Thursday, March 3, 2011

Thirty Questions: No Answers

This will be about a Facebook meme. (Yes. Subsidzied Sincerity is Topical Subjects, LLC.) Presumably you've seen the Thirty Questions thing that has been passed around Facebook, one a day of pictures to an ordered series of questions, like "person you couldn't live without" or "thing that's influenced you most recently." It's a fun part of "talking about yourself and topics you enjoy" that people like, but I don't like the one a day format. I'm uncomfortable with putting a photo on people's newsfeed once a day and so I'm doing it all, all, behind the scenes.

Yes, the one a day thing makes it easy to do and to keep up with, but it seems aimed, to me, anyway, to be aimed for its viral spread and for it to repeat, like a barrage, on the newsfeed. It's not really an invasion, but it is annoying, so doing it all behind the scenes. And one outcome of that is that I get to...hem and haw over the exact wording of much of my things and keep it from coming up. I've had people tell me I'm very accurate in what I say, so this just increases the pressure to say it in the way that leaves the most interesting silences. There are worse things.

But more than that. What do I write about my biggest regrets? They almost all involve other people, and privately, to boot. Thus, I am unlikely to list it in "thing I wish I could forget." So, white lie on Facebook. People do it. I'll do it, too. Hopefully, they'll understand. (Or won't. I'm not sure which I want more.)

Hopefully, the point of Thirty Questions is to reveal something about oneself in a way that's structured and interesting and easy to browse. Who knows how it'll end up working out, but it's something that I plug away at, bit by bit. If I have any interesting reveals (it's not entirely clear to me that I do) it's because I, at least now, try to live by that old Eggers chestnut, that and the "go with it girl" advice of the World/Inferno Friendship Society. Saying yes instead of no and not playing it safe, essentially.

Of course, playing it safe is rather relative when I can read stories about an eighteen month old child being shot with an anti-aircraft round in the Middle East. Huh. Be creative and don't run from it is the only answer I've ever gotten that's made sense. I suppose figuring out how to make money from writing is a good idea.






I've been listening to the Wonder Years split with an English band called All Or Nothing. This song is on it and is called An Elegy For Baby Blue. No relation to the post. Oh well.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.