Vulnerability as a pejorative

I may have figured out why “Tumblr” is often used as a disparaging adjective (calling a person “so Tumblr”, etc). It’s not just because of associations with far-left politics—although, despite the common perception, it’s not exclusively so. There are Tumblr pages and communities all over the ideological spectrum. The popular contempt for the website also may be because it’s an outlet for emotional first-person confessionals. That kind of vulnerability gets sneered at. Some entries may sound kind of exaggerated or theatrical, but I think what it really boils down to is that the genuinely heartfelt narratives make a lot of people uncomfortable. Readers don’t want to be raw, so they don’t like seeing others that way. That reaction is a kind of non-empathetic empathy.

Such self-expression is dismissed as juvenile because the expectation is that adults talk “rationally” about work and money while teenagers talk about feelings. And honestly, I’m tired of that norm for adults.

There is something about openness that makes some see you as a receptacle. If you’re open, the jaded people want to reach into your space and either drain your substance or replace it with their own. I think there need to be communities where people can talk sincerely with friends or strangers or just a blank page, siphoning off their thoughts into the reflective a.m. hours. Tumblr isn’t perfect, but I’m glad it serves that need for so many.

Tumblr has its problems, but the world isn’t Tumblr.

Ever notice how the people who constantly complain that “we can’t say what we really think anymore because everyone is so politically correct nowadays” actually have no problem saying whatever they want, at any volume they want, and often seem to encounter a huge crowd of like-minded peers?

The complaint that “everyone believes X” is one of those opinions that actually becomes less true depending on how many people believe it. Because if the majority is complaining about a supposedly omnipresent belief, then that belief cannot be as pervasive as they say.

This is why I can’t buy the whole “Oh no, the whole world is turning into Tumblr!” claim. Yes, there are communities on Tumblr that use social justice as a cover to bully people, or who misuse SJ theory for personal gain within their groups of friends, or who get angry at others for being genuinely uninformed. There are also those who expect a person to change their entire worldview within the course of a single conversation and then get upset when they don’t. Because I care about social justice, I think it’s important to acknowledge these problems that exist within some Tumblr communities. But the world is not Tumblr. Even the most seemingly polarizing SJ groups are a backlash against an opposing status quo. And yes, there are people who want to make the rest of the world like those aforementioned groups, but they generally don’t have influence beyond their specific social crowd. These are not the people who are running the world.

College campuses are used as examples of ways in which some negative approaches to social justice are gaining traction. While there are campuses in which students have done certain things I disagree with, a college campus is also not a microcosm of the larger world. It’s a sub-community, and a very small one at that. Also, we forget that college undergrads are usually young. They could likely change the way they are expressing themselves as time goes on, and adopt a more productive approach to social justice.

So yes, there are factions of the social justice sphere which are imperfect, and that needs to be recognized. But those factions are not even the entire social justice world, let alone the larger world in itself.