elapses | i hate tagging these kinds of entries

A little over a month ago,

whalelines linked me to this article, entitled "The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation". It is about things that are brought up all the time: how the internet/your cell phone/today's world has changed your brain chemistry. It's a really good article -- Anderson's writing is very engaging -- that feels like a pun but it also doesn't and for the record it isn't -- (this sentence is starting to feel like the grammatical equivalent of cultural ADHD) (oh god I'm making it worse), but the first time I was reading it I had to get up in the middle of it because this article, and everything like it, are talking about me. There are a hundred fifty-year-old psychologists/researchers writing up books, articles, studies, and blog posts about why every so often I will realize I've lost an hour watching videos of four-year-old gymnasts for the last five minutes.

BUT DON'T WORRY I'M NOT GOING TO GET ALL DEEP AND PHILOSOPHICAL ABOUT THIS TONIGHT, this is totally about the internet.

Anyway I was reminded of the article because tonight I was thinking like those people. BECAUSE LJ IS SLOW. You guys have totally noticed too, I've seen it mentioned more than once while flisting, and the uprise in the number of tumblr users in the last couple of weeks seems... like an obvious scapegoat? Which then incites a curmudgeony reaction in me, because that is... the person I am. ("WHY IS MICROBLOGGING ALL THE RAGE? Maybe I don't want to post short things! I LIKE A LOT OF WORDS"). WHICH IS SUPER HYPOCRITICAL, because like... I do have twitter. I hate the stupid character limit (200 IS A MUCH MORE REASONABLE NUMBER) but I have it, and I've probably had it longer than most of you (according to that one website that tells you when you signed up: 2 years. WEIRD.)

The thing is that twitter -- and, from what I understand, tumblr -- is kind of a double-edged sword. You can post your thoughts/that hilarious youtube vid/the .gif your friend linked you to without having to write a lot of words of explanation like you would if you were posting it here. What you end up with is a conglomerate of half-thoughts, some of which, in a pre-microblogging world, would have gotten posted on your LJ, and some of which would have gotten lost in the ether of your memory. We all get more out, but the result is: less posting here. And it's not that this new way of interacting is really a threat to our old way of interacting: I think everyone loves this site for the same reasons I do -- the wordiness, the fic, and those really really lovely long thready conversations you can get into.

BUT ME BEING ME, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. How you flip between/utilize the three (or two, or if you still only use LJ, why you still only use LJ), how they've changed your ~internet experience~, HOW YOU FEEL. Pleaaaase? Also I have a poll for my own nefarious curiosity/statistical purposes:

[Poll #1417966]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This post was interesting, in and of itself. The article was fascinating. It took me until now to read it, probably therefore proving the article's point. Oops. But seriously, I feel like that's true and this post is absolutely true.

LiveJournal has been ridiculously non-existent lately. I miss it. I'm like you in that sense - i'm all about the wordiness and the thinking through words and --- haha I just thought I heard the facebook pinging noise and got distracted --- but this post, your post, is what I love about LiveJournal, the longish winded posts about real things and people's lives and the world. I really really miss that. Really really really.

And I use twitter, but I'm over twitter, too. I use it for me, because I've found that the more I started using it, the more I started needing to use it. I'd update about something stupid and then when I had something stupid to update about, it would be something I'd feel compelled to text to Twitter. I hate myself for it. But somewhere along the way, recently, I stopped caring. I only get the updates of people I know on my phone, with the exception of cnn breaking news and borders, and even borders is likely to go away soon. And even that usually seems like too much. It's all useless information that clearly people - myself included - text to twitter because they have no one to text it to, because it's mundane, stupid, utterly pointless. And, hell, in my case it's often so cryptic that it's clearly only something that I understand, but yet I do it anyway.

And as for tumblr, I don't use it the way I'm supposed to. It's a public livcejournal, in a sense, for me. It's something that I can share with a couple of real life people - with a few people from here, sort of - and that's it. It's still a place for my thoughts, and sometimes they're half thoughts or cryptic ones that don't make sense, but sometimes they're long-winded and messy - the same way my posts are on here, sort of, though it's different becaause it's public and clearly public and i think my writing style changes because of that. The point is that I don't use tumblr like I'm supposed to; I use it how I want to and because I love the simplicity of it, the hasic layout, hell, even the lack of lj-cuts as one person I follow (lol a band guy?) so nicely noted.

I hate the way the internet is changing things, Alex. And I know we're a part of it and it is going to change, but I don't like watching the local news and listening to them tell me to follow them on twitter and check their facebook page for updates. I don't want the news in 140-character bursts, and I don't want to read about what Sally NewsAnchor thought of the flag day fireworks. I don't care. I want the news to be the news and the internet to be the internet, but I'm so far in the minority that it doesn't matter, because it's going to change and it's going to stay that way, if Time can have covers about Twitter and Obama's twitter can re-tweet the whitehouse twitter. That's the world we've somehow come to inhabit, and I'm really not sure I like it at all.

Basically I love this post.

Also it's totally the most hypocritical thing ever, because you post like once a month now, darling. ♥

(P.S. I miss you; why don't we talk like at all anymore? :(.)

And, hell, in my case it's often so cryptic that it's clearly only something that I understand, but yet I do it anyway.
AHAHAHA. Livejournal likes cryptic stuff too, Melissa! THE SERVER MISSES YOU!

Well I guess not, you have been posting.

IDK DUDE, you know how I feel about twitter but like:
a) my username is AWESOME
b) sometimes it's really nice to be able to ask your flist like, where to buy DVDs when you are ~out and about~, although I guess I could do that on LJ, but ugh, more of a hassle than Twitterberry
c) boredom reliever, at least I don't play tetris on my phone anymore?

SO IN MY WORLD WHERE THE UNIVERSE REVOLVES AROUND ME, IT HAS A PURPOSE. (And in my world, tumblr does not.)

I hate the way the internet is changing things, Alex. And I know we're a part of it and it is going to change, but I don't like watching the local news and listening to them tell me to follow them on twitter and check their facebook page for updates. I don't want the news in 140-character bursts, and I don't want to read about what Sally NewsAnchor thought of the flag day fireworks. I don't care. I want the news to be the news and the internet to be the internet, but I'm so far in the minority that it doesn't matter, because it's going to change and it's going to stay that way, if Time can have covers about Twitter and Obama's twitter can re-tweet the whitehouse twitter. That's the world we've somehow come to inhabit, and I'm really not sure I like it at all.
A+ wording, I'm not going to elaborate. But I agree.

ALSO I HATE YOU NOW, duh.

i hate tagging these kinds of entries

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