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The year 2012 marks the age of many things, a beginning to some and end to others.
2012 marks the end of the world, the presidential election – dubbed the most idiotic of all time – and a flurry of strange global warming -induced weather.
Besides contemplating the possibility of the world ending, or the destruction of the American empire ruled under Mitt Romney, I find the Internet to be the most interesting way to avoid the boring turmoil in the real world.
Technology continues to fry my mind, as innovative ways to express one’s every fleeting thought and precious moment in the outside world become available.
Recently, I’ve been going crazy with my Tumblr instead of focusing on my midterms. If you’re unaware of this bourgeoning sensation, Tumblr is an online microblogging community and social networking site, started by David Karp, the current CEO and original founder.
Tumblr also allows users to keep up a blog-like webpage through personal posts or reposting already existing multimedia content. Users can follow other blogs or make their blogs private with a password.
Besides the incessant posts of pointless, replicated material, some people actually use their Tumblrs as vehicles to show the world their writing. Take Tao Lin, an American writer and founder of literary press, Muumuu House, who began, posting about the daily happenings of his life in New York City on Tumblr, eventually becoming a published writer of six books.
Besides Tumblr and its underground alternative literature style, websites like HTMLGIANT, Thought Catalogue, Gawker, and n+1 all post and support this new movement of unpunctuated, short bursts of thought and casual everyday mumblings.
I would go so far as to refer to this alternative style as a movement, due to the fact that the constant development of new technology assists in the continuation of this unusual writing.
The pieces featured on these literature blogs are intellectually stimulating, interesting and usually pretty raunchy, but in a good kind of way. Yet what makes the content and movement so much more exhilarating to follow are the writers behind the coded and encrypted pages.
Literature has reached the day where readers are becoming more fascinated with the lives of their entertainment providers instead of focusing on already dead has-beens. Thought Catalogue is the new Herman Melville, people. We’ve bypassed the age of J.D. Salinger and his paperback copies of “The Catcher in the Rye.”
I’m introducing you to the Internet and its possibility for huge success. Paper is obsolete; take a look at the hands of your classmates and what are they carrying? Kindles and Nooks. Textbooks are the overpriced version of torture, and students are spending their time browsing Twitter and Facebook.
Say goodbye to typical literature as well. You’ll no longer be curling up at night with your favorite book, but instead your embellished iPad 3, or Macbook Air, browsing the pages of Tao Lin’s Blogspot or Mira Gonzalez’s hilarious published Twitter feed.
