the problem of traffic

What exactly happened to the Garfields? – I asked my wife. Why should we send them our old crockery?

If only, said my wife. Read the list.

But what happened? – I said.

Don’t you know? – she said. They lost everything. Their house, their cars. Ron lost his job. Everything they had was on tick. House, furniture, appliances, clothes, school for children, everything. And I don’t know how exactly it’s called or what the procedure is – repossession, I suppose – but they had to give it all back. Because of debts.

I still don’t understand, I said. How could it happen? I know that Ron wasn’t exactly properly rich but I always assumed that he should have had quite a cushion to withstand such things. He was a CEO, for goodness’ sake. He was … not entirely wealthy but pretty much well-off.

He put all his money into his blog, said my wife.

He had a blog? – I asked. I didn’t know that.

Well, said my wife. Apparently, he did. As far as I know, he blogged about his dog Charlie. He started his blog about two years ago because there was some problem with hookworms and, as far as I know, he eventually put all his money into this blog to increase traffic.

But what kind of traffic do you need to such a blog? – I asked. If you only blog about your own dog. I mean, why on Earth would you need a lot of traffic blogging about your golden retriever?

I don’t know, said my wife, but I think I kind of understand him. As far as I can see, he probably felt neglected after he started his blog. You know the feeling. You go out on a limb online sharing the most intimate, the most sacrosanct bits of your life and no one is interested. Or all the wrong people. Not the kind of audience you had in mind. I think, he probably felt this way. He probably felt that Charlie didn’t get as much attention online as his dog deserved. Charlie is a good dog. Poor creature.

What happened to Charlie? – I asked.

They had to find a temporary accommodation for him, said my wife. For the time being. I think I can totally understand Ron, she said. It must be a bit like you blog about your child and expect some response, some minimal feedback from people: a comment, a like. And there is none. Nothing. Week after week after week. Not a single human reaction. It’s like you’re suddenly lost in space with your child. While you are offline you think that you live in a society, in a world full of people but as soon as you go online it turns out that you live in a total emptiness. In a void. (My wife shuddered slightly). It must hurt, she said. No one cares about your child, or your dog, or you, or whatever you write about, not a single person among all those six or seven billion people. This must be scary. I’d definitely panic, she said, if such thing happened to me. This is why I hate the Internet. I think, this is what happened to Ron. He just panicked and tried to increase his traffic. To augment his audience. There must be tricks, there must be strategies. People peddle these tricks and these strategies for money. They sell attention. And eventually, as far as I know, he stopped blogging about dogs and switched to politics. He tried this and that. You know, Ron is a high achiever. Was.

Why? – I said. Did he die?

More or less, said my wife. It should have been a huge personal challenge to him. He just couldn’t leave it alone. He had to win. Agnes told me that he had lost his sleep. His health deteriorated. He became depressed, he developed some ugly rash that not a single doctor knew a hoot about. Apparently, he invested their entire savings into his blog. At some point he started discussing a suicide pact with his wife. He said that their children would be better off without him. He said that the Internet was an abyss filled with misery. De Profundis, he said. He said that never before had he ever suspected so much misery in the world. He said that he had been an insulated little fool living in a bubble. Said he had never known that he was such a nonentity. That he, in fact, didn’t exist. That he was nothing. He lost his faith in humanity. He started drinking. He stopped talking at all. Later on he would stay in bed for weeks with his laptop, drinking, crying and checking his ratings. Then one day, after he’d lost his job and all this repossession thing happened and they had to give Charlie away and move into some sort of council accommodation, he went out for a walk. There was no Internet connection at the premises or they couldn’t pay for the access, I don’t know. I think, they had problems paying for their mobiles. Well, he went out for a walk for the first time in months and he disappeared.

What? – I said.

Just didn’t come back home, said my wife.

For how long? – I asked.

For the second week already, said my wife. He called, though. Not Agnes, me. Said that he had to sort some things out and that the real world was ‘overwhelming’. Said, that he had been ‘transformed’. Yes, I know, said my wife, it’s all seems pretty tragic, but what I think is that Agnes and the children will be better off without him for a little while.

