Most people conduct themselves differently in different company and situations. Social media can jumble our sense of discretion when we forget our audience, or accidentally post in the wrong place. On tumblr, the norm is for people to have a bunch of cute animals, yuks, positivity, and horrifying news from the movement, all in a messy stream. Who is that meant for? It’s not great.
When I first got into tumblr, it was with the intention of creating a feed where no one would encounter depressing or triggering content. I’m not hyper-scrupulous about tagging things that don’t bother me (like cute snakes and bees), so it isn’t the safest place on that platform for people with those problems, but it’s a good place to go for yuks and cute animals, sans all the hot news about how we’re doomed and people are fucking evil. A rare service. I also limit the images of people to extremely non-sexy ones* because hawtness invites thinking about bodies, a problem for many eating disorder sufferers.
That’s my primary tumblr, but in following others to get material, I kept getting stuff I couldn’t use on my dash, and had no outlet for the way it made me feel. So I started the Great American Satan tumblr (which mostly reblogs political stuff), a less sensible tumblr for barfing up all of the horrifying news about white race terrorists, and an artful repository for images of sexy people.
That’s my useful faces of the moment. This blog, its tumblr version, the easy going tumblr, the ragey anti-racist one, and the sexy people. There’s a few others that don’t lend themselves to snappy descriptions, and no doubt more to come eventually.
What are your faces online? What do you use them for?
*Just realized this sounds like I’m trying to post unsexy people. That’s not exactly it, it’s just generally posting people that are not being at all sexy. Generally. Boy. I rly can’t compose words today.
I have a facebork account so I can look at other facebork stuff.
Every word in my profile is … less than accurate.
Let’s see. No Facebook, no Twitter, don’t have a clear idea of what tumblr is.
I comment on other peoples’ blogs. That’s about it for my social media presence.
I deleted my facebug a few years ago. I can see using it just to look at people’s links tho. Also pretty sensible to keep a slim internet profile, it can get unwieldy to manage one’s different accounts. By the way, I may link to my other stuff more directly some time, but don’t want to do that while I’m getting highish traffic from the slyme pit. I’m sure eventually they’ll be jerking off on my stuff anywhere and everywhere on the ‘tubes, but no need to accelerate the process.
I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately. IRL, I’m an economist, and my “main” blog is intended to be a part of the econo-blogosphere. It’s not technical, but it is kinda “inside baseball,” written for econ groupies. (Econ has groupies? Sorta. A little. OK, I can dream, can’t I?) But lately I’ve wanted to write about society-and-politics stuff that might be interesting to a broader audience, so I’ve had to choose between mixing that into the econ stuff or creating a new, separate “space.” I ultimately went with “new and separate,” and the deciding factor was comments — I want to attract a different community of commenters to each blog (and moderate the comments slightly differently). A bit like having different discussion groups for different topics, I guess.
Exactly what I’m talking about! I think it’s kinda cool, because writing is an expression of yourself, socialization too, and this is like multiplying yourself. Camus was into it, thought living different lives within the one you’re allotted is the best way to thumb ur nose at incipient doom. Maybe sock puppeteers are onto something.