I do appreciate the culture of Tumblr as a historian because on Twitter I would be expected to talk straight academia, on Instagram I would be expected to post perfectly staged photos of my reenactment costumes, on TikTok I would be expected to make videos propagating badly revised history, but here I can just whip open my laptop and tell the world that I think Thomas Jefferson was a little bitch with no context whatsoever
So a real thing with the dissolution of social networks is the loss of small connections. Funny takes and long threads can be archived, but how do you preserve your bond with a mutual? How do you find each other again? With every platform move we lose small connections with people we appreciated. That’s a sad, involuntary little break-up. Sorry to all the little ghosts I’ve lost over the years. Sorry to all the new ones coming.
I’ve been herdivineshadow for… about 24 years at this point, so hopefully I’m easy for old friends to find again.
my toxic xennial trait is that i believe something should either be software (in which case after i download it i shouldn’t need to be connected to use it) or a web page (which shouldn’t require me to download anything to use it, however badly, in a browser). fuck your mandatory single function constant connection apps
One: don’t you ever touch me again. Two: don’t you ever touch me again. Now, you have no idea who the hell I am, or where I’ve come from, and I’m not about to tell you my whole life story. All I need to be to you and everybody on this dome is a fixed point. The last man standing. I do not need your sympathy or your admiration. All I need is your compliance and your fighting skills. And if I can’t get that, then you can go back to the wall that I found you crawling on. Do I make myself clear?
