The Internet Personified: Various things I did not say on Twitter
Trying to take back the content!
Hello my little doodlebugs,
This newsletter is not as deep as it sounds, I was just trying a week of putting all the “bon mots” I would’ve normally shared on Twitter over here instead. I don’t know, Twitter is feeling more and more bloated, just scolding and virtue signalling, I feel like anything else gets totally lost in there. Besides, if you have your own platform, why not just put all your wisdom up on it eh?
Unfortunately, a small drawback is that it just looks like I put a bunch of random tweets together over here, there’s no narrative flow, so consider this just a collection of observations, if you will. Luckily (for me) (for you? we’ll see) I have no character limits on this newsletter so I can expand at will.
Shall we begin?
It’s ironic that people who were all, “Oh critics are gatekeepers! Let people read what they want to read and what’s popular!” are now the same people begging for recommendations on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.
Be as doubtful of the person who rates everything five stars as you are of the person who only gives one star.
I have a bookish Instagram account as many of you know, and on that account, I follow a lot of other bookstagrammers, just to see what’s new in the world, what people are talking about and so on. And it is mostly garbage out there. If I followed the word of bookstagrammers alone, I would be swallowed under a pile of books, because every book is just SO GOOD FIVE STARS. (Sometimes it’s four, but never lower than three.) Do these people ever meet a book they hate? Or are they so overwhelmed by free books—and I imagine that’s what it is, because they never post pictures of old books, for eg, it’s all the newest stuff, the very latest thing, the advanced reader’s copies etc—that they couldn’t possibly think of giving anything a shitty review? And that’s what makes me not trust them, if you love everything generally, then you love nothing specifically, and then you can’t be depended upon as a person with taste. Please send me follow recommendations for people who are actually talking about books they love and hate and have feelings about, not just the plot summary and a five star rating and a question of the day. (vomit.)
Speaking of question of the day, this seems like a good point to link to this post about prompt Twitter and TikTok, you know, where someone asks a question for virality’s sake: what’s the best thing you have learnt during lockdown being a perennial fave.
One pandemic blessing: I have not had to hear that awful Red FM or whatever morning show RJ with his crank calls and his baby voice and his laugh track and his sound effects.
Cheating: I actually did post the above on Twitter. But I just wanted to expand slightly—I think I even turned this peeve into a bit in my new (STILL BEING EDITED) novel, so obvs I’m thinking about it a lot. But, picture this: a defenceless Meenakshi, taking a cab early in the morning, the coffee still kicking in, the eyeliner barely hiding her swollen eyes and then out of nowhere, the WORLD’S MOST ANNOYING MAN floods into her eardrums from the radio the cabbie has turned on. Now, I am a polite person, generally, and driving a cab has to be the WORLD’S MOST BORING JOB (elevator operator is also in the running) (you have them in some Bombay buildings still) so I don’t tell them to turn off the radio unless I’m on a call, and as a result, this man, who is he, what is he, is just everywhere, because the cabbies apparently adore him and are his biggest fans. He makes crank calls, see, and is really annoying on each one, pretending to be a child? and someone on the other end has wronged him? and that’s really the whole schtick. Every time. I suppose people get him to call their defenseless friends and relatives, and then he plays this bad Bollywood sound effect music: TOINGGGGGG and that’s the punchline. Oh god, I hate him so much.
Radio Mirchi! Not Red FM. Radio Mirchi plays promos for him in the evening when his show isn’t on, so you’re never safe.
Overfollowing people who are very chatty and share-y and get a lot of replies and traction: whatever you love about them can so quickly become things that annoy the crap out of you about them.
Overfollowing must be a real thing by now, right? Everyone has three or four different socials: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (and newsletters for chatty types like myself.) And if you follow someone everywhere—-and they cross-post—then you’re seeing the same caption several times, over and over again. I do it too, sometimes, when I’m particularly proud of myself, and yet, I also judge people who do it. “Hah,” I think, “You thought that was worth repeating three times to three different sets of audiences. Please, it hardly worked the first time.” I’m very judgy, and never am I more judgy than when I am falling out of love with someone on the internet. It begins with a torrid flurry of following them everywhere at once: so funny! so smart! so witty! and then I see too much of them and poof, it is over.
