GOOD BE THY MORN AND MAY IT REST GENTLE ON THE MIND WHAT, I PRAY THEE TELL, IS IN THE COMMENT THREAD OF A FACEBOOK OR TWITTER POST? Twas the morn of my Facebook post bannered THE RETURN OF COLOURED IDENTITY POLITICS, whence there descended upon the commentary thereto, emotive words of vexation and venomous casting of pseudo innuendo upon my person. Whilst I hereby do not seek to trip the light fantastic in condescending glee upon the casters of these aspersions, the occasion doth beg the need to examine the literary medium of the missive we name Facebook. One such inquisitor, upon choosing the cowardly inbox tool, asked with theatrical exasperation, why I write about such grave matters like coloured identity politics in such snidely tone of disdainful voice. Fret thee not fellow Facebook thespians, for I shall answer thee now with due literary regard for thine feelings of dismay. I shit thee not! One of the most profound words spoken about the art of writing, that impressed a young Afrikaans speaking Jeremy vannie Elsies when he studied English (2) at the University of the Western Cape in the early eighties, was that of the writer Marcel Proust (1971-1922). Proust said about writing: ... it is the secretion of ones innermost life, written in solitude and for oneself alone, that one gives to the public. Proust words here, aptly also applies to Facebook thespians, with the proviso of not confusing his contextual use of the word secretion, with excretion. However, some of the comments on my post on coloured identity politics, were more a case of excretion than secretion of innermost life. Claire Harman, in her article titled Margins of Terror, published in the Literary Review magazine of March 2014 (Issue 148), argues on this type of abuse of the culture of comment on social media as follows: Far from releasing writers from self-consciousness, the internet makes it virtually impossible to forget the hydra-headed real audience that is just a click away. Display and performance take over; there is a confusion of tone, a horrible striving for approval, even when the content is far from polite or charming. Although such writing on blogs and threads (and of cause social media) always tries to look chatty and intimate, the sense one gets is of multiple monologues going on, everyone is so self-aware that no one is addressed at all. The spirit of the internet is that of marginalia; ardent, perhaps, but inert. One comes across similar solo performances all the time in the internet, lonely bleatings in backwater blogs, the final or lone contributions to a thread from someone having their say into a vast indifference. We all know how quickly comments ever away from the subject of the post, or fail to acknowledge the original subject at all; it is a one way commerce that begins with irrelevance and ends in the sort of malicious trolling that has been so much in the news last year. The culture of comment seems so democratic, so liberating, but in practice can be little better than a dumping ground for words and feelings, the rhetorical equivalent of fly-tipping. So, on bended knee I beseech thee! Upon next occasion pray thee remain steadfast in sticking in thine comments to the subject of the post and its relevant import; lest thine comments wither into the rhetoric of fly-tipping.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 04:20:06 +0000
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