#talkingisimportant

[wordscanbuildworlds]

"I was confused a few months ago...really confused, and i thought about stuff the way you do..like how i should keep my feelings to myself and how no one knows or should know the real me, but then, I met someone I could talk to, and my life is much better now."

[whatisdoneisinprogress]

Tumblr, Feels, and Support: A Love Letter

A little while ago something came across my dash discussing how on Tumblr, emotion is power. It just occurred to me just how amazing this is. Not in terms of "weaponizing emotion", which however does serve to make it valuable instead of derided like it is in many/most Western cultures (and others probably, but I can't actually say with any authority, although globalization has seeped a lot of places).

The amazing thing to me is how much support people get here. There are Tumblrs for lots of things. Body positivity, fandoms, trauma help, lots of feminism, and a thing where a manatee gives inspiring words. It's everywhere. People comment about how they're having feelings about something and how they deal with things and it's okay. People feel comfortable sending their deepest secrets to a blog to be shared to an unknown audience (something I've done at least once) because, somehow, of the way Tumblr feels (said as a vibe thing and without irony or puns) and functions. I responded to a post and shared my own deep insecurities and questions about myself because I feel comfortable doing so in this space. That's fucking amazing. "Baller", as a close friend of mine might say.

That being said, Tumblr is by no means perfect. There are many, many issues in some places. Misinformation being often reblogged, scams, blogs that promote EDs or other unhealthy behaviors, excluding people because they don't fit into a narrow view of the world (people talking about others being "not trans* enough", I'm looking at you). With a huge, unmappable network of blogs like Tumblr, things are bound to come up. People who are doing things that helps them emotionally in the moment or they think is the best thing to do at the time exist. We live in the world. It's all around us, so of course Tumblr is going to reflect that. Darkness is going to exist here, but there is so much light here too. The world of Tumblr has, in many places, created a space that helps people get to a better place in their lives, educates large numbers of people, and helps sometimes (and I hesitate to say "often") helps keep people alive. And that is So. Fucking. Brilliant.

I guess I could make a parallel about the brightness here and what that must mean about there being brightness existing in the physical-space world, but I'm not going to linger too long. It's not the point right now. And if this gets passed around and people read it, there will be those that think I'm being an optimist, or I'm ignoring what I want to ignore, or whatever. Like we don't all do that every day, right? I know I've had to in order to stay lucid sometimes, at least.

Where I'm going with this is that tumblr has shown me something. It has shown me that the gaslighting I put myself through is exactly that. That we all have feelings. That they don't make us crazy, as my and many of our societies would have us believe. That being who I am is the right way to be, no matter what that is (as long as I'm not hurting anyone, thanks for that Young Wizards) and I can like what I want to like without having to listen to the people in my life that tell me otherwise.

What we have all created with Tumblr, a little like what made Jane in OS Card's ansible (which is also kinda the internet in a way), is a network of ports of harbor. A way to interact, much like the rest of the internet, with each other in the aether of the servers. And this dock, this combination of ports of harbor, has done a lot to help people. And It. Is. Beautiful.