Tumblr Confessions: The Rest Of The Story

One of the things I initially intended to do on this blog was to explore each thing that bothered me about my time on Tumblr, but that I had never said in public because I was too afraid. It was intended to be a series of posts, each addressing an individual view that I'd witnessed as commonly held on Tumblr that I disagreed with. The more I think about it now, the less important it feels to me. I don't have good examples to hold up of the behavior I witnessed now that I cut myself off from the site, and because I'm not looking directly at it every day now, it no longer poisons me so badly that I'm choking on angry rebuttals.

Initially I wrote a four page series of short diatribes on individual ideological points that I saw there and differed from, but I can boil it all down to this: I found myself generally more conservative/libertarian than the people I was surrounded by, and I found myself surrounded by bitter, angry people with lethally sharp tongues and quick tempers. It also seemed like a majority of the posts I saw were penned by people who didn't want to think or ask questions or talk about it, it seemed to me like they wanted applause for their contempt.

Was that everyone? No. But it was rare to go a day without seeing some post that felt severely under-informed and over-inflated with its own importance and wit. Producing a real zinger often seemed more important than starting a reasoned dialogue, and any important points were assumed to be shared with the audience in order to get to that one-up. At a certain point, I felt like I could have produced a virally popular post by following a formula.

I usually didn't say anything. I told myself that I wasn't good enough at debate, or I sucked at retaining enough facts, or I didn't know enough initially. I reassured myself that it was okay if I didn't want to jump into a never-ending series of misunderstandings online with people I didn't even know. Occasionally, some post would be blatantly wrong enough for me to scrape up two ounces of courage and say something about it, but that was the exception. Again, I told myself that I was keeping my blog mostly neutral and making it a safe place for anyone.

Perhaps that's what I wanted, on some level. But on other levels, holding back my response felt like choking. I don't want to let that feeling totally off the leash because, let's face it, I can get very angry and whip out a sharp tongue too. But I shut it down more often than not because I was afraid of looking like an idiot, or of getting mobbed, or doing a disservice to what I understood to be the truth.

And that's another thing. The truth matters. Yes, I have ideologies too, but don't worry, I've consulted with my doctor. I kid, but in all seriousness, I think that there is just as much blind dogma in politics as there is in dead religion and that's bad news. While it is difficult and painful for me to expand enough to encompass opposing arguments and make a decision, it's something I am trying to incorporate in my life whenever I have enough emotional buffer to handle being poked in the axioms. One thing's for sure, I was never going to find the truth in the sinkhole of Tumblr political discussion.

I want to get better at expressing my opinion. I also want to be able to express my opinion even if I can't present all the backing I've absorbed for it. The idea that I have this right to an opinion and that I'm not legally required to defend every nuance of it is new to me. I get that expressing an opinion invites discussion and questions and poking, but there may be times when I politely--as they say in D&D--disengage from that. I may say that I hold a certain opinion, and I have done some reading on the topic and intend to do more, but so far the logic points me more in X direction than in Y direction.

I want to be more courageous. Okay. One step is answering difficult questions. Another step is carefully speaking the words that burn in my throat when I see or hear something that really bothers me. Maybe I will do this badly for a while, but that's how you get better at a thing, right? Another step will be absorbing opposing arguments.

Leaving Tumblr was, I believe, the correct decision for several reasons. One of them was the unearthly level of contempt that got under my skin on a near-daily basis. But instead of dwelling on each and every individual instance of that, I would like to let that go, now. Having covered it with a single, general post, I dismiss it. If topics come up again in the future, it is my responsibility to address that, but I think it's better to let this particular past rest.

Here's to taking the topics as they come and not swallowing the coals anymore.