What the actual fuck was wrong with me when I was regularly posting on here.
I'm deleting as soon as the export is processed. Eight months away from Tumblr will convince you you should do the same; the clock starts now.
My bf and I are at a bar one table over from two guys who look exactly like Reilly and Jonesy from Letterkenny
If I ever got to pick one historical event to be present at I'm 99% sure it would be this
The answer to "how many times can I listen to 'The Lonely Goatherd' before my husband locks himself in his office?" is, for anyone following along at home, one and a half.
I had a dream where I was telling someone that I didn't like the concept of intersectionality because its framing implied distinct spheres of intersecting experience rather than a spectrum of humanity, which is an idea I've never quite articulated while awake but that I'm completely obsessed with now
join literally any kind of organizational committee to die instantly
Susie Essman has the best job in show business by virtue of just getting to yell at Larry David constantly and get paid for it
I've always dreamed that Dr. Seuss would fall dramatically from grace, but goddammit, not like this
I think I was like 20 before I realized that "school being closed for Town Meeting on the first Tuesday in March" was not, in fact, a nationwide experience
You mentioned a repetitiveness in the way people voice their ostensibly innermost experiences—could you clarify on that? give some examples?
Rambling attempts at sense-making under the cut:
I dreamed last night that the rod in my closet broke, and instead of fixing it or even picking up my clothes, I made a sign that said "The Fuck My Life Club" and hung it on the closet door
My favorite presidential history fact: Teddy Roosevelt's daughter had a pet snake named Emily Spinach, Emily after her aunt and Spinach because she was green
I'm a Greek who doesn't like garlic does that make me the last unicorn
I still enjoy Reddit, but only the parts of it that haven't (fully) succumbed to the cult of plastering identity labels on everything. Giving Redditors custom avatars and actual bios instead of letting their post histories speak for themselves is one of the more viscerally loathsome socmed changes in recent years. Can I just have one fucking space without ambient pressure to brand and market myself jesus christ
(and yes, putting your gender and race and sexuality and disability status on everything is branding and marketing, just with a woker gloss)
funereal-disease reblogged
I don't know whether I changed or the content itself did, but there's not a single social media platform that I don't find unbearably trite and cringey these days. The few blogs and subreddits I still like post original content only and aren't affiliated with any kind of "community". Not to sound too harsh (because that's something I've been concerned about lately: tempering my instinctive harshness/bluntness), but almost everyone in any kind of "community" speaks and acts and carries themselves exactly the goddamn same. Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Instagram are full of people who think and act exactly like everybody goddamn else. They share the same Tumblr screenshots and pastel infographics from the same meme pages, and everyone in the comments makes the exact same jokes in response. They put the same things in their bios; they frame their deepest, and ostensibly most personal, thoughts and feelings the exact same way, in the exact same language.
I thought I wasn't doing that, that I was an original, and then I left Facebook and Instagram and cut way down on Tumblr and I realized: holy shit, I was doing exactly that. I read my old posts now and see brainworms I had no idea I had, things I hadn't realized I'd absorbed from people I had no idea were so influential. I can't unsee it now. Everything everybody does is one big social contagion. It's memetic chattering all the way down and not one original thing is being said or done. If they are, it's not within the context of """community""".
I'm not deactivating this account, but I'm not investing in it anymore either. For your own sanity and self-actualization, I strongly recommend doing the same.
The replies are correct that this is basically just how socialization works, and that it's existed for as long as intelligent life has. I do think, though, that the internet plus American cultural imperialism has made the scope of the sameness broader than ever before. I hate that I could go anywhere in the English-speaking world (and probably beyond, to be honest) and meet people exactly like the clones on Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Instagram. It feels like there's nowhere to go to escape the Marvel-movies-and-cat-memes monoculture.
I still believe all people have a unique interiority and are inherently deserving of dignity and respect. I think terms like "sheeple" and "NPC" are dehumanizing, and I don't like to use them. I also think most of these people are probably more interesting irl. We all have much more to us than what we post on social media.
But my god, modern social incentives sure are a particularly grating combination of "constantly overshare" and "never discuss anything in a way unapproved by the monoculture".
I don't know whether I changed or the content itself did, but there's not a single social media platform that I don't find unbearably trite and cringey these days. The few blogs and subreddits I still like post original content only and aren't affiliated with any kind of "community". Not to sound too harsh (because that's something I've been concerned about lately: tempering my instinctive harshness/bluntness), but almost everyone in any kind of "community" speaks and acts and carries themselves exactly the goddamn same. Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Instagram are full of people who think and act exactly like everybody goddamn else. They share the same Tumblr screenshots and pastel infographics from the same meme pages, and everyone in the comments makes the exact same jokes in response. They put the same things in their bios; they frame their deepest, and ostensibly most personal, thoughts and feelings the exact same way, in the exact same language.
I thought I wasn't doing that, that I was an original, and then I left Facebook and Instagram and cut way down on Tumblr and I realized: holy shit, I was doing exactly that. I read my old posts now and see brainworms I had no idea I had, things I hadn't realized I'd absorbed from people I had no idea were so influential. I can't unsee it now. Everything everybody does is one big social contagion. It's memetic chattering all the way down and not one original thing is being said or done. If they are, it's not within the context of """community""".
I'm not deactivating this account, but I'm not investing in it anymore either. For your own sanity and self-actualization, I strongly recommend doing the same.