My Offline Community of One

Dear potential Instagram followers,

In 2008, Theatre actor and minor daytime television personality Oliver Gomm
created (by accident) an alter ego named GOMMIE who writes obsessively in
overpriced moleskin pads and gets himself into all sorts of trouble just so he
can write about it to his adoring and imaginary public who consider GOMMIE
to be a sort of modern day (alive) version of Samuel Pepys.

After many years (8) of successfully keeping up his accidental (and mostly
secret) duty, GOMMIE met a wonderful girl called MELANIE who was doing a
PHD in “the internet” at “Oxford”... and she said to him one day “GOMMIE,
why do you write in pads and not on the internet? without the internet you
don't exist. Without the internet you're nothing but an offline community of
one”.

GOMMIE (and this is just the kind of guy he is) took this on board, and
thought that maybe this is part of the reason for him feeling so isolated and
weird all the time; He was not part of the internet!

So the next week, after breaking up with MELANIE, GOMMIE logged onto
Insagram under the guise “MYOFFLINECOMMUNITYOFONE” and started
lifting and posting specific memories from his diaries into highly personal,
visual poems that he called “GOMMIES" in the hope of exploring such
subjects as love, fun, English politics, and the fascinating tension that exists
between survival and adventure. He even wrote a manifesto on the carpet of
his mums floor one day stating all sorts of Dogma- style facts about what a
GOMMIE is. About how a GOMMIE is “not words only”. About how a GOMMIE
is “a poem that can turn into anything at all” About how “You don’t have to
worry about anything in GOMMIE” And about how “All you need to GOMMIE,
is a pen, something to write on, and the infinite- which is infinite.”

And now, Some 11 months later, with a sweet 336 followers under his belt,
GOMMIE feels like a martyr and is consequently well up for bringing YOU
(potential Instagram followers) up close and personal with a few classic
GOMMIES in the hope that you will stop fucking around and start
GOMMIEING yourself.

See you on the green.
love,
Gommie
Jan 2017.