There are only two kinds of people: those that can write well and those that don’t. I don’t count myself to the former, but I can as well have a look at them.

What do they, with their well writing? Bored from pleasing the common readership, the members of this rare folk start trying to please each other by writing the finest and most subtle texts. They write on writing, of course. People who can leverage the full power of a medium end up using the medium for nothing but communicating about it.

Thus, writers write on writing. Ham radio operators morse about signal strength. Mailing lists discuss net culture. Film directors produce movies full of inside jokes. It’s all a mere end in itself.

That’s what literacy is, in the end: Eternal rereading, reinterpretation, recombination of age old stories. Stories that are plain shadows. Metaphors that stand for nothing but themselves. And finally, once you’re bored from the idea of structuralism, you start discussion of structuralism itself.

I shall not act the innocent. Look at what I’m doing, not only writing about writing, but guilty of all above.