I’ve been writing for Anne Roquigny about the internet, and I realised at the end of it that I sound like a curmudgeon. This is nothing new. Two years ago I wrote “How Not To Succeed on the Internet” and I stand by my advice.
The best way to go is forward, even when it means going backward. Give up whenever you feel like it. Let your children starve, lose your lover to a randy shop assistant with a rash, max out your credit cards as fast as possible, and flee your country never to return.
Forget the internet, which will soon be gone, with everything in it. Whatever it is you want to say, write it all down on paper. Learn how to make ink, and build yourself a printing press. Seal your books in a lead box, and bury that box in a stone sarcophagus, somewhere far from where you are now, half a mile above sea level, in desert conditions. Grow beans, and chew them thoroughly.
If you do these things, surely you will be handsome, and wealthy, and your children likewise.
But that’s not the point. The point is the sharp bit at the end.
