Binding Infinity in a Nutshell

When twitter first started gaining popularity a lot of people would ask me, “What’s so good about it anyway?!” and I would always say the same thing: It’s the only interesting part of facebook, the status update, but without the annoying tagged pictures and game spams. Tumblr seems to be the other part good part of facebook which is pictures, video links and links to interesting articles. Even though tumblr offers the option to add text, most people choose to post pictures or videos instead. It’s definitely making communication and creating bonds with people more interesting because of the lack of an obvious dialogue. It’s way easier to see pictures of peoples interests than it is to read about it so in a way tumblr has streamlined how you get to know strangers and even your friends. On twitter, for example, you would have to follow a person for a few days or weeks (depending on how often they tweeted) or read their tweets (which could be in the thousands) to get a sense of their personality and interests. Reading can get kind of boring, but on tumblr you can go through a persons page for hours just looking at pictures and you gain a better sense of who they are. Tumblr focuses on the visual aspect of communication which is why, I think, it’s gained a lot of popularity. 

Exploring on tumblr is pretty fun, especially when you have a ton of links to choose from on the popular tags list. I looked through the list and found a tag that interests me because I dont understand why its getting so popular right now: NAIL ART. All my friends are talking about it, and I want to know why it’s so awesome! I looked through the pictures and I gotta say, some girls get really creative with their nail art! A lot of the girls also post tutorials on how to make the designs along with which brand of nail polish to use. I posted a picture of my nails which are very unimpressive and simple compared to the ones other girls do. But hopefully someone will suggest a cool design I can try. My eyes have been opened to the world of nail art!

Tumblr definitely enourages people with the same interests to collaborate. I feel like when it comes to social commentaries, communities or sharing human interest stories tumblr can be quite effective in getting a large group of people togther to share ideas. Posts can ge tagged with words that pertain to the post or to the ideas that want to be generated by such posts. For example, if you search PETA pictures of PETA ads come up with tags such as animals, love, pets, dogs, cats etc. So even if you just wanted to look up cute pictures of animals, you might stumble across a PETA ad that plucks at your heart strings and then you reblog it so your friends can see it then they reblog it and the chain continues with all sorts of pictures and links all across tumblr.

The way friendships are created and maintained are vastly different from the way it was back in the day (mid 1990s). It was a lot harder for people to make friends the “old fashioned way” by meeting someone face to face then going through that long process of getting to know them, sharing your interests etc. Getting to know someone could literally take months! But now, with facebook especially, you can meet someone at a party, add them on facebook and get to know them in the span of a couple of minutes (or hours if you like to be thorough) just by browsing their facebook, looking through their pics and seeing what they “like”. As mentioned in this week’s reading, using social networks helps reduce the awkwardness created by not knowing someone really well and instead turns it into a conversation about common interests. In addition to changing the way we make friends, we are also using social networking to maintain friendships which can become increasingly difficult for college students who are going to school and a lot of the time also working. You may not be able to see someone face to face every day, but you can leave a comment on their facebook page or reply to them on twitter to say “what’s up??” I feel like for the most part, social networking sites are making phone calls obsolete like how e-mails made snail mail obsolete as a form of communication. As technology and social networking sites advance, the ways in which we communicate changes and what might have once been considered outside the norm (on-line chatting with friends instead of going out in person) is now considered absolutely normal and is accepted by main stream culture.