Earlier this year in pre-Covid times, yes that’s how we view 2020 now, having arisen from the social haze that was Fringe, I caught up with a fellow blogger friend. Over lunch, which we photographed naturally, she confided in me about a thought that’d been festering for a couple of years and was in danger of morphing into a life-limiting belief. She believed her social media presence was killing off valuable friendships. It was an interesting observation that if I’m honest, felt quite close to the home.
My friend, let’s call her Susie, began blogging in 2003 when only a handful of people had heard of the ‘b’ word and those who had called it a “web log”.
In case you don’t know, blogging began in 1994 by a student called Justin Hall who was looking for a place to publish his writing, sound familiar? It wasn’t until 2005 that the phenomenon became mainstream and even then, it was mainly confined to Travel Bloggers and a species that would become known as Mummy Bloggers.
Seventeen years on Susie’s words are now in high demand from several established media outlets. Consequently, her social media feeds boast of her meeting various local, national and international artists while attending A-list events.
She told me that on most occasions the encounters left her inner-child squealing with excitement and rushing to write about how normal the interviewee was, along with any wisdom she’d gleaned from the brief happenstance. In order to draw people into the blog article she’d post an image on Facebook and Instagram. Nothing unusual about any of that I thought. I couldn’t see a problem.
Susie admitted that to the observer her social media feed made it look like she had “a pretty good life”, which she conceded she did, mostly. However, she lamented that the images belied the endless nights attending events of no interest to her. Nor did they show the impact on her health. How she’d eat dinner at 4pm prior to the event, then junk food at 11pm when she’d return home exhausted and primed to devour the entire contents of the fridge. I could relate to the post-event eating phenomenon where you feast on the first thing that jumps out of the pantry, though not the rice cakes, never rice cakes.
She said the images also hid the hours spent crafting an 800-word review and posting it on several platforms, each one requiring a different password and format structure. No, none of that shone through her smiling social media posts. Nor did the fact that while the blogging time commitment was the equivalent of a part time job, it resulted in a total income of exactly zero dollars, zero.
“All that’s pretty standard Susie, what’s your point?” I asked.
The problem was threefold she explained.
As she ordered another wine Susie explained that she could not remember the last time she’d been invited to an event by someone who didn’t have a vested interest in her attending. Friends no longer asked her out.
I explained that they probably thought she was busy or had already been invited to the event. She conceded that this could be true.
However, she added that on those rare occasions when she did catch up with friends, she’d sit for three hours listening to and asking about their lives. She’d hear about marriages, births, divorces, children’s achievements, pets achievements, husbands achievements (more often the lack there of), holidays, outfits, haircuts, all discussed in great detail. At the end of the night the group would enthuse about the evening and bid each other farewell promising to catch up more often. Susie said she always enjoyed the evenings, but a different feeling would hit her once she was back home and settled in bed.
“No one ever asks about me, about what I’ve been up to,” she said.
I fiddled with my wine glass not knowing what to say.
“I’ve been trying to work it out for years. Maybe they think my life is boring or frivolous. Maybe they don’t have to ask, I mean they can see what I’ve been up to online can’t they?”
“Could be,” I replied.
“But even so they could ask, couldn’t they? Ask was the actor really that nice, what did you learn from the professor or the paedophile even, should I see that movie, that kind of thing. I’ve learnt so much from the people I’ve interviewed I’d love to share their outlook on life and get other opinions.”
“Do you review and rate your events?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well then they know what you think and whether they should see the movie.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Susie staring blankly out the window and me frantically trying to think of a way to cheer her up.
“There is another explanation …” I smiled.
“What?” she looked at me, her eyelids straining like the banks of a Mundaring Weir trying to hold back its contents.
I took a moment to consider how best to convey the message in a way she’d understand.
“In the words of Greg Behrendt who wrote that famous 2009 romantic comedy drama, starring Scarlett Johansson, Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, that rated 7.5 stars out of 10, maybe they’re … Just Not That Into You”.
“Oh, I loved that movie,” Susie enthused kickstarting a long discussion about the merit of film in challenging social norms and discussing the unspoken, “not Ben Affleck’s character though, don’t you think?”
Everyone finds their tribe, eventually. Blog on fellow bloggers, blog on.
For more short essays you might like to checkout Wit and Wisdom. Go to Amazon.com or Amazon.com.au
