Tribblicate

Well, and my work.

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.

I use Tumblr because my ideas are the only possession I like to share. Call it an only-child-until-a-year-ago thing. But I love to just…release what I think and feel out into the world.

It’s like, everything gets so bottled up. Everything I know, everything I feel, every funny joke I don’t tell, insult I don’t release, every over-flowing silence…and the bottle is just straining and there’s so much pressure on the stopper…

But then I open the bottle. It’s like unloading on someone after you’ve had a bad day. Like sitting with your best friend and just talking about everything that bothers you or interests you. Everything you hate and everything you love. Everyone you hate, and everyone you love.

Tumblr’s like that, except more. Like a thousand friends are all sitting there with an ear open, and you just unload and unleash. Your ideas burst into space, and anyone who’d care to read can. And anyone who does, for a moment, just a moment; is connected to you.

I love connection. It’s the same reason I use Twitter. It makes me feel connected. And yeah, maybe people don’t care that I’m at a dentist appointment and yeah maybe that gif I posted wasn’t funny, and yeah maybe I don’t have 1000 followers…but it doesn’t matter. Because every time I get a like, a retweet, a new follower, a reblog; for a moment—just a moment—I’m not alone.

That’s why I use Tumblr.