(no subject)
from a mediabistro interview w david karp, the founder of tumblr:
Do you feel blogs are contributing to the millennial narcissism?
For the first time, the millennial generation is growing up realizing and understanding that if you don't put yourself out there, the search results that come up next to your name are not necessarily going to be flattering. The only way to control that is to be out there, to flood the Web with stuff that you're comfortable with. Now, when you search my name, you come across the thousands of posts I feel comfortable representing me. That's not the case for a lot of people, who got tagged in one embarrassing picture on Flickr, or all they have is their Facebook account, and things that they wouldn't want representing themselves to anyone. I think that it's going to be necessary for our generation to be a little bit more, not necessarily narcissistic, but open to the public. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. I think at the end of the day we all crave that popularity, and this is a great, really fun way to have that identity and have that online as we're increasingly spending our time there.
[emphasis is all mine, and, ahahah, ironically the reason it took me 5 minutes to post this instead of 15 seconds is that i couldn't decide which of my blogs/names to post it under. but it's more of a typical daily conversation in the non-LJ parts of my life, and seems most relevant and helpful in a community where so many folks would like some additional fuzziness around their identities. so here you go.]
Do you feel blogs are contributing to the millennial narcissism?
For the first time, the millennial generation is growing up realizing and understanding that if you don't put yourself out there, the search results that come up next to your name are not necessarily going to be flattering. The only way to control that is to be out there, to flood the Web with stuff that you're comfortable with. Now, when you search my name, you come across the thousands of posts I feel comfortable representing me. That's not the case for a lot of people, who got tagged in one embarrassing picture on Flickr, or all they have is their Facebook account, and things that they wouldn't want representing themselves to anyone. I think that it's going to be necessary for our generation to be a little bit more, not necessarily narcissistic, but open to the public. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. I think at the end of the day we all crave that popularity, and this is a great, really fun way to have that identity and have that online as we're increasingly spending our time there.
[emphasis is all mine, and, ahahah, ironically the reason it took me 5 minutes to post this instead of 15 seconds is that i couldn't decide which of my blogs/names to post it under. but it's more of a typical daily conversation in the non-LJ parts of my life, and seems most relevant and helpful in a community where so many folks would like some additional fuzziness around their identities. so here you go.]