Love Hate Relationships
12th January 2019
I hate January. Its a time of year when my gut instincts are to shut down and hibernate (I’m sure I’m a genetically modified squirrel) but it invariably tends to be a month that’s riddled with shit storms. (I just hope my mother didn’t feel the same way, given that she gave birth to me in this month). Maybe they’re shitstorms no bigger than those that can occur at any time of the year, but I, being in hibernation mode, can’t handle them in January. Or February. Or winter as a whole.
Trouble started brewing almost as soon as Big Ben saw out the old year. Well, maybe a while later cos I can’t quite remember January 1st.
I decide that its time I tackle cleaning up my website, yes this one.
I plan out a list of blog topics so that I can post regularly and create a semblance of consistency. It’s a key word I’ve seen in multiple articles about how to stay on top of your marketing game. Its also a word that I am rarely associated with. Spontaneous, random, haphazard yes. All preceded of course by the adjective “creative”. Consistency? No.
After getting off to a roaring start, composing a blog and publishing it, I see this bright sparkling notification that I should upgrade. Ok, why not. Click….and then PFFF!
My post has vapourised and suddenly I can’t edit anything. I break out into a sweat. Alarm bells sound in my head: I spot a red triangle surrounding an exclamation mark, a sign which I’ve only seen before on the doors of radioactive labs. This one’s parked in front of my URL and reads SITE INSECURE. I’ve just spent hours working on my brilliant plan. I scramble to contact my website developer and then my server provider. For days I text; they reply with (incomprehensible) suggestions. I message more; they offer more (incomprehensible) suggestions. Still nothing works. I don’t video call. How can I? I ‘m running around the house like a screaming banshee.
Whenever I see a 3 year old blithely scrolling and tapping on a tablet, I want to throw the kid in front of passing traffic. How are they so intuitive and adept at working out how to use devices? Its like, give them half an hour to themselves with a tablet and they’ve already unlocked parental controls and are on Level 9 of Grand Theft Auto.
Meanwhile, I’m swinging from WhatsApp to my Facebook feed to Messenger to Skype, trying to locate a message I received and ignored a few hours ago. I finally find it in my SMS folder. I’m fuming. My Cappucino’s gone cold and the waitress looks like she wants to cordon off my table with Police Crime Scene tape.
Its official: top thing on my hate list is technology. When it works smoothly, I’m eager to explore, and exploit, all its possibilities. But when it starts to misbehave, it does my head in. When suddenly apps merge, when I’m redirected to Outlook when I thought I’d logged into Hotmail, when every single App seems to know exactly what I purchased last night and bombards me with invitations to buy more, when Facebook (ooh now we’re stepping into knife throwing territory) repeatedly invites me to tell the world what I’m thinking, or suggests I might know and should befriend dozens of strangers who are friends of friends…
As an artist I’ve vigorously kept in touch with my inner child, in the sense that I aspire always to approach my work in a playful experimental manner. Its a wonderful loving relationship. But when it comes to technology, all I hear from my inner child is the crackle of radio silence. Major betrayal kiddo!
