50 Thoughts I Had While Watching "Anonymous"

1. The onscreen titles look surprisingly like the font “Papyrus”, the worst font, worse than Comic Sans.
   
   
2. The film starts in New York. New York, New York, famous for its associations with the English Bard.
   
   
3. DEREK JACOBI IS IN THIS AND I DO NOT APPROVE. 
   
   
4. Okay, Jacobi, I know you are a sceptic and support the authorship question Jacobi, but you were amazing in Doctor Who, The Last Tango in Halifax and In the Night Garden. You do not need this gig. 
   
   
5. And now we’re getting sweeping, running backstage shots of a busy theatre. All this makes me do is realise how much I miss Birdman.
   
   
6. Derek Jacobi casually strolls up to the theatre, clearly unprepared, and launches into a prissy rant about how someone with a “Grammar School” education couldn’t possibly write words, clearly unaware at how ruthlessly challenging and comprehensive a grammar school education was in the late fifteenth century, but I’ll let that slide.
   
   
7. Actually, I won’t let that slide. Fuck this film already and its classist attitudes.
   
   
8. Why is suddenly there rain on stage? Dramatic effect? A pointless effect. I am mad at this film and its pointless effects.
   
   
9. Okay, so that transition into Jacobean London was seamlessly done. I give Mr Emmerich credit where it is due. But I can’t get the image of a bored Derek Jacobi standing underneath a really obvious garden sprinkler out of my head. 
   
   
10. ACTION SEQUENCE. Ben Jonson is running from the guards with some paper tucked under his arm. He hides in the Rose Theatre, so the guards burn a giant building down without even legitimately trying to look for him. Logic!
    
    
11. Small point – Jonson’s father is apparently a “glassblower” in this adaptation. If his family comes from humble beginnings and he didn’t have a university education (though Wikipedia states Jonson wanted to but didn’t) then why is it totally fine for him to be able to write amazing literature but not Shakespeare? Technically, Jonson is also a bit of a pleb and by rights shouldn’t be a genius, but the film’s not about him.
    
    
12. Edward, Earl of Oxford, is introduced walking the streets of London with a hankie to his nose, tiptoeing on a wooden plank to avoid the mud like a sissy. Already I think he’s a nonce. 
    
    
13. Please tell me that’s not Shakespeare.
    
    
14. Oh. Wow. I normally very much respect Spall but we’re going for the whole “let’s make Shakespeare a complete bumbling cad” thing in the style of The Shakespeare Code in Doctor Who, just to make dead sure the audience know he’s too dumb to write plays. Cracking. This lazy casting won’t grate on my nerves at all.
    
    
15. Wait, wasn’t Marlowe dead at this time? What year is this? Is the film deliberately not telling me what year it is so I can’t fact check its historical accuracy? I think it is. Sneaky. I see what you did there, Roland.
    
    
16. “Since when did words ever win a war?” says Essex. Well, there’s the famous Tilbury speech, for starters, which YOUR OWN BLOODY QUEEN performed years ago prior to this scene. Also you won’t have heard of Martin Luther King Jr, Ghandi or any other famous men-of-words throughout the ages yet, but as an Elizabethan nobleman, your education would have included lessons dedicated specifically to rhetoric and language, so either you weren’t paying attention or I’m supposed to hate you.
    
    
17. Now for the first appearance of Queen Elizabeth. At least she looks appropriately withered and aged here. She also looks absolutely delighted by people pretending to be fairies though, so I’m suspect as to what I’m supposed to think of her.
    
    
18. “It’s by… Anonymous,” whispers the mysterious dwarf. TITLE. BOOM. MIKE DROP.
    
    
19. In an unnecessary flashback, the Earl of Oxford has written his first play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream aged NINE. So not only is Roland Emmerich retconning the recognised Shakespeare canon by putting Midsummer first, but he’s also, essentially, suggesting that the plot, language and structure of one of the most famous and beloved comedies in English literature is so basic that a nine-year-old could write it.
    
    
20. Forty years? Five years? I don’t know what year it is in the first place so these constant flashbacks-within-flashbacks have no context for me. Please stop with the flashbacks.
    
    
21. Back to the older, wiser, Rhys Ifans, who is lecturing Ben Jonson: “I am the Earl of Oxford, that’s my wife, who’s the daughter of my very esteemed adoptive father William Cecil, because my parents died, which means you should feel sorry for me even though I’m being a bit of a git, and this is my big house, and these are my flowers, and I like poetry, and I am an Earl, and I am important and I am giving LOTS OF EXPOSITION in a very droll voice, because I am upper class but also mysterious and important.”
    
    
    
22. Also, the roses in Oxford’s garden are LITERALLY Tudor roses. I’m not a botanist but I’m quite sure that it’s genetically impossible for roses to be two colours like that, and that the “Tudor Rose” is just a symbolic coat of arms to combine the two noble houses of York and Lancaster rather than an actual, living plant. Unless Rhys Ifans has servants who literally spend their day *ahem* painting the roses red, in which case, The Earl of Oxford is the original Queen of Hearts and I approve of this mashup.
    
