LAlien

Originally posted on Medium

Because it’s cheap, insincere and lazy. Let’s not beat around the bush for niceties sake, shall we?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for them too. Who can resist the tantalizing prospect of quick fix knowledge?

It’s like fast food. I’m not going to spend three hours slaving away at a lavish home-cooked meal that’s likely to result in an utter disaster when I could get the same nutritional value from a $2 burger at McDonald’s in mere minutes.

But Lucian, I hear you cry — A McDonald’s burger won’t give you the same nutritional value, what are you talking about? That’s nonsense and everyone know’s that? Well of course. They do know this. But yet Sixty-Eight Million people still stuff themselves with this trash every single day and you’re reading your 15th top ten article in the past hour, diligently avoiding putting any of them to actual use, and stuffing yourself until you’re sick.

That’s what we’re effectively doing. Now, I’m not here to claim that the people writing these articles don’t know what they’re talking about, or that the McNugget morsels that they entail aren’t valuable insights. Potentially.

But what I am going to tell you, is that it’s shameless pandering. Everybody know’s that today’s society, for the most part, has the attention span not even equal to a goddamn goldfish. So naturally every top ten article that claims to give you the inside knowledge on how to gain readership will undoubtedly tell you to make use of short list articles that can be consumed quickly and leave your reader wanting more, so throw in a few hyperlinks to your other top ten articles, and if they stick around long enough, they’ll hit that follow button, and BLAM — you’ve ensnared them with cheap parlor tricks.

This is a con. More often than not this writer isn’t giving you anything new that you didn’t already know. They’re just reiterating already established notions and putting their own twist on them, repackaging them up as ‘THE TOP TEN SECRETS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE’ and hitting publish. C’mon. Are we not better than this? —

— Ah, yes, right on cue, I hear an indignant cry from the back — ‘well isn’t everything ever created just somebody else’s re-imagining of something that someone else once did, but what sets it apart is their own unique voice?

Okay. Well yes, Mr. Smart ass, I’ll concede that generally is the state of creativity now. Everything has been said before and we’re all scrambling around here in the bushes, desperately searching for fresh spins. But mostly what I take issue with is the mentality they encourage and the behavior that elicits from them. They’re diversions. Distractions. They’re crack.

You could have just read the ultimate top ten. Your perfect model of how you can change your writing habits/gym habits/morning routine/perspective on life — it spoke to you deeply at every single integer. But no sooner are you done, minutes later you’re absently feasting on another. With maybe 10% of the previous one retained.

You know that friend everyone has, that one who you don’t really see that often? That you make plans with and get really excited about seeing and all the great things you’ll do, and then they cancel your plans together after you’ve cleared your schedule and turned down other stuff, and got yourself all excited about it? The one you always say how good it is to see each other when you actually do meet up, and you both realise why it was that you became friends in the first place? That warm affection for one another is rekindled, and you have the best time. Challenging each other, and exploring new aspects of yourselves, and just having a jolly good ol’ time. You promise to make more effort to see each other and stick to plans, because this has been really great. Then they don’t call or answer your texts. So you stop calling. You lose contact again, and the same process repeats itself. That’s kind of what it’s like…..wait, sorry, that’s just being an actor anywhere.Let’s try again.Being an Actor in LA is frightening, disheartening, fascinating, sporadic, exploratory, inspiring, not very glamorous, glamorous, rewarding, repellent, exhausting, invigorating, financially worrying, fleeting, inconsistent, alluring, intoxicating, nauseating..

Thank you Anonymous internet user. I’m glad I got one too. To answer your question........I don’t really know. I’ve had a love/hate/love/seeing other people/lust/on a break relationship with Social Media for quite some time now.

As I alluded to in my first post, although it was probably hard to make sense of, since pretty much anything I write tends to end up cryptic for no good reason, but the whole LAlien thing began simply because I wanted to be more involved on socials and in a different way as to how I was using it before. Let me explain.

The current state of the acting industry as much as it pains me to say, holds your social media and the weight it can bring in very high regard. This isn’t an aspect I’m entirely comfortable with, but alas, it is a fact. Thus, you must be active on socials.

So I was, and I wasn’t really using them in a thoughtful or true manner, or experimenting, or being very creative or even being myself. I was posting because I thought I had too.

I got tired of that. I didn’t feel comfortable with it. Or maybe I just got lazy, and sick of it. But I stopped. I found my way back to it by accident, with the LAlien thing, and it felt nice to be posting something that resembled an authentic voice for once. Nothing that made any particular sense, but most of all, I enjoyed being on social media again. People seemed to enjoy my voice. Whether that’s true or not, who’s to say. But as I said, the biggest take-away was that I enjoyed it, and still do. 

I enjoy creating things, in my own special little way.Before LAlien, I was never very comfortable posting, because I didn’t really know who or what I was posting for. Trying to be present on social media for the sake of it was tiresome, and not at all organic.Here, I’ve gone off on a tangent again, do forgive. I’m forming new thoughts, even as I type this. I’m perhaps not speaking as eloquently and sensibly on the matter as I could. There is a lot of thoughts vying for attention here right now. I’ll try to focus again, and go directly back to you question.What is my intent. My intent, is to be able to use social media as a potentially viable tool to create some stuff. Stuff shall remained lazily categorized as stuff for now, as I don’t want to say I’m going to create X Y Z, and then go make A B C.I guess maybe to replace ‘intent’ with ‘why’ makes it a little easier.

An answer that will change drastically over time, and a very short space of time most likely.

self-proclaimed wit will probably suffer. Which is ironic, because the LAlien ‘brand’ is founded on, and hinges upon the fact that wit shall prosper in a foreign land.

Unaccustomed to this new platform and unrestrained by an infinite word cap, will the LAlien be able to sustain such insightful clarity when documenting his across the pond journey as he did over there where it first took step?

Will his unrivaled discernment focused on the more subdued of differences between his Native England, and this wild US of A stay true, and prosper.

Or will this foray into territory long haunted, but never actualised etch the faint beginnings of his downfall?

By which he means to say, a blog has been long on the cards, and tumblr long flirted with, but procrastination, doubt, and the incapacity to structure anything into a coherent theme he deems worthy of an audience has held him at bay, and we’re about to find out whether his precautions and reluctance were warranted, and should have been adhered to.

Really we should have some sort of introduction, yes?

But how does one introduce such a vague and nonexistent concept? I’d much prefer it if I could just direct you politely to the place where it all began.

(That’s a link up there by the way.)  ^ click it, please do. Apparently my chosen theme doesn’t appropriately highlight such things in a way that actually makes the reader aware they are clickable.

Began is also a loose term. More like stumbled accidentally and aimlessly into existence.

What started merely as a way for me to utilise my social media in a manner that didn’t make me uncomfortable became a compulsion that now holds me hostage every time I decide to post on Instagram.

An obsession that compels for every upload to fall into accord with this strange commentary I impose on each one, incessantly talking circles around myself and the fear of failing to uphold an unrealistic standard of content, that I’m in any case, reluctant to wonder at length how many people even read at all.

Wait, was that bitterness you sensed just there? He hasn’t been here for five minutes and he’s already turned his back and forgotten his roots.

Wait, now he’s talking about forgetting his roots.. does he mean the UK or Instagram?

What happens when you take away half a workman’s tools? Was half my power in the fact that I had an image to use as a starting point for the subsequent word vomit that was to ensue, which allowed me to also pretend there was actually a justifiable rationale for the bile I was spewing.

When there is no picture to direct the words, where do the words take us?

Well I guess that there is the whole point of this blog, that I’ve accidentally arrived at, but in true LAlien fashion, shall insist was intended all along, and thus take full due credit for my own marvelous achievement.

Yes, I’m also aware, I could, and most likely shall, attach pictures here yet still, and yes, I’m also aware, that to do so thereby makes redundant my above statement, and by extension, the very concept and reason for an existence of this blog.

What a blunder. How very existential and tumblr-esque of me.

Wait, now he’s taking cheap shots against the platform he chose, and intends to make a community around and garner readership from?

Isn’t awfully clever this one, is he.

This has been a terribly fall-short introduction, that has neither shed any light onto what it is I’m talking about, nor brought any enlightenment into what it shall hold in future posts.

Have you really come to expect anything less (or more) from these LAlien rants of mine? I hope we know one another better than that by now, and if we don’t know one another at all just yet - get used to not ever being entirely sure what it is or why you're reading, anything that I’m writing.