Tumblr for the Lipitor generation

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Here’s how I feel about the different social media sites and their uses:

·        Facebook, for the young, is for connecting and gossiping and embarrassing one another.

·        Facebook, for those of us who are no longer young, is for keeping in touch and swapping recipes and Simplicity patterns and posting pictures from thirty years ago and embarrassing one another.

·        Twitter is about branding and advertisement and being stupid in fifteen words or less. If you are not consistently very witty, you shouldn't really bother posting, unless you're Katy Perry or Justin Bieber, in which case it doesn't matter.

·        Pinterest is for those who like to post and share pictures of fashion and decorating and jewelry and cute boys. Much though I like all these things, I decided after a few months that Pinterest was not for me.

·        WordPress is a nice stable blog website, full of people with all kinds of interests. I have made some very nice Internet friendships on WordPress.

·        Blogger / Blogspot ditto.

·        Tumblr is a friggin' zoo.

 Let me expand upon this last statement.

Tumblr is something for everyone and no mistake: lots of beautiful photography and art, lots of underdone cheesy humor, lots of selfies. Also lots of bizarre political thought and amateur porn. It's a more freewheeling version of Facebook in which you don't need to friend anyone, and in which most people use handles and aliases. Nothing comes to you automatically on Tumblr: you have to shop around for it. Once you find something with which you feel comfortable, those people will be reblogging from other similarly-oriented Tumblr blogs, and you can follow those in turn, and - within a month or two of careful tending - you will have a beautiful Tumblr garden / dashboard full of lovely and amusing images and texts to enjoy!

Let me give you a head start. Let's say you're a mature person, a little literary, a little artsy, with a taste for kitch and a goofy sense of humor. You might like to look at the following Tumblr blogs, just for entertainment's sake. (And if you’re reading this on Tumblr, look these folks up; you won’t be sorry.)

  

·        Diane Duane. Diane (who blogs under her real name) is a successful author, mostly sci-fi and young adult. She lives in Ireland and posts wonderful pictures and texts, and she is very responsive to her fans and readers. She is very likeable, and I recommend her highly.

·        Devilduck. This is the ultra-kitschy Tumblr blog of one of the guys associated with the well-known Archie McPhee joke shop in Seattle. If you like pictures of people wearing horse masks and Christmas trees decorated with Cthulhu tentacles, this is the site for you.

·        Bad Postcards. What it says. Mostly 1950s and 1960s; mostly cute, some poignantly nostalgic, and almost all in brilliant Kodacolor.

·        1950s Unlimited. Like Devilduck, but a little more on the sentimental side. If you get misty-eyed over black and white photos of people using cigarette machines, you'll feel very at home here.

·        Well, That’s Just Great. The drily amusing / often hilarious daily chronicle of a man named Anthony Giffen who lives in central Florida with a dog named Ducky and a partner named Gizmo. Highly recommended.

There: I have sanitized Tumblr for you. I guarantee no porn, no dangerous radicals, no homicidal lunatics.

Now get in there and explore Tumblr and stomp around a bit.

You might just have fun.

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Twitter: more fun that I thought it was going to be

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Last year I wrote a blog entry comparing Twitter (unfavorably) to Facebook. It’s less personal, I said. These people you’re following, they’re not really your friends. It’s really all about branding. Yada yada.

 

 

All of this is true. With the addendum: I’ve changed my mind. I can see now what it’s all about.

 

 

Largely this is because I've only recently begun to use a handheld device. In some unexplainable way, Twitter comes alive on a handheld. On my laptop screen, it just lies there lifeless; it reminds me of those old 1990s bulletin-board sites that were only one generation beyond MS-DOS. On my BlackBerry, however Twitter looks zippy and cute. I can scroll up and down with the touch of a thumb and watch the world skitter past.

 

 

Of course, it takes a while to figure out whom to follow. Here are some of my favorites:

 

 

• My policy wonks, the snarky/cute Jake Tapper and the twinktastic Ezra Klein, both of whom always have something to say (and Jakie likes to take pictures out the window of the press helicopter!). (Fun fact: Jake dated Monica Lewinsky once or twice.)

• The whole Chelsea Handler crew – Gary Valentine, Josh Wolf, Ross Matthews, Jo Koy, Sarah Colonna, Chris Franjola, Chelsea’s dog Chunk – all of whom can be relied upon for zingy one-liners, as well as the occasional pantsless backstage pic.

• The Bronx Zoo Cobra. (Sample tweet: “Hey, everyone, it’s Glass Cutter Day at the zoo! Bring a glass cutter and get in for half-price!”)

• A couple of astronauts, because they’re cute, and you never know when they might actually tweet something from space, and how futuristic would that be?

• Harvey Levin of TMZ. I love the gossip (even though 75% of the people mentioned on the show are unfamiliar to me), and Harvey himself, all five-foot-three he-man lawyer inches of him, is adorable.

 

 

I used to follow the Jersey Shore cast, but they are so galumphingly stupid that it became tiresome to read them. (“I UP IN THE HOUSE HATERZ!” Bleah.)

 

 

Look for me in your message feed: @lorwil.

 

 

And remember: HATERZ GONNA HATE!

 

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