ADDLED BY TWIT-FACE
I have a background in computers and technology since the mid-eighties and my saving grace learning that stuff at the time was that is was based on logic and common-sense, (or it was on the Mac platform at any rate).
Initially I toured the country trying to convince the newspaper industry of the advantages of Desk-Top Publishing over hot lead. Believe it or not, it was slow going and soul-destroying and the new technology wore a saucy price tag too. The early innovators were just getting their heads around DTP when I was back with Postscript Graphics and Photoshop. Their resistance was monumental.
But over time they put their toe in the water of graphics and photo-retouching and then I'm back again announcing the new thing. "Internet and URL's is the future lads," I announced excitedly, "and soon you'll be putting that rag of yours out to a waiting world market." A chorus of 'Fuck-off John' came back but I persisted.
So they dragged their weary backsides online and suddenly I'm back again. "I've had a vision lads and it is moving pictures. I give you, 'Video-Editing,' and this is really where it's at." Groans of "Jesus Mallon!" followed and I hit a brick wall. "OK, we publish at our desks now and we're making more money as a result, our pictures and graphics are winning us awards and we're ahead of our competitors online and increasing circulation massively. But we're not going to make a movie John, no fucking way!"
So I quit my job and went making movies myself instead. The technology was brilliant but the old ways were changing and how you created awareness of who you were and what you had to offer was changing utterly. As an internet native I first came across Facebook and signed up to see what that was all about. Next came Linkedin and I got one of those too. My WAYN account was next to be opened and then Twitter came along. I stress at this point that I didn't even know what I was supposed to do with all this new shit. I was a confused lurker trying to figure out what I must be missing.
I had my first mobile phone in 1989 and I can still remember it going off on the Cork Dublin train and passengers standing up to see where the noise was coming from. I was like one of those passengers looking at Twit-Face, as I called it all collectively. Early mobile phone users were on the damned thing always and they used it to ring home and say where they were and what they were doing, (nothing of course). People all around made eye contact with each other before throwing those eyes to heaven. That was me on Facebook. It bored the tits off me.
When all the German supermarkets began opening I had a look at that too. I don't know which one I went to first maybe Lidl or Aldi but very quickly and because of social media, I just called them all 'Addled.'