A Writer's Notebook, Day Nine-Hundred-And-Ninety-Four

A friend of mine invited me to checkout Clubhouse, which, to be honest, I had never heard of.  So far, I am not really sure I understand it on any level.  I mean, I realize the concept, but the interface has me at a loss.  I wish that I could find a way to interact with social media and other internet technology that was not so alienating for me.  Even discussing this, I think that it might just sound like a rant by an old dude, but I am a person who loves technology, or at least, I love the idea of technology.  The reality, for me, has been upsetting, in a great many ways.  Many of the areas where I have neurological differences are to do with spatial awareness, hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and processing visual information.  My ability to remember image patterns is quite low, though I score high when dealing with other types of memory.  For me, even attempting to recall what a symbol means can be challenging.  Even more, the multiple fonts and text sizes create a jumble that makes reading the specific information so difficult.  I often cannot tell what is a tweet, for example, and what is a username.  I need a way to sort the information so I can process it, and that extracts it into a format that does not require so much intense visual decoding.  I have looked, and so far as I can tell, such tools do not exist.  The problem is, though, it has become a necessity to be involved in these platforms.  I am told over and over about the support found in online communities, about the ways it can help to build an audience or create a support system, or find out new opportunities, or any of a myriad other vital tasks of the modern world.  I want those things, but the design philosophy behind all these platforms makes these mediums literal obstacle courses for a person who is neurodiverse in the ways I am.  I am going to give Clubhouse a try, but just looking at it tonight, I was overwhelmed, even worse when I attempted to find content on it that interested me.  My friend offered to help me try and get a handle on it when he is free tomorrow, so am going to give it my best and hope it is just my previous experience misleading me.  

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