On noise and noise-making...
Reflections on writing, the early internet, and my least favorite Hozier song
There’s a lot of noise on the internet. I would know; my internet presence is old enough to rent any car on the lot, making me feel a little weird and making it easier to understand why I’m a little weird.
Okay, it’s not entirely Neopets’ fault, but I’m going to lay at least a little of the blame on that late 90s internet obsession because it helped set the stage for… well… all of the rest of this.
I first discovered online communities in the wild west of the internet in the late 90s and early aughts. I was immediately hooked, as anybody who knows me could probably quickly imagine. I could talk to people who shared my interests and didn’t make judgments about me based on who my parents were or how weird my hair was. That was way better than talking to all the people at school who had called me “the Walking Dictionary” since the third grade and knew my mom was dying.
Yeah, it’s easy to see the appeal there.
Unfortunately, I also learned early that online communities of all sizes are full of… well, noise. When your entire relationship is based on text, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of meaningless back-and-forth, or worse, an incandescent spray of letters out into the gaping maw of your timeline. It’s easy to forget that the person on the other side of the screen is a person. It’s easy to think, “I am alone here, and nothing I say or do will change that.” The social media beasts of today look very little like the forums of my virtual pet or mommy board days, but the same sort of noise abounds: desperate clutching at anything that feels real, that feels solid, even if that reality is just a venting of your own anger, or the solidity of your own ego.
I’m not speaking from some objective position here. I’ve been absolutely in it for years, and I’m not arguing that it’s getting worse (though I know some would), but it’s also not getting better, it’s just getting to be more. More of all of our lives. More of every day, every hour that we spend. More of the money we part with. More of how we keep in touch with folks we never see… Folks we might never see again. It is our news, it is our entertainment, it is our market, it is our community building, it is our advertising, and it’s all blending in this one, big, noisy soup that even if you distance yourself from, you can’t ever truly escape—because the people around you haven’t.
I don’t think the answer is to reject it. I think the answer to this problem, like most problems, is to examine how we use it and shift. Intention is a powerful thing.
That’s why we’re here right now, you and me. I have been writing since Meep let me at her old typewriter in the office of her bookkeeping business (more on that later) and have loved it, always. But it’s easy to get lost in the sea of updates on Facebook, and Twitter is… we won’t talk about Twitter, honestly, I’m still too mad. Where does a valiant writer go to share their thoughts, their experiences, their creative vibes, if not to one of the social media megachurches of modern society?
A newsletter, of course. :)
I’m a big fan of the artist Hozier (have you heard his latest stuff? If you haven’t listened to “Eat Your Young” please stop reading and go do that. Incredibly funky and also horrifying! In a good way…) but even though he regularly sings about stuff that sort of grosses me out in a big way, there’s this one really inoffensive song on Wasteland, Baby! that I just sort of can’t stand: “To Noise Making (Sing)”
This song is not about decay (“In a Week”), some terrible thing in the woods (“In the Woods Somewhere”), the eventual heat death of the universe (“No Plan”), or religious hypocrisy (the ever-popular “Take Me to Church”)—which I wouldn’t necessarily hold against it, since I like most of these songs. There’s nothing that particularly stands out to me as being “why I don’t like this song” but it feels empty to me compared to most of what he does, and maybe that’s all it is: I come to this particular table expecting more and get… well, less. But there are a couple of lines in “To Noise Making (Sing)” that came to mind this morning while I thought of what to start us off with:
You don't have to sing it nice, but honey sing it strong
At best, you'll find a little remedy
At worst, the world will sing along
I guess, despite my lack of love for this particular number, that’s what I’m doing here. (Remind me to tell you about my karaoke days sometime.) I’m singing to the Universe, in the hopes that maybe I’ll feel better for doing it, but if the side effect is that you also sing to the Universe—then that would be great. If we could, together, cut down a little on the collective noise and engage a little more intentionally with one another, then maybe…
I don’t know. Maybe our communities will be a little stronger. Maybe we’ll understand each other a little better. Maybe the advertising will work a little less well.
Maybe our virtual pets are still alive out there, frolicking in the meadows of the internet past, but we can’t hear them because we can’t even hear one another over the sound of so much interference. So much noise. Maybe, with a bit of effort and intention, we can hear each other again, and maybe we can hear ourselves.
I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here with me. Feel free to “sing along” by hitting that subscribe button, and keep me accountable for next week when I want to tell you all about the SWFA Nebula Conference. :)