Friday, September 11, 2015

Same old new silence

Not a day goes by i don't get the annoyingly amusing “Why don't you reply?”—mainly through online comments. The irony in replying to someone explaining why i don't reply beats me. Besides, i'm feeling too old for this shit now where i'm expected to explain my actions/inactions. Especially when the whole idea was to be online without giving a crap about who thought how about what. Thankfully, i've continued to post whatever i felt like sharing be it on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or WhatsApp. I'm not answerable to anyone and vice versa. At least that's what i maintain from my end. Some days ago, somebody messaged me saying that i could have gained a lot more followers had i bothered to converse on timeline. Apparently, it's good for one's image! I thought about that for a bit and it actually made sense. People who got addicted to Social Media years after i did are far more influential than i'll ever be. Apparently, i've created a snobbish image for myself. And that's something i fail to understand. How is a person who is not bothering you AT ALL a snob? Shouldn't it be the other way around? People expecting complete strangers to interact with them as if it's a birthright should be considered snobbish, shouldn't they? Anyway, i don't really care who calls whom what. I must admit though that my style of expression has changed a bit. I don't try to be funny. I'm so much more comfortable in being random nowadays. In fact, i'm convinced that humour is the curse of our generation. Everybody is expected to be hilarious all the time that it's not funny anymore! I'd rather prefer to be morose and stark. Life is like that. A few gobs of alcohol or a gust of smoke can't change that. Sorry. I understand humans better than most of those breathing around me. Just that i'm not manipulative enough. About three years ago, i wrote a blog post on similar lines and I can tell you that the change in tone has nothing to do with the fact that my hair is greying at a phenomenal rate but because after a point, you really don't give a fuck. After a point, you don't check your mentions or google your name or check the stats on which lame tweet performed well. You do so despite fully understanding that you're just fading away leaving behind a digital footprint with the potential to embarrass. Coming back to the original question, it's not true that i don't reply. I do. The only difference i don't create an unnecessary scene out of it. People have conversations on the timeline with the sole intention of upping each other in terms of wit, if not insults. It's a show business with no money rolling. The timeline is a stage and everybody's performing. I used to do that back in 2010. That was then. As of now, i do have an open DM. So anybody who's desperately dying to talk to me can message me so that we can converse like civilized people usually do—privately. But seldom does anybody do that. Everybody wants to have a freak show on the timeline, not a decent conversation where thoughts are exchanged. Maybe that's why i never receive DMs asking me “Why don't you reply?” ending with an emoji. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed reading this. I know I'll never be as funny on a timeline as I am in my head, so I really don't try. I agree with keeping most conversations private, both for the reasons you state, and also because I like my twitter TL to be largely an expression of my random thoughts and writing fragments. There's a certain aesthetic purity to it. If an exchange goes on for more than a tweet I take it to dm.