Why I’m Here

On having a separate space

Some time during the past year, my friend was having trouble adjusting to university life and living in the dorms on campus. She visited a counsellor because she was experiencing too much stress and he told her that it was because she couldn’t separate herself from school. She felt like she was in school all the time because she didn’t get to go home except for the weekends and she didn’t feel relaxed even in her dorm room because in her mind, it was still school. He told her that she needed to leave campus more or try to associate positive experiences with school so that she wouldn’t feel trapped.

I bring this up because essentially, as much as I love Tumblr, it’s also become a space where I have to censor myself and create a sort of personality that was acceptable to my friends. Much like my friend, I have difficulty separating my private space from a social space.

One thing that bugged me a lot was about how people used my blog to check up on me. In casual conversations, they would mention things that I had said on my tumblr but have not said to them. For example, I was having a bad night or an experience. They would ask me about it the following morning.

It was incredibly jarring because I wouldn’t be sure then of what I had said to people and I had just forgotten it or if I never said it and they knew because I blogged about it. I have terrible memory and also, a great need for privacy. It gave me a lot of anxiety because I couldn’t ensure my own privacy and if my memories were true or false.

I would have friends checking up to ask after how I was if a post sounded too negative and while I appreciate the concern, I hated it because it made it sound like it was a cry for attention or help and genuinely, it wasn’t.

I write to make sense of things and to give an explanation. Not for others but for myself. One way to bring things to life is to give them a form in reality. For things to become true, they must be read out or spoken aloud because then they have materialised in a form that is not simply understandable by yourself but by others too. But even so, when my thoughts have become words, I did not write them with an audience in mind. Or rather I wish I had not because when I write on Tumblr, I am achingly aware of how they will come across to my friends.

I am unable to articulate my feelings without fear of being called attention-seeking or being dramatic.

Public profiles

I think it’s clear to see from the way I’m writing here that this post was not meant for my Tumblr.

The distinction between Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, is that while I understand the need to create and maintain a public profile, my Tumblr was not meant to function that way. I would consider Instagram (even if my account is private) to function as my public profile. It’s what I would want people to see me as, happy and well.

It’s not meant to be a mouthpiece, my Instagram is just a feed of pictures to fit myself into social conventions. I don’t attach very much meaning to it. It’s an introductory profile to who I am, I would say. When you meet new people and exchange contact details and social media profiles, it’s basically an extended namecard.

And as such, it follows that people criticise social media for romanticising ideal selves. People tend to post the good parts of their lives. They post pictures of their cafe food, their dates, birthday celebrations. Rarely do people post pictures of their mundane workdays or such.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing necessarily. Some time in 2013, there was a #100happydays challenge (I participated in that too on my Tumblr with my best friend and we both agreed that we enjoyed it and got a lot out of it), people criticised it because it was ‘fake’ and didn’t portray an accurate reality. That’s a fair point but I think it misses the big picture. To me, the challenge was a way to immortalise good things that have happened to you and to find something positive even in the little things. It isn’t to brag or show off what a brilliant life you’re leading.

But at the same time, there is a certain backlash to revealing too much of the bad parts of yourself any way publicly. You’re shamed for being too happy, and also shamed for being too morose.

Content creation and sharing

The best known example of an echochamber in this day and age would have to be Facebook. My own feed is usually nothing but shared articles. My own profile tends to be nothing but shared articles I’m tagged in or have shared myself. They range from cat videos to Tastemade minute tutorials.

I acknowledge the fact that Facebook,Tumblr, etc can also be a space to create content but how I have used it has always largely been very much about echoing the same sentiments and opinions.

Creating gifs of TV shows,YouTube videos like makeup tutorials, video essays, think pieces are often shared throughout all platforms.

Reblogging or sharing is a way to relate to other people. It’s a way to show what you’re interested in, in the hopes you find like-minded people.

The increase of social media usage and sharing has seen a proliferation in think pieces.

I think that’s great, it’s incredible to read articles from different perspectives and comment sections tend to be a great place for discussion and opinions.

However, it also means that the bad sheep or the lazy work is out on display, full-frontal in the spotlight. And worse yet, something that infuriates me, is the amount of attention we pay to them.

I hate Thought Catalog, I’m just going to put it out there. I’ll only ever read the links my friend has specifically sent in the group chat but Thought Catalog has become a cesspit of unoriginal articles.

Buzzfeed has at least tried to gloss it over with a shiny veneer but TC baffles me in that some of its articles are truly little less than stolen work. I understand that we don’t want to censor or limit our selves, but there is a line between creative license and plagiarism.

I want to be able to come to my opinion about matters and step outside of this self-made bubble of advertorials masquerading as think pieces or original content.

Here, on medium, I rarely read what other people have posted so it’s pretty much just me screaming into the abyss.

Privacy

This probably should have been an earlier point and I think this whole post boils down to this but privacy is the biggest reason why I have a medium account now.

As I’ve said before, if you were to google, you would probably be able to find this blog.

I’ve had friends who deleted their blogs or accounts before but the problem is: the Internet never forgets. It’s easy to get ahold of a time machine or to find traces of online activity even after shutting down an account.

I watched a brilliant video essay on the right to be forgotten and most likely digressing from his points about it, I wish there was an option to completely clear yourself from the Internet.

I can’t delete my Tumblr fully, the best I can do is to leave it as it is. I don’t want to delete it because I still do want to do shit like reblog gifs and see what new things the people I follow are up to.

But I want to be able to create a distinct personality for myself that I know I’ve created just for me and no one else.

And that’s why I have a medium account.