This is what I think

[gron-ya]

Blast from the past

On Valentine's Day, I got a virtual gift from Livejournal to celebrate my 20 year anniversary on the platform. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

I haven't logged into Livejournal since 2015 and I was surprised that my blog even still existed there. I haven't logged back in yet to see what my "virtual gift" is.

That alone feels like a throwback, like sending eCards and poking each other on Facebook.

[gron-ya]

Joyce’s Epiphanies

I thought James Joyce came up with the idea of the literary epiphany in the short story The Dead and then he either named it “an epiphany” or it became known as that because the story takes place on January 6th at a party that is held for the Feast of the Epiphany.

And maybe that’s the way it happened.

Except that Joyce didn’t really come up the idea of a character having a life-changing realisation or an epiphany, and he actually had Stephen Daedalus define epiphany as "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself." in an early draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which pre-dates the publication of Dubliners (the book of short stories that ends with The Dead). He also didn’t invent the word “epiphany” which has its roots in Ancient Greek and means “a manifestation or appearance”, like the Three Wise Men turning up on January 6th.

When I was searching online find all that out, the best example of a literary epiphany that I came across was Cher’s “I love Josh” moment in Clueless, with the lights and the fountain behind her. She’s just had a big fight with Tai because Tai has feelings for Josh and now Cher is wandering around wondering why she got so angry. I’m sure there is a similar moment of realisation in Jane Austen’s Emma after Harriet tells Emma that she has a thing for Mr. Knightly and she thinks he likes her back, prompting Emma to realise that she loves Mr. Knightly! Which goes to show that epiphany’s existed long before James Joyce starting calling them that.

[gron-ya]

It's weird to hear ads for TikTok on Irish radio in the same week that the US senate is voting to ban it from government devices.

It's weird to hear ads for social media platforms on the radio at all. The two I heard were on RTE Radio 1. One was about all the money saving tips that could be found on TikTok and the other was about using the platform to ignite a love of reading in your 30s.

It sounds like the same voice actor on both which I think it a bit cheap of TikTok.

[gron-ya]

Farewell to Twitter

I joined Twitter in the summer of 2008, during a temp job in Slough. The office had blocked Facebook and I needed a social media distraction to get me through the dull day. At this time, social media was still just a fun distraction, a way to chat to friends, post photos, etc. It hadn't yet become an essential part of business or something that you could study and do as a job. I had read about twitter in the Guardian (the Guardian was my other main work distraction) and thought I'd give it a try. It took a while to get the hang of it and find people to make it fun but within less than a year, I was logging on everyday and the time I spent there only increased. I loved it. I was enthusiastic about it. It was fun and interesting. It was so simple but so clever. You could connect with so many people and just talk to then about all kinds of things.

I'd had an online life for a while at that stage. I'd spent the last ten years forming friendships with online strangers, on mailing lists and blogs. I meet some of them in real life too. When Facebook came along it turned that process upside down. It brought real-life people online. People I meet at college, at parties, on nights out with friends then became online friends. Twitter managed to do both these things. It had all the interesting people who I never meet, as well as lots of real-life friends, and people who I would didn't know at all but who had interesting things to say. I followed a lot of writers, tv and theatre people, lots of creative people, lots of funny people. I learnt a lot from all those people in my phone.

Twitter was the first online platform that I used primarily on my phone. I loved how I could disappear into my phone and catch up with what everybody else was up to while I waited for the bus or stood in a queue. I'd get a glimpse into all these different lives and the world felt smaller and I felt more connected to it all. Twitter made me feel better informed. I got these regular snapshots from around the world. I learnt weird things, I got lots of recommendations for books and tv shows, and more recently newsletters and podcasts. It widened my cultural horizon.

I loved the twitter chatter for big tv events. I remember watching the final series of Love/Hate and everyone tweeting during the ad breaks. I'm going to have to find a real-life group to watch Eurovision with next year because I won't be able to watch it with twitter.

A big part of why I've decided twitter after all these years is because it feels a bit weird and gross to be there, that in some way I'm supporting or endorsing the poisonous troll by still spending time on the site. It's also got quieter and I think a lot of people are pausing before they tweet and then maybe not hitting send. I think it's been that way for a while. The thoughtful, informative people I follow are now worrying about the kinds of replies they'll get, or going the wrong kind of viral, or things not coming across the way they meant it. I worry about those things.

I tried Mastadon and it seems fine. The thing that put me off was that's it is too much like twitter. People try to tell you it's like the early days of twitter, but I don't think that's true. It may be a new platform but it already feels twitter shaped. That may change and it will become a brand new thing but right now, people are posting how they post on twitter and I realised I'm tired of that. I'm fed up of the performative tweets, the fast reactions and the terminally onlineness of it all. I want out but I'm still finding it really hard to leave. Even though twitter is a lot quieter recently, I'm still afraid I'll miss something. I will miss the connected feeling I got from it but I need to acknowledge that really that's already gone and has been for a while.

It was fun while it lasted.