A little narcissim never hurt anyone

Photo: New Car Networks

Doesn't everyone love to talk about the "social media" nowadays? The journalists loves it, the politicians loves it, your consumer psychology lecturer loves it, the snotty kids on the train certainly loves it. With the rise of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc, there are more ways than ever to put whatever you want about yourself online whenever you want. People have even started to define our era as the "Mum mum look what I've done era".

You can sit there in your hipster corner and try to convince yourself that you "only" use Facebook to stay in contact with friends (you know all 403 of them) or keep up with news through your Twitter account, but both you and I know it's not true (believe me the sooner you leave that corner the better).

We all use social media platforms to put things about ourselves (to what extent is another a story) out there for people to read, and then hope that maybe, just maybe, someone will acknowledge it or even compliment you. The journalists, politicians, lecturer and the snotty kids on the train however are now questioning our need to put every little detail about ourselves online - everything from what we ate for breakfast to what we think about the new Spiderman trailer (it was so-so). Why do we consciously or unconsciously cry out to the world to see us, to hear us? Most importantly, is the social media fuelling such ego-centric indulgence?

Perhaps, but why does it have to be a bad thing? Of course it would be terribly aggravating (to say at least) to be around people who constantly need to tell everyone what they're doing and thinking, especially if it's meaningless jibberjabber like "I bloomin' love Jaffa cakes". In a culture where narcissism is a big no-no, we've been taught that it's not polite to boast or to be conceited.
But unless you're an altruistic saint, it's only natural to want to tell people what makes you a good, cool or nice person and what your opinions are. Social media is a place for that.

Why is it so bad to have a place to vent all of our narcissistic needs? Why is it so bad to express oneself and hope that someone somewhere might feel the same? Aren't our opinions as valid as anyone else's? Aren't there enough of things we keep suppressed inside us already?

But still you may think there's no need for people to flog who they're dating and not dating or whether they care about Amy Winehouse's death or not, all of which just make them look like desperate attention-whores. Well, let them decide what they're going to put up and how they're going to be perceived according to it. When did you become the useless online info police, huh? No, I didn't think so.

Scrapbook 2.0

Here are some of the pictures I've taken this summer. As you can see I haven't left the borders much.

Simrishamn, Sweden

Västra Hamnen, Malmö

Helsingborg, Sweden

Malmö, Sweden

Simrishamn, Sweden

Simrishamn, Sweden

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Twitter Style

Here's another Twitterature post. Been working on this for a while now, it's somehow still quite long.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
@BehindTheseGreenEyes

So this giant Santa-Clause guy says I'm a wizard and enrolled at a magic school. Right! He must be on crack.
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Hagrid (giant) is serious. Currently in London, getting stuff for school. Went to the wizard bank, turns out I'm loaded. Eff yeah!
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Why is everyone telling me I'm famous?! And stop touching my scar you freaks!
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At King's X. Info guy looked at me as if I was barking asking for platform 9 3/4. Awesome. Hey..did that ginger just walk through the wall?
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School's a proper Dracula castle I'm tellin' ya. Got into Gryffindor. It's normal to tell a talking hat where to (or not to) put you right?
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Classes are wicked! Flying lessons sure beats PE! The Potions prof. Snape hates me though. Not my fault you haven't gotten laid in years!
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Who's the youngest in centuries to play for their house's Quidditch (kind of basketball on brooms) team? Who? Yes, moi. #swag
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TheDailyProphet
Dark wizards/witches believed to be behind Gringotts break in. Spokesgoblin insists nothing was stolen. Investigation continues.
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This guy Malfoy is pissing me off! Seriously needs a life. Challenged me to a duel but never showed up. Wuss.
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A 3-headed dog locked inside school. Check! (Was it standing on a trapdoor?) #notevenjoking
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Apparently Ron and I are friends with this valedictorian from hell, Hermione. She's better now, after we saved her from a 12 ft tall troll.
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First game and we totally beat the crap out of Slytherin!170-60! Snape's officially an ass for trying to kill me. #gryffindorslytheringame
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None of my business but Snape's up to no good. Bitten by the 3-headed dog, huh? Too bad it was only his leg.
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Merry Christmas folks! You won't believe what I got - an invisibility freakin' cloak! Girls bathroom next! Just joking. #or
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None of my business but does anyone know anything about Nicolas Flamel? Anyone?
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Baby dragons sounds a lot cuter than they are. Not that I know someone who has one or anything..
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Not supposed to tweet during detention, then again what kind of detention is walking around the forest? Malfoy is totally shitting bricks.
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It's normal to get a head splitting headache from seeing a guy drinking unicorn blood right? It was V------?! Well no big deal. #youknowwho
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None of my business but the Philosopher's stone eh? No wonder Snape wants it, eternal life and all the gold you want. It'd def get him laid.
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Revision is a bitch. Especially with this freakin' headache. Do they have Nurofen in this world?
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Snape's gonna make the move. None of my business but I need to stop him.
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Turns out it wasn't Snape. However, prob. shouldn't tweet about it. I'll just say: Man with 2 faces - totally kicked his ass.
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So it's back to Kent tomorrow. Sucks. Oh well, can at least threaten Dudley with turning him into a pig.

