Building Burrows
I'm writing this while avoiding my seemingly never-ending responsibilities: homework, cleaning, summer internship applications, thesis planning, and all the other BS I task myself to do. I think this generation has gotten really good at evading non-digital reality by burying themselves in useless content. After about an hour of scrolling through Substack, I convinced myself to begin writing on here. Mainly to have a consolidated place to store all of my meaningless thoughts that fizzle up in my brain during lectures or after conversations with my boyfriend, but also to contribute to the increasing number of girly pops critiquing mainstream "culture" on the internet. I think it's okay to be a skeptical hater so long as it's well-informed and well-intended. Alas, I dig up my burrow, hoping to eternally store my thoughts.
I've been thinking a lot about young people's recent shift from mainstream social media platforms like Instagram to more lowkey sites like Tumblr. I wonder what attracts us (me included) to the platform. Nostalgia instantly comes to mind; we all yearn to return to a seemingly simpler time, where #justgirlythings and Joy Division album cover posts dominated the internet. Theorist Svetlana Boym says that nostalgia is a longing for a different time, an ultimate refusal of modern notions of temporality and space that plague the human condition with linear progression. Early social media was sort of like a timeless microcosm of teenage creative expression, characterized by amateur photography overlayed with cringe captions but nonetheless lacking the timelines that are so pervasive in apps we use today. When I scroll through Tumblr, I don't feel time slipping through my fingers. I feel comfortable in the repository of a dreamy, childlike pre-responsible adult condition.
On the other hand, Instagram makes me feel the weight of the inescapable time-lapse; photo by photo, I'm reminded of the world beyond my screen. Time is running, and every post is a painful reminder that someone is ahead of me in the race to determine our collective history. However, Boym also notes that nostalgia isn't just retrospective but can directly impact our utopian constructions for the future. Taking refuge in more antiquated forms of social media acts as a refusal to the implications of a newfound digital age where everything is documented and captured to be put on display for the rest of the world. Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter are nothing more but a place to commodify your existence and measure your importance in the genealogy of inescapable capitalistic progress.
While it is important, I don't think it is purely nostalgic; otherwise, only older Gen Z and millennial-aged people would be hitting that reblog button. I think Tumblr's rebirth is partly due to its enticing anonymity. The use of poetic usernames, blurry photos with little context, and a following typically comprised of complete strangers are all seductive elements of this reintroduced online fascination. Not to go full-on Foucalt, but in a world of inescapable surveillance by the data vampire networks, we exist in a digital panopticon facilitated by social media technologies. I personally hate Instagram because whether I like it or not, my identity is attached to my account, and I feel like everything I post is open to scrutiny, not only of my online persona but my physical personhood as well.
Although surface-level, Tumblr seems like an oasis from perception and oversight. A place where you can literally post a photo of a wall that looks cool and not give a fuck because no one is out to judge your competency or character. I think a lot of this shows that younger people are rethinking their relationship with social media and their positions as postmodern subjects in the technopocene. No, I don't want to be perceived. I want to be able to share pretty photos and music without having to create an entire brand for myself.
Let me build my burrows!
