The Fear

You know, writing stuff on the Internet totally gives me the Fear. I know we (the class) have talked about this already. I’m going to talk about it some more.

I kept a blog a couple of years ago, but doing so changed my writing style, made me less candid, more sort of – I don’t know. Stunted, trite, sarcastic, ‘witty’. I would always be posting stupid little anecdotes that ended with a punchline. (A continuation of this style is evinced – my god, ‘evince’ is actually a word? – at the beginning of this class blog in my post about cellphones.) And it’s totally because of the Fear, you know, like of public speaking – which for me is ridiculous since I’ve never had any such fear of public speaking specifically, nor of writing, nor of letting strangers read very personal writing about myself. Actually I get off on the idea – well – I know I very much used to get off on that idea. I made a habit of telling anyone and everyone incredibly personal things about myself. I used to think that social protocol, tact, for example – a sense of what’s appropriate - just got in the way and ought to be ignored. Used to.

Ugh, I’m babbling. It’s because of the Fear. What I’m saying here is, I love attention, I love the sound of my own voice; you wouldn’t think I’d get the Fear, not me of all people. What’s going on?

Agoraphobia, fear of the agora, agora being the Greek marketplace where everyone hung out and gossiped and checked each other out, I guess. The mall, I was totally afraid of the mall during my early high school years. What is she wearing? What am I wearing? Who am I being seen with? Dad, I’ll meet you at the car in two hours.

The art gallery opening. I mean, I know we’re all adults and we’re all beyond that shit now – and I certainly at least try to act indifferent - but if I’m planning to go to one I still check to make sure I’m wearing eyeliner and maybe take too much advantage of the free alcohol.

Spaces where the social stuff is made visible, then. Opportunities to see and be seen. In short, the public arena. This is what I’m afraid of. And rather than socialising on the Internet being, like, a freeing thing, where you can play and reinvent yourself or show the ‘true you’ or whatever, I totally find it scarier than real life. Possibly because in person, it’s easier to feign indifference.

I mean, try feigning indifference when filling out a personal profile. I’ve done a lot of the things. The issue, perhaps, is striking a balance between total indifference (in which case you wouldn’t even be constructing a personal profile) and, well, the opposite of indifference – the, er, reason why you’re constructing a personal profile, I guess. (I’m operating within the assumption that indifference is sought after, ‘cool’, a kind of armour, like irony.) And I’ve put time and effort into constructing personal profiles, and I think that this is normal and human and okay, in the same way that spending half an hour deciding what to wear is okay. We put time and effort into constructing the way we’re perceived – people of my age group more so, perhaps – this is stuff everyone knows, I don’t need to be bashing on and on about it.

Maybe the reason why I’m so entirely neurotic about, um, the online agora (online agorae?) – so much so that I’ve stayed away entirely for most of the term – as opposed to almost everybody else who can just get on with it – and many of my friends who still maintain blogs –

No, I don’t know the reason. All I know is that I hated deciding what to wear to the mall when I was fourteen, that I hate turning up to a gallery opening where I don’t know anyone well enough to cling to, and that publishing any kind of content at all online turns the tone of my writing into the sort that needs its own laugh track.

I was going to say, like a standup comedian on amateur night, but I’ve thought of a better example: those people who, to hide their anxiety, turn their conversation into standup comedy, and just recycle anecdotes so if you hang out with them too much you hear the same stuff. I knew a dude in high school who did that. He blatantly made stuff up, too, and retold other people’s stories. But he was okay.

(the above paragraph was a deliberate ploy to not end this post on a punchline.)