Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Facespace, mybook etc.

Now that I have profiles on facebook, myspace, bebo and pretty much every other networking site it's possible to be on, I get sent a lot of trash. A lot.

I consider it in no way fun to have these accounts; I consider it necessary. They help publicise my books and build a fanbase. They make it much easier for readers of the Jimmy Coates series to get in touch with me, which is good, and it's also easier for me to get in touch with them, which makes it a good thing for spreading the word about the series.

But I can't help being irritated by the trash.

I usually wouldn't mention any of this, but sometimes there's something so ridiculous about the trash that it makes me laugh. Lately there have been more and more quizzes. Not general knowledge stuff, but things that tell you about your personality, or what colour you are, or what country you are, or how 'aussie' you are (those three all arrived in the last fifteen minutes).

And there's always the same incentive offered for clicking on these things and answering whatever questions or performing whatever physical challenges are required to find out the answers to things like: Are you in luv? Do you have swine flu? How did you die in your last life? What 2009 song are you? What car fits you the best? What character from Twilight/Friends/Lost/Harry Potter are you? And, of course, how will you die?

And so on.

That incentive is always: take this quiz, because it's scarily accurate.

Yes, I'm sure that the level of accuracy in the result of the quiz would scare me. That must be why I delete all these things. I'm scared of what the result might be.

Because I'm sitting here, knowing that I'm love, suffering from swin flu, that I died in my last life by being flattened by a fridge, that the 2009 song that I somehow am is 'Poker Face', that of all the cars in the world a bugatti would 'fit' me best, that I am, underneath this facade of my real life personality, a vampire/Joey/the one that started in a wheelchair/Hermione and that I'll soon get hit by a falling satellite.

But I'm scared to see that truth reflected back at me by a quiz on a social nerdworking site.

Sometimes all we have to fear is the truth.

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