Out of Whack

The guy who's following me online, reached out via email last week and asked me (no doubt derisively) how in the world I can have 1600+ tweets but only 31 followers on Twitter?

He actually inserted three (3) question marks at the end, and capitalized the word 'how' ... Apparently needing to know, indeed, HOW I could possibly have more than 1600 tweets??? - but only a proportionately tiny handful of people giving a shit.

I told him -- my online "fan" -- that I wasn't doing this to be "liked"; that I had an agenda, and at the end of the day, I am and have been achieving my goals.  True, it seems I have more social networks online than actual "followers" ... and some of these networks are entirely useless.

Don't care.

Google my name now, the name, Jeff Glovsky.  What you "stumbleupon" today is 1000% times cleaner, more accurate a reflection, more truthful and balanced, than even six months ago.  Yes, I still suck in some quarters ... and in the fevered imaginings of the guy who bumped into me in New York a few weeks ago and hissed in my face, "you fucking scumbag" (This actually happened) ... in front of not only my family, but the Starbucks barrista I was trying to make eyes with!

Or a guy in Miami ... who never previously met me, but felt compelled when he did, after sussing me out from a photo somewhere, to make challenging, instigatory remarks to my face ... alternately and insultingly laughing in it with his girlfriend, as I picked up my dry cleaning one day with my wife.

Fortunately, such disgusting, and vaguely unhinged, public incidents are few and far between.  In the former example, I hope and pray this guy remains unarmed ... Is it any wonder my "tweets" are geschützt?!

But 1600+ tweets ... Indeed, HOW and why?

Because I have photography and writing streaming on Twitter:  I have "allowed" the "app" to post on my behalf ... so whenever I do something on WordPress or Tumblr, it's automatically "shared" with that guy who's following me.

But why so few followers?

Because, why so MANY?  What is the point of having '500+', or random "likes", or like, @GayBatman trying to like me??  Or Hot Lonely Girls, beating down my door?  Man, I've got my own stories.

And is this even real???:

purveyor of (smash)words

 * * *

The 'real' Jeff Glovsky

Not Very '90s

“If you’re really a mean person you’re going to come back as a fly and eat poop.”
- Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)

I have been asked -- my follower sent me an email -- why I never got around here, or anywhere online, to mentioning Kurt Cobain to mark the 20th "anniversary" of his stupid death.  When jazz guitarist Jim Hall passed, I put up a couple of his tracks on SoundCloud.  I nod in respect to dead writers often ... To "celebrate" the 34th year of a world without love, I posted a piece about Lennon here.

But April 5th came and went with barely a pause ... for remembrance ... stage diving ... a global moment of angst or moshing.  No one seemed to light candles, or say much.  The kids in alterna-clothes, spirited teens once, kept creeping up in age, towards forty ... and Courtney Love keeps being dissed or ignored - in short, regarded like she's batshit and kept in the attic.

While a cursory google, if you will, of the phrase, "Courtney Love found the jet", may induce a giggle or two, the fact that EVERY snarky twenty-something with a phone or keyboard picked up on that "meme" to insult the woman, is wholly sad.

That's the soul difference between us and them ... the gaping divide between our Generation X -- Kurt's, Courtney's, mine -- and our Gen Y, Z and Millennial offspring ... younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, eventually grandkids:

Any self-effacement or actual humor is vanished.  Our kids today -- unoriginal, uninspired (except to "share") and largely untalented -- get off on maligning and effacing others ... with no hint of playfulness -- no irony -- and whether or not it's truly deserved, or they have any clue who they're talking about when they're cutting, and pasting ... and narcissistically, or derisively, "sharing".

Apparently, Courtney Love was on the Tomnod website, participating in the online challenge they've got there.  She (now infamously) tweeted,

"Prayers go out to the families #MH370 and it’s like a mile away Pulau Perak, where they 'last' tracked it 5°39'08.5“N 98°50'38.0”E but what do I know?"

According to their website, "(t)he Tomnod mission is to utilize the power of crowdsourcing to identify objects and places in satellite images."  The Search for MH370 would seem to be the perfect measure of that platform, which has previously mapped search campaigns for Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the ruinous Oklahoma tornado of May 2013.

As far as I can tell ('but what do I know?'), Courtney Love was participating.

How is that batshit (or "deranged", as it's actually been nastily written in some places)?  And why are there literally pages on Google, serving up dozens of this obnoxiously mocking "story" about her participating?

I can't help thinking Kurt Cobain would have loathed what the internet has become for most people:  less an information superhighway, and much more a clogged high school corridor of cliques, desperation for acceptance, intolerance, peer pressure and bullying ... from which even the strongest among us prefer to escape.

The damaged and fragile do not stand a chance.

RIP (GenX) KC

"Fade to Memory (Old School)", ©Jeff Glovsky