'POGs', they were rather exciting for roughly 3 days weren't they? You recall I'm sure, small cardboard disks featuring a caricature of a hirsute caveman and a thicker plastic disk that you used to topple stacks of...oh, alright about 3 minutes then. Well what about 'Furby'? They were so popular housewives were beating the living piss out of each other in toy shops so that their screaming offspring might cease their pained wailings until the next hot release of ammo was shoe horned into their playground artillery. Marginally entertaining for half an hour at Christmas time until a cockeyed uncle pointed out that it resembled a babbling female pudenda, adding an extra five minutes of guffaws before the gathered family turned their attention to a dog hurtling down the street with a man's underpants between it's teeth.
'Tamagotchi', a plastic egg containing a virtual friend whom requires an inordinate amount of attention; essentially a prototype Myspace.
How about 'Twitter', everyone remember that? Exceptionally popular for about 18 months before people came to the conclusion that they could now NEVER, EVER, EVER escape the banality and absolute mind crushing nonsense of their friends, their friends' friends and people who don't even exist. At the end of it all people woke up to the fact that they were reading snippets of dreary bullshit from every item on Earth that could possibly advertise something that no one will ever need.
I signed up to 'Twitter', don't look for me I'm no longer there.
I was genuinely intrigued to find out why so much news coverage has been dedicated (see 'wasted') to something so flaccid; I lasted roughly five and a half minutes.
In five and a half minutes I could have made and drank a cup of tea / glued and undercoated a 'Games Workshop' figurine / said a prayer / done 600 sit-ups / enjoyed sexual intercourse...twice.
But no, I spent that time on 'Twitter'. Not setting up my account, but experiencing the soup-brained dullness of it. I quickly found someone I knew and 'followed' them (or whatever creepy verb they assign to it) and soon I had people 'following' me, people who I have done my utmost to avoid as I find their personalities so fucking draining I'd happily sit in a bath tub full of my own Mother's blood as I tattooed swastikas onto my face with a rat's fang rather than converse with them.
My ex-girlfriend was on there.
"Wow" I asked myself "I wonder what nuggets of sublime information she shall lay on me!"
Now, I'm not a bully so I won't bother pulling anyone to pieces in public, but let's just say it was less than holding. So what else can I do? Well, I tried to find Stephen Fry, just to see if he got out of that lift OK, but then I thought why the fuck should I?
Essentially it's a tool invented to make the ordinariness of everyday life seem as glamorous as that of a Hollywood starlet or a Formula One racing car driver, yet where an actress may write something along the lines of "Well, what can I say? I had to tell Spielberg 'No! remove your tumescence from 'neath my skirt at once!' And he was just swift enough, as nay a second later Stephen Fry alighted from the elevator, wild eyed and pissed to the gills!" your common-or-garden 'Twitter' user might inform us of their bewitching decision between a boiled egg breakfast or a can of Skol.
In truth no one could give one solitary fuck about what you are doing every second of the day and you in turn really don't want to be informing people about how dismal your existence is:
"I'm on the 38 bus, I'm doing this from my phone!"
"I was on the 38 earlier, is it still busy?"
"Not really, where you on the same one as me?"
"I don't know"
"It's stopping at a bus stop"
"Yeah, it did that when I was on it"
"Are you still getting my messages OK? I went under a bridge"
"Yep, still getting them"
"What you doing now?"
"Just letting the gas from the oven leak into my lungs, seems like a fun idea".
You may question my disdain for 'Twitter' as I write and update my blog, but there is a universe of difference, the first and most important being that I can write as much as I wish on here, create sentences that last for record shattering time and riff wildly upon a single subject, whereas on 'Twitter' you are chained to a limit of 140 words. On here I'm not in conversation with anyone, I'm drafting (albeit frivolous) thoughts and diatribes; on there the thoughts you may draft are merely mild brain farts.
And why are the majority of people on there right now farting away? Because they read that they should get involved with it, with this revolutionary new concept that will forever change the way we live our lives, no one wants to be left behind because if it's in the papers then you're already too late aren't you? Because remember, it was those same papers that printed ream upon ream of articles about 'Tamogotchi', 'Furby' and 'POGs'. They weren't telling the public about the new craze, they were too busy INVENTING the new craze in their very publications.
Well fuck the papers, fuck the news, fuck bite sized pieces of non intellect, fuck wasting your precious time, fuck popular culture, fuck Stephen Fry and fuck my ex-girlfriend, if you're so enamored with your own lives write an autobiography, sit down and take time out of this mortal coil to draft an exquisite tome of lush verse and page turning intensity, because it wont be long until we're expressing our love to each other through the medium of thumb typed messages whilst snuggled up on the sofa. Some of us are well versed in this digital fucktopia already.
"Daddy, what did you do in the 'Twitter' days?"
"I sat on top of a skyscraper with a book and a bag of sandwiches and watched the Earth burn while everyone stared at their thumbs".
Get out there and fuck someone.
Lts of xoxox T
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