I think the strangest relationship that has come out of the growth of social media is that it has to ability to bring people together without even introducing them. It is easy to broadcast almost everything about your life; work, friends, hobbies, past trips, etc. With a click you can announce your background bio; where you were born, where you went to school, your family dynamics. You can make public whims, passing thoughts and minute details that ordinarily would be kept private. What makes this significant is that there are a whole audience for these updates; and that they actually read and pay attention to them. Facebook is probably the best known outlet for this kind of relationship; but take the uprising Tumblr. Tumblr sets up a relationship between people that may not be physical acquaintances and gives them the publicity for these types of broadcasts. With each picture or quote or gif that a user reblogs, there is the creation of a whole online identity. Anyone can be idolized for their taste in clothes, their taste in hipster pictures and photography. Small comments and responses to questions open up their perceived individuality. Viewer eat this up. On tumblr, people who have not even posted their real name can gain a following of thousands; thousands who read their word and see their reblogs and treat them as celebrities. There are several tumblr personalities that get hundreds of questions and inquiries a day; questions that are usually reserved for fans of famous personalities. There is a voyeuristic quality to this relationship that I can understand, and even sometimes appreciated, but in the end I feel uncomfortable for knowing so much about people I have never encountered in person.
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