On Not Knowing Where to Look

Today is the day I’m going to get back into Tumblr.

This is pretty important news, and I’m glad you’re here for it. It’s Friday evening, on the last day of the month, and TODAY IS THE DAY. I know that TODAY IS THE DAY because I decided it YESTERDAY.

I decided yesterday because something’s got to give.

I’ve spent the last few weeks looking beyond the news. Not really at … just, around. Glancing past the edges, looking behind and underneath, I’ve treated the news like a gory horror film — I need to know what happens, but I don’t really want to look directly at it. So I stare at that space on the wall or the painting behind someone’s head. I don’t really know where to look, and that’s been a bit of a struggle.

And so, I’m hoping Tumblr is that thing.

I am not hiding from all of this, per se. I have a solid rule about looking at (or around) the news: I will look at Reddit’s “News” filter exactly once a day — twice if I’m feeling particularly brave. I will scan the articles, and every once in a while I’ll dive into the comments.

It has been about two and a half years since I last posted something meaningful on Twitter, and even longer since I was an active participant on Facebook. I still have both of these things, but they’re dormant, as is my Instagram account (most of the time, at least) and LinkedIN. As the noise has overtaken each of these channels, I’ve been pushed away.

But I like Reddit, actually. I probably shouldn’t; after all, it is still REDDIT. But I do. Each news post has a little bit of everything — the first comment will be about how This News Item Is Actually About A Future Dictatorship, and the second comment takes the opposite tact: This News Item Is Actually Not Real Because Checks and Balances Still Exist, However Tenuously. It seems like a pull in two directions — a volatile chaos of doom and coping — but it’s that pull that gives each news item a bit of context. I can see the full spectrum of the story. It gives me a bit of comfort, even if my optimism is in short supply. It’s coping, you could say, and despite the opinion of most toxic weirdos who voluntarily leave voice chat on while playing NBA2K, “cope” is an okay thing to work with.

Thing is … that one look at Reddit news only takes a short time, and I have a VERY BIG attention deficit to reign in. It’s why I took the most recent email from my friend Lisa Maria Marquis to heart. In it, she writes about life beyond our ruined web spaces. And that life, it turns out, is weird radio and old goofy movies. She says:

I’m keeping my eyes open for hints of the old internet, the self-made web, the homebrews, the cultural preservationists, the weird hidden corners and wikis and forums. The points of genuine human interaction. I’m listening for obscura.

All of this reminds me of the early days of the pandemic. Not knowing where to turn, I fell in with a community of friends and other like-minded tech and content people via Slack. Created as a kind of escape, in which we organized Saturday morning cartoon collections, the chat became an outlet for what the old internet felt like — a mix of community and chaos and nonsequiturs. We gathered every Saturday, and then, eventually, as the world came back up to speed and our day-to-day became more “leaving the house” focused, it slowed to a crawl. Still, while we now have new communities, and new outlets, and new areas where we can distract ourselves and share weird things and vent and commiserate about whatever it is we need to commiserate about, the spirit of those early days still persists. It’s about caring — caring about vulnerable people, and caring about our dumb shit, and caring about everything in between.

Caring takes a lot of energy.

Listen, we all know that one Fred Rogers quote about times of crisis — “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” That’s fine. It’s important, at least, for kids to do this. To know that, somewhere, these stiff drinks can still be cut with a bit of adult empathy.

But also, in times of crisis, when we look at bad people doing worse things, when we see the piece-by-piece dismantling of decency, I find my mind drawn to another Fred Rogers quote — not so much a quote, I guess, as a few moments from a children’s song. I continue to do all the right things and be the person I need to be, that the world needs me to be, that my family needs me to be; I also want to acknowledge that it all sucks and, to be very very very clear, fascists and tech assholes can fuck right off. Two middle fingers to the entire business, and please don’t look to me for help.

Instead, look for the distractors. The good ones. The ones that provide a bit of context, and the ones that provide a lot of levity. Who cut your adult empathy with a few shots of the strong stuff. Who stand by your side (or, at least, in your inbox) and make a joke and tell a story and remind you that there are more like you, and that in THIS particular safe space you can read a story about record collecting or fart memes or dumb old movies with the relief that they’re also feeling the same things. That these dumb things are also paired with the kind of empathetic kindness, concern, and coping that you yourself are working through.

I hope, for some of you, that this newsletter fills one of those spaces. That mixing anxiety screeds with dumb stories about punk concerts is the type of temporary escape you’re hoping for. If not, there is so much out there. So many corners that haven’t been infected and ruined. So many weird things to take note of and cherish and share and celebrate. I’m going to figure out how to log into Tumblr, and I’ll let you know if I start feeling any better. In the meantime, I urge you to share your stupid distractions with me — with all of us — when you find them. In return, I’ll point you toward some of my favorites — all of which are very good and not stupid even for a second — down below.

Caring takes a lot of energy. That’s what they want — they want us to care so much that we collapse, giving up and giving in. We don’t have to. Instead, we can sprinkle a little bit of obscura around our lives.

Good luck out there. May the memes light the way.

Read These Newsletters

I follow a lot of newsletters, but these four are the ones that continuously prompt me to email them back to say thank you. If you like what I do, these four are much better at it:

• The Future Is Like Pie / Lisa Maria Marquis — Thoughts on design and tech and writing, and probably a very good Tumblr resource
• Ethan Marcotte — A web designer who writes incredibly thoughtful and calming things about tech unions and life.
• Mike Montiero’s Good News — A weekly answer to a weekly reader question. Mike used to be my favorite web curmudgeon until he turned into my favorite email therapist.
• Garbage Day — I don’t actually know Ryan Broderick, but this newsletter (about social and web trends) mixes the right amounts of context, panic, and furry memes.