#roxytonic

there was a tumblr post i saw the other day that essentially described the difference between twitter and tumblr as "having your brain fried instantly like an egg" vs "being cooked slowly". the motif of tumblr as a "healthier", but not innately healthy, social platform is something that's also paralleled in Neil Gaiman's own interpretation of tumblr as high quality junk food (versus twitter crack cocaine and blogpost wineries).

food for thought, rather than thought for food, i suppose!

directly speaking, tumblr's cursed/lax blogosphere creates a dissonance everyone is trying to resolve--or propagate--through common reblogs and other social responses. so this can take the form of a simple shitpost-y reflex (increasing more dissonance) to a complex, multilayered response (decreasing/slowing dissonance) to literally just a picture/video/gif where words fall short (various effects on dissonance). tumblr is cursed and weird and obscure because we literally make it cursed and weird and obscure. dissonance is the default.

our brains are also plastic. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor tells her audience at the beginning of her TED Talk that her audience isn't going to walk out with the same brain they had when they walked in, on account of their neuroplasticity. but for us specifically, this concept of "your brain will not be the same" is even more pronounced. as older teenagers (i'm personally about to turn 18), our brains are still doing plenty of pruning and maintenance. as we stand, our experiences aren't things that "might" change our brains--they're things that will change our brains.

and that's the element of truth in @tuvanshaman 's post. if tumblr is an experience and a part of our life, and our brains are still developing, then we can be confident in saying that tumblr literally, in real life, changes our brains.

i've personally been on the site for 2.5 months. that's not even a quarter of the year. while i can't gauge how much my neurocircuitry has changed, i can say that, psychologically, tumblr has allowed me to find solace in genuinity and passion again, even if it's checking up on critical mcytblr or writing long-winded responses and analyses like this :)