Adventures in hair…social media “tables”
Ray and I crossed Tampa Bay and went to downtown St. Pete yesterday for hairdos, food, and a walk along the beach out by the Pier. It was a lovely day. I got my hair dyed teal! I was just trying to get my gray dyed, but Katelyn kindly explained to me that she’d also have to lighten some hair around it, because the gray hair wouldn’t pick up the color well. It’s waaaay more teal than I thought it would be, but I love it.
Ray was trying to explain something very Gen-Z to Katelyn, and I realized that I, a Gen-Xer, needed to translate Ray’s Gen-Z speak into sort-of-Millennial for this.
(Most of the time, I don’t, but Katelyn had zero context. They were talking about how Reddit is charging for access to their API and a bunch of Redditors, apart from sabotaging their subreddits, are jumping over to Tumblr instead, encountering new aspects* to the fan communities they already love, and being profoundly shocked but not exactly…mad.)
So here’s your guide:
–Reddit is the nerd table, where the kids who grew up to be engineers and IT and shit hang out. They don’t like it, though, and would rather be somewhere else.
–Tumblr is the theater-kid table. In-jokes and glitter.
–TikTok is the popular kids’ table, which includes the popular-kid hangers-on. Also includes the ADHD entertainer/jester(s) of the week, a rotating position.
–Discord is the gamer table.
–Facebook is the B-average table, where you weren’t in after-school clubs because you had a part-time job.
I think that’s all we covered at the time.
I cracked a joke about how different it is to market on Tumblr versus someplace like TikTok. The Tumblr owners keep trying to sell identity verification and Products to theater kids like it’s TikTok v 2.0. Nah. Me: “All they have to do is track memes and make stuffed animals that go with the memes and they’d be billionaires.” Ray: “Oh, that’s already a thing.” Apparently they also sell badges that you can inflict on other people, so if I understand correctly, now people are buying each other rainbow verification badges to celebrate Pride (and just in general).
Other tables I can think of:
–Twitter used to be the area out back by the dumpster where all the smokers, stoners, and punks hung out.
–Instagram is where the actual cool kids hang out, the ones who point at themselves and can honestly go “Who? Me?” while talking smack about people copycatting their fashion sense. (My sister Katie is one of these.)
–MySpace used to be the band kids table.
–LiveJournal used to be the goth kids table.
–Pinterest is the apparently-peaceful Home Ec table, which has all the best gossip. Do NOT touch the scissors.
–YouTube, as a social media platform, isn’t even a table. It’s the space between school and the buses. Venture into comments at your own risk. Better to just zip up your coat and move on through, no matter how interesting the conversation sounds. No matter who you are, you don’t belong there.
–Wattpad and DeviantArt: should be obvious. They aren’t table so much as a corner in the classroom that draws up ranks whenever there’s a “group” project.
–I’m still twiddling my thumbs on a bunch of other ones to see if they actually gel or not. So far, not.
I never got to sit at the jock table so I’m not sure what that would be; there wasn’t really one at my second high school (they were seriously all over the place, I hung out with some of them, did theater or nerd stuff with others) and the first high school I was too tuned out to notice. I was sitting out under the bleachers with the Blogger crowd, as it were.
The shop kids, with whom I also hung out, kind of just wander around, posting helpful helpful dad/butch videos on YouTube, getting harassed in comments, and going, “Wow. People. You never know, do ya?”
Huh. I sat at more tables than I realized, back in high school. I always label my past self as “not very social,” but I was really just shy. If someone else dragged me along, I got along with just about anybody who wasn’t an asshole, and even then most of *them.*
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*How anyone survives on Reddit without being exposed to slash fiction, a.k.a. gay wish fulfillment pr0n, I don’t know, but apparently that’s a Thing and Ray is finding it vastly amusing.
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The hair in question.
Midjourney’s rendition of “Saint Raccoon,” a generous creature who is yet vicious when cornered.