So today I was talking to my friends and narcissisticly I brought up my blog. With the scorn of a thousand Perez Hilton's they looked at me and said "You use Blogger? Why aren't you using Tumblr?"
I didn't know how to respond. This blog has been very kind to me. It gently brought me into a world where I can be as self-absorbed as I want, and it's considered normal! I stammered a bit, then took the general stance that I had tried Tumblr and found it way too confusing, which is actually the truth.
Several months ago I noticed that many of my friends had started using Tumblr, and would occasionally talk about it. Curious, I looked at a very computer savvy friends Tumblr page and was very impressed by it. The page contained fun fashion advice, antidotes, quotes, videos, pictures, and tons of other sensory overload information, all in a tidy graphic design. My thoughts were racing about how my self-obsession could take the form of so many types of media! But after creating a page and looking it over, I realized that I was not tech savvy. Back in the day I was the middle schooler without the pink hearts dotting my myspace page because I had absolutely no idea how to read HTML. So I promptly dismissed Tumbler as too difficult for my extremely limited capabilities.
Going back to this afternoon, I tried to explain to my friends that I just was not a 'Tumblr person.' Of course, the second that we all went our separate ways, I immediately went back on the website that had crushed my hopes several months ago. I reasoned that if my friend (whose life ambition is to dig up dirt and rocks for a living) could work this technology, then I could too. (As a side note to the friend in question: I think that you have made the right career choice! Can't wait to visit you in Bosnia :)
As I looked over the site again, I decided to start with the easiest possible action, picking a background. As I went through the site I saw many a layout that would have had my Media Design professor fail me in his class. There was the wretched, '99% negative space' theme; the senseless 'beige on white' theme; the most painful of all and most unacceptable 'everything clumped in the lower left corner' theme.
I will not pretend to be an expert on presentation design. But there are several things that I know, and Tumblr had so far violated all of them. It was like watching someone decide they did not believe in gravity only to be suddenly not applicable to the rule... then watching them scream as they could not stop themselves from floating into the oxygen depleted atmosphere. Seriously, that is not an exaggeration. After this traumatic experience, I kindly explained to my friend that I just did not want to put my words onto a page that looked like the morning after a very large hipster get-together (notice how I did not use the word 'party' as that might seem too mainstream for these free-thinkers).
But the journey of my Tumblr would not end at me mocking the subculture that prides itself of being independent and is slowly becoming the painfully mainstream. After swallowing my pride, I went back on the site for the third time. I did not want to fail at this new website just because I am a proud and preconceiving moron. On a side note, I am trying to save that attitude for when I finally achieve world domination. Anyway, I found a design with an acceptable layout and color pallet, and applied it to my Tumblr. It really did not look too shabby. Of course, I did not want to create completely new content, so this is my first attempt at linking my Blogger and Tumbler. I have the impression that I will mainly keep using my Blogger, and just hope that it uploads to my Tumblr. On the bright side, as the friend of mine said as we parted ways, "I mostly like using this site because it sounds dirty...Today I tumbled."
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