Strange woman sends heartfelt goodbye letter to social media platform with zero irony
It’s crazy to think, that next year, my time on tumblr will reach legal adulthood. Like, I was about 15 when I made my account, and now I’m 32. It’s probably weird to people to refer to it like it’s a person, reaching a certain milestone like this that really isn’t much to feel proud of and maybe worth not ever mentioning at all, but it’s just kept me thinking for a while. Like most things in my life, I really have to put in effort to step back and think; “does this really serve me anymore? Do I need this or can it go to make room for better things?” and I’ve been rolling these questions in my head for a while. Taking a break is easy, but commitment to leave makes me anxious. Even though it’s a little lame, this website has shaped who I am now and part of why I’m Weird Like That. I know there’s a few people who have been dedicated to the platform and failed to adopt the particular vernacular, the silly in-jokes, the trivia tidbits and general common priorities that unify even the most opposite of people there. But respectfully, those few are nothing more than lost instagram and twitter users that are barely noticed by the strange quirky feminine mass that spans the website over the years. I hope not to romanticize it; this is a website of some of the most insane, stuck-up, and annoying people on earth, and exactly why it’s hard to cut myself off from the source. The screenshots just simply won’t do; you HAVE to be there. I know without a doubt a lot of my pretentious takes on modern internet cultures, on popular social media, and really just media in general stems from this place(which can be seen as part of the problem). I know a lot of my desires to be more intellectually driven (whatever that means) and think more critically have been carefully psyop’d into existence by weird lit majors and women way smarter than me on my feed. It’s the place where people like me can be rewarded for turning the metaphorical camera in on ourselves but also rewarded for failing to ever, ever gain a bit of social awareness as long as it’s done in a subversive way. It’s probably why I consider any online social interaction with someone who isn’t on the spectrum or has ADHD a novelty, and to be completely honest usually an uncomfortable experience. It’s where I get told to kill myself by 3 anons in my askbox because I don’t ship 2 fictional characters correctly(really, I was asking for it). It’s where nearly every “hear me out” is respected to the point where the game isn’t really fun anymore. It’s where I see bootleg reposts of tiktoks, peer-reviewed fuckable buildings, girls quoting the unabomber, mental breakdown play-by-plays, gifs of obscure movies, and of course, great cat videos. I’ve checked my privilege so many times I am now authorized to check the privileges of those within a 400 mile radius. It’s where I can say “that person in power should not be alive” or some variant of the phrase and people agree and nothing bad happens to me, and it’s the place where I block people if I find them annoying. It’s the social media I go to so I can scroll for hours and pretend I’m different than any other social media addict when I’m not. I may have a better platform, with all ads blocked, and a very precise curated feed of intellectual-adjacent content, but I can’t keep lying to myself that I’m not also wasting time I could be spending on just….something less draining. What I mean is, for me, The Scroll is an overstimulating thing that I do until I am fully numb and my brain is fried. I’ve tried the timer thing and it doesn’t work for me, I always disable it and find a way to keep going. I do better just cutting off the temptation in the first place. I really do think it’s like a slot machine for dopamine but it always gives, but I can’t spend this dopamine money anywhere else, and it takes so much time and energy away from my hobbies, interests, and general life. I also have found myself get more and more furious and affected, to the point of it ruining my next few hours at least, at any of the discourse or negative world-event stuff on my dash. It’s already too late before I block it and it’s honestly not very different there than it always has been, but I’m getting so much more vulnerable to the negative emotions any sort of negative post can give me. It’s a me problem, and I can tell it’s because I’m relying way too much on the app and website to be my little joy button, so much that not getting my fix for even half a second pisses me off something terrible. That’s textbook addict behavior. I have to cut myself off before I find myself unable to ever enjoy the place ever again, but also unable to leave. I don’t want to be like I was with facebook before I cut it off for good.
So, I’m going to try to lay my dear tumblr to rest, to move on from her and close her chapter in my life. I know I owe her thanks for all the great things I got to be a part of, of all the people I met that made me feel less like I was this weird loser girl and instead someone unique with potential to mean something to people. I needed a place like this to distract me from the unbearable loneliness of being a sheltered only child with no pets, who couldn’t have friends over, and was struggling with an intense learning disability she didn’t know she had. I was a weird girl who liked weird things that wanted to feel a part of something instead of always on the outside, and tumblr gave me that. But more importantly? I learned to be okay with being on the outside and embrace the whole of who I am. I met so many real, great people. I will always have this stuff in my dna. But I really do have to move on. It takes a woman like me with ADHD to be this melodramatic, but I don’t care. This is a third place I had that actually fit me during the most formative years of my life, which have shaped my trajectory to this day. I fell back in love with reading, with art, and with myself because the culture of the website never gave up on loving these things. I will probably always have that early 2010’s hipster element to myself, where I want to see weird and groundbreaking art, music, movies, and any other media. I love a grassroots scene that bleeds authenticity, and I love seeing people get to be people without the pressure to perform being cool. I try to be understanding and empathic about it, but sometimes I just can’t stand normie shit on the basis of it being normie and I know that’s part of that core tumblr pretentiousness that won’t stop eating my brain. Of course I rarely currently go to the site just to relive my golden era, instead I’m there because it’s stayed just as good most of the time while still evolving and changing. It’s hard to explain, but everyone else there is grown up too. We aren’t teenagers anymore, we’ve got jobs and kids and shit. But even so I can tell that I personally am changing into someone that doesn’t really need to be going here. I’m feeling the discomfort even on a good day. Maybe I’ll come back to try it all again, but only if I become a very different person. For now, I need to let go and make room. Thank you for everything. We changed each other. That will always mean something to me.