Getting sensitive in my old age

I’ve written here before about one of the people who irritate me: the Baptist preacher in Wycombe High Street.

It was not only his Calvinist theology that irritated me but also his projection, his diction, his whole way of preaching. It grated at my aesthete’s sensibilities and I felt like heckling.

But I saw the same group in the High Street yesterday (I was going down to the British Heart Foundation to drop off a bunch of card games I’d culled from my collection: I’d forgotten how many MUNCHKIN varieties I owned.) and either they have improved or I’m getting less sensitive. They may have got themselves a new preacher: the one yesterday was a lot thinner than the fellow before as well as a lot less raucous. But both of those could be the result of COVID. Still didn’t like the theology but I got down to the charity shop in a vastly better mood.

And this leads to a reflection on idiots on the Internet, especially the ones on YouTube. Just like street preaching going on YouTube doesn’t require any actual ability to communicate. There are arrogant teenagers and twenty-somethings who think they’re terribly funny and are wrong. (Is this the feeling that my Dad got watching Monty Python.) There are fresh-faced young journalists giving their not terribly insightful comments on current affairs. Maybe one in a thousand of them may get to be the next generations Jeremy Paxman.

There are people who can’t judge how loud and insistent they are in front of a camera or down a microphone. (And yes there are some who are off the other way: who knew E.L.Wisty had so many offspring?) There are people I actually like, whose views I want to hear who I can’t stand to hear formulate them.

On the whole it’s people who hit too hard that put me off. I’m British, I’m middle-class, I’m older. While I want people to speak up and speak clearly (because I’m old) I don’t want agression from something I’m watching/listening to for pleasure or education.

I get a bad impression of the education in rhetoric that young people get, in the US or in the UK. The Americans seem to have received lessons in how to be clear and teach the point of what they are trying to get across. The British seem to have been told to ‘express themselves’ which some of them do to excess.

Should there be such a thing as communication education? Is there? I dunno. I’m sure there are a huge number of experts on the Internet who have five vital tips they will give you in return for your click.

(Nobody should listen to my podcast (Improvised Theatre With Dice) for evidence that I know what I’m talking about. It’s a place where Roger and I come together with a couple of topics and a list of the points we want to make to each other and we wrestle (intellectually speaking) with the theme and with each other. It gets messy sometimes with lots of ums and ahs. Sometimes it flies but those are our good days.)

There are a few who I go back to and think they know what they’re doing. It’s not always to the good (there are some very smooth people out there selling some very dodgy ideas) but at least I don’t grind my teeth. At the moment Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast REVISIONIST HISTORY is my indulgence: he does irritate me with some of his conclusions but he delivers them clearly and in interesting ways. (Now go ahead tell me your favourites and how you can’t stand Malcolm Gladwell. I’m braced.)