The World According to... Boring John

Message to MySpace Agent

Hi

Ever seen Groundhog Day? Great movie starring that guy with the hangdog face - Bill Murray. Anyway, he keeps on reliving the same day, over and over again. He gets bored, as you might imagine and he even actually tries to kill himself in more and more bizarre ways. This all fascinated me, especially as it didn't matter what he did that day, he would always wake up at the beginning of the very same day, and have to have the very same conversations with the very same people (he even had to watch the street beggar die, but that's another story).

Anyway, the reason I'm writing is that whatever he did (or wrote!) it did not change anything. There were no consequences to his actions, because whatever he did elicited the same response, or the same turn of events.

So, beam back to MySpace.

Imagine, if you will, someone sending someone else (let's use the initials A.B. to protect the guilty) MySpace messages. Witty, friendly, hostile, pained and, if I'm being honest, tediously long messages, not too dissimilar to this post in actual fact.

Imagine (if you can!) that A.B. never responds to these messages. Never. Would that mean that this someone would stop sending the messages eventually, irritated by the non-responsiveness. Or, would it mean, buoyed by the absence of feedback (negative or positive) this someone would just carry on sending. Click, send. Click, send. Click, send. Would this someone get more and more bold in what they feel able to say?

It's an interesting one, for sure. Only for those with nothing better to do on a Sunday I agree, for sure.

Take it from me, A.B., that a little birdy told me that silence has no power anymore. It's normal. It does not disarm or disable or demean. In fact it empowers and vindicates. Utterly so. Amazingly so. The little bird would chirp. The boy cried wolf too often, birdy would say. The little boy just cried too often.

No, what worked and what continues to work are short left-field replies that cut to the nub of the matter with brutal incision. For example, one such reply might involve the admittedly somewhat puzzling expression, ego vertigo. Puzzling to little birdy, anyway.

"Anyway, it's a rainy day (days I most enjoy)," this someone might say, "and I thought I'd share this thought with you. Yes, I admit it, I was thinking about you. It's Sunday, after all".

People are funny, aren't they. As are little birdies and little boys.

Why can't they all just get along?