Monday, December 17, 2012

I am not serious enough for the internet (guest post)

The gorgeous Zoey is sitting on the lily pad with me today.
I adore her ascerbic wit and her photography is amazing.
She's snazbigly funny.
She also gives excellent squeeze. 
 
{Serious Internet Image from here}
Once upon a time, I looked like a serious person. I had a serious job in public health. I was passionate about all sorts of super important issues. I had gone to university and received a serious qualification. I’d always been studious. All things that to the untrained eye, make me look serious.

Until I found myself at a wedding and my first baby was about two. And I was faced with all sorts of serious questions like ‘so what have you been doing?’ Apparently creating an entire human and keeping her alive and/or not killing her is not an achievement. And while I tried to think of an answer that was not boring, I realised I’d lost a good portion of my bullshit ability. Which lets face it, a good part of my career in public health and marketing was based on my bullshit ability which I have to say is stellar. And as the evening wore on and I went from realising I was not serious and probably never had been to taking the piss out of everything that moved. I’m sure being on the piss helped.

At face value, the internet is not serious either. You’d think we are a match made in heaven. And we are kind of. I mean the internet has lolcats. LOLCATS people. Somewhere that has lolcats can’t take itself too seriously, surely. You say one wanker thing once, in a publication that no one reads and all of a sudden #ActivatedAlmonds is trending all over your ass. Not serious. You say one dumbass thing at a conference once and people continue to in-joke about it for freaking months. (Yep, that was another in-joke. ZOMG I’m doing it again) Definitely not serious. Or so it would have you believe. But the not seriousness of the internet is a lie. A bare-faced lie. And the lolcats are just there to distract you from just how serious it really is.

You know those slightly inspirational or slightly funny pictures that people post on facebook? People actually interpret that shit. Depending on how those people are feeling on any given day you might have given new meaning to their entire life or you might be wrong, so wrong. Or worse, you might be judging a whole minority group. Why do you hate people with [insert offended group]? WHY?! And you thought you were posting pictures of cake. You weren’t.

Also, don’t express an opinion. Be a sheep. Express other people’s opinion. That’s safer. Or better, fence sit FOREVER. The internet loves that. Because you can then keep everyone happy, all the time. You thought you were being vaguely amusing with that throw away line? Unfortunately not. You are now a troll. A troll bully. Who is stoopid. Now what were you saying about that thing I passionately care about but will forget tomorrow?

If you have a blog or a facebook account or on twitter and you don’t blog for a cause, re-share that ridiculous vaguely-related to cancer update or reteweet all the charities then I’m afraid you are a horrible waste of skin. I’m sorry, it had to be said.

I’m not serious enough. Because inappropriate jokes that the internet will never forgive me for pop into my head all the time. I find all the passion, all the outrage kind of exhausting and a bit boring. Except when I’m outraged by something then I’m all over it like a freaking rash. And then the internet gets to call me a hypocrite and then nothing I’ve ever said, ever has any meaning or value whatsoever.

After awhile you get desensitised to it. Now I’ll post a picture of my kid drinking homophobic hot chocolate WITH SUGAR, whilst sitting in a car seat with twisted seatbelt straps (I like to call it the baby death trap). When someone on Facebook complains about it (they will) I suggest they use the extremely disturbing unbaby.me app that will turn all of my baby pictures into lolcats. Or I’ll go into a forum where they are discussing how vanilla and annoying I am and I will only barely be able to resist leaving a comment ‘mmmmm vanilla’. But I don’t because then they might mock me by emoticon. Actually that’s not the reason, I’d be sitting there praying for the golf clap emoticon instead of the yawning one.

I spend too much time on the internet saying ‘yeah, that was a joke’. And no, it’s not me. I’m freaking hilarious. So when you see me around, please know that I am mocking everything in my head because I’m hiding from the Internet. That bitch has no sense of humour.







Zoey is a reformed perfectionist and chaos manager. She blogs in words and pictures at Good Googs, but mostly pictures. You can catch her being not serious on Twitter and posting things without hidden meaning on Facebook. She thinks the only purpose of her phone is to take photos. Evidence of this can be found on Instagram. (Frog: She also writes a pretty decent serious bio for herself).
 
Are you not serious enough for the internet too?

22 comments:

  1. Great post and I completely agree. I'm not serious enough either. Move over and make room on the lily pad. Rachel

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    1. Join me Rachel! We have way more fun than all the serious people put together.

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  2. You can turn people's kids into lolcats?!?!?!? Awesome!

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    1. Well technically I think you can just turn them into kittens or puppies. But they are all potential lolcats right?

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  3. The homophobic hot chocolate with twisted seat belts straps made me LOL like a LOLCAT.

    Love it. Nothing seems to make sense anymore ... did it ever?

    Golfclap emoticon for you, Zoey.

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  4. I've always thought you were funny. And you're right, all this pretending at not being serious, while everything is really being seriously judged.

    I have to confess to being a fence sitter on most things, because I simply don't know enough about all the things that people are getting outraged/passionate about. So I just sit and watch.

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    1. And who has the time, really? And watching is often extremely entertaining.

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  5. Someone said you were VANILLA!!!!!

    This is PRICELESS!!

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  6. I doubt anyone's taken Mumabulous seriously, even when I'm dissecting critical social issues like the lead role in the impending Dr Who movie.

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    1. This one time I posted a picture of P eating McDonalds and someone thought I was naming and shaming some other person's parenting. Nope, the baby is mine and it was sarcasm.

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  7. Thanks so much for the guest post Zoe. You rock! xxx

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    1. Thanks for having me! This has contributed to significantly alleviating my blog withdrawal symptoms.

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  8. I'm so serious I analysed Twitter like I was Jeff Probst snuffing someone's torch out. I ride the sarcastic train most days and I fully appreciate that few people get that I'm not being serious. At least I'm laughing at (to?/near?) myself in my own soft sleeper. That was a seriously good post, Z (may I call you that?), seriously. Kx

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  9. I am the queen of over analysis. Sometimes blogging to me feels like a series of small social experiments, in which I find out ALL of the ways I can unwittingly annoy people. I was glad to read this today. :)

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  10. I thought the point was to not take ourselves too seriously anyway. I'd much prefer to laugh than more almost anything else and am proud to say my kids' wit has surpassed their parents' by miles already.

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