My book of revelations

Revelation of the day: Internet = Wonderland

For me at any rate. The parallels between my recent adventures and those of Alice are uncanny (although I’d like to reassure everyone that no narcotics have assisted in the writing of this blog).

For starters I imagine falling down a sodding great big rabbit hole is akin to being asked to set up an online identity and blog when you’ve never even visited MySpace before, or placed a bid on ebay (is it even referred to as placing a bid? there’s probably some shorthand abbreviation). It’s a tad daunting. You’re not sure whether you’ve going up, down or sideways, or even exactly where you’re trying to get to.

Secondly she had the Eat me/Drink me quandary (can’t quite remember what happened as a result, but they certainly meant she wasn’t herself). I’ve had the Rename Me/Redefine Me one. They say online you can choose to be whoever you want to be. You can develop a whole new identity. But I don’t think that’s quite the case. You don’t seem to be able to have the exact one that you want (the exact persona may be). To me, your online name goes someway to creating that all important first impression. My first choice of a name was taken. As was my second preference, and my third. In fact gmail ended up thinking I was one of those automated programmes trying to set up 101 email addresses I tried so many different alternatives. (Incidentally, can any one explain to me why you would want to be the ‘…meister’ of anything???) Consequently, something that I started out really looking forward to setting up became a rather frustrating task. So the upshot is that I’ve ended up being someone (thing?) that I didn’t necessarily want to be (although I thought the ‘Dumb’ twist on ‘Dum’ was quite appropriate considering the circumstances).

Finally (because I’m sensing that this posting might not be conducive to the art of ‘skimming’ if it goes on much longer) we’ve both had to try to learn the rules and play the game. Her house of cards kept falling down; I sense my blog will be just as fickle in the light of new challenges. Those croquet balls kept getting up and moving round; my initial attempt at a blog doesn’t seem to be where I thought I left it either (I’ve gone from having no blogs to having two of them, I just can’t find the first one).

So there we have it. Posting number one. And a new sympathy with people out there who are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not.

Hopefully more real revelations postings to come.
Failing that I’ll have to revert to a work of fiction.