Hey

If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering where my blog went.

I started my blog when I was seventeen as a way to blow off steam while dealing with life away from the computer. If I had a bad day, I’d go on to Tumblr to find something to riff on in an attempt to be funny for an open audience. I felt like it was all in good fun at first, but as time went by I realized that I was wallowing in a cycle of cynicism and negativity.

I met a lot of really nice folks on Tumblr and learned a lot about myself through the conversations I had with the people here. Putting my thoughts out there and getting other people’s thoughts in return really helped me to better myself and see the world more clearly than I was before. It may sound corny given the fact that my blog was mostly jokes about video games and train-of-thought essays but it’s the truth.

A lot of my Tumblr posts were bombastic and crass, impulsive and low-effort, derisive and drenched in “internet gamer” ironic humor. This style of humor got a big response but was mentally exhausting to keep up. I told myself I was doing it for fun, but my reliance on negativity and cynicism led to an intense feeling of burnout as time passed. I felt like I made a name for myself being a “Highly Opinionated Sarcastic Gamer That WILL Fight You” and decided that I did not want to be that anymore.

I tried to shift my social media presence to be more honest and sincere and I felt like I was successful in some respects, but I just couldn’t shake the negative mental associations I had with this website and my own username. I saw “CaptainSnoop” as a version of myself perpetually stuck as a spiteful angsty teenager participating in daily Tumblr discourse “ironically” and trying way too hard to be funny. I would see the site’s layout and brace for some kind of argument because of my frequent, lengthy, hastily-written, and poorly proofread Hot Takes that invited constant debate and correction. I wasn’t satisfied with the name I made for myself, I was too burned out to start putting real effort in to my longer more thoughtful posts, and just looking at the website put me in a sour mood because I associated it with “complaining for attention.” It was all negativity top to bottom and I decided that the best way to fix the problem was to excuse myself from Tumblr to focus on finding a way to feel good about how I put myself out there on the internet. These days I’m mostly active on Twitter and Discord, pleasantly chatting with people and posting goofy pics I made in paint.net. I realize Twitter is hardly an upgrade to Tumblr, what with it being “all of Tumblr’s jokes and discourse but five years behind and also a thousand times larger and angrier,” but I have my fun and I feel good about it.

All in all I would say my experience with Tumblr was a net positive despite the burnout. I was able to start working on becoming the sort of person I actually want to be and I made a lot of irreplaceable lifelong friendships here. My experiences helped me to realize that I should be making an effort to share the things I enjoy sincerely rather than burying myself in cynical irony for cheap and easy attention. That’s a pretty valuable life lesson to come from a website on the computer and I’m thankful to have learned it.

It’s been real, Tumblr. See you.