The Third Person Avoids Embarrassment

After an argument, Thomas was advised not to write his blog in the third person because it implied that he wasn’t responsible for it. He resented the suggestion and said that no one wrote the blog but him and that he could prove it on account of the spelling. But Graeme (not his real name, but it’s a name Thomas dislikes almost as much as he dislikes Anthony C. Berber, so its use is appropriate) said he was referring to the blog’s narrator being “Thomas” and not “I”.

Thomas thought about this and realised that he wrote it this way because he dislikes talking about himself almost as much as others dislike hearing about him. Moreover, it didn’t matter because no one read the thing anyway. Graeme said that he did, otherwise he wouldn’t be making the point, and Thomas said that if the only pointing out was going to be criticism, then he’d prefer it wasn’t read in the first place. Graeme then asked why Thomas was bothering to write a blog at all, to which Thomas said that it was probably for the same reason Graeme was bothering to read it. “To annoy people,” said Thomas. “Because I’m good at that.” Graeme said that blogs can’t be written in the third person because the whole point of them is to create an intimacy with the blog’s reader. Thomas said that he’d readily create intimacy for Graeme by shoving the blog up his bottom, and act which would, ironically, turn Graeme into an unconventional blog post in very much the first person.