Tumblr - one big girl's bedroom.

If you’re web-literate and young, I’m sure you will have stumbled at least once on something on Tumblr, a mish-mash of photos, gifs and philosophical quotes taken out of context. If you don’t have an account on this website, you have only seen a small fraction of this network of fanbases and their accompanying hyper-idolatry and obsession. For take a leap into this small but powerful corner of the internet.

When you arrive on your ‘dashboard’, the equivalent to a Facebook or Twitter feed, if you are following blogs, most people will say photos of random places and things, like phone boxes, beautiful horizons from beaches, or people’s dogs. Most people post GIFs – a cross between photos and video, which loop continuously. The most common GIFs are often ripped from popular YouTube hits, usually sassy black women, giving looks of disapproval. It’s this that seems to have cemented the reputation of Tumblr of being populated by hipsters, which makes it, automatically, completely pointless and people unfamiliar to its charms rate it on par with MySpace as being a fad. 

Its charms? The function that makes it popular among (not-so) niche fangroups is tagging, so when searching for material on the site, the results correspond to the tags given by the publisher to the photo/rant/fangirl seizure. Arguably the most popular fanbases among teenage girls, the most avid users of Tumblr, are Justin Bieber and One Direction (obviously), and it shows, take One Direction as an example. Type in ‘one direction’, ‘1 direction’, one of the members of said band, or just  ‘1d’, and you are bombarded with pictures, gifs, videos, quotes, rants, anything that can be posted on the internet, about One Direction. The same goes with anyone who can be put under the umbrella of ‘celebrity’.

And to me, this scares me. I can imagine that if you’re new to ‘show-business’ (a term becoming quickly old-fashioned), these deluges of hyper-interest, which can be taken so far as to be cyberstalking is alerting. The fact that teenage girls argue not just about who is the best in One Direction but about which is the best ‘ship’ or (i.e. the prediction that two of the band members are secretly in a relationship with each other) and how they can be proved/disproved on the basis of supposed intimacy. There are people that have managed to make fun of this. Charlieissocoollike made a video about Tumblr a while back (click here) and did mock his fans for their activities on Tumblr, but even he is slightly discomforted by things such as the fanfiction (I’ll leave that until another time). Think about it – who would be comforted by such things as childhood photos being posted, not by you, on such things as Tumblr, to see repeatedly?

This is not a criticism of the internet, or teenage girls, known for posting attractive men on walls and listening to the byproduct of studio sound equipment. This happened fifty years ago, and perhaps this is the modern equivalent of having rooms dedicated to the latest heartthrob. Nevertheless, the level to which the obsession is reaching is disconcerting, even from just an observer. And so the earth turns round.

Alexander

Let us move on from rare and unusual events

I was six years old. I remember coming home from school at about half past three, turning on the television, expecting cartoons when the news was on. There were buildings on fire, and the news was still on even when I had to go to bed, at seven-thirty. Of course, being six years old, I would not understand that this attack on the most powerful country in the world would involve a botched war in Afghanistan, a country previously resistant to superpowers, first to the British and then to the Soviets, consequentially radicalising young Muslims at home to ‘fight back’ against encroachments on Muslim territory, to carry out sabotage attacks in London, Madrid, Glasgow and Mumbai. But this is not the fault of Al-Qaeda, but the fault of the United States and its resistance to let go.

I didn’t feel the need to reference a date to describe the chain of events. In fact, I shall not mention the date, month or year, when those events happened. It demonstrates the power that this event has had on the past ten years, even though it was ten years ago. There are survivors and they will not forget what had happened, as there are the families of those who died either in combat or in the attack itself. Nevertheless, the rest of us, who weren’t directly affected, but who now have to be patted down in airports before buying a bottle of water to replace the bottle you had to throw away, must take advantage of the ability to separate the lives of the still-grieving from yours, and come back to terms with reality.

In fact, terrorism from Islamic extremism has been around since the fifties. In 1970, several aircraft from Western nations were grounded by Palestinian nationalists in Jordan. Whilst everyone was indeed freed from hostage, the plane was nevertheless blown up. And let us not forget the tragedy of Lockerbie in 1989, where the Pan-Am plane had exploded into mid-air, killing not only people on the plane but on the ground as well, as sections of the aircraft fell onto the town. There have been attacks in Munich, at the 1972 Olympic Games, in Paris in 1995. And whilst we go past somewhere like Lockerbie and still sympathise with those killed or affected, we continue our lives as usual.

But that attack that I saw on the television has changed the Western world for the worst, and has made life worst for those who resemble those responsible, as people abuse Muslims, previously an integral part of the community, now alienated by former neighbours. Muslims, who, although dedicated to their religion, respect the way of life in the West and have made outstanding contributions to European culture as a whole, are blamed for an attack by fundamentalists. Would we tolerate the same words if we said that all Catholics are paedophiles and the scum of the Earth? Even the Daily Mail would be slightly surprised.

I, for one, am sick for the constant remembrance ceremonies, the constant paranoia which the attack shrouds and the disgusting bigotry which has been the result of political and media engineering to make it seem that what happened was a near-apocalypse. Whilst I do not condone the attacks of a few self-righteous martyrs, and I cannot ignore the suffering that such an attack has done, it is so wrong for this to be treated as an isolated case. Who knows? Right now is the London 2012 Olympics, and who says that such an incident could not happen within the next few weeks?

A brief introduction...

Hello, person who found this by chance on Google. Let me introduce myself to the grand network of time-wasters, such as myself. I'm Alexander, I live near Brighton, and possess a strong desire to deliver my great messages to the world. 

I'm quite political, which guarantees something to talk about. I'm not outraged about the system, but, in true fashion, I could always mark out places where there are rooms of improvement, especially in the current kerfuffle that is Cameron's cabinet. 

But it's not just about politics - I like other stuff like culture, seeing different countries, listening to a wide range of music and watching films, especially French films. As much as I would like to deny that I aspire to be one of those journalists or artists living in up-and-coming or generally cool parts of London, I realise through self-analysis that I would be telling a big fat lie. 

But never mind. As I let your hand go, shaking it vigorously like an aerosol of WD40, let us see each other soon, as the maiden voyage of the good ship Endeavours begins. 

Alexander