What do they need? – I said.

Look at the list, said my wife. Some things has already been taken care of, she said, like the washing machine and the TV set, courtesy of Sebastian and Josh, and the fridge, and the clothes. Sarah gave half her wardrobe for the cause. This here is the rest. We can pick out whatever we want and pass the list further to the Trestles.

There were five items on the list.

1. Ultimate Dyson DC41 Animal Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaner with accompanying HSB Microfibre Cleaning Glove yellow or blue or iRobot Roomba 790 Vacuum Cleaning Robot red or light blue.

2. Mepra Stainless Steel 1950 Deluxe Cookware Set, satin blue or copper.

3. William Turner Old English Cutlery Set or Full ProPassione Laguiole Tableware Set with horn/brass handles.

4. Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica porcelain dinner set or Florentine Turquoise Wedgwood  full dinner set.

5. Horchow Haute House Erlinda Dining Table From the John-Richard Collection and Miguel Dining Chairs or Doucette Dining Table, Lilah Settee, and Melissa Dining Chairs.

What do you think? – asked my wife.

Well, I said checking the items online for prices and availability, as terrible as it all is, I don’t really think we should write the old Garfields off quite yet.

Blogs

Do you follow blogs? Do you read them? Do you post comments or take part in online discussions?

I do follow two blogs. One of them belongs to a retired English accountant. The man writes utter nonsense sometimes, as if his retirement were too much of a burden for him. This is not personal nonsense though; this, for the most part, is a highly stylised literary gobbledygook very finely written by a person who can truly appreciate the most delicious bits of belles-lettres. This man embodies for me an aesthetic principle, an ideal of the perfect artist described in one of the Philip K. Dick novels as a robot floating in the interstellar space and shooting mysterious objects in all directions for no apparent purpose.

Several years ago I read a blog where the author described in minute detail and in a very funny tone some of the least important occurrences of his daily routine. Usually he would publish a post of several lines about a slightest rearrangement of things on his desk or about a sudden, brief and unfulfilled urge to make a totally needless telephone call to his uncle. It was magnificent but this blog has long ceased to exist.

Another such publication I follow more or less daily for even less obvious reasons is an American conservative blog. The general attitude of the blog seems to me reasonably belligerent, all things considered. By reasonable I mean that the opponents of this blog may be completely unhinged. What makes this argument truly dramatic, in the academic sense of the word, which implies that both sides of a conflict must be equally justified in their competing efforts, is that I can easily understand the other side, the liberal one.

Another criterium of a true drama is that the argument must be all-important; it must determine the very existence of all the people involved. I mean, people around the globe follow this political process even more closely than I do and either start a world war or wait for the next turn of the US electoral cycle, depending on the outcome of the debate. Sometimes they err and the war stays local, but the quality of the debate is invariably very high.

I never post comments though. I did but soon found out that it doesn’t make any sense at all. People don’t discuss things to find out some basic truth about their lives. This is what I thought and this is why everyone taking part in any discussion would always turn upon me the moment I pointed out to them this painfully obvious truth. It is as appropriate as taking part in a discussion onstage while being a part of the theatre audience. You may be well aware of the solution to the problem but I really doubt that anyone around will appreciate that.

This is why the comments are usually the weakest part of any publication these days, especially after the armies of paid trolls descended on these battlefields. But even without all the mercenaries these discussions are pointless if they are not confined to some very specific topics, say, a printer malfunction or a baby rash. When arguing about more general things, especially the political ones, people don’t want solutions. They know them all too well long before they start a bunfight.

Usually they just want to spar a bit, to let out some steam in a friendly death match. They may seem to be at each other’s throats, ranting madly and frothing at their mouths but don’t you be deceived: this is all as cordial and familial as it gets. Don’t spoil the fun with your silly candour. Just sit and watch how the world goes to the dogs while you’re having a break from making it a better place.