    
23. The only notable thing in this film so far is an obviously Italian servant who clearly seems to speak mostly good English apart from a few words random of Italian out of nowhere, just in case you occasionally forget he’s Italian. 
    
    
24. Flashback again. this time The Earl of Oxford is now that guy from the Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. It’s a testament to how much I hate this character already that he wants to study poetry for pleasure, is refused this request, and I’m secretly pleased.
    
    
25. As I’ve already mentioned, rhetoric, latin, grammar and the like were not thought of as necessarily evil, and poetry was a celebrated high art form in the Elizabethan court. Nobles like Thomas More wrote Utopia during Henry VIII’s reign, for instance. Celebrated courtiers such as Spencer and Syndney wrote extensive poetry sequences which pleased the queen enormously and were thought of as exemplary works of art. The Cecils, uncharacteristically, call poetry Unchristian. I can only presume that we’re supposed to hate the Cecils.
    
    
26. Oxford literally throws a sword at the young Robert Cecil, a crippled boy who is playing chess with himself because he has no friends. Edward can clearly see this and calls Robert a loser right in his lonely crippled face. As a reminder, we are supposed to like the Earl of Oxford.
    
    
27. Oxford gets all high and mighty about his poems and stabs a servant through a curtain Because Reasons. I wonder if this is a cack-handed symbolic literary reference? (Hint – it MASSIVELY IS). You can hear Roland Emmerich basically jumping up and down behind the camera screaming “IT’S LIKE HAMLET, GET IT?” in order to give credence to this ludicrous plot. 
    
    
28. The young Earl of Oxford straight up killed a servant for no reason. He was following orders and hid because he was scared of Edward. I presume that is because the Earl of Oxford’s reputation for being a bullying dick precedes him. Edward thinks it’s totally unfair that he might be punished for killing an innocent man. I repeat, we are supposed to like the Earl of Oxford. 
    
    
29. Flashforward – and yes, that is Mark Rylance. MARK RYLANCE! What are you doing here? I know you and Jacobi are talented Shakespearean actors who support the authorship question, but why are you in an Emmerich film?
    
    
30. We now jump cut to Edward, Earl of Oxford and Queen of Hearts, practising signing “Shakespeare” in different styles and spellings. I assume this is supposed to give credibility to the theory that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays because he never signed his name in a consistent way. Spelling in the Elizabethan period was notoriously fluid and malleable, and signing your name with different spellings was not uncommon, so this is a moot point.
    
    
31. We learn that, Because Reasons, the Earl hasn’t been a very good landlord and estate holder and his family are very poor, in spite of his fancy house and earldom. He is a tight bastard and won’t give his daughter a decent dowry. He is cold to his wife. When she accuses him of “playing the flute while estate burns”, he corrects her mid rant to say that the correct phrase is “Nero fiddles while Rome burns” because he is a stickler for idioms. In the modern day 21^st century, The Earl of Oxford would be the kind of guy who gets angry when a toddler misspells “happy anniversary” in a card.
    
    
32. And lo! Suddenly, in yet another flashback, a wild sex scene between Queen Liz and Edward appears. And lo again! A post-coital sonnet miraculously and efforlessly appears. Rather than making me feel moved, all this does is make me miss Shakespeare In Love.
    
    
33. Flashforward, and the most glaring howler in this montage of plays is that MacBeth is here apparently written before King James’ ascension to the throne, despite the fact that a) it is a play set in Scotland dealing with witchcraft, specifically written for James’ tastes and patronage and b) it contains specific references to King James’ lineage which would make absolutely no sense to talk about while Queen Liz is still on the throne.
    
    
34. Now Hamlet is being performed in front of Elizabeth. The stabbing through the arras scene is being performed (in case we didn’t get the reference earlier), and Elizabeth is seemingly turned on and is massaging her breasts for no apparent reason, which is disturbing. 
    
    
35. “You know he’s illiterate,” says Ben Jonson. As I’ve already mentioned, a grammar school education was extremely comprehensive and Shakespeare’s extensive learning would have included reading, writing, Greek, rhetoric, Latin etc as standard. This is just lazy.
    
    
36. Now, for no reason, Edward’s fencing partner tries to kill him. Francesco, the Italian guy I mentioned earlier – who in case you forgot, signor, is most definitely Italian - runs to his aid. Everyone in this film is either a douchecanoe, or gets stabbed, or if you’re Chris Marlowe, both.
    
    
37. For some reason, the film is very hung up on Shakespeare designing his own genteel coat of arms. Everyone in the pub laughs at his efforts. This was a fairly ordinary, though not necessarily common, procedure for men on the rise in Tudor and Stuart England who wished to be welcomed as a gentleman. If anything, the laughter just makes all of the characters seem like snobs.
    
    
38. Ben Jonson, angry drunkard, now challenges Shakespeare to write the letter “I”, to prove his illiteracy. I briefly forgive the film, because I realise that if Shakespeare comes across as a git in Anonymous, then Jonson comes across as ten times more of a git.
    
    
39. The film also features as its subplot a cack-handed treatment of the Essex Rebellion. In a plot to stir rebellion against naming James I as successor, and to protect his illegitimate son the Earl of Southampton from being defeated, Edward pens Richard III as propaganda against Robert Cecil, in spite of the fact that Richard III was one of the first few plays that Shakespeare wrote.
    
