Ambient intimacy
I’ve been thinking the last few days about what microblogging is, and what makes it so compelling.
Even through twitter and tumblr are both ‘microblogs’, the longer I use the two the more different they seem to me.
Twitter’s form invites ongoing ‘vocal’ interaction. It’s easy there to listen deeply. and to respond from the heart to what one hears. And the slices of life one hears there encourage those heartfelt responses.
Tumblr, in contrast, is more like sitting quietly together in the same room at the end of the day, each of us occupied in our own pursuits, and each occasionally looking over at what’s in the lap of the person at the other end of the couch. One’s thoughts are unbroken. It’s a more contemplative place.
Both are forms of ‘ambient intimacy’. I am thinking that’s a quality that’s probably inherent in microblogging platforms in their very nature. But just as there are wildly different forms of intimacy in off-computer life, so it seems there are different flavors of virtual intimacy, too.
