He was a man of the 21st century. A 21st century that was currently replaying the famine and war of a century earlier. He was staring at an internet that was full of the neutral point of view or else hot takes and sick burns. In the narrow channel between these modern-day Scylla and Charybdis, he set out on a raft to try to communicate something of the personal. On a little raft, this modern Kon Tiki swam into those swirling waters, and of course his raft was destined to get smashed against the rocks.
His little piece of slice of life and stream of consciousness had foundered and sunk, and he climbed up on the beach, tattered. He was especially puzzled when he looked around at other stories: lauded fiction, full of vague allusions and magical realism, that had reached popularity. He puzzled over it while looking at pictures of mangled tanks and wondered about relatives in the hospital with Covid-19, which is what people do in early 2022, facing down two and possibly three horseman of the apocalypse with nothing else but a closet full of white rice and off-label pharmaceuticals. The returning pain in his neck and back made him unable to track his own thoughts. And he was facing an important problem: what separated a work of art from the idle chatter of random thoughts? What was the heart of a work of art? Was it a matter of structure (the usual form of fiction), or soul (a single concept, developed from a disinterested point of view)?
He looked at his clock. He didn't know. To be honest, he was having a hard time keeping his metaphorical head above metaphorical water. But he had one guess: the usage of the third person over the first person. If he told a story in the first person, it would be idle chatter. But switch it to the third person? Then it is a work of art, not just a personal reminisce.
Finishing off his four paragraphs, he had already prepared his riposte if it was challenged: if they challenged this third person account of a theoretical person who was definitely not him, and yes he realized he was into some Douglas Hofstadter territory here, he could bring up a dozen "stories" about grandpa's rocking chair or mimosas with a BFFsy that are no different, and perhaps less relevant. This opens up quite a can of worms, because there are so many cases scattered about that if one is dubbed inappropriate, then dozens or hundreds could be challenged for relevancy. He waits for the response, and prepares to bring Jean-Francois Lyotard into the picture as well.