Tag: roxygen

  • roxygen replied to your post: The ‘inspiration’ tag on Tumblr is really…

    I can’t cosign on the career bit, but I tend to get sad whenever commercial jingles scrawled on paint samples become sources of inspiration. It makes me feel as if a little part of all of us has died.

    I know what you mean…it’s like that deflated feeling I get after watching a really inspiring commercial hoping it’s some message of goodwill from a charity organisation or some NGO interested in quality of life, and it turns out to be a commercial for life insurance. 🙁

  • To Blog, or Reblog?

    cynicallyjaded:

    Seriously considering becoming a re-blogger. No one appreciates original material any longer. People mostly like things only if they see other people liking things, and the number of people that like originality rather than fads are few and far between.

    I agree with all the comments, and I appreciate the compliments, but I guess deep down inside, every single one of us has a hint of attention-whoring that we can’t always dismiss, right? Seriously though, like someone once told me something along the lines of ‘words flow easier if there are hearts that are willingly receiving them’, posting on Tumