The Problem With Timely Things In A Place Like This
Yesterday (Technically, today, as I posted slightly after Midnight), I recited words into a microphone.
Describing some thoughts about a recent event.
I then transcribed those words over the next two hours, with a few edits here or there, to text.
As of a few hours ago, all of those words I wrote with one meaning, now mean something else.
They were words that were written to an imagined audience experiencing something in an exact moment in time.
An event. A timely event.
Now, the following day, that moment has passed, replacing it with a new moment.
Those words are now. . . old old, old old. The cool is all gone.
Not because of anything I wrote or edited since then. Time simply moved on, and left that piece behind.
Time had a different plan in mind.
I don’t like writing about things happening right now. It’s a little unfortunate that so much of the internet has always been about, discussing, writing, and creating things related to what’s happening . . . right now.
It’s so rare that I’ve joined an IRC, a ventrillo server, a discord server, heck even an AIM chat room, and had a discussion about what we were discussing the day prior. Two days prior. A week!
Reflecting on what was talked about in the recent past is a rare occurence in internet spaces.
Every day, the entire world happens, and then gets discussed.
And because it’s the entire world, where eight billion people are Doing Stuff all the time, there’s never a lack of fresh Stuff To Discuss.
Maybe on forums, in years past, where things were moving a little slower, events had a longer life span.
But nearly every major form of social media since, decided to put content on an infinite timeline.
One line, constantly moving forward in time. These timelines are rarely designed in a way that let’s you look back at what the world was talking about a week ago.
So you can bring up that hot topic you were so passionate about.
Maybe the website might offer you the charity of sorting by the absolute CREAM of the crop posts.
For that week, month, year. But, it’s rare those discussions, comments, and replies, ever have a life span longer than a few days.
And let’s call it like it really is! Those “Sort By” features are mostly there so that when all the things happening right now have been read, the user can spend a little more time reading the things they might have missed.
Not for the purpose of reflecting on the events from last week.
This article, while about a timely article, is not timely.
It’s ideas are static in respect to time. As static as an idea like this idea can be.
Time will not change this idea. I’ll change with time, and look back on this idea, and have new thoughts about it. How maybe it’s changed, improved, gotten worse.
But I haven’t written strictly about anything rooted in a moment right now.
I do regret writing what I wrote yesterday. I feel as if I simply took a bucket of dry sand, and poured it into the wind.
Hoping that somehow, I’d come back tomorrow and the sand would still be exactly where it fell.
I said to myself, when I was defining the principals which should guide the words I write here, that I wouldn’t write timely stuff.
And yet I did. Just once, maybe to try it out. Overly excited about a thing that happened.
And, immediately I was rewarded with a reminder of why I adhere to that principal on this most sacred of websites which I know my readers have come to love, trust, and devote their entire life to over the past few months.
I’m sorry I let you down.
I hope this timeless reflection on yesterday’s timely article can make up for some of the potentially eternal lifelong trauma you might have acquired as a result.
Though I fear it’s, kind of boring. And mostly just a reminder for me. To not do that again.
Here’s a quote I regularly recall from a dude that spent his life reporting on things happening exactly right now:
“In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.” - Paul Harvey