Am I Too Grumpy Online?

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 13.266% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

In real life, I sing songs to my dog all the time: “A pet to the dog, and I’m too late – you give dogs a bad name,” I sing as Shasta runs away from me to try to play “Catch the dog.”  Gini’s continually giving me a cocked eyebrow as I’m doing some goofy monologue to our puppy.
I’m also telling terrible puns pretty much 24/7.  We were out to breakfast the other day, and discovered our friend Laura had never had Eggs Benedict.  Jeremiah her husband said he’d have to whip out the cooking equipment and make his own special version for her.  I told him he’d better have chrome plates.  Why, he asked?
Because there’s no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise.
Astoundingly, they did not hit me.
But if you look at my blog, it’s all “Here’s a condemnation of ‘nice guy’ culture, here’s an analysis of an opening chapter, oh Christ what the fuck did they do on Game of Thrones, here’s Yet Another Serious Analysis of Polyamory.”  And I worry that maybe my blog makes me seem to be a grim and kinda complainy guy, the sort of grouch who lives to just carp at things, whereas I think most of my friends know me as “That doof who sends me otter videos.”
It gets slightly better on my Twitter account, where I get to say silly things in 140 characters, but even then I do a lot of GRAH SOCIAL INJUSTICE linking.
It’s a concern, because I have unfriended people for being relentlessly grim.  I’m sure they’re fun in real life, but their feed consists entirely of negative reactions to things – this movie was awful, this news item is heartbreaking, these people are racist morons, and while they’re rarely incorrect eventually I shriek, “Don’t you ever enjoy anything?”
They probably do.  I assume they’re not curled up in a hole searching out awful things to say.  But what they present as their electronic persona is unremittingly bleak, a constant stream of anger and complaint and All That Is Wrong With The World – and while they have the absolute right to do that, I also have the absolute right to say, “I can’t deal with the all-anger channel” and sign off.
It’s a matter of taste.  And I personally don’t wanna come off as Mr. Omni-Downer in my blog, continually dissecting all the awful things in the world, never talking about all the fizzy awesomeness of the world we live in.  But I though I can fret about how I come off, I can’t actually diagnose it, because I’m me.  Blog-me – the dude you’re talking to right now – is an entirely different person, a sort of avatar – I send him out into the world with a flurry of posts, and people have Very Firm opinions on him, and in most cases I actually have no idea what those opinions are.
As I’ve said many times, there’s a disjunct between Who I Am and Who I Come Off As In This Blog, an inescapable schism, and though I try to make it an accurate reflection there’s always gonna be some distortions.  I can’t blog 24/7.  I wouldn’t want to blog 24/7.  So there’s gaps, and movies I meant to review, and funny anecdotes I didn’t bother to share, and all that falls through some hole in the world where I actually, you know, live my life.
And I have zero idea how I’m perceived.  I get some nice feedback, but that’s from fans.  And if I’ve learned anything from Kitchen Nightmares, it’s that dissatisfied customers don’t write you an elaborate letter stating their complaints… they just don’t come back.
All I can do is hope that people realize I can be both contemplative and goofy, and that my writings convey some of the full spectrum of me – from depressive despair to HEY CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS AWESOME, and that people think of Blog-Me as someone who’d be fun to talk to.  And I hope that when I talk about the problems with the world, I also convey that there’s also a lot of wonder in it at all that people are as kick-ass as they actually are, that I think the average person is actually really fascinating, and that puns and bad songs about dogs are a vital portion of a balanced breakfast.
I don’t know what you think of me.  But I’d like to think that you think that I’m a positive person, if that makes any sense.  A positive person who ponders.
I could live with that alliteration.

5 Comments

  1. R. H. Kanakia
    Apr 28, 2014

    Well, you also include a fair amount of: “I love my wife so much” and “I am so thankful to be alive” and “these are my sweet-ass bees” and “I am so amazed by all this good writing-related fortune.”
    So there’s plenty of happy stuff too. By the standards of internet-related grumpiness, it’s not so bad.

  2. Lydia
    Apr 28, 2014

    I’m a fairly new reader, but I’ve never gotten the impression that you’re a grumpy person FWIW.

  3. Rosemarie
    Apr 28, 2014

    I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but *this* person thinks of Blog-You as someone who’d be fun to talk to. 🙂

  4. Beverly
    Apr 29, 2014

    Even when you have the grumpies reading your stuff is enjoyable. I guess I could call you a cheerful grump. I do think you should show us the awesome bees more often.
    And, yeah, I kind of agree with Rosemarie, you would be fun to talk to and hang out with.

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