Yet again, I have not posted for a long time. The bliss of Paris in early September seems well past now, alas, as work difficulties, an epic trip to India, and now things like Coronavirus swamp my vision.
I have never used 'social media' - I am not on Facebook, I don't use Twitter or Instagram. I do not possess a mobile phone let alone a smartphone, so wonders such as WhatsApp or Tinder are alien to me. Yes yes yes darlings, I know what you're thinking.
Some of my friends think that my refusal to get a 'phone' (i.e. a mobile) is a function of some particular narcissism or arrogance on my part. Some good friends think this! God help me. But they're wrong. I am a bit intimidated by phones. I enjoy not being accessible ALL the time. I am glad not to have yet another thing to be addicted to (such as email or the web or (mostly) bad radio). I am very glad not to be one of the idiots - sorry but they are - who spend all their time staring at a small screen: not looking at what happens on the street, not looking out of the window when travelling by bus or train, peeking furtively down into their laps (what else might be there?? The commuter mind boggles) when driving or sitting in traffic jams. No, I am not one of them. I hope I never will be.
But I would like this blog to have more readers than it does. I certainly am that self-involved. I've thought, very slowly (over a year) of using Twitter to advertise the blog. Apparently I could set up a Twitter account without having to have a phone. But my sense is - someone correct me? - that the efficacy of my use of Twitter would depend in large measure on my willingness to tweet or twit or whatever the hell it is the maunderings and online effluvia of other people. Sartre said that Hell was 'other people'. He was right. So there would be no way for me to use Twitter without getting thoroughly ensnared in the concomitant morass of rubbish, self-congratulation and non-information which seems overwhelmingly to make up its 'content'.
So I don't want to do that.
But I do want to go on writing.
Chewing over the Twitter possibility has certainly dampened my enthusiasm for posting. But I need to move on. Richard Seymour, well-known for a recent book on Jeremy Corbyn, a deserved hatchet-job on Christopher Hitchens, and the blog
Lenin's Tomb, has published a new book entitled
The Twittering Machine, which is a brilliant critique of the workings and anti-social effects of 'social media'. Here is an earlier rehearsal of his thesis:
More positively, this evening I wish to mark International Women's Day. So here are some things to read and think about, more interesting and in the end more important than our current fever of panic-purchase of baked beans and toilet paper.
A battery of pieces from the Verso site:
