Wadde Hadde Dudde Da?

I am sick of the internet.

Actually, that's quite a heavy statement, so let's clarify. I have been pottering about on MySpace for quite a while now, probably something like 18 months, and perhaps the novelty has started to pall a little. It is quite easy to get started on building a network, really very easy. all you need to do is search a few pages, drop a few comments, and away you go. It's a bit like internet dating - if anyone replies, you can start a conversation, and who knows what will arise from it. Unlike internet dating, you probably will get a reply eventually. That is a subject for seperate bitterness, and I may go into it later.

The thing is, if you are successful in building your network, you have to maintain it. And I find that after an initial series of comments like "lk yr vid of burning nun, ROFLMAO", the initial rush of happiness at finding a new friend subsides. So it's fairly inevitable that of 80-odd friends, you will end up talking regularly to no more than five of them. That has happened. But, finding new friends was not quite why I was on MySpace, at least, not once I had.

I like blogging, you see. I in fact think I might be quite good at it. I was always crap at most of the fun things at school. I preferred English lessons to football, and thought that backies on a BMX were probably more dangerous than useful. I never aspired to popularity, preferring to have a small number of good friends I could rely on rather than a huge circle of loose associates who, if I was lucky, would remember my name.

Happily, this didn't lead to being one of the differently interesting kids at the edge of the school field who talked to themselves and directed their energies to plans of bloody revenge. I would instead sit in the middle of the field talking bollocks with a number of likeminded souls and avoiding the footballs that would fly towards us every six minutes. Not as many girls as I would have liked, but there you go. Being able to quote the dialogue to Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail turned out to be less alluring that I thought it was. In such a fashion I passed thirteen years of education, substituting the 6th Form Centre for the grassy field during the last two years.

So what does that have to do with blogging? Well, I was beginning to wonder myself, until I was called away from the computer for a couple of minutes, which jarred me back to what it was I was actually talking about. The point is, MySpace is bad for good writing. Partly it's the site itself, which is horrendously badly coded to begin with, and then riddled afterwards with poorly written HTML page pimps and stuffed with bandwidth-gobbling YouTube films. Click on any page, and the chances are it'll take a good three days to load properly and be unreadbly sparkly once it does. I have an OAP of a computer and it really isn't hip to that jive. See? That's how old my computer is. It deletes my cool contemporary urban and replaces it with stuff from the Fifties.

But secondly, it is relentless. If you get a decent readership, you have to write constantly to keep them happy. And most of them won't stick around if you decide to take a day off. Some will, and I love them all, but a lot won't. I have had various people come and go, just like life, I suppose, but like all things on the internet, it happens a lot faster.

I am becoming old. I am becoming sedate. I don't want to log on every single day and fill E-Space with my whimsical thoughts. Most days I don't have any to begin with, let alone any worth writing down. If I do, they're going to be about something like work, or telly. Everyone rants about telly and things you write about work can be very easily traced back and get you into serious trouble. You hear about that quite a lot. So I'd quite like to be able to write something a bit more considered at my leisure and then not have to worry about people writing back.

I'd still like to be funny, of course. If anyone reads this, you will tell me, won't you?

Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal