(It’s a clever title, I promise and has nothing to do with VR)

I posted something about this on Bluesky the other day, so if you get a sense of deja vu, it’s from that.

I’ve been online for a long time, starting in the mid 90s, meeting other 2000ad/comic fans on social media of their day newsgroups. Newsgroups were a noticeboard like facility, no direct messaging but with very good threading, and it was largely before the “World Wide Web” – aka the internet as we know it now – was fully formed. Like many things, they ended up getting wrapped into google (specifically google groups – my haunt was alt.comics.2000ad you can probably find proto-me in there under the name paulj)

The rise and rise of social media and online ads, and all things internet has come at a cost, I think – and that cost is the slow decline of real world interactions. Real world opportunities to do things. It’s hard to measure because how do you measure something that may have happened. But it certainly feels real. And the older I get the more real it feels.

As social media now begins a slow but steady decline, a balkanisation, owing largely to the Musk transformation of twitter into X (shaped a bit like a swastika with the hard edges removed) to people heading off for threads, mastodon and bluesky (I went for mastodon, didn’t enjoy it, ended up on blusky, which is still lacking a lot of my mutuals from former days on twitter, but has enough comics folk it’s not a problem)

Part of social media’s problem is that it is now required to start making rather a lot of money. Twitter prior to musk buying it wasn’t making anything, facebook rakes in millions from advertising and its rather brutal shakedown of companies (“Hey! Congrats your latest post was seen by 25 people, if you’d like the 15k people who follow you to see it why not pay!”) and that, as others have said, leads to enshittification (the ongoing creeping crappiness that is created by the need for social media to stop serving its users and start serving mammon)

Anyway, maybe that’s all wrong and what’s really happening is I’m in my fifties and I’m feeling like a lot of what I’ve been doing online has been an enormous waste of time. I enjoyed being on twitter, I thought I was good at it. 15k followers was my upper limit and it never really moved from there, and you begin to realise it was all a bit pointless really.

I’ve been digitally drawing for a few years now, and my early digital work from 7-8 years ago are in files somewhere – maybe an external hard drive. I dunno. My early pen and ink work, from 25 years ago. It’s sitting in a box in my hallway.

I went to a Belfast Comics Jam this month. Maybe me being out of the loop of what’s happening locally means I’ve missed decades of this kind of event, but it certainly feels like, at least in Belfast, every couple of generations some small kindling of interest in comic making happens with enough people that people start to do something about it. We’re a small place though (Belfast had a population of about 345k people in 2022) and that feels like our limiting factor. The Jam was made up with people I’m pretty sure are about two generations younger than me. I felt old and out of place, and they seemed to be having a great time. I didn’t spot that anyone was interested in commercial comics, they all seemed to be just doing it for a bit of fun – which is great! I sat and did some doodling, and then went home. Feeling old.

I also did an audition for a play. People more my age. Acting. It’s been a while. Long term readers of the blog may know I did a few plays from 2016-2017 (Macbeth, The Dead, and Tucaret) and before that I think the last play I’d acted in was around 1997 (most 20 years before). In my twenties I was full of confidence, and bluster and could do anything. (Arguably arrogant, and a dickhead, but still CHARMING!). Then coming back to it in 2016 a lot of that ego had been knocked back. I think I was pretty decent for someone who was just there for the experience of doing it, but man I felt that age gap as a lack of confidence very keenly.

This time, a smaller gap (though bout 7 years yikes!) and my confidence is a busted flush when it comes to acting. My world has shrank so small, my ambitions now to sit in my room and work – and it’s great that I get to do that, but exposing yourself by sitting at a table and reading out lines in front of others.

I had tried auditioning before, last year, for a play and I think I can read out loud dramatically but it required an accent and I just… I just couldn’t muster one. I felt self conscious and that audition was so awful I thought “that’s it. That’s the end line of me ever acting again” and so didn’t think about auditioning again, until my wife suggested I give it another go.

This current play (and I’ll tell you all this on the basis I don’t expect anything to come from the audition at all) is called The Ghost Train, set in a Cornish train station (my wife being a cornish woman, I thought this might be at least some sort of sign I should give it a go). I bought the play and thought I’d practice. But I just couldn’t unlock any of it it in my head (I read a lot of comics scripts, and they’re not dissimilar, except a comic strip I start to see it – it leaps out to me now, this is what happens when you’re 24 years in to a professional career, I suppose) but one character is a broader cornish character and so I gave that a go. In my head. Not out loud. Well, occasionally out loud when no one was about. I mentioned it to a couple of people and when they asked to here, I immediately demurred. Not good. (Anyone who knew me acting in my twenties will struggle to reconcile mr ego then of mr petrified now)

Went to the audtions (I was a bit late) everyone was lovely, especially the people who knew me from the previous plays I’d done there (who were not only lovely but very happy to see me).

I did a couple of line reads. Very nervy. Very … not great. And got to do a cornish character “Do you want him Cornish-ish?” “Yeah that’d be great”. And I don’t know how to best explain what happened next, but my brain said “ok cornish” “yeah I don’t know what that sounds like” and then what came out was… my normal belfast accent. It was like I was trying to will myself to levitate and my feet stubbornly refused to leave the ground. Absolute disaster. I mean no-one could tell the inner turmoil, but having asked if they wanted cornish and having delivered Belfast (And I think I did an ok read, albeit in my own accent) I wouldn’t blame anyone for not making a mental note of me being a genius.

After the reads, I’d yet to get to read the broader cornish character (which was the one I’d actually done some readings of in the house) the director asked around if anyone wanted to audition for any particular role, and reader, let me tell you my hand steadfastly stayed by my side in much the same manner as my accent steadfastly stayed Norn irish.

(And worse, everyone else whod done accent work – and almost everyone had – had all been great, it’s a broad play, so lots of fun broad accents).

Then one of the other people round the table asked to read Saul (the cornish fellow) and we did another read (this time I was given one line, a posh, indignent ladies – because by this stage everyone was being a little goofy) and I read that one line great – nothing Belfast about it. (Well maybe) but it loosened my brain up. That after that, and just before the director called it a day I asked to read Saul.

And this time the accent came. Thick and … well.. west country. But broad and characterful and it doesn’t really matter if I get a part or not, the important point is I gave it a go.