Wandering Wandering Star

I am a teenager and also have a fascination with Tumblr. I will try my best to explain this from our perspective as teens.

This site rocks! Why? Because unlike Facebook, I have a clean slate. Instead of being associated with my name and my real life being, I am a newly founded pseudonym if I so choose. No one knows that page is mine except for the selective friends I may choose or ask to follow me. But Tumblr isn’t about seeing what my friends are up to. In fact, I know the creators of less than a handful of the dozens of blogs I follow. Because of this, it turns into a tool for discovery, following members of the community who share my interests versus my friends who can get boring seeing as, at least during the school year, I know what’s going on in their lives every day. But these bloggers, who live lives I don’t see first hand, are neat to read about; they voice opinions that I care about and are hard to find organized anywhere else in such a way, and they share new things that few of my friends know about (which is why I mostly reblog: passing along the things that I love).

Another note on reblogging content: Reblogging is a great and made-easy way to define my newly-established online self. It is how I quickly pass along the things that I care about and keep my followers interested in my blog. Despite it not consisting of all-original content, my blog is the equivalent of making a portfolio to sum myself up. I spend much time and care making my blog unique and look good.

My followers rely on me for discovery, as I rely on the people I follow. So, I feel responsible for doing just this; not doing so would run the risk of me losing followers, which will impact the amount of users who see my original content when I choose to write something myself or post a photo of mine or a video I found. So as I am browsing my feed for hours and hours, I am also looking for things that I think my followers would be interested in, like to see, or content that would go nicely given the other stuff on my blog. And, yeah, it is endless, which only increases the amount of time I spend on the site (the scrolling is set up so that as I near the bottom, more content loads). And I see it as crucial that I search through everything in my feed since my last visit to Tumblr, as I wouldn’t want to miss anything potentially interesting (that may make good blogging material or just suits my own interests).

I for one speak very differently on my Tumblr – I have began to write more original content versus reblogging in the recent weeks. I talk with my friends, on Facebook and face to face, about our lives, our friends, our plans, funny stories, all things that no follower of mine cares about; they have their own Facebook and social lives for that – Tumblr is something different. I voice my opinions on Tech that few of my friends would care about, but my followers are intrigued by. I operate under a name other than my own and appeal to and associate with an entirely different group of people, hoping to become ‘popular,’ if you will, in a completely new setting. I use ‘popularity’ with discretion, though, because it’s not about being impressive and cool and manipulative, but rather about becoming a blogger more and more people enjoy reading and value the opinion of.

So that all is the “why?” factor. But yeah, it’s wasteful, no doubt about it. I cannot put this on a resume and it doesn’t earn me benefits later in life. That said, as I sit infront of my Tumblr, with an opinion and defined set of interests, it seems like a freedom, as weird as that may sound. I do not think of it as wasteful by any means while I am writing a post, but instead as a way of voicing my opinion to those who are most likely to care or value it. I can’t vote, I can’t even – like your daughter – drive yet as of this writing, so this is how I say what I have to say. I don’t do it with the intention of making an impact or changing anything, but instead just to say what I have to say for the sake of saying it; I like the idea of my voice being heard somewhere where people care, so I make it heard in an environment with users who will curiously read what I have to say solely out of interest. Doing so brings me a sort of joy, that people care or agree with the things I say, that I really can’t get anywhere else.

This may sound like shenanigans from a parent perspective, but as a teenager, I really have found myself starting to have my own opinions. These, in some cases, greatly differ from relatives or friends, people who used to greatly influence my opinions. My Tumblr is my way of sharing my new opinion with people who are interested in hearing it, if that makes more sense, so they don’t go completely unheard and leave me feeling useless. Socially and productivity-wise, this may be less than productive, but in the short term and while living in the present it makes me feel good and of importance.

(http://www.quora.com/Tumblr/How-do-teenagers-waste-hours-upon-hours-consuming-Tumblr?srid=nv)

Anticipate

Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
• Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically

“Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:

• Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
• Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own
• Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret 

Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution.  A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:

• Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
• Encourage others to do the same
• Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide

Many leaders fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:

• Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
• Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
• Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align

Total consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge.  To pull that off, you need to:

• Understand what drives other people’s agendas, including what remains hidden
• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it’s uncomfortable
• Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn

As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by.  You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure–especially failure–are valuable sources of organizational learning.  Here’s what you need to do:

• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
• Shift course quickly if you realize you’re off track
• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight