youngmanhattanite:

jdel:

But am I the ONLY ONE who thinks YM is a better read because a person’s life is being ruined? Is that sadistic? Much respekt to whichever anono-blogger is having his heart torn out at the moment, but at the same time keep it coming. It’s like watching a car crash, except instead of mass destruction and loss of life, there’s just mass destruction and loss of life. Take that for what it’s worth.

You’re the only one. After all those times we encouraged people to unfollow us, turns out divorce blogging is the most effective.

No jdel is not alone, I’m right there with him. But my tastes are not in line with what’s in vogue on the internet. There’s a backlash against “oversharing” and I think that has discouraged people from “just normal” (and possibly insightful/inspiring/intriguing) sharing. But in my opinion that’s by far the most interesting part about tumblr, the sharing of real things that really matter to people on a personal level. When I want news or informed opinion, or art, or fashion, or political debate, or music criticism, this is not my first stop (I do read about those things on here and sometimes debate them, but it’s not what keeps me coming back).

What I find compelling about tumblr is the same thing I find compelling about dance. When I’m teaching my adult amateurs the thing I say that most changes their dancing isn’t a technical correction. It’s to remind them that while yes, there are dancers out there who are going to do these steps a thousand times more skillfully than they will tonight, nobody can do it quite like you. No matter what your level of training or physical development you have a voice that is utterly unique to you. Finding it doesn’t come easily, it takes focus and a bit of tenacity as pertains to personal honesty. But it’s within everyone’s grasp, today, now, if you are willing to stop all the bullshit and actually try to “speak” in it. If you make the effort you *will* have a return. It might not be profound or ground-breaking but it will be real and if your audience is at all receptive (a condition firmly out of your control) it will be heard for what it is and will command the respect due the effort no matter how successful the product.

In other words, when they cut the bullshit and dance with a level of sincerity that otherwise frightens them, it’s suddenly beautiful even though it’s just your normal low-level ballet class, and people passing by the studio stop saying, “Wow ballet looks hard!” and start saying, “Wow ballet is so pretty!”

And tumblr is the blog version of adult amateur ballet. The posts I consistently read all the way through aren’t impassioned arguments about a new album or an old politician; I do read those but only when I have time. The posts I’m looking for on my phone when I have a ten minute break and I want to mentally exit the studio for at least seven of them, are the posts where I hear real people talking about real things that, because of how they are positioned in life, hit them more deeply than anything else. So yeah, so-and-so’s struggle with the bartender at work might pale in comparison to the BP tragedy, but her writing on the bartender topic is much more honest and emotionally relatable than her oil spill laments. On the BP topic I hear “her opinions” but on the bartender topic I hear her voice, and of those two things I vastly prefer the latter, at least where tumblr is concerned. The quality of editorial over here fluctuates greatly. The strength is in the quality of voice, when people attempt to use it.

But it’s unfashionable to focus on the issues closest to one’s mundane personal heart these days because the ease of personal blogging has turned the internet into a cacophony of “I hate the bartender at work” stories that seem mostly indistinguishable and therefore all but empty of value. That, coupled with the trend toward coating oneself and one’s statements in as many layers of protective irony as possible, keeps people from making the sincere effort that produces a line or two that’s able to sidestep the unoriginal topic by being totally naked and real.

And I’m not saying that every “I hate the bartender” story I read on tumblr warms my heart. There’s a lot of noise in that genre and you have to bypass a lot of it. But that’s the role of the audience; the condition that is out of control for the writer is *not* out of control for the reader. If I want to read real, compelling things by real, everyday people I have to keep the idea alive that real, compelling things are going to come from real, everyday people writing about real, everyday things. I have to keep myself receptive.

This is where the unfollows come from, a “lazy” audience. People don’t tend to unfollow when they disagree or are pissed. They unfollow when the things you are writing about ask them to meet you halfway in terms of reception. Well that’s my suspicion anyway, I don’t actually know a whole lot about being followed or unfollowed.

But I know what I see getting attention. YM is an easy blog to follow, usually. It’s witty and direct and safely hip. In that background the divorce stuff hit like a swift kick to the solar plexus and it makes you, as a reader, have to choose to stop hearing the tinkling of ironic little bells and start hearing an actual voice. It’s more grown up stuff and it asks the audience to grow up too and that’s kind of like asking an audience to work so some people get confused about that, or else they’re actually lazy (which I think is quite often an expression of an unacknowledged fear) and so they turn away.

And that’s why, the better things get, so often the less of “an audience” they draw. Well these are my theories anyway. Perhaps I’m justifying my own sick fascination with the suffering of others at the same time as glorifying my first and deepest love, ballet, who, sick herself, asks audiences to provide the context in which her devotees can stand up on stage each night and do a few pretty things but mostly fail because it’s really pretty fucking hard to get it as right as it was meant to be.