    
40. Also the film here decides to not even try to be historically accurate twice-over, because Essex famously commissioned Shakespeare’s men to put on Richard II, not Richard III, which would make more sense in light of a military coup. My theory is that Roland Emmerich briefly glanced at the Wikipedia page of the Essex rebellion, wilfully misread Richard II as Richard III, decided that the likeness between Richard III the hunchback and Robert Cecil the hunchback was too delicious not to take up, and decided to sacrifice historical accuracy for “art”, or something.
    
    
41. I sense that Mark Rylance’s agent might be a genius for getting him this role in Anonymous; it allows Rylance to be part of a film that’s sceptical about play authorship, but by playing an actor who just performs Richard III, rather than  actually being involved in the Oxford drama, I can’t technically fault Rylance for being part of the ludicrous plot. This portrayal of Richard III might also have been a sneaky backdoor audition for his performance at the Globe Theatre a year or two later. Someone needs to give Mark Rylance’s agent a raise.
    
    
42. "Snubbed from the Pub" Jonson decides to rat on the upcoming Richard III production. When the censor asks Robert Cecil if he wants the play that’s lampooning him to be stopped, Rob shrugs it off and lets the it go ahead. Edward is trying to pick on a lonely cripple and the cripple brushes it off like it’s no big deal. As a reminder, we are supposed to like Edward, not Robert.
    
    
43. While the play is being performed, The Italian Guy who is Very, Very Italian, AKA Francesco Mario Pizza Garlic Bread, is in the audience. Jonson feels bad for ratting him out and tries to warn him of his impending doom, but just the first few opening lines of Richard III are enough to make the Globe groundlings  go full Les Miserables and his voice is lost in the crowd. The film cannot decide whether Jonson is a good guy or a bad guy, and I think it doesn’t matter, because everyone in this film is terrible.
    
    
44. “How does it end?” asks a crowd member. “No doubt tragically” says another.  This is the first good line in the entire film and I want to high five the screen.
    
    
45. Francesco Luigi Mozzarella Meatball dies heroically saving a bumpkin-prostitute/country-wench from the evil soldiers shooting civilians. His death is shot in bloodless slow-motion. Jonson cries a bit. I think we’re supposed to care.
    
    
46. Edward, Earl of Oxford, stares out of the window sadly at the carnage of the failed Essex rebellion below. His expression is one of shock and dismay. I can only conclude that Rhys Ifans has suddenly realised he is wasting his talent in a silly Roland Emmerich film that he is contractually obliged to finish. He resolves inwardly to do better next time. Unfortunately, his next major cinematic on-screen presence is as The Lizard in The Amazing Spiderman. Keep trying, Rhys.
    
    
47. Now Robert Cecil, badass huncback, the only character I have rooted for so far, is a bit mean. He points out Edward’s accidental incest, revealing Elizabeth as his mother. But Robert saves the awkward situation by coldly joking that this plot is a little like a Greek… Tragedy. LITERARY BURN. 
    
    
48. With that punning revelation, Rhys Ifans has now truly comprehended the depth of silliness the film has reached and can take it no more. He collapses into the courtyard, in the rain, taking no notice of the surrounding extras that are being offed in a rare act of mercy by Emmerich’s henchmen/camera crew.
    
    
49. Uncharacteristically for a man whose lovely dulcet tones provide warm narration for In The Night Garden, Jacobi performs a brief, bitter monologue, walks offstage like an arrogant sod, and the curtains close. This film has made me hate Derek Jacobi, which is certainly a feat.
    
    
50. I can’t help but notice no one in the fictional audience clapped at the end of Jacobi’s bit. They all get up to leave in dead silence and disapproval as the Papyrus credits roll. How apt.  

In Defence of the "Essay": a Love Letter to All Letters

So this post is not going to be about the Greek financial time bomb, nor is it going to be about the BBC TV series Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which ended yesterday (In short: WATCH IT, IT’S FAB), nor will it explore my poorly organised and rather extensive book collection that fell off my shelves and painfully onto my head over the weekend – three topics which I considered genuinely blogging about.

After my last post, I had resolved not to write about writing again for a while, but two things happened: I threw away my typewriter and started reading a novel called Frances and Bernard.

Firstly, let’s address the typewriter, briefly – yes, I am one of those people. Or rather, I was. Not, perhaps, this person. But I adore, bloody adorel, typewriters. If anyone rich is secretly in love with me, I am a hipster idiot materialist for wanting one, but I will instantly marry you if you buy me one of these.  I had to chuck my second hand and very busted 70s typewriter it because it wasn’t being used, and it wasn’t being used because the ribbon kept getting stuck, and finding ink for it was a bitch. I bid it a solemn farewell with lots and lots of regret.

Anyway, I got quite emotional about the thing – I really sodding loved that typewriter, and one of the main reasons was because I enjoyed writing letters to a friend on it. In the last year of sixth form, I bought it on eBay, intending to write stories, but instead I wrote letters on it.

If I bloody love typewriters, then I bloody well really love letters, and I really really really really love getting long messages. Messages that are poetic, messages that are boring, messages that are out of the blue, and messaged which take a long time to make and read. Nowadays I contact most people on Facebook messenger, and people always apologise for sending lengthy posts.

Never apologise for sending “essays”; I hereby stand up for the right to send and receive and read long and weird messages. Send me lots of words, make them spiky or smooth or weird or wonderful or banal. I’ll drink every drop of them and appreciate the effort you mad in making them, if I consider you a half-decent sort of lass or lad. Because I miss writing and receiving letters and notes.

Hell, if I could, I’d probably keep Royal Mail up and running with my bare hands and letter writing powers (if that’s what it’s even called anymore – is it fully sold off by our daft government yet? What’s happening with our postal service? Sod knows).  I’d buy millions of stamps with my pitifully empty bank account, because I’d fire out letters to all my friends and family with reckless abandon. They wouldn’t even necessarily have to be long, poetic or insightful ones. They’d probably be quite shit  and short. If I could, I’d write letters such as:

Dear Eleanor, 

Please would you be so kind as to send the address of the shop you bought your grad ball shoes from? 

I’ve stupidly forgotten, and I really need a pair of sparkly but tasteful heels and I remember yours were particularly splendid.

Many thanks, 

Beth

Or possibly

Dear Frankie,

How is the job hunt going, m’lovely?  Please check out this illustrated gif on the internet, I thought of you when I saw it and thought you might approve. The link is: 

http://cosmouk.cdnds.net/15/03/1421154092-anigif_optimized-26351-1420998169-6.gif 

Obviously you’ll have to hand type this into the search bar which will be a minor pain in the neck, but I’m dying to know what you thought of it, so write back with your reaction, described as thoroughly as you can in leiu of a snapchat. 

As you can probably tell, I’m not particularly busy at the moment, and I’m utterly bored and depressed in Thurrock – I’ve resorted to marathoning Orange is the New Black, repeatedly reorganising my bookshelves to amuse myself, and am even blogging now as a kind of safety valve – so write back whenever you feel like it, but preferably soon.

Your friend,

Bethan

PS – did you know that “Thurrock” literally translates in Anglo-Saxon as either “bilgewater in a boat” or, my favourite translation, “dirtheap or dungpile”? You couldn’t make that shit up.

Or even

Dear Emma,

This letter might seem a tad out of the blue, but I have been thinking about this for a long time and need an answer to settle my nerves. 

Having found a DVD stash in a clear-out  and rewatched a few of them,  I must ask – is Christopher Eccleston truly an underrated Doctor in the first series of post-‘05 “New Who” Doctor Who or is it just the fuzzy-felt nostalgia inevitably sinking in? 

To think, the first episode of the show – 20^th March, 2005 – aired slap bang on my eleventh birthday, back when I was in primary school. That was donkeys years ago – we weren’t in a recession, I hadn’t had my first kiss, I sincerely thought “randomness” was the epitome of wit*, no-one had heard of Lady Gaga, both my grandmas were still alive and I hadn’t read a single Dickens novel yet.

Also, does it make me a terrible human to admit that, in reterospect, I never really warmed to Matt Smith or Karen Gillian in the fifth and especially the sixth series of the show?

Of course, I hated River Song but I think everyone does, secretly. If you think you don’t, I apologise, but if you search your soul quite hard, I think you’ll find I’m right on this one. As I usually am on matters of Doctor Who.

Yours affectionately,

Bethan

Anyway, despite the fact that I have the misfortune to have been alive in the twenty-first century, which is according to Tumblr posts a terrible century for young, bookish and romantic women to be in, and where letter writing is definitively not a “thing” anymore, reading Frances and Bernard got me thinking about this dying, if not dead, form.

The book itself, an epistolary novel set during the fifties, is a disappointment thus far. I don’t think that’s any real reflection of Carlene Bauer skill as a writer – some of the letters are just the sort of amicable, borderline pretentious and faux-spiritual stuff I reckon I’d send to anyone half interested in hearing about my day via the medium of the post. But I suspect that, having heard that this was a story in letters, my hopes were raised higher than King Kong on the Empire State building. When I saw this book in the Birmingham Waterstones a few weeks after I first found out about it, I pretty much pounded my chest with glee before hobbling over in an excited and ape-like fashion to the counter.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the novel contains a lot more about Catholicism and religious fervour than I’d anticipated, and the pace is somewhat off, the letters Frances and Bernard have so far made me forgive its faults. They are quite lovely to read, and honestly realised. The subject matter might be drier than I’d hoped but I forgave it because of the letters.

But that in turn got me thinking about another film which I heavily suspect I’ve over-idealised in my head – one that you’ve probably heard of, You’ve Got Mail. It features dial-up tones, Hanks and Ryan, but above all, letters – well, technically emails. Emails so long and sincerely written, they might as well be letters.

Yes, it's shallow. But by gum, it's good. 

Even though the film features brutal business takeovers, weird insults and gross miscasting, I forgive the film for all its multiple faults because its basis is in the form of letter-writing, and even though the greetings characters sometimes compose to one another is very “bloggy” (*ahem* “I am sending this out into the cosmic void”) the characters are sending lovingly written emails to each other god damn it, and that is a dying and beautiful art form.

