The world- especially the virtual world- is full of people saying things that they think are important, but actually aren’t important at all. I have decided I want to be one of those people.
But not really. In the midst of all these words that nobody reads or hears, there is a small margin of people who are writing or saying unimportant things that people are paying attention to. That's who I want to be.
Because none of what I think about, write about, or talk about is important, at least not to you. Actually, most of it isn’t important to me, either. In fact, it’s really hard to say anything important at all. It’s kind of an unrealistic goal to shoot for- to want to be able to say stuff that’s important. No, what I’d rather do is have people want to read my unimportant stuff. I guess I want to be unimportant, but interesting.
It’s hard to be interesting too, though. But it’s not unrealistic. You just have to be able to think about things in a way that people find worthy of their attention, for whatever specific reason. Now, I don’t know why you might find the stuff I have to say interesting, but here’s why I find it interesting:
- I live in Philadelphia, where there’s never a dull moment and always something to see, whether it’s a guy touching himself on the subway or a couple of fifteen-year-old girls pulling out each other’s weaves while they fight in the middle of Center City. This is society at its finest, you guys.
- I (almost) have a degree in anthropology, which has taught me how to watch people creepily, but write about them in a non-creepy way. It’s also given me a perspective that other people should have, but not enough do. In other words, if me and the guy touching himself on the subway are both watching the same young woman talk on her phone, we (probably/hopefully) will notice very different things about her.
- Finally, my interest lies primarily in linguistic anthropology, and more than anything I am fascinated with the way people use words to say what they want to say. I like to think that this makes me able to articulate what I’m thinking in a particularly unique way, and that my analysis of the things I observe is just a little bit higher quality than a lot of other people’s. So essentially, if you had to choose between what I’m writing about the young woman on the subway or what the guy touching himself is writing, you would be more likely to choose me- at least, when the pornographic, nonsensical ramblings of the other guy quickly lose their appeal.
This might sound like I’m tooting my own horn a little too much, but trust me, I’m really not big on horn-tooting. You may find little or none of what I write to be interesting, or you may find it interesting for none of the reasons I listed above. It doesn’t really matter to me. But I am interested in why you do or do not find me interesting, and so I welcome all feedback. Because as much as I’d like to be one of those people who other people pay attention to, and as much as I try, I can only be just another one of those rambling people that nobody listens to unless I’m doing something right. Otherwise I’ll just be amusing myself, and I don’t need the Internet to do that.
(That’s not entirely true.)
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