The thing is, when you enter a new environment it’s like being young again. And not just young in the sense of youthful optimism, but also in the sense of naïveté.

When I entered Tumblr a few years ago I was a noob. It didn’t matter that I was relatively old chronologically, or had been active online for decades in various venues dating back to the 1980s. I was still a noob.

I joined Tumblr mostly to interact with a particular fandom I was excited about, and almost the very first thing I did was to be excitedly, noobishly uncool in a way that involved failing to observe proper boundaries between the public-facing lives of the people whose creations I was a fan of, and their nominally private, but still publicly visible by virtue of social media, lives.

I love piecing things together from clues. I love identifying and classifying things, tracking down connections, diving into obscure meta. It shades easily into obsession. There’s a point where it becomes a parody of itself, where the obscurity of the connections I’m making becomes a joke, even to me, and I’m winking at the silliness of it even as I’m doing it. But you’d have to know me to know that I’m joking.

I’m bringing this up because I’m currently identifying and classifying clues on a subject of my fannish interest, and I can see myself going down that same path. But you know what? I’m going to observe proper boundaries this time, and not talk about it publicly.

I’m still enough of a toddler to want to mention what I’m doing. If I were truly an adult I wouldn’t say anything. Instead I’m saying, “See? See how I’m not posting about that thing I could be posting about? I’m being totally grown-up now, aren’t I?” And then I beam proudly at myself, like I deserve a star on a reward chart or something.

But no. I’m not doing anything special. I’m just taking the ordinary human care to observe proper boundaries between public, private, and the complicated gray area that plays out when sort-of public figures nevertheless want to interact online with fans who also shade into being more like some degree of online friends, at least as long as they can keep it together and not act noobishly uncool.

And I feel like mentioning it for the aforementioned childish reason, but also for the slightly more grown-up reason that I want to thank the online friends who put up with me, and whose kind advice and gentle example have helped online me grow up. A little.

So thanks.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1DrdMRp.

This entry was posted by jbc on Thursday, January 8th, 2015 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.