Yes, yes, bring it on. I'm the old man complaining about tech. Except unlike most other old bastards, I have a 100% misanthropic reason for it. Most old bastards want to bring the world closer together. I just want to drive it further away from me.
I hate talking on the phone. Always have, always will. It sucks that I wound up getting jobs that require me to be on the phone the whole time I'm there for the past twenty years or so. It's only made my hatred of talking on phones even worse over the years. My ideal life is to never--EVER--get another phone call again. I like being inaccessible.
Imagine my horror when someone (who had the incredibly selfish motive of wanting to be in constant contact with me) forced a cell phone into my hand about twelve years ago or so. It was a Net10 burner she'd gotten off a crackhead. I did not want this gift, but it was very clear to me that saying no was not an option.
And so I joined the modern age of cell phones.
But fuck that shit. When I was a kid I tried to stay out of the house as much as possible so I couldn't risk being dragged into a phone call. Now I try to stay in areas where cell phone coverage is spotty at best, and still that motherfucker rings.
I will give cell phones one thing that is good for my well being: texts. I have no problem with texts so long as it's not a long conversation. Ask a question. Get an answer. Ask a follow up. Get another answer. Acknowledged. Done. Those are the best text interactions.
I've told you all that one day I'm going to go full hermit. I can't afford that right now. But someday.
It's funny. I was thinking about this when one of my publishers/editors/good friends, Nick Day, posted this to his own blog. I understand that he was mostly talking about being inaccessible as an author, meaning one who puts the work in front of the ego, one who does not engage in online arguments and so on. I dig that, too. I don't read reviews (more or less), and if I did come upon a bad one it doesn't bother me. If the reviewer put a lot of effort into a one star review, I find that pretty funny. The things I write are all over the place, making an author brand practically impossible, and that's by design. You will never one day hear that I trademarked my own name like Harlan Ellison. I write whatever I want to write, and sometimes that has been a detriment to getting people to read my work, but that's not my problem.
Although Nick goes a bit too far when he takes pleasure in taking his own work out of print. I'm sure that brings him joy, and that's a good thing, but I write so people can read me, even if they decide to pirate my books (which has happened, especially with Strip). I'm toying with the idea of bringing Dong of Frankenstein back into print, for example.
Wow. This is getting away from me a bit. I just meant to say that I hate cell phones, but I guess that's what happens when I write these things while high instead of drunk. I can barely hold a train of thought together.
Also I'm not a big fan of the internet, at least not in most of the ways that people use it. In particular social media. It's pretty crazy how quickly these things can become pretty little hate machines. But that's probably a story for another day. Or night. Or goodnight. Fuckers? I'm off in the weeds. WEEDS, I tell you.
No comments:
Post a Comment