I'm going to start assigning troll relationships tags to things because KK is my favourite character.
On the one hand, fiction does affect reality but on the other handwriting out detailed murder doesn't make me a murderer- it might get me put on a list though.
we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.
when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i “pick up” to respond to them.
the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents’ house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom’s handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten.playlist for beach trip ‘94. i don’t have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.
my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family’s photos as a present for my mom’s birthday. there’s a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn’t make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn’t “a thing”. somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.
when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they’re over 18, and they don’t remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.
and something about … being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don’t know why. but “real adults” see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she’s only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it’s good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.
in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don’t really understand how to operate my parents’ smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.
I imagine that the last generation to really feel this way, to really feel a before-and-after kind of world, was at the last turn of the century, which had 3 huge, life-changing inventions happen all at once.
In 1890, everybody rode horses, used candles to see at night, and communicated through letters.
By the 1920s (only 30 years later!), everybody had automobiles (or access to another form of 'self-driving’ transportation like busses or trams) and nobody had horses. Nearly everyone had electricity in their houses. Nearly everyone had a telephone, or access to one.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine growing up, being taught by your parents all about how to ride horses and care for them and hitch them to a wagon, only to…not ever use that knowledge as an adult, because you have a car? Can you imagine learning how to make candles, finally getting good enough at it to be useful to your family as a teenager, only to flick a switch to turn on a light bulb as an adult?
I feel like that last huge change in technology is the same thing we are going through. I know how to read a paper map. I will never need to use this knowledge. But it’s still in there; including the many patient hours my mother spent teaching me, and a lot of fond memories I have of her doing it. I know how to research a topic in a paper library, with actual books. Pretty sure I will never do that again. I memorize phone numbers, 'just in case’. In case what? The automobile (smartphone) gets un-invented? But I hold that knowledge in my head. It’s there. It’s part of me.
I wish I could speak to my great-great-grandmother, who had her first baby in 1900. To ask her, if what Millennials now are going through is what it was like for her Centennial generation. The absolute whiplash, from one way of life to another.
Kids born in 1890 knew how to make candles, and kids born in 1920 could not fathom why you would need to know this.
We all know about the Twitter immigrants, but there seems to be radio silence on what’s happening now with Reddit users from certain subreddits doing a similar thing.
What’s happening?
Reddit is restricting their API later this month and killing off third-party apps. An AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the CEO Steve Hoffman was held and it was clear that he would continue with the changes.
In protest, thousands of subreddits across the site are planning to go dark for 48 hours on June 12th. Some are planning to continue indefinitely until the changes are reversed.
Okay, so how does this affect Tumblr?
Some subreddits (mainly queer and left-leaning meme ones, don’t worry too much about Reddit Atheists™ overrunning us) are encouraging their users to jump ship to our beloved - and beloathed - hellsite. There will be another influx of new users and many will be unfamiliar with how the site works.
What do us Tumblr users do?
Show them how to use the site; introduce them to the site’s culture, tell them to reblog shit and curate their dashboard. Sorta like how we welcomed Twitter users back when they flocked here. Kungpowpenising optional.
I’m new from Reddit, what do I do here?
CHANGE YOUR PROFILE PICTURE AND BANNER TO SOMETHING OTHER THAN DEFAULT BECAUSE THIS SITE IS FILLED WITH BOTS AND YOU MIGHT BE MISTAKEN FOR ONE. This is the FIRST thing you should do after getting a blog.
Other folks can help you with stuff like curating your dashboard or creating sideblogs (or you can look shit up) but please, PLEASE just give yourself an icon and reblog some stuff so people don’t mistake you for a bot
This is one of the first posts I’ve seen after trying to look at Tumblr again, so I’ve decided to head their advice and reblog this. I don’t even know what a reblog is but I’ll find out in time. It’s a learning process
a reblog is what you just did! it’s similar to a retweet on twitter and it’s the main way things spread on tumblr
I pointed this out in a Discord server I’m in and thought Id share here:
Bob Iger announced that Disney is going to absorb Hulu, and Hulu will no longer exist next year. All shows will move to the Disney+ app.
Disney also announced they were going to remove shows and movies periodically from their streaming services.
I believe both of these moves are because of the Writers Strike.
Disney knows its going to lose the strike. There is too much public support. Specifically, the WGA is going to win writers getting more residuals from streaming.
So if Disney takes shows off of streaming, they dont have to pay the writers the residuals.
They are going to use excuses like “not enough funding for the server capacity” or “not enough views to warrent keeping the show”. These are BULLSHIT. Its all greed. Its only GREED.
Pay attention to what happens in the following weeks.
And keep supporting the writers’ strike.
This is similar to what happened with HBO - new owners merged two streaming services, and all of a sudden there wasn’t enough server capacity for all the shows somehow. A total lie.
Time to start downloading EVERY Hulu show. Hoist the colors high.
And yell at your congresscritters about antitrust laws.
Download everything that isn’t a major franchise. If its name isn’t Marvel, Star Wars or The Simpsons, assume it’s getting canned and get a copy in as high quality as you can store. Eventually your copy could be the only one.
This.
This is especially true for the weird stuff you’ve never heard anyone else mention. Lost media is a tragedy regardless of what it is.
But don’t take a random tumblr’s word for it, here’s a verified source
Beginning now, if you love that show or that movie, piracy should be your first resort, not your last.
