Reposting from my Tumblr

[atalantapendrag]

Can't Stop the Signal

When I mess around on Tumblr I can see elements of 4chan and Twitter. It’s like watching something evolve, seeing family resemblances, I don’t know quite where I’m going with this but it’s fascinating.

I have my cheap, no-data-plan not-a-smartphone set up so I can text a post to Tumblr. I can even add a picture, although the camera on the phone isn’t very good. I have Tumblr set up to automatically tweet my posts (although I can disable that when posting directly). In theory, I could have my tweets collected periodically and posted to LJ and/or Dreamwidth as well.

Something is taking form here, but I’m not sure what. And of course I’m ignoring Google+, Facebook, Blogger, and a bunch more sites I don’t use.

I follow a lot of blogs on RSS feeds on Dreamwidth. I have a big friendslist on LJ. I spend increasing amounts of time on Tumblr, and Twitter is constant background noise. I have this amazing relationship with INFORMATION, and I don’t just receive. Most of it is reflection and static, but I’m transmitting. I don’t get out much, don’t have many face-to-face conversations. But I talk to people online (directly or by posting), and I get responses, and sometimes, people share what I say with others.

I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this. Mostly getting thoughts out of my head. I wish I had a therapist, and specifically one I could show this to and expect an intelligent reaction and some insight. But I have you, internets. Any interesting information in my static? How much of this will you reflect, and what will you add?

Comments

Re: The Internet Connection (yeah, I went there!)

[atalantapendrag]

Oh, definitely a change in the shape and not the quantity of information; the brain can only process so much. And when you spend as much time online as someone like me does, you're filtering the world through your choice of lens in a way that just isn't possible offline. But I'm a rather extreme example.

Re: The Internet Connection (yeah, I went there!)

[sathari]

True that you're filtering it through your choice of lens; I think that in the past the equivalent filter was essentially geographic, though: that we were limited to people who were geographically close to us in terms of our perceptions, which is a different shape of skew but not necessarily a less narrow one.