Shouting into the vacuum.

Every Monday for the past few weeks, I’ve consistently come online for the sole purpose of finding a new youtube video for the complex, thought provoking fun guaranteed by youtube channel ‘isthistom’; an extension of the riddle site This Is Not Tom (TiNT for short).

I encourage anyone who enjoys puzzles (and has a lot of time on their hands) to visit the site. It’s an addiction I’m in no hurry to break. (For help, visit the unofficial forums).

While the weekly puzzles in themselves are, as far as I’m concerned, nothing short of genius, the most fascinating part about this website is the progressing story that ties it all together. After solving each string of clues, followers are lead to a chapter of a story, which becomes clearer and infinitely more real with each passing week. I’ll avoid going into details of the story here, and suggest you visit the site to find out more.

What I wanted to write about today was the chapter released four weeks ago; which I believe was the sixth instalment of this gripping tale. Specifically, I wanted to point out this section of it:

So, like, imagine some girl who writes in her little unread blog, right? She writes, and no one comments, and she wonders if anyone reads it, and she looks at her site stats and finds that most of the few readers find her on the 37th page of google results for small town kitten or whatever, that her blog is only attracting people obsessively interested in kittens living in small towns, and even though the lack of readership is terribly, oppresively depressing, she keeps blogging. This girl, she can make her voice hearable but cannot make it heard. This sweet little girl – who has friends, who harbours crushes, who worries about homework, who knows that talking without being heard is sadder and more poignant than silence – heroically overfills survey memes with the minutiae of her life. And then I ride these details to the NutraSweet high of feelingreallyfeeling [as we subjects used to say] her life. And only because she continued on shouting to the vacuum.

I wanted to point this out, partially, to give spotlight to the wonderful story written by John Green. (Author of Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. I bought copies of all three online.) This ongoing story has been described as his latest novel and anyone up-to-date with the TiNT riddles will know what I mean when I say that it’s difficult to know for sure whether this is a work of fiction or if it’s a true story (or maybe even both).

Mainly, though, I wanted to post that passage of his writing on my blog because I’d imagine it rings true to a lot of my potential readers, as it does for me. I’d imagine a lot of you have blogs of your own, and can understand the feeling of talking unheard. And while the lack of readership can at times make me lose the motivation, I intend to continue shouting to the vacuum.