And yes, I *still* haven’t seen The Shop Around The Corner yet, the classic film on which Nora Ephron based You’ve Got Mail, which makes me an idiot and barely able to call myself a lover of film and cinema, but nevertheless, I relate a lot to You’ve Got Mail. When Joe Fox (Tom Hanks playing the Mean Guy turned loveable softie and, in my view, just about gets away with it) writes about Starbucks defining a sense of self, I don’t find that an outrageous product placements clanger, and I’m basically a communist. The key – bear with me – is in writing it down.

If the character had out and said that to Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) out loud, then I would have not bought it. Think about it – imagine a close friend of yours, while chatting to them in a park, for instance, says they judge themselves as a person based on which coffee they order from a popular chain store. You’d probably see them as a colossal doughnut of a fool.

But writing that shit in letters? Yes. I'd buy that comment one hundred times. We all write daft stuff in letters that sound odd and poetic and formal but somehow lovely in that context. I have been known to wax lyrical about Caffe Nero hot chocolates in the captions in my Instagram feed. It feels right, somehow, when you write it down. Don’t ask me why.

So am I saying that, theorietically, if Costa Coffee wrote me a poem and sent it to me in a nice envelope, would I be more inclined to treat their drinks as an artistic product and less like what they actually are – pretty crap hot chocolates and teas? Am I saying that I would forgive their faults? I am ashamed to say that I would probably be more inclined to.

Then again, Caffe Nero doesn’t have to send me a poem, because their hot chocolates are liquid, exquisite, divine chocolatey gold and nectar and lovely hugs in a mug. Incidentally, if a representative of Caffe Nero wants to ask me about doing product placement in these blogposts, I can send you my email address.

       Sheer Bloomin' Gold, these are. Sheer Bloomin' Gold.

Maybe I am a sucker for letters. Perhaps if I got one of those “I am a Nigerian general with £20 million quid to shove into your bank account if you please give me your pin number, card number and mother’s maiden name” emails, but instead the email was handwritten and sent through the post, then I’d be more inclined to hand over my significant financial details without a second thought. I’d be broke and a victim of fraud – but the Romantic in me says at least I’d have a letter in my hand, and what a rare and lovely thing that is.

I suppose it’s all a bit of a weird and pointless conundrum. In an age of instant messaging, are letters really a lovely thing, or am I being taken for a pretentious ride? Am I a sucker for a form that masks its content? Is my admiration of letter writing a somewhat innocent, quaint and sentimental feeling, or am I simply a chump?

Answers on a postcard please.

*As proof, I can, ten years later and without thinking, repeat the entirety of “The Llama Song” verbatim. It is a particularly rubbish trick I pull at parties and gatherings after a few glasses of wine, and possibly a few shots of tequila, much to the disgust and chagrin of my associates. 

Swearing, Caring and Oversharing: My Social Media Holiday or Is “Buzzfeed” an Insult?

Dire Warning: Massively big post of dubious quality ahead.  I’d also like to take the opportunity apologise for that unbearable headline, but now I’ve done it I can’t bear to get rid of it.

Today, I was going to tweet something but I couldn’t. This is a good thing.

I was on Netflix, which I have only recently acquired (read: found out my brother’s password and lovingly stolen, as good siblings do). Scrolling through its films I saw a duo of Danny Bloody Dyer movies. One of the films was Run For Your Wife, which is a sin against cinema, a sin against punning and above all a sin against the Church of Wittertainment.

But it does make for an exellent Kermodian rant:

The other film was The Altogether, a film which breaks my heart by its very existence because Martin Freeman is in it. Martin Bloody Freeman is in it.

Martin “I am both Watson and Bilbo and that guy from the original UK Office whose name Bethan can’t remember but is Jim in the US version” Freeman, whose appearance even in Ali G Indahouse, of all things, is gold. Dyer and Freeman is like combining the best and worst of British, a deliciously delicate sweet pie pastry with past-their-use-by-date rotten jellied eels as its unfortunate filling. 

I was going to tweet something remotely outraged in a comedic fashion about this unholy matrimony of actors. The tweet probably wouldn’t have got any favourites or any attention because most of my tweets just clutter the cosmic internet void. But still. A nice tweet it would have been. The sort of tweet I like tweeting. A shiny tweet in the landfill of twitter, which one hapless follower-come-magpie may have favourited out of pity.

But I did not post anything about Danny Dyer, or The Altogether, or even the fact that The Bicycle Thieves, a beautiful classic film of unbridled joy which you should see, is also on Netflix. I am not allowed for the next few days, at least, to tweet anything at all. Or Facebook anything all. Or even take a photo of my outraged, heartbroken face and post that to Instagram.

I have put myself on a self-imposed exile of not Saying Stuff On Social Media², for My Own Good. This is a Big Deal. Saying Stuff is very important to me. Saying Stuff on Social Media how I connect with quite a few people. Not Saying Stuff on Social Media means I’m basically on my own with my thoughts for a while now. Which at least a bit weird, if not also a bit sad.

