CONFUSE-A-TROLL (Patreon)

Hello you lot. Sorry it has been a while since I did a new Patreon post. Been a leeeetle busy. But I just wanted to scrawl down some thoughts post-Digitiser The Show, which are for your eyes only.

A lot of you have been a bit concerned about some of the flack that Digi has been receiving on Youtube and other places. Some of you feel so aggrieved that you're taking on the trolls. I'm incredibly flattered, and feel proud, that you'd do this on my behalf, but I also really don't think we need to.

I want to reassure you that all is well. The subscriptions on the YT channel have been soaring - we've gone from 10,000 on Saturday to almost 11,000 in just a couple of days - and the likes far, far outweighs the dislikes. Likewise the positive comments to negative comments. People generally just like things without feeling the need to comment. 

When they hate things, that's when they get vocal. I know I've been guilty of that - I mean, even in terms of writing on Digi, I find it easier to slag something off in funny way than I do to praise something in a funny way. Hence the many lists of 10 Awful Things.

I think what we're seeing is what Digi used to get in the olden days. For the last few years, we - you and I - have been in a lovely bubble, where we're all friendly, and we're all nice, and it's a strong community of people who are all there because they love the same thing. That is not Digitiser's natural state, and I think we've forgotten that, because of our bubble. 

Back in Teletext Times, Digi would receive dozens of letters every day telling us how shit we were - and that was in the days when people had to physically put pen to paper! Imagine how many other people who hated us who never wrote in! Digi by its very nature is divisive. It always has been. In a weird, perverse, way, I always enjoyed getting those letters more than the nice ones, because we could take the piss out of the person writing (and, indeed, I'm treating the YouTube comments now very much as the Digi Letters Page of old - and loving it!).

Digi sets out to piss off people who hate it, but in doing so the people who love it... they REALLY love it.  If I was making something that was trying to be all things to all people then I wouldn't be true to myself, or to the spirit of Digitiser. 

This is going to sound mental, but last night Sanya and I went to pick up our daughter from her dance class. I got bored while waiting for her to come out, and I started screaming and banging on windows. No, that isn't a joke; that actually happened. I had a moment of realisation this morning, and said to Sanya: "I just realised - Digitiser is basically just me being me". 

And she looked at me shocked, and laughed, and said "You only just realised that?". Not everyone would find a 47 year-old man screaming and banging on windows and doing a weird dance, endearing or funny. Most people would back away, confused and scared, going "There's something wrong with him"...

Such as it is with Digitiser. And I'm not going to change it, because I can't. The thing that irritates people, because they don't get it or like it, is what makes it Digitiser.

Digitiser The Show is a big, noisy, public thing that is drawing attention to itself, and so - especially in this era of opinions and trolling - we're going to get flack. It's not for everyone. People don't always censor themselves when talking online. People get a dopamine rush when slagging people off. 

But what we can do is either ignore it and not worry about it (because the show is in rude health and isn't going anywhere), or engage with it in a way that confuses.

There's a book that Penn & Teller released years ago, and in that Penn tells a great story about how he was once in a bar, and was about to get beaten up by a bunch of bikers, who were taking the piss out of him for ordering a milkshake. 

Just as it looked as if he was going to get the shit kicked out of him, he tipped the entire milkshake over his own head. The bikers were so weirded out by this that they just backed away... I've always remembered that, and tried to live by it. We're not going to change their minds, but... if we do have to engage with them, we might be able to make them back away in utter confusion, and weird them out. And maybe we'll win a few of them round (certainly, this approach has already seemed to have worked with a couple of the YT commenters).

I can't think of anything more Digitiser. 

Paul

x