novelist in a national newspaper, and among the heartfelt expressions of grief a woman had drifted in and written "never heard of him. lol"  and swanned off again. Her account wasn't even anonymous - she was spreading the joy with her given name attached. And she wouldn't have even thought about it. Unless someone is looking to specifically target you, the internet is a consequence-free playground, and thoughtlessness the basest coin in the currency. 

Where's all this coming from, John? Surely no one has been mean to you on-line? Oh, you've seen through my tissue paper facade. I recently wrote a blog about how sad I was seeing my family home for the last time. I was back in Basingstoke for a funeral, and went over to the old gaff to have a look round the suddenly enormous, empty rooms. The house looked tatty with neglect, and I took a few photos and made a few notes, pouring those notes into a blog practically unedited. There were a few stray adverbs. Some of it skewed purple. But it was heartfelt and sad and the pictures were quite good. My brother shared it on social media, and a few people were kind about it. But one man wasn't. One man appeared from nowhere to tell me - and I'm quoting - it was "a shawl of bollocks". 

A shawl of bollocks. 

I mean, that isn't even a thing is it? That's not wordplay, that's not an artful puncturing of my pretension - possibly justified in this case.  No, it's a stupid man saying something stupid, stupidly. The visual image alone is nightmarish. Granny's lavender scented house cloak heaving with swollen pink testes? Thanks for that image, bloke from Twitter with 27 followers. Haunting. And yet visceral. Veiny. 

He's not obliged to like the sentimental rot I've written. He's not invested in a hundred year old house in Hampshire, and my being sad about visiting it for the last time. He's got his own thing going on - being rude to strangers on the internet. It's a noble and very fashionable pursuit. It's very now. Should I be honoured that out of the virtually infinite content on social media, he plucked me for abuse? I am. I feel special. I feel seen. Finally. 

Should I be disappointed then that his comment was so shit? Frankly, yes. It's slightly galling. A wasted effort, like taking a soft cock to the orgy. Which I'm certain he would if he were ever invited. "A shawl of bollocks". I am not cut to the quick. There's nothing of me in the insult. It's just another example of careless crassness, of kicking a stranger because they're already down. Lazy, boring, and lacking wit and style. An unflushed dump in pub toilet - it's someone else's problem now. Leaving that cubicle with a big smile on your face. Wash your hands? Hell no, you've got texting to do. 

And that's it. That's the end of the blog. I've done 365 of these now - one for every day of the year. Like 12 advent calendars all in a row. Most of them are well over a thousand words long but if you take each one as a thousand - a very conservative estimate - it's 365,000 words long. That's three long novels. I must be mental. You could pick one of these blogs random and it would be a layer cake of truth, sadness and puckish humour. It's a shame this one had to be so sour and reactionary. But the British public have pushed me too far, with their access to the same technology I use to disseminate my every last thought, unbidden. 

I am a member of the British Public, it is true. But my pledge to you is that I will never foist my thoughtless, glib nonsense on a stranger's heartfelt - admittedly over-written - outpouring of grief. I've never done it and I never will. Unless it's really late at night, I'm drunk, and something unrelated has made me really angry. Let the shit posting fly...**

*This is a pun on the notion of something coming from an earlier time than another thing, but also the idea of a predator predating a prey animal. Yeah, it's not just thrown together, is it? 

**This last bit is a joke. I'd like to be able to trust people to get that this last bit is a joke and, in fact, a pointed comment on the original troll, but it's the internet where irony is not often recognised or enjoyed. So I can't. Sorry.