First, I copied and pasted
the post-game analysis I posted here a few days ago...
In my admittedly harsh estimation, the show sucked.
No --
I sucked.
. . . et cetera . . .
Anyway -- that's my post-game.
. . .
(Parenthetically, however, I must say, however flawed my inaugural radio hosting gig was, I'm obliged to declared it a qualified success for one simple and obvious reason: People not only talked about it immediately after it aired... they were talking about it the day after... and the day after, and the day after that. And not just the people who like me and support my efforts in blgging and other arenas; the people who loathe and disparage me, and claim to think me irrelevant and useless -- THOSE people -- who, by the way, NEVER seem to stop talking about me, never mind that it's negative, they constantly fucking TALK about me, for chrissakes. You'd think if they truly wished to make me IRRELEVANT, they'd just SHUT THE FUCK UP about me.
Anyway -- crappy sound and hesitant host or not, a show cannot truly be declared a bomb if people are still talking about it 5 days later. It must be acknowledged as a qualified success. So there.)
Then, I wrote my response to THEIR post-game" analysis (of course, edited slightly here and there, in this version -- editor's prerogative):
I agree with virtually every criticism leveled at me here; irrespective of the needlessly cruel delivery style of some here
(very much expected, and to which I've long since become impervious), even the jabs at my personality flaws are pretty much accurate, noted and already on my list of
Shit I Have to Correct.
Character Defects and Technical Difficulties aside, the most challenging aspect of this venture is obviously the undertaking of a completely alien vocation. I'm amused by the "shocked, SHOCKED" reactions of some here; as if the expectation was that I was going to waltz into talk radio -- regardless of the fact I'd never done anything remotely like it before, that I was a complete amateur, that I was likely (and, as it turned out, WAS) to be nervous as hell -- a seasoned professional.
And oh, the feigned disappointment. Coming from a bunch of people who doubtless would have liked nothing better than to hear me vomiting on air, all this hand wringing over my mediocre performance is risible, to say the least.
One more thing: For people who declare me utterly irrelevant and useless, you sure spend an awful lot of time thinking and talking about me. You keep it up, you might surpass me.
I shouldn't even bother going back to read the response to this -- but eventually, after a LONG time has passed... I probably will.
Funny thing, though -- I actually have grown impervious to the callous cruelty of these types of people. Don't know what happened; maybe just the passage of time? Or perhaps it was the series of REAL dramas in my life, the REAL pain I've experienced over the past several months -- perhaps it gave me a true, heavy-duty sense of perspective.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ As I've said repeatedly to a couple friends who've been experiencing their own pain over some online assholery: those people aren't really talking to THEM, not them as actual PEOPLE, with feelings, with lives and children and hopes, dreams, fears -- those people are typing those awful words to NAMES on a screen.
They have no real sense of the humanity involved at the other end of the TUBES, as it were. The callous, unfeeling, vicious, malice they spew through their keyboards onto their screens -- they do NOT truly think about the actual FEELINGS those words elicit from the ACTUAL PEOPLE to whom they are directed. How could they? If they truly did KNOW... they would be monsters, wouldn't they? Amoral, vicious, sociopathic monsters. For the words they write, the things they say to other PEOPLE... those words are MONSTROUS.
The only thing I can honestly believe of them is that they are utterly detached from the reality of what they are doing and saying. They do not have any true sense of the HUMAN BEINGS to whom they are speaking with their keyboards and their internet connections; funny that should be the word we use for it -- connection; it's the very last thing they actually are, connected." They are completely DETACHED.
Anyway, that's how I see it, and that's how I've come to be resolutely detached, myself, when approaching the type of person online who writes to me the sort of language I know for a fact she or he could never say to my face.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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