I met the lovely emmas last night for a couple of drinks in my first ever Tumblr meet-up, and I have to say that it was really great to talk to someone who is pretty much in the same boat with regards to blogging and so forth. None of my offline friends blog (that I know of), and whilst the girlfriend appreciates why I love it so much, my enthusiasm about the whole area can probably be overwhelming to a non-participant.
So it was good to be able to talk about it all with Emma, and talk we did. We swapped stories about people that we both follow, and why we choose to follow certain types of people, about receiving and sending emails to random people, about the way our own blogs have evolved and how we decide what to post.
We talked about the dashboard event days (iPhone release, presidential debates), and how it almost becomes a chore to get through eleventy billion pages of the same stuff over and over again. Or how you can see the same image reblogged so often amongst a small circle of people, which is a little pointless.
I felt a touch nervous beforehand, I have to admit. It was like going on a first date or something, but weirder because you sort of feel that you know a hell of a lot about the other person already, and that they know things about you too.
But it was very quickly clear that there was nothing to be nervous about. It was almost as if being on Tumblr sort of did any breaking of the ice that was required, and that we could just leap into conversation straight away, as if it were a continuation of previous emails or blog posts. I’m finally understanding the “social” bit of social network.
I’m not sure if I’d cope with a big Tumblr party, but this kind of smaller thing was ideal. I shall no longer have any fears about meeting (semi-)random women from the internet!
