I was so busy reading, my coffee got cold. So when I had absorbed the best edition of the paper for a while, I came back into focus and reheated the drink. Can’t stand cold coffee. And I thought all over again of the vagaries of communication – not just modern communication – communication period.
In an age of increasing division, there are two nations – those online and those not. When we began annalog eleven years ago – I say we because it exists in communication – some kind soul wrote and said she wished I would be on Facebook, I had so many friends out there … And even then I knew, just as many enemies.
I spit on social media.
I am sure it has uses, some of them good, but I like my private life. Maybe I am the last generation who will have any grasp of the difference between public and private life , the difference between spoken and written, any sense of “haven’t you got enough problems ? What do you need any more for ?”
In current parlance , you can get hold of anybody. But you can’t. You can send them a message but there is no guarantee who receives it, what happens to it or how it is perceived. Finding a written article about Erin O’Connor
was like meeting a friend. I did meet her once in the street, six feet tall and colouring to die for. I said “ Excuse me but I admire you so much. Please shake hands with me” and stretched out my hand. She recognised me, we shook hands, and I told her of the early spread she had done which I kept. She said interestedly “ But why ? That was a long time ago ..” Which was logical if you spent much of your professional life in fashion. So I explained: she has a nose, I have a nose, as a definable feature we’re a group, she laughed delightedly – how you want a heroine to be.
If I were depressed I would explain that the cost of stamps is now so prohibitive that the post will die out, or be reborn again as a private paid for service because stories about things not arriving are legion, like a Christmas card in August. And lack of acknowledgement rules. NOT OK.
For all those who live through social media – even when it causes problems (like the 12 year old quoted by a sensible sounding clinical psychologist, who gets 200 hits
to start the day, loves them but finds the time and energy she needs to deal with them makes her anxious) – few have any insight into the pressure. I wonder if anxiety is as addictive as the process of using that all dominating click, while a young person would not necessarily recognise that disruption wasn’t only exciting, it was harmful.
There were always trolls, fixated people who can’t wait to be acknowledged for how they upset you. There was always somebody in any size audience and you learned to be ready and wary. Now they have an additional credence – the message is widely disseminated, which give sit a kind of acceptability. I don’t accept it.
I could write a list of people I would like to be in touch with , to commend or condemn but I have to admit (to myself as well as the reader) that part of that transaction is the acknowledgement.
Which is not under control. You may write to Keir Starmer expressing concern for his response to Mandelson – not only for what he (KS) didn’t “get” but for what Mandelson is, was and always will be – but there is no guarantee it reaches target, it is open to perception and abuse by every pair of hands through which it passes – hard copy, on the way to the bin or the shredder: electronic comment – well, how long is a piece of string ?
When I speak about communication, I mean me to thee, thee to me. Having written for publication for years, I accept that the words are open to interpretation which is why I am serious about what I write, Throw that into the public pond – and we’re back to throwing stones into water
– the ripples go on forever.
Annalog 