Untamed

Writing isn’t the same as it used to be, in many senses. Back in the old days there used to be typewriters, but that removed the personality within writing. Sure, there’s the way someone writes, the way things are expressed and written but that still doesn’t seem the same. Handwriting can say a lot about a person, more than one may actually believe – where you were sitting, how you were writing with your wrist, how fast or how slow; it all can be told just by ones handwriting.

Typewriters were always there, removing the personality within writing and making anything anyone ever said look the same as everyone else. No matter what they said or who they were as a person, the black ink and standard font made it look as common as anyone else’s work, and it wasn’t until you took a closer examination at the writing that you realised what you had in front of you. The same can be said for meeting a person face-to-face, only its their physical appearance that immediately displayed something about the person, without you having to take too much time to ask questions.

Even now we’re just as common and anonymous with writing via a computer. Online publishing makes a slight change, allowing virtual space to look like anything that the owner wants, usually but that can only be created ‘personal’ to a certain extent. At the end of the day, there’s still someone out there with the same background colour as you, perhaps even the same title. With so many users online, it makes it difficult to be unique, personal and noticeable with something as simple as a user name – the only other easily created option that shows something about you, immediately.

It gets touchy when you move into the field of common appearance. How does one define themselves, how do I make what I am writing now seem my own, unique and personal when it doesn’t show anything about me at all. My handwriting certainly isn’t here, the evidence of how I put each letter on page in ink isn’t able to be deciphered through this common Windows default font. How can I be me, by using a user name, when there are so many other people online who also possibly (and most likely) share the same name as you to identify themselves? When a service denies use of a name because it is already taken, how can you represent you on a personal level when the name you desired was used by someone else?

We all have things in common, but technology and more “convenient” methods unnecessarily make everyone too common and too similar. We don’t particularly need these methods to do any of the tasks we do today, it just happens to be that they are more common. It’s easier to find a free online publishing service such as Blogger or even WordPress to share your views, opinions, ideas and creativity to the world than it is to put greater effort into publishing a book with the same views or ideas. People have time, they just don’t want to spend that time doing something productive, because it would require dedication and effort. Perhaps that or their ideas and views are so common or similar to other peoples that they feel comfortable not doing anything more with their work.

Time is everything, and always something that we believe we never have enough of. You certainly cannot get back the time you lost or used, so why is it easier to spend hours upon hours playing a game but not to spend something as little as forty-five minutes writing or doing something that expresses who you are. You are never the night elf warrior you create in a game, the game makes you that way, gives you only a limited options of “expression” that can, and will, begin to look similar or exactly the same as every other player in the realm.

We are much happier to be nothing, than something.