Bernie 'n Me

jhnmyr:

Last week in Los Angeles I participated in a live Q&A as part of an ASCAP expo on songwriting. When the topic of Twitter came up, I explained my waning interest in it being part of my daily life. By no means do I think it’s over as a medium altogether, but I do think that the days of “Twitter: The Breakthrough” have passed, as has been and will continue to be the case for every online social network. It’s reached it’s cruising altitude, so to speak. Patterns and templates are emerging. The Twitter-bred syntax isn’t really doing it for me anymore.

And call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s the healthiest thing in the world to read scads of mentions/@replies and effectively open the floodgate of other people’s approval/disapproval. Finding out in 140 characters what a stranger has to say about you is like a mathematical equation without an established value of ‘x’. Who are you, stranger? What do you stand for? What do you like, and if it’s not me, then what does move you? What DO you look up to? Once I find that out, I’ll know how disappointed I should be.

This is where Tumblr comes in. It’s the future of social networking if your image of the future features intelligent discourse. I love reading other Tumblr users replies, because they’re thoughtful by virtue of the fact that if they’re not, they’ll bring the intellectual property value of their own blog down, and that’s a commodity on Tumblr.

This post is an experiment in itself. If you want to communicate with me, open a Tumblr account, follow me, repost my blog and then add to it. I’ll follow you back. Agree or disagree, lionize or demonize, but for God’s sake, be original. You’ll have all the room in the world to do it now.

JM

I always wondered how you kept up with all the replies you must get with over 3 million Twitter followers. I actually believe you read them, picturing you as someone who is hands on when undertaking a task or project. What I like about your tweets is your clever way of communicating, mixing everything from the very silly to the extremely serious in an abbreviated fashion like a puzzle where every space counts. Sometimes less can be more, but this is nice too.

My replies have always been positive not because I feel like I need to earn a place in your heart, but because I sincerely enjoy a lot of what you have to say and feel compelled to respond as a matter of relating. Your music is first and foremost, and what brought me into the fold in the first place. It seems natural for me to be interested in the mind behind the rhyme since I’m a fan of your work. You write beautiful melodies and have a great singing voice, but it’s the lyrics that draw me in.

So I’ve learned in the course of the last few years that you speak your mind and I respect your right to do this, whether or not I agree or agree to disagree with what you share. Those casting stones hopefully don’t live in glass houses, but you know they do.

I followed you here because I wanted to lend support by participating in your experiment. I don’t have anything to blog about at the moment, but hopefully one day I will.

Thank you for your efforts in bringing the community you’ve created together in an enlightened way.

Best regards,

Lance