I feel so lonely on Tumblr. I dig the privacy, but there are really so few people who can consistently keep me thinking and entertained at the same time (I’m particularly choosey about who is shoveling posts onto my home page). This platform seemed to have such promise, but it’s kind of flattening out. We’ve photoshopped the shit out everything. There are no more untarnished symbols. The amateur culture is amazing, but it still isn’t producing the heft of meaning that the internet seemed to promise.
The bed intruder song was close to what I’m talking about. There’s a racial element that the news cast has to explain away in its follow up broadcast, so it’s inherently edgy and thought provoking for people who think beyond the shiny shit shoved in their face. There’s a real life element that responded in a very human way to a particularly tragic incident: this was a futile attempt to scare some guy who broke in and tried to rape someone’s sister, someone’s daugher. It was super entertaining that this guy’s mode of speech sounded even better when you put it on repeat and popped some autotune behind. No one says run and tell that, but it makes one hell of a catchy flourish. And then it actually moved into a Billboard space. So it was thought provoking, enjoyable, and record setting. Multiple layers.
Most of the stuff thrown around of late isn’t like that. Or maybe I’m not connecting to the right places. Who knows.
Words That Don’t Exist in the English Language
L’esprit de escalier: (French) The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said. Translated it means “the spirit of the staircase.”
Waldeinsamkeit: (German) The feeling of being alone in the woods.
Meraki: (Greek) Doing something with soul, creativity, or love.
Forelsket: (Norwegian) The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.
Gheegle: (Filipino) The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute.
Pochemuchka: (Russian) A person who asks a lot of questions.
Pena ajena: (Mexican Spanish) The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.
Cualacino: (Italian) The mark left on a table by a cold glass.
Ilunga: (Tshiluba, Congo) A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.
Brilliant.
I love all of these wo:rds :3
Schadenfreude: (German) the pleasure derived from someone else’s pain.
(via wooziness)
