by Melissa Campbell
In the past few years, there’s been a ton of talk about the power of the Internet as a tool of activism—and as someone who grew up on the Internet, I often find that the people who are espousing social media’s activist brilliance actually have no idea how young people are using the Internet. Example: if I hear one more well-meaning adult tell me how excited they are about Facebook and Twitter I am going to scream.
Facebook is a utility, not a tool of organizing. Facebook connects us with people we already know, and becomes so inundated with people from our “real lives” (hi mom) that using it for anything more than event planning seems, well, pointless. I don’t need an Internet utility to help strengthen my ties with people I already see every day, you know? And Twitter is…well, I don’t really know what Twitter is. I use it for kvetching and practicing stupid one-liners. I have friends and colleagues who use it for community building and link sharing and activism, but I’m pretty verbose, so 140 characters just won’t cut it for me.
Instead, I use Tumblr. The relatively new micro-blogging platform has a bustling community—or rather, it has hundreds or thousands of bustling, informal, user-constructed communities focusing on everything from fashion to education to feminism. Tumblr’s think-it-post-it style of sharing means that, if you let it, your personality can really shine through your blog. I follow, and am followed by, so many brilliant young women who give me hope every day for a future free of sexist bullshit.
I have never felt community on a website like I do on Tumblr. The people I follow provide an amazing reprieve from a world full of ridiculous sexism, racism, and hatred. (Which is not, of course, to say that some Tumblr users aren’t racist sexist douchebags, only that they’re not showing up on my dashboard so for me it’s like they don’t even exist.) My tumblr is like a little internet nest full of only things that are good: chubby fashion blogs, queer sex, riot grrrl-style zines, serious political discussion, and funny pictures of baby animals—ok, that last one’s not activism, but still. Via Tumblr, new communities of young women activists are sprouting up all over, and are creating “real life” actions like the Walk for Choice.
But there’s more to the importance of virtual communities than what they can organize in a non-virtual space, and that’s where Tumblr’s strengths are. Blogs like The Feminist Hub, STFU Conservatives, The Riot, and Rabble Pro Choice provide jumping off points for Tumblr users to find and follow one another, get to know each other, and build legitimate (if virtual) relationships based on political as well as apolitical things. K, who I’ve been following for a while, framed it this way: “I can get a lot of information that I’m interested in, i.e. social justice issue sort of stuff, from it. Even if someone posts something I never knew about it introduces me to a topic that I might feel is important.”
Forget Facebook, y’all. Tumblr is where it’s at.