But then people who post too little are at a danger of being forgotten, like someone will chime in after three months away and you go, “Okay? You’re still here?” like you would someone at a party who said bye dramatically ages ago. There’s no winning. Social media really does bring out the worst in all of us, but here’s an original photo of my leg next to Bruno as we sat on the sofa and read yesterday that I have not posted anywhere else.
There’s that exclusive content you signed up for!
So many Indian newspapers using paywalls these days: do they actually work? Until last week, my RWA group was still forwarding round free PDFs of EVERYTHING, including FT and The Economist. People don’t like paying for things when they can get them for free (look at the number of people who ask for free books with importunity each time you release a new one) which is the problem that media has in general: when they started giving away news for free, when WE started to blog for free, readers got used to getting a service for nothing. Why would they pay for it after?
Which may be one of the reasons I won’t switch this newsletter to paid just yet—although I have been considering a Patreon (ie where you give me a certain amount of money in exchange for things I create just for you, and cut out the freelance hustle entirely.) Would you be into that? Giving me a little money every month in return for writing that I can only do when no one is breathing over my neck?
Meanwhile, I have been planning on giving you MORE FREE STUFF: my books need winnowing, more are arriving, and so at some point, I will do some sort of book giveaway situation. Maybe to mark a milestone: we’re 250ish away from 1000 subscribers on this thing, so when that happens. Tell your friends!
Bought new speakers—and they’re Talking Speakers! So every time I turn them on, they go “Power on! You are plugged into nirvana!” and when I turn them off they go, “Adios amigo! Powering off.” They’re Indian-made speakers, talking to me in a male American accent, and at first I found it a little annoying, but now I’m really into it. They’re extremely chatty, telling me whenever I connect and when the battery’s low and so on. Now, when I go to bed before K, I go, “Adios amigo! Powering off.”
Talking Speakers makes them sound like Talking Animals from Narnia. Remember that bit in The Silver Chair where the kids and Puddleglum are caught by the giants and they realise they’ve eaten a talking stag and it’s horrible for all concerned but at different levels? I don’t know why I bring this up, just that passage was cool. I still reach in to old cupboards, not hoping exactly, but you know, one of these days I’m just going to walk through to another land and I won’t be surprised at all, I will take everything in my stride because secretly, I suspected it all along.
& finally:
Appropos a Facebook status earlier today, nothing gives me the heebie jeebies more than North Indians randomly dropping the “a” at the end of words. “I don’t understand Krishn,” said this status, repeating “Krishn” so many times it become big neon letters, the missing “a” fused. “Keral” is even worse than “Krishn” though. I imagine them not using the “a’s” at the end of any words: “antenn” “camer” “banan” all the way up to “umbrell” and finally, “I can’t come, I have diarrhe.”
Heh. Quite a mot, quite a mot. Sometimes I make myself laugh, which is probably the most indulgent laughter there is (List of Indulgent Laughter in order of indulgence: 1) Your kid has said something funny, 2) Someone has fallen over something, 3) Power laugh to show that you’re better than other people even if you don’t think it’s particularly funny, 4) Your pet is being very cute and funny.) (Pets are at number 4: ie, the LEAST indulgent laughter in my list, because I think animals in general are clowns, and K does this bit where he narrates what the cats are doing in a perfectly deadpan voice, like, “Oh, Olga’s very busy and important” but much funnier than that example and I die, I literally die.
Okay, quick link list because I’m in a hurry so I won’t even spell check this bad boy, pls forgive typos.
America’s caste system.
On the flight of vesper swallows.
And more birds: Mozart and the starling. (Going to buy this book after reading this excerpt.)
Covid etiquette.
I wrote a bunch of quick Delhi guides for Culture Trip and they are up now, bad timing, but what to do. They are all very good, and may serve as inspiration for when we’re done.
Okay! Have a great week, own your own content!
xx
m
Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you?Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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