The bcc news online website featured an article about my “death of conversation” gallery yesterday entitled “People not talking to each Other”. Have to say, I was pretty damn chuffed. Their website is my daily go-to source for all my current affairs information and so my life as a content consumer and content supplier crossed paths for the first time. And it was the BBC for God’s sake, this was pretty immense…
And yet, once this accomplishment had sunk in, I did what we humans always do once we get somewhere and achieve something…I moved the goalposts. Being on the website was great and everything but now I wanted to be in the “most popular” section. That was where I always went first to see what was being read and shared and that’s where I wanted to be.
And to my great delight, in the space of a few hours and after a few thousand shares there I was in the Top 5. Amazing. But very shortly that wasn’t quite enough. I wanted to be at the top of that list and I started to look at my competition. The very sad demise of Terry Practchett was at No.1 and I didn’t really want to compete with him. What about my other rivals? “India bridegroom dumped after failed maths test” was getting a lot of action. Why hadn’t he done his homework? His numerical deficiencies were costing me dear. And then an article about soup started to crawl its way up, I mean, soup?? When did that ever get the headlines? Why soup? Why now?
But I hung in there as the day went on and at one point I was up to no.2 (as per above screenshot) but that damn mathematically challenged groom thing was in the top spot. Terry bless him was already on the way down and soon so was I. Once I got overtook by “Measles sceptic loses court battle” I knew was on my way out.
By the time I woke up this morning I was down to number 5 and knew there was no way I could compete with the latest entries which included “world’s ugliest woman bullied by trolls” and “first successful penis transplant”. I was very shortly out of the charts. It was all over.
24 hours of relevance is about all you can hope to get from the relentless feed of non-stop stories which bombard us every minute of every day. The nature of viralness is that its heavy hitting but fast and furious. Bit like a..umm..virus weirdly.
What I found interesting is that the numbers are never enough. You are always left wanting more..ironically just like the ‘computer cuddles’ that are mentioned in my article. (yes I am trying to make “computer cuddles” happen). And that is why its best not to take any of it too seriously or think that an extra zero at the end of your stats is going to make the difference in your dopamine reward centre. It won’t. It all feels the same regardless.
When you see the insanely rapid turnover of information it makes it all feel somewhat transient and unimportant. The modern appetite for something new seems to know no bounds for today’s hungry content consumer. We all skim, we all flick, we are all absorbing data at a much more intense speed than any previous generations have done before but it does feel like less is going in. What’s the point of reading it if you don’t properly register it? Anyway, this may or may not have gone in, you have most likely moved on to the ‘penis transplant’ story already…but you better read it quick, there’s something else coming just round the corner, and another, and another….
ADDITIONAL: My dear friend Patrick (who is in one of the pictures) has been plastered all over the world as a result and received some possibly unwanted attention so I wanted to re-dress the balance with something positive by directing you to his company ‘Make My Home Green’ which is busy solving our environmental and financial problems with insulation solutions. Please check out his website here: http://www.makemyhomegreen.com
