I fear I may
have inadvertently become an internet stalker.
I’ll try to
keep this short and tweet.
What began as
a bit of loitering, has gradually progressed into lurking, only to finally
evolve into stalking. I am talking here about having discovered the
world of social networking – Twitter, in particular.
As I may have mentioned before, I have this
‘thing’ with the internet. ‘Thing’ being
a mild way to describe the driving desire I experience when I come on here without
strict guidelines and a specific goal in mind.
Otherwise it’s akin to sending a lone child off into a sweet shop, with
a credit card – don’t expect me back any time soon, or without having bought or
eaten everything in sight.
Apart from my
insatiable desire for seeking out information on any topic which randomly distracts
my mind, I have a particular ‘interest’ in reading ebooks – an extension of my
love of reading the real thing. This
unfortunate turn of events came about as the result of acquiring an iPod Touch
a while ago, when I was suddenly catapulted into the world of apps. And, being
of limited imagination when it comes to using technology, my attention was drawn
to the familiar and comforting world of books – available instantaneously on my
iPod. Oh joy!
I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Then, oh
double joy, I found that they were also accessible to me on my computer. All this time and I hadn’t known I’d got an
instant library at my fingertips. Out of
my mind went the tiny detail about why I had given up going to the real library
(because it’s full of books, and I would bring as many of them home as
possible, and promptly get lost in reading them all, whilst neglecting other
areas of my life – like sleeping, eating properly, getting dressed, and
suchlike. You know, the trivial
details).
So I failed
to make the obvious connection between an internet library and the real thing,
but instead made up for what I’d been missing out on, promptly going berserk,
reading round the clock, and probably doing untold damage to my eyesight, and
my brain, in the process. All attempts
at controlling it didn’t work, due in part to the fact that I couldn’t think of
anything else to use the iPod for, other than to listen to music (which was the
original purpose for buying it).
In the end I
did the only sensible thing – I got rid of it.
However, a monster had been unleashed, and now demanded to be kept fed -
the love of on-line reading. I’ve always
been a voracious reader, and here I’d found another way of doing it, with
access to a whole world of literature I’d never have otherwise encountered, or
wanted to pay for. Or wanted to be seen
in the company of. This way I could have
access to books which I would not consider checking out of a library, or buying
from a bookshop, because of the embarrassment.
I have my image to maintain, don’t you know.
In the
process I discovered a particular author whose books I found I liked. That would not have been so bad had I not
also discovered that she has a blog, which I proceeded to follow. And then I found ‘THE LINKS’ – yes, there
they were, sitting innocently on the page, under the heading ‘Want to get
social?’ And, of course, the social
butterfly in me (yeah, right – she sits alongside the maths genius, the
computer geek, and the musical maestro), she piped up and insisted that yes,
she did, that she’d like to stretch her wings a little, and that it would be
okay just to have a little look. Really,
it would only be a peek.
And the rest,
as is so often the case, is history: meaning a repetition of the same old
thing, with the inevitable conclusion - I am now a Twitter obsessive.
However, this
does not mean that I have joined the ranks of the Twitterers, and am now gaily
interacting with the inhabitants of that strange on-line world. On the contrary, I merely sit on the
sidelines, reading tweets, feeling a familiar sense of detachment, whilst being
fascinated with the conversations taking place.
It actually feels like I’m reading a book, or watching television
(another medium which I had to rid myself of, ‘cos it was sucking the life out
of me). I begin to live vicariously, whilst
my own life gradually fades into the background, eventually almost ceasing to
exist.
I have gone
so far as to calculate the time difference between the countries of said author
and myself, in order to be able to work out when I can next expect new tweets
to appear. This is on account of the
fact that I initially spent a great deal of time checking and re-checking every
few minutes, only to be frustrated to find there was nothing new to read: until
I realised that it was the middle of the night in America when I was doing most
of my twalking (a new word for tweet stalking).
Yes, it’s got that bad. If I
carry on like this, I’ll be plotting out her day!
I feel a bit
like a voyeur, which is faintly disturbing, even though there’s nothing sexual
in what I’m doing. But then our world
has become quite voyeuristic, the way we are able to read about or watch what’s
happening in other peoples’ lives, via the news or reality television,
newspapers and magazines, and the internet.
Me, I find myself strangely fascinated and enthralled by the way people
discourse with each other. I imagine
this is how an alien would feel, peering through a microscope at an entirely
different species, studying how it works.
Or perhaps it’s ‘cos it’s a bloody effective way of avoiding my daily
routine!