This self-imposed social media exile began in spirit two days ago, when I genuinely wondered whether or not to livetweet my period. (For context, #LivetweetYourPeriod is a thing, I am not making it up, it is exactly what you think it is and here is an article about why it is quite a good thing because this post is, in internet terms, already the length of War and Peace.) I thought that it would provide some general comic relief when shark week next comes around. I thought about it. And then thought some more. Then it became a thing that I had a small crisis and a sleepless night over. A Sleepless Night. What began as a joke elevated to a more fundamental “how do I present myself on the internet and how do my friends and acquaintances see me as a person and am I okay with that?” kind of thing.

That’s right, folks. I’m officially reaching the clichéd “graduate panicking about stuff they don’t need to panic about and then writing about it” level of shite blog. Considering I’ve already posted about being single, all I need to do is post about my lack of employment possibilities and how I’ll probably never become what I wanted to be growing up (a crime-fighting ballerina novelist) and I can shout BINGO!, get a full house, and presumably leave the hall of twenty-somethings with a jobseeker's allowance.

Anyway. I was in two minds over whether to tweet about menstruating. It went a little something like this:

Introducing a METAPHORICAL INTERLUDE! 

Presenting BETHAN’S TWO-MINDEDNESS: AN ILLUSTRATED DIALOGUE featuring the fictional constructs of Bethan-Dee and Bethan-Dum¹

BETHAN-DEE: Maybe we should? It will be all political and stuff. I’ve got some cracking yet poignant jokes about the cost of sanitary pads.

BETHAN-DUM: Well, I don’t think anyone wants to know about that, tbh. Regardless of its political associations and potential to be a humour goldmine, menstruation remains a taboo subject. It probably won’t be received well. Don’t you remember all of Beth’s exes? The guys that were supposed to be most intimately acquainted and interested in the contents her underpants disliked openly discussing the notion of her uterus lining being shed. Even on good days. What would a potential employer, casual acquaintance or future partner make of such behaviour?

B-DEE: Maybe that could be an acid test. We’ll give them a checklist. “Are you comfortable with Bethan discussing her rubbish periods in either online or paper-based or live-discussion form? If no, then maybe we need to reconsider our professional and/or personal relationship.

B-DUM: Beggars can’t be choosers. But it doesn’t matter now. Now everyone reading this blog is just thinking about it anyway. About “it”. Bethan’s friends, Bethan’s online acquaintances, and potentially strangers who live across the pond, are now thinking about “it.” Well done us. *slowclap*.

B-DEE: What, you mean her lady garden?

B-DUM: Specifically a bleeding vagina, yes. That belongs to a specific person the reader of this blog might actually have already met or might meet in the future. Shit me, we’re dumb.

B-DEE: Well, now we’re swearing, right? Doesn’t that quite negate the idea of menstruation as overshare? If her employer sees that she occasionally uses “colourful” language on the internet, however well-placed in an intentionally humorous the context, won’t she get fail to be employed anyway regardless of the state of her vag? Should we panic about that?

B-DUM: Shut the fuck up, you cockwomble.

I have always had a turbulent relationship with how I present myself both in real life and on the internet. I think there is both a unifying theme and a disconnect between the two. Unifying, in that I always strive to be open, easy-going, somewhat sarcastic, fluent and friendly. Disconnected in that, like most people, I exaggerate on the internet where I don't in real life and have the potential to come across as being a virtual flippant oversharer.

I do not know if this attempt at a casual voice online is a Good Thing or a Shit Thing. It has been this way for years and I still don’t know how to think of it. A few months ago, for instance, on a blog that may or may not still actually be live, I was a blogger famed among my fellow-colleagues for my weird, flippant tone. I asked my then boyfriend to read an article I had written about, above all things, the sensitive topic of abortion.

His reaction? “It’s very… Buzzfeed. Yeah. It’s very Buzzfeed. I could imagine you writing for Buzzfeed”. I did not know whether to punch the air for joy or punch him in the face.

I have nothing against Buzzfeed. In fact, I quite love it. Every morning, even before I check my social media notifications, I have a routine where I look at the guardian headlines, then BBC news, then I’ll check Buzzfeed. But "debate on abortion" and "cat video" do not go easily together. Is a “Buzzfeed” style a compliment or a curse? On the one hand you've got pretty much every article Daniel Dalton has written, on the other this.

Does a “Buzzfeed” mentality mean I have a tendency to write relatable and accessable and entertaining posts, something I like the idea of, or that I just spam banal stuff and get a kick out of getting any old reaction or a view? Am I a narcissist? I’ll take a picture of a seagull at a beach and post it on Instagram, and genuinely – genuinely – get a little kick if someone likes it, regardless of what time of day it is or what I’m doing. Is that sad? 

I hope it isn’t sad. But I’m increasingly worrying that people view me as someone who is lived and defined by her online statuses. A month or so ago a friend I hadn’t seen in a while introduce himself to me by immediately saying “I saw what you posted on Facebook the other day! It made me laugh.” A friend I have only met twice in real life and, having left uni, might realistically never meet again, on finding out I’m quitting social media for a while, commented  “miss you already!”. Whether or not both of these encounters were sarcastic or genuine – it’s always hard to tell if people are pisstaking on the internet – people are starting to define me by the words I post on the internet.

