There are times when I think I’ve made some sort of important decision in my life and then almost instantly had a moment of clarity that tells me that really, in the grand scheme of things, it’s all a tad petty. One of these, for example, is a half decision to stop tweeting as much. Ultimately as scientists try and cure diseases, people across the world suffer from starvation, astronomers seek out other worlds etc etc, my choice to not litter the world with quite as much bullshit is hugely irrelevant to nearly everyone’s way of life. I say nearly everyone, because I am one of everyone and to me, it’s given me a few extra minutes back in my day. My day that I decided was not productive enough because I was tweeting to much. My day, that before the arrival of Twitter, was used to procrastinate in ways even less useful than actually writing some jokes in an online social media site that could possibly, on a minute scale, drive people to see me live. I was doing things like making a horse out of objects in my room. Or drawing things, or rearranging stuff, or any number of things that also, in the grand scheme of life, are pretty pointless.
I have, of course, since making this decision, not really tweeted any less. Or if I have, I’ve still spent as much time wondering if I have something to tweet, if I’ve tweeted enough today, or too much. If the people that have unfollowed me today have done so because of me tweeting too much, or not enough. Again, all of things mean nothing to anyone, except me. I’m not sure why they mean anything to me either. Someone recently told me that none of the funniest people on Twitter are comedians. This comment is invalid for a number of reasons including that by simply being funny a lot you probably are a comedian of some sort by default, even if it’s not a professional one. But mostly it made me think that it could be because as a comedian I have to spend some time writing jokes for the actual world, real shows, where people pay to watch and I can continue to earn a living. Then I realised that their opinion means fuck all to me and I don’t know why I got upset anyway. It is bizarre how years on stage can make you immune to personal heckles in real life yet behind the mask of the internet, the odd comment can get you riled.
I left Facebook a little while back. Well, I still have a fan page because I have attention seeking issues, but I deleted my normal profile on account of all the noise that accumulated in my life. Day after day I saw posts about people’s lives that I couldn’t give a fuck about because the contents where banal or the person hasn’t been in my life for a long time or, infact, ever. Aside from never remembering anyone’s birthdays, it felt like a relief. A tiny bit less crap in life. Twitter didn’t used to feel like that, but recently it’s started to. Maybe there’s too many people on it. That means too many bonkers opinions formulated from not reading things, too many needs to upset others based on how they do things, too many petty squabbles with people you’ve never heard of. I fume more about people online who’ve decided to send me endless unwanted different punchlines to my jokes, or tell me a gag isn’t funny when they could’ve just ignored it, or that they think something I like is actually shit.
I often think too much about these comments and maybe assume it’s comment on how society is. Maybe it’s because people are lonely and don’t feel they have much value. The general populace has no real voice in the world anymore. Protests don’t mean anything. Voting just gives us the same bunch of money orientated bureaucrats with a different coloured rosette. Rarely now do people even get the chance to win shit stuff on telly anymore, because it’s now celebrities that get to do it instead even though they can already go on holiday due to being famous for not knowing where a country is or some bollocks. So the only outlet is online, shouting frustrations into the constantly growing void. If you’re not online you won’t see them or care. If you are online you get bored of seeing them and so stop caring. Most people I know don’t read comments pages on articles, and have muted various people they are following or friends with. That void is starting to mean those frustrations aren’t heard on the internet either. So no wonder people are getting angry and mean.
Of course, in many years from now when archeologists dig up all our bodies, they won’t realise any of that. They will just wonder exactly what we spent all our lives doing. Computer data will be long erased, electronics won’t survive erosion and there will be no records to show for our hours and hours of 140 character shouting. They’ll mostly just think we were all very lazy and sat down a lot. So my decision to cut down tweeting, on the whole, really doesn’t matter. That is, unless archeologists in the future found a horse sculpture made of things from a bedroom. Then believed it was some sort of idol to the mighty horse god. And thusly, history was shaped anew….
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I’m doing my first ever UK tour in 2014, starting end of January. All dates and most ticket links are up at my website: https://www.tiernandouieb.co.uk. Please spread the word and come along as if you’re not there, it’ll be rubbish. It’ll just be me in a room and if I can’t get 3G I’ll be really bored. The very funny Chris Coltrane is supporting me on some dates and the brilliant Keith Farnan is doing a double header with me on others.