My Tumblr: an Introduction

It has come to my attention that my new Tumblr layout is somewhat confusing so I'm gonna try to clear things up as much as possible.

www.tiffanyalwaysknows.tumblr.com

First of all, not every picture (GIF, audio, video) on my Tumblr is my own. However I'd like to think about 60% of it are my own photos (for example the pictures marked with a red star in the photo above are mine).

If you're not in the mood for going through a blog full with (mostly) photos that gives me the tingles and makes me happy for being alive in this creative world, and only wants to look at photos that I've taken you can click on the  'My photos only' link (red sq in photo above). The link is quite tricky though, because the text is small and you often have to click on the white space above the text instead of on it. As you can see there are also links to my Streetstyle blog 'Hello Fancy', my twitter account 'Tweet me', my archive and so on. You can also leave me a message by clicking on 'Ask me stuff'.

As you've realized the whole photo is not shown on the page. Being the sensible person as you are, you will click on the photo if you wish to see the whole thing.

For your convenience (or not) I've also enabled endless scrolling, so you can just keep scrolling and scrolling until there aren't anything to see anymore.

Toodles,
Tiffany

Review: How to love 'A pocket full of Sunshine' by Natasha Bedingfield

Photo: Screen Gems

Being one of the last people in the world to see Easy A (2010) had its up and downsides. One being the long line of praisals of both Emma Stone and the movie's humour which made you feel like an complete outsider for not seeing the comicality in GIFs of Emma Stone shampooing her hair (which people on Tumblr are/were eager to reblog in masses). On the other hand, with all the recommendations and "actually-it's-not-that-funny" comments flying around one couldn't help but to build up quite some expectations of the movie.

However, a severe case of laughing cramps and a loud sing-along to Simple Mind's "Don't You" later, I just wanted to hit the play button again.

Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) is a clean-cut 17 year-old who's not very popular with the guys, or as she describes it: if Google Earth was a guy, he couldn't find me if I was dressed up as a 10-story building. Little did she know that a small lie about losing her virginity to a college student would travel á la Gossip Girl style and reach every student at the school in a matter of a few hours.

Enjoying the newfound attention, Olive agrees to pretend to have sex with a guy friend, to stop people from bullying him for being gay. One thing leading to another, she soon finds herself in a 'pay-me-and-you-can-tell-people-we-hooked-up' business that's just waiting to go wrong.

The brilliance of the movie lies in the novel take on teenage life and the spot-on comedy. Casting aside the overdone boyfriend-revenge, unrequited love and mean girls stories, Easy A explores the impact and hilarity in rumour spreading and the thin line between being a virgin-nobody and a "dirty sk*nk".

With a Diablo Cody-sharp dialogue and a brilliant performance by Emma Stone, Easy A is one of few teen movies that neither makes you want to scratch your eyes or wish you could strangle the movie characters half way through. In fact it's one of the best not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman movies since the Breakfast Club.

(and this is why I've developed a weird fondness of A Pocket full of Sunshine)
Tiffany

THIS

Matthew Seadon-Young,