This makes me wonder if I’m becoming a virtual construct. Even my dearest friends that I talk to regularly on Facebook messenger; I can’t help but think, will I ever see you in real life again? Because if not, then I really need to get my online shit together. I’m wondering if spamming links to Buzzfeed articles is really how I want people to remember me. I worry sometimes that, like that episode of Charlie Brooker’s magnificent Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back" if I came back as a robot made up of my social media profiles, I’d be a combination of links to Earth, Wind and Fire songs, sweary and incoherent political rants, and tweets demanding that the Penguin in the Christmas John Lewis ad be called Keith Chegwin. Who’d want to have a pint with that woman, really?

                                  

   Well, *I* enjoy drinking and dancing to Earth, Wind and Fire. I'd like to think I'm crazy great after a few glasses of wine and their greatest hits album. 'Cause if you don't dance and if you don't dance then you're no friend of mine.

But I still reckon that’s what I am. I think this little gap in posting stuff is less me altering myself, more accepting that my online persona is who it is, and will continue to be so. I am not going to be a verbally interesting, quiet person who makes only the occasional but profound comment like a small smug part of me wants to be. I am a woman made of my many rambly words. Some of those words stick and others don't.

It’s a little like accepting you have a weird shaped nose or a crap laugh or a birthmark, all three of which I incidentally have, so I know what I’m talking about here. Unless you have some kind of magic surgery, you cannot permanently change that. You've just got to deal with it. I am a hybrid of unbearably awkward in real life and overly verbose on the internet. That is fine. I am okay with this.

I think the people who like flesh-and-blood me are special, because if you’ve ever had the misfortune to meet me in real life, I am quite shit. At the pub, like most idiots, I sometimes think I’m Oscar Wilde or Tina Fey when I’m actually Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice³. Which means that if you meet me in real life on a regular basis, you have accepted me as your Mr Collins friend, and I love you dearly for it. On the internet, however I feel more at ease, I like words and communicating, I feel happy when I post the odd joke or jab or buzzfeed link and, whether I like it or not (and moreover, whether it gets any likes or not), it tends to go down a little more easily.

Unlike this long, rambly and desperately odd piece of flub blogging which will probably be deleted in embarrassment once I resume life in the twitter, Facebook and Instagram-verse. Now that that’s off my chest, once I've had a little think about it, let’s get back to posting inane stuff on all corners of the internet.

But seriously though – Dyer and Freeman? In a film together? What a bloody mess. More of a bloody mess than the second day of my period. Amirite? Ha ha ha. *Ba-Dum-Tssh*

¹For context, I was originally going to virtually stage a three-way argument between my Id, Ego and Superego, but felt that you, reader of this blog, might statistically be more acquainted with Lewis Carroll and the Alice books. If I’ve insulted your intelligence, allow me to say, from the bottom of my heart: soz. If you don’t know either the three-part psychological model of the psyche or who Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum are, I’d recommend reading Carroll over Freud.

² This blog, as far as I’m concerned, is not social media. It’s more like a shit diary and a crap hobby, all rolled into one shite package you are inexplicably reading.

³My apologies to the die-hards out there who will inevitably be angry that I have linked here to the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and not the vastly superior BBC TV series adaptation of P&P. Tom Hollander (**not** New Spiderman Tom Holland) is, however, equally brilliant as a Mr Collins as David Bamber is, and I will not hear otherwise. 

Tinder by Numbers

My name is Bethan Smith and I'm ashamed to admit I'm a Tinder user.

I've sort of fallen into a relationship ditch, where I'm too young to attend my local speed dating event (25 and above, the sods!) but too old to meet people through my established friendship group, and definitely too old to do that "we just said hi, held hands for a bit, now we're officially a couple" thing that I did at age fifteen (and I suppose, embarrassingly, in my first year of university, with a guy who was as shy and stupid as I was at the tender age of eighteen).

Not to be melodramatic, but dating post-university seems to be a barren wasteland of hopeless despair. If there's one thing I've sussed in the months since I took my last exam, it's that I'm probably going to die alone in a bedsit somewhere, probably while a sad trombone plays in the background. Not even with a dog or cat to slowly eat my corpse. I'll be so poor, I doubt I'll be ever able to afford a flat with a landlord that will accommodate a pet.

Having graduated, I now live in my hometown of Essex, specifically Thurrock, the land from whence Russell Brand originated (not to brag, we went to the same primary school, though obviously not in the same year) and officially the most depressing place to live in Britain. There's nowhere to "meet" people here, let alone people who might also be interested in spending an evening drinking moderately priced wine in a somewhat nice bar discussing films and books and praying that they find you cool enough to meet again.

Hence, Tinder is both the saviour and bane of my romantic life. It's the app that seems to be both casual enough for those not necessarily interested in getting seriously linked up right away, but not limited to "have you met my friend Dave? He's got a squinty eye and he's a tad racist but he's lovely, really." You just swipe, and occasionally, if the fates align and one of you isn't painfully shy, chat awkwardly about favourite films and ice cream flavours before never speaking again in a comfortable silence. I would say that on this app, I've had in-depth, decent conversations with three people. All of these eventually fizzled.

The one problem, as I'm sure you're aware, even if you've had the fortunate to never have to use this app, is it's a choppy water filled with unfortunate man-sharks. Douchebag sharks. Douchebag sharks that work in finance and make Snoop Dogg and unironic 4:20 references. With dick jokes. And topless pics. And fedoras. Pink fedoras. EVERYWHERE. Finding a non-douchebag-non-fedora-non-shark is like panning for gold in the Thames.

So I decided that, in order to have a successful dating experience, it would be useful to do some number crunching. Armed with the ultra-scientific clicky-counter thing pictured below, a notepad, and an A* GCSE in maths, I'd figure out the statistics associated with my average Tinder experience, warts and all. I would make a badass tally chart, and in the process figure out where I'm going wrong on this rubbish, douche-bag-fedora-shark attracting app. 




For context, like most women with hideously unphotogenic faces, I only have two profile pictures I am happy to use. One obscures over half of my face, so instead I use one that is a weirdly huge close-up of my smiling mug. Better a weird close-up than one that shows my weird looking face in its usual incarnation.

Moreover, my profile lists me as the following:

"Twenty-something Essexonian who enjoys the following: being a bibliophile and chocoholic, watching BBC television, going to the cinema, avoiding gender stereotypes, quoting films at any opportunity, having a somewhat dry sense of humor, enthusing about Victorian literature and wearing Doc Martens. 

Hello to Jason Isaacs!"

(Fun fact: I have decided that all wittertainees on Tinder who recognise that last reference and acknowledge it are automatically eligible for one free date, if they choose. So far no one has got it; I remain dateless.)

I gave myself about half an hour to swipe 200 people and see what results I could find.

The Basic Results

Number of Total Swipes: 200
Number of Swipes Left (Nope); 181
Number of Swipes Right (Like): 19
Number of Matches: 9
Number of Messages: 1
Average Time Spent on a Profile: 9 seconds

Putting my statistical "I'm going to sound like a scientific twonk" hat on, I approved of about 10% of the "sample", about half of which in turn also approved of me. I only received one message, about that classic Tinder staple, "what films do you like?".

Put in real terms: Out of two hundred random sods, I only liked about 20 of them, and only one of them wanted to contact me in turn.

Now for the fun, analytical part:

The Figures:

Number of City Financiers/Bankers: 25
For context: Essex is notorious for being the home of comutting bankers and other sorts. Tinder in Essex is equally notorious for being said bankers preferred method of obtaining what I presume they call "the wenches" and/or "the females", or if we're going to be vulgar but accurate, "the p*ssy". Hence, I was surprised that city idiots only made up one eighth of the sample.

Number of profiles that listed "Working Out" or "Working On My Guns" as a Dead Serious Top Hobby: 11
Regardless of location, this kind of behaviour is commonplace on Tinder. Again, the number was surprisingly low. That said -

Number of Topless Profile Pictures: 28
A similar number to the bankers, no? On the Venn Diagram, the Edward Woodward style "Oh Jesus Christ, no" holy grail of commonplace Essex Tinder moron would be an intersection of these three categories. I don't care how fabulous you think your abs are. I don't get to waltz around with no top on, nor do you. Put a shirt on.

Animal-Based Profile Pictures: 11
A rare instance of Essex improving on the Midlands with a surprisingly lower count than expected. Perhaps bankers have no time for that?  I've noticed that a favourite tactic of men on Tinder is to pose (often topless) with a helpless and cute pet or animal as a kind of weird shorthand for "I'm as sweet and loveable as this adorable tabby cat, even though I list snorting crack as a legit hobby". 

I love minature schnauzers. I certainly don't love you.

"Just Here for The Banter" or Similar count: 7
None of these men made my swipe right list. #JustSaying

Number of Dope References: 7
Also unsurprisingly, levels of Banter corresponded to levels of unironic dope and weed references, also accompanied by millions of weird emoticons I never even knew existed and Snoop Dogg quotes. I'm getting old.

Clangers and Downright Offensive Chat Up Lines: 10
Not that type of clanger (i.e., "I can tell you now you might look like a tiny clanger but I am most definitely not small"), and not even a standard groany cliched comment, but the type of clanger that makes you want to headbutt a wall in despair and wonder how these men will ever reproduce. I won't name too many in case they're detected and recognised, but highlights included "no fatties allowed" "vegan sluts only please" and "can't take a joke? Then don't expect a poke". 

The "I Can't Tell Who You Are From This Profile Pic" count: 7
More an annoying habit than anything else. Having multiple men in a shot means I can't tell which one of them is "you", the person actually on Tinder. Particularly if your profile picture shows you with a girl. Who is clearly your girlfriend. Please find your "player three" on some other app. That's just shady.

Actual Racism or Sexism: 3
All three of these genuinely shocked me, but one guy particularly topped it by having a profile picture of him at a fancy dress party - dressed in a Hijab with a sign saying "death to the west. He was also a banker. What a ***.

Scientific Conclusion: Tinder is every bit as rubbish as you would expect it to be. But now I have the stats to prove it.