The Night Belongs to the Poets and the Madmen.

Okay so I am going to have to admit that the link between post and title is small to say the least, but it is a quote that has been spinning around in my head for a couple of days as random sayings and quotes do at times so I've put it there anyway. Just to let you know, it is actually a quote from 'Modern Family', the full quote being : - 

"“Life is just more interesting after 2am. The liquor taste better and the woman more beautiful. There is a saying; the night belongs to the poets and the madmen."

But anyway. So my train of thought and - albeit tenuous - link to my title goes as follows; Night -> Things that go bump in the night -> Werewolves -> People changing -> Changing who we are. 

See! Everything is clear? No? Well on with the post, anyhow. Just bare with.  

So I can pretty much guarantee that you, dear reader, are a member of, at the very least, one social networking site. I'd go as far to say that it is probable that you are a member of two, three or four. Personally, I am active on 3 social networking sites on a daily basis and I would say that I am a different person on each and every one of them. There are very few people that I am friends with on all 3 websites, but I can identify traits and characteristics that they demonstrate on one that they do not on another just as I do and I think that this is actually a really interesting thing. And this is what this here post is going to be about. Changing who we are. Geddit?

I know that this concept isn't new and I am also aware that I'm no psychologist so cannot say why we "play our parts" when we're online. I've already spoken in a previous post about how hiding behind a screen allows people to say and do things that they would never say/do face to face, and I suppose that this is taking on a new personality too. But when we are online and on these different websites, is it us taking on a "new" personality and becoming someone else for a while, or are we just being who we really are?

The three "Megans'" that I'm going to talk about are the Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr Megans'.

Tumblr

I absolutely love Tumblr. This is the site that I can be the me'est me I can be on. I find that the people are a) a lot more understanding b ) a lot more open minded and c ) a lot friendlier. There isn't a day goes by that I don't see someone replying to a post giving advice, information, constructive criticism, help. There are, of course, people that feel the need to start arguments etc, but in general, I would say that Tumblr is a pretty nice place to be. The main thing I like about it is that it is where my inner (not so quiet) fangirl can go to reblog reblog reblog things about people/shows/songs/films/furniture/quotes/books/technology/hair/underwear/art/shoes/etc I like and noone will go WTF?!?! because, HEY! They're doing the same thing. If they don't like it, they unfollow you - a concept that really isn't that obvious to a lot of the people I find are on twitter/fb. 

I can write what I feel think and want on Tumblr knowing that people will either scroll past it not caring or take the time to read it but they won't mind, either way. I can get home and not have to really censor myself and that is surprisingly refreshing. 

I'm not wording this very well, but in short, I find it to be a place where people are people and there's no judgement because we're all as weird as each other in different ways, which is an attitude I feel is severely lacking in the other 2 networks. 

Twitter

I used to love Twitter. It used to be completely void of people I know "in real life" because they were all at the stage of no way I like facebook too much, twitter is crap bla la la. And so I'd talk to a lot of people that liked the things I liked, got excited about the things I got excited about and were good for a ranting session or two. But then the bandwagon came rolling on past and the facebookers started jumping on and now I frequently have year 9 students following me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that because I was an early 'tweeter', I am better than anyone else but I really don't want these people following me! I can no longer post a whole days worth of tweets about David Bowie having a new album out because the people I go to school with will think that's 'really weird and annoying and you're clogging up my timeline omg'. Don't think I'm not MEGA excited about his new album because I am and I have tweeted quite a lot about it. But no where near as much as I would have. I don't tweet about Doctor Who much anymore because no matter what people say, yes it is a little nerdy - fantastic but nerdy - and sixth form is hell enough without people speaking about what a twat I am for liking Doctor Who or whatever it may be. Now, I don't hide that I like Doctor Who - I quite often talk about it in fact - but having it all over my Twitter just doesn't appeal to me anymore. And as more and more people I actually know follow me, the more I have to censor silly things like that. My twitter name used to be 'River Lestrange' referring to both Doctor Who and Harry Potter. And my followers actually used to get that!!! They would comment on it and know what fandoms I am in! I miss those days because I had to change it - I'd had enough of people coming up to me at school and asking what the hell that even meant and why do I have that as my name? Ught. But no, I like twitter. I really do. I just liked it a lot more before. I am a strange mix of "school" and "real" Megan on there and it's all a bit weird.

Twitter and I have a strange relationship. 

Facebook

I'm thinking this is going to be a very short section. I hate Facebook. If it weren't for the family that I am in touch with on there, I would delete my page in a heartbeat. The statuses annoy me. The photos annoy me. The idiotic things that people say and do and post and like and talk about annoy me. Yes I used to like it and yes I spend longer than I should looking through other peoples pages, but if anyone can honestly say that the way they portray themselves on fb is really them, I don't believe you. You're always trying to seem more exciting than you are, prettier than you are, more intelligent than you are, dumber than you are (which pisses me off most of all). Facebook is full of fake people that you really know, and it's a website that I despise. 

So I don't really have a neat little closing comment for this post, and I can't really remember where it was going, but I think it's interesting to think about how we act differently to different people, even when each are a group of people that we don't really know. I know noone on Tumblr in real life, about a third of people on twitter and I actually don't know a lot of people on my fb, yet I come across differently to each group simply because of the website and how everybody else interacts with eachother. 

Huh. Deep. 

Anyway. I hope that you're all having a fabulous new year and this hasn't been completely mind numbing as I suspect it has been. 

M x

There's a Starman waiting in the sky...

This song has been stuck in my head since the moment I woke up this morning and because of it, I have done quite a bit of reading on the Ziggy Stardust story. For those of you who don't know, Ziggy Stardust was David Bowie's alter-ego in the 70's whos lifestory was (sort of) told through his 1972 album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars". 

In an interview with Rolling Stones magazine, Bowie expanded Ziggys story, explaining : 

The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids no longer want rock-and-roll. There's no electricity to play it. Ziggy's adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, 'cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. 'All the young dudes' is a song about this news. It's no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite. [...]

The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I've made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage. [...]

Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a Starman, so he writes 'Starman', which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately...The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don't have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black hole jumping. Their whole life is travelling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a Black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie, the Infinite Fox...Now Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starmen. He takes himself up to the incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make them real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world. And they tear him to pieces on stage during the song 'Rock 'n' roll suicide'. As soon as Ziggy dies on stage the infinites take his elements and make themselves visible"

Bowie did actually "kill off" Ziggy with a final performance of Rock 'n' Roll Suicide in 1973.

I adore the lyrics to Starman and the whole idea of it. So beautiful. 

I'm a massive Bowie fan and regularly have a new favourite song of his, but for the moment it's definitely Starman. 

Just look at all that fabulous!

M x