The Pitfalls of Pretentiousness
Feb 01 '01
The Bottom Line Easy to get caught up in the numbers and comments. Can easily become addictive and go to your head (unless you're blessed with a family like mine).
Following my evening repast, I retire to the solitude of my study to ponder my next offering to the Epinions community.
Product after product enters my mind, and each is instantly rejected as much too mundane and pedestrian for an author of my immense talents.
You see, I've recently skyrocketed from complete obscurity to the dizzying heights of only relative anonymity.
I have arrived.
I am...a star!
Returning to the problem at hand, I lay my head back, close my tired eyes and await the voice of my muse.
"Hey Shakespeare, can you tear yourself away from the computer and take out the garbage!"
My wife...the anti-muse.
Doesn't she understand that there are thousands and thousands (well, maybe 6 or 7) of my loyal followers (I like to think of them as Egroupies.) anxiously awaiting the posting of my next exciting and illuminating review? Must I constantly be assailed by these tedious, insignificant earthly tasks?
Oh, how I suffer for my art!
Doesn't she understand that I am no longer of this world?
I am...an Epinionator!
Trudging wearily back to my computer, I stop to brush moist, pungent coffee grounds from the tops of my shoes.
Lousy garbage bag ripped again!
Pretty darn flimsy for the price.
Wait...is that a potential review? No, let the unwashed masses tackle that subject. I was meant for much greater things.
Hmmmm! Let me see.
I can feel my creative juices beginning to flow.
Oops! Correct that. It's only my old bladder problem again.
I've got it! I'll post a solution to the crisis in the Middle East.
This could win me a Nobel Prize. Better yet, Epinions might even make me an Advisor!
But where can I possibly post it?
Diplomacy? No category.
Statesmanship? No category.
Oh, these categories are so limiting for a man of my world vision! And they wonder why Churchill and Roosevelt never wrote Epinions.
O.K. The Home & Garden section has a sub-category called "Five Gifts I'd Like to Receive." This could work...what better gift for mankind than a definitive solution to the problems in the Middle East? Of course, I'd have to come up with solutions to four other crises.
Fortunately for me, the world is in turmoil and four more should be easy enough to find and solve.
Might take five or six hundred words though.
O.K. How to begin? First, where the heck is the Middle East? Probably somewhere near Scranton...
"Hey dad, the water in the toilet won't stop running!"
My son...muses interruptus.
Intoxicated and invigorated by visions of greatness, I march resolutely to the upstairs bathroom to calm the troubled waters in my own household as I will soon calm the troubled waters of the world.
As I work, immersed to my forearms in icy water, a thought flashes through my consciousness and I become stricken with terror.
There are members who, lacking my world view and jealous of my greatness, would call such a review off-topic and rate it "Not Helpful".
Anything to bring the big man down.
My hands begin to shake and my knees become weak.
"Not Helpful".
Crushing.
Devastating.
I dare not chance it.
Shoulders slumped and head hanging in despair, I drag my weary body and tortured soul back to my computer where, pounding frantically at MY keyboard, sits my daughter...mini muse.
"Dad, I need the computer. I have a science report to finish for school tomorrow."
"Report!"
"Report!", I exclaim.
"Doesn't my art mean anything to anyone? How can I create under the conditions that you mortal, non-Epinionators subject me to?"
"It's for school, dad. You're the one who's always telling me how important education is.", she replied.
"Young lady, I am on the cusp of creating the ultimate Epinion. It could mean as much as forty, maybe fifty cents to this family, and I could bask for days in the loving comments and adulation of my fellow members."
"Chill, dad. I'll give you a half a buck and tell you that you're not too weird for an old guy. Now would you please let me finish my report?"
Defeated, I crawl away.
In bed that evening, my wife asks if I came up with anything to write about for that web site I belong to.
Inwardly pouting, but trying to shield her from my pain, I relate to her the events of the evening, and express my frustration at not finding a suitable topic.
She inquires as to why it's so important to write "another one of those reviews" now.
I try to explain that I have readers!
"Do you know that my 'WOT' has tripled in size in the past month?", I said.
"You couldn't prove it by me.", she replied.
Deflated, I curl into the fetal position and, tossing and turning, drift into a troubled sleep by counting "VH, VH, VH...".
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Epinions.com ID:
rich2003dm
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Location: New York City
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 171 members
About Me:
I broke my pencil so I'm probably done here.
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