“

Because that’s what Tumblr comes down to. There’s a vile sub-section of Tumblr-istas who I’m not going to name because they’re crazily vigilant about monitoring themselves and prone to throwing long, maudlin fits about “people being mean on the internet” and so on and I don’t need the trouble, but here’s what they do: 90% of their posts will contain some kind of image (frequently animal based), LOLCATS-speak and/or songs that are “meaningful” that they have a lot of “feelings” about. (The fact that the word “feelings” has been rebooted as something inherently positive is completely insane, but let that pass.) Or they’ll talk about “The Hills.” Or whatever. But then — like an ’80s sitcom in sweeps season — there will be A Very Special Post occasionally, about something that’s clearly emotionally important to the person writing, generally concerned with a) a past relationship in its failing stages b) childhood traumas and fears remembered, frequently family-related c) getting drunk and experiencing a mental breakthrough. The prose will often emerge like a groggy, hungover New Yorker refugee: the prose will be “terse” (or someone’s idea of terse), frequently in the present tense, laced with heavy doses of the maudlin and faux life lessons wisdom. We are then supposed to applaud the Tumblr person, who has proven that they can skim the tides of crap pop culture without losing their intellectual/moral seriousness; they’re just saving themselves for the big moment, when they can speak for a generation.

It’s all pretty terrible.

”

—

In Which Vadim Accurately Determines How “Gawker-Style" Ruined The Written Form on The Internet.

Do try to read. It’s a bit more than the usual four paragraphs, so some people may have trouble with the sentence structure.