Tribblicate

Well, and my work.

Is because my blog doesn’t really have a FOCUS. It’s not a blog full of pretty photos, it’s not news, it’s not Glee stuff, it’s not anime, it’s not all about films, or books or whatever. My blog has a lot of reblogging, but I also try to generate my own content, as well as push my own things onto the internet. Sometimes it gets noticed and sometimes it doesn’t, but my shit is a mixture of liberalism, gay issues, politics, opinion pieces, porn, literature, quotes, pretty stuff and what have you.

But there isn’t this one predominate focus that attracts one sort of audience. You’d think that a variety of topics would draw in a variety of people but it does not seem so. But perhaps I’m just doing it wrong or just not doing enough, because plenty of people run blogs just on funny things they say, pictures of themselves, pictures of trees, and the occasional opinion. Not knocking it, because I LOVE those sorts of blogs, but it appears that I fail where they succeed.

But here I am talking about failure when it’s not really ABOUT followers. For me, it’s about creating and sharing. Writing and reblogging. Myself and the universe. Things of interest and things that interest me. And as long as I’m doing that, and doing it well, I guess it doesn’t matter who notices.

But if you’re speaking, and there’s no one around to hear it, have you really said anything at all?

It’s funny, before I joined Tumblr, I was on Facebook, and before I joined Facebook, I was on Myspace, and before I joined Myspace I was on Neopets (but lets put Neopets aside because it’s too niche to qualify for this discussion). Because I’ve spent a substantial portion of my life doing the Big Internet Thing (BIT! :D*) I’ve begun to notice certain trends that befall a site after I’ve spent a sufficient amount of time on it.

I’m only going to talk about one here, and I’ll call it The Social Networking Chain Reaction**. This is the tendency for long-time users of a website to complain that it is being “ruined” by users from another website, who are now joining en masse.

For our first example, lets look at the big Myspace/Facebook feud. For a long time these two “social networking giants” were competing. Users were their prize, their currency, their points, their teams, their everything. Whoever had the most people (with too much time on their hands) would win, would be saved from irrelevance. It’s a well known fact that Myspace lost this war, and lost it hard.

Now, I joined Facebook long before Myspace began to crumble, because I was told by my first boyfriend that it was “WAAAAAAAAY BETTER AND SUUUUPER KAWAII DESUUUUUU AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” the moment I set foot on the barren, blue wasteland I was instantly bored. The trouble with social networking is that without friends, there’s no socializing or networking. So it’s good to have a list of friends that are already on whatever site you’re joining, and while I knew people on facebook already, it wasn’t enough to garner any interest, so I promptly ignored my account, until about the middle of Myspace’s journey into irrelevance.

By the time Myspace had died (historians mark Myspace’s “link with your Facebook account” as the final nail in the coffin, and the end of the war) I had managed to garner a hundred plus friends, and I was enjoying the most epic time waster ever. But it was at this point that I started seeing statuses everywhere like;

OMG YOU GUYS! FACEBOOK IS STARTING TO SUCK NOW THAT ALL THESE MYSPACE PEOPLE ARE JOINING!

—Former Myspace user.

Why are you naming yourself “Midnight Suicide?” This isn’t Myspace!”

—Ex-Myspace user, formerly known as “Moonless Knight”

This went on for a pretty long time. It was reminiscent of the white, privileged suburban complaining “This neighborhood has really gone down hill since the blacks moved in!” or “Those damn Mexicans are ruining this country.” I think it speaks to a certain Social Network Nationalism. When we join a site, we start to get a sort of pride for it, we think that since we were here FIRST we are its true citizens, and the newbies can only ruin it.

And now we’ve come to Tumblr, which I joined sometime ago, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t see people complaining about Facebook users migrating over to Tumblr**. For a while, this site served as a sort of niche for Mean Girls references, cats, and cats referencing mean girls. But it has steadily grown in popularity, and the Tumblr purists can’t help but hail facebook as the ultimate scapegoat.

Whatever proceeds Tumblr as the new, interesting site will probably endure this same phenomena. Because as users we put too much faith in these sites, we see only OUR vision of them, OUR fixed point in time, OUR awesome site full of intelligent people and whores. And when newcomers seek to enjoy our coveted little piece of the internet, we don’t embrace them and we don’t share. We view them as parasites, infringing on our beautiful, perfect site, and infecting it with their blatant stupidity. They will forever sully it, eroding it until its as desolate and barren as Myspace.

It continues on an on. Myspacers ruined Facebook, and now Facebookers are ruining Tumblr, and I’m sure those Tumblr Whores are going to ruin (X) Social Networking Site that is TOOOOTALLY KAWAII DESU. I think we need to get off our high horse, I think we need to accept that Tumblr is only as good as its bloggers. It’s as awesome or as shitty as we make, and as long we continue to generate legitimately awesome content here and there, it will endure.

*And a cute anagram was born!
**Some sites don’t experience this, as they don’t have a direct predecessor (see: Twitter) while others are too ubiquitous to have this occur (Youtube). 
***We’ve got this Fight Club mentality. The first rule of Tumblr is don’t talk about Tumblr on Facebook. EVER.

Somebody whose witty and sophisticated.

No, someone whose a world class slut with a heart of gold.

But no, a girl who doesn’t give a fuck. Or a guy whose gonna be President. Or something else or someone else. But it’s all just things really.

We have a meme for every occasion, and a GIF for every situation. We’ve have it all because we’re witty, we’re smart, we’re sophisticated and totally improvising.

When anons ask stupid questions, we’ve got a snappy comeback and a hair flip to boot. If they’re asking a good question we’re just as likely to throw down our golden hooker hearts as we are to disregard it entirely with that same snappy comeback, that same GIF, that same oneliner. Because, lets face it, the only important question is “U mad?”

I feel like we’re all building one, constructing one from the base components of who we are and what we like, and letting it grow. In the same way that an anon can talk about raping your children everywhere but real life, we can pretend to be newer, better, wittier, sexier people through our blogs.

But this ritual, this persona it exists for a reason. We’re on the INTERNET. We’re one little twinkle in a sea of flashing lights, some of them dot-like stars from afar, and some of them gaseous balls of radiance, eager to give hope, or crush it. There’s so much competition for everyone’s attention. We all just want to be heard. Even the Lurkers want to be heard. So we’re just doing our dances, our elaborate acts, jumping through hoops or sawing people in half. We’re craving attention, craving reblogs, craving likes, craving notes, craving asks. Without any of that we mean nothing.

But to do this act, to achieve these things, do we cease to be the person we are in real life? Do we give into a sort of literal PC? Does our blog become more of an avatar unto us then a representation of who we really are? Because lets face it, the blog about an extremely knowledgeable nerd forever collecting pictures of her various obsessions while maintaining an aura of cool I’m-not-popular-but-I’m-witty is far more entertaining then the one about a lonely girl in the back of a library.

It begs the question if anything you see on Tumblr is even substantial. It makes you wonder if the majority isn’t just a bunch of insecure shut ins, forever hiding behind a glowing screen. Presenting ourselves through now-dated Mean Girl memes and excessive uses of Oprah’s exasperated expressions. Are any of these confident, sexy, cold as ice, sweet as sugar Tumbloggers even real? Are they even relevant?

A question for the ages I suppose.

oddfutureandfriends:

I found your Tumblr.

-Mom

GOATSE

The new layout feels a bit more organized than the old one. I mean, I’m not exactly a fan yet, but as with most site-changes I’ll just kinda get used to them. Like New!Twitter (which isn’t really new anymore, and is only called that to contrast it with Old!Twitter).