You wouldn't think it to look at him. That Charles Arthur, the mild-mannered – avuncular even – technology editor of the Guardian might, three years ago, nearly have been responsible for my death.
The story starts back in 2008, just after the publication of my last book, in which I described my embarrassingly unsuccessful attempt to become the British Mark Zuckerberg. Tired of London and tired of life, I decided to sell almost all of my possessions and embark on a new life, travelling from tech conference to tech conference, blagging cheap accommodation and free booze, and writing about the resulting experiences on my blog.
And what experiences they turned out to be: from crashing parties at SXSW and ETech with Michael Smith, to hijacking a double-decker bus (owned by Myspace) at FOWA [the Future of Web Apps conference] with Alex Tew, to almost coming to blows with Jason Calacanis on some New Media Age panel or other. It was shortly after the Myspace bus incident that Charles Arthur blipped on to my radar, and I on to his, when he wrote a very generous review of that book. Specifically, he wrote that "seeing the crunch come like a slow-motion car crash is compelling reading". Indeed.
Seeing an opportunity to strengthen my blagging powers, I emailed Charles and suggested that, if he liked my writing so much, he might find some space within Guardian Technology for me to write a weekly column. To my slight amazement, he did.
With the words "Guardian Columnist" on my imaginary business card, the game changed overnight. Where once I'd had to talk my way into conferences by pretending to be a contributor to some fictitious publication of other, now the invitations arrived in floods. And so did the tickets to lavish parties and fancy dinners, and gallons and gallons of sponsored booze. I was already a heavy drinker – living permanently in hotels will drive you to that – and my alcoholic intake increased sharply along with my readership.
Pretty soon I stopped paying attention to conference programmes entirely, in preference for sitting at the back of the room, bitching about the crap Wi-Fi or sub-par food while getting slowly – then quickly – drunk on whatever I could lay my hands on. Once a week, I'd dash off 800 words of as much as I could recall from the previous seven days – wooden ducks, a broken keyboard, Michael burning his eyes out with a taco. A few days later, a chunk of money would land in my bank account; enough at least to get me to my next destination.
Obviously, I expected the jig to be up after a month: conference organisers would soon figure out that allowing me through their doors was a net negative and would add me to some kind of blacklist; Charles would come to his senses too – kicking me to the curb in favour of more words from the eminently sensible Cory Doctorow. But even after I wrote a (now reasonably infamous) hit-job on the 2008 Le Web conference (dashed off in 10 minutes in a hotel room, so I could get back to the bar), and even after organiser Geraldine Le Meur had been so angry with me that she refused to shake hands with me at DLD the following year – even after all that, the invitations still came. Not only was I allowed to attend Le Web 2009, but Geraldine and her husband Loic even invited me to speak on stage. "All publicity, it is good" as Loic put it afterwards.
So, at the age of 29, I was being paid to travel around the world, almost attend conferences, get uproariously drunk – and then to write self-promotional pieces about my brilliance after the fact. I moved to San Francisco on a media visa (again facilitated by my Guardian gig) and promptly began to tear my way through the glut of parties afforded by the second – third? – dot-com boom. It all seemed (to embrace the cliche) too good to be true. And, as it turned out, it was.
What I saw as my irreverent oeuvre, and what one reviewer recently described as "a testament to the virtues of debauchery", was in fact a toxic cocktail of narcissism and alcoholism. For all that total strangers might have envied my lifestyle and wanted to spend time in my company, my closest friends were slowly edging away. I simply wasn't fun to be around for more than a single night – constantly looking, as I was, for the next ridiculous story; the next fun way to get ejected from a party or slung in a police cell. After all, from these disasters, the best columns usually came. As my editor, Charles couldn't have been happier with my work. But unbeknownst to him, that work was facilitating a lifestyle that, had it continued, would have almost certainly killed me.
Fortunately it didn't continue, and if I'm going to give Charles credit for almost killing me by giving legitimacy to my behaviour, then I suppose it's only fair I give him his due for saving my life; or at least prompting the change that did. In July 2009, just eight long months after my first column, Charles sent me an email...
Hi Paul,
Oh, I don't like to have to write this email. The past not-quite-a-year of your column has been enormously entertaining, and what's more you haven't managed to attract a single libel lawsuit. I'm not sure whether to be amazed, delighted, surprised or disappointed. But I've liked them all.
However, the economic situation has increasingly begun to chew off first our feet and more recently our legs. Which is why I'm really sorry to say that in recasting the budget I can't, at present, find a way to keep paying for your weekly column. Obviously you're free to take your ideas elsewhere.
I'm really sorry that it's come to this; if it's any comfort, you're far from alone. We're simply having to take an axe to all sorts of contributions because there isn't the money to pay for them.
If you've any questions, then do get in touch.
Best,
Charles
And that was that. Economic realities, nothing personal. But the result was the same: with that email I was transformed from reckless alcoholic columnist to just plain reckless alcoholic. I'd lost countless good friends, burned even more professional relationships and torn my liver a new asshole; and suddenly it was all for naught. No-one was paying for my shit any more, except perhaps me.
It was at this point that I discovered just how forgiving my friends were, particularly my best friend Sarah who used her sway at TechCrunch to convince Michael Arrington that giving me a job might not be suicidally irresponsible. Assuming of course that I promised to grow the fuck up.
The following few months weren't exactly plain sailing – in fact, they later formed the last, and most painful third of a book about my struggles with alcohol (see below for more on that) – but eventually I came out of the other side, mostly alive.
Looking back now, I feel slightly sick when I think how close I came to oblivion, and I shudder when I read the boasts of other people still living the life I once lead. You can see them everywhere, on blogs with titles like: Drunk Writer Talk, The Drunk Blog and Drunk Man's Guide. At least I went to the (limited) trouble of finding an editor who would publish my words: thanks to YouTube channels, Twitter accounts, Facebook galleries, it's possible to build a reputation as an entertaining drunk without ever having to sober up enough to type a full sentence.
Regardless of our preferred social media channel, each of us has become the lead character in our own ongoing narrative; and our audience (whether a dozen or a million followers) demands we engage in even more ridiculous behaviour to keep them entertained. Even otherwise sensible people can lose their minds when faced with the possibility of capturing something that will interest a large number of people – which is why the BBC is forced to remind readers not to "take unnecessary risks" when taking camera phone images for potential publication. (I'm sure the Beeb's lawyers are happy with that piece of arse-covering, but trust me when I say that all the risks I took seemed perfectly necessary at the time.)
And yet, and yet ... it's ridiculous for me, of all people, to act po-faced about those who behave badly to attain online fame. Here I am writing a self-promotional guest column in the hope that you'll buy my new book describing exactly that kind of behaviour. And not only have I been paid handsomely for writing the book, but this morning I signed an option contract for the film rights too. If ever there's an example of someone profiting from recklessness, it's me – I'm like the baby who stuck his hand in a fire and pulled out a fist-full of chocolate.
Perhaps a more sobering example can be found in the story of Evan Emory, a Michigan musician who this week pleaded "no contest" to charges of "unlawful posting of an internet message with aggravating circumstances". Emory was arrested after he decided it would be hilarious to play a gig for a class of young children, and then cut the video together with a borderline pornographic song to make it look like he was singing smut to kids. Of course, he posted the results on YouTube.
Similarly hoisted on their own electronic petards were Teeside 20-somethings Francisco Zayas-Slater and Andrew Pepper who were arrested after posting video of them driving recklessly at 90mph in a 40mph zone, and the breathtakingly idiotic Anthony M Carleo (aka "the Biker Bandit") who allegedly stole $1.5m in chips from the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas only to be caught after boasting of the crime on the TwoPlusTwo.com gambling forum.
The behavior of Messers Emory, Zayas-Slater, Pepper and Carleo might have been more extreme than mine (the only person I physically harmed with my drinking was myself) but our stories share a common factor: a pathological need to misbehave, and then to share our misdeeds with an appreciative audience. Otherwise, why bother misbehaving at all?
• Paul Carr's new book, The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations is published today in the UK in paperback and ebook formats. Or buy it in the US: paperback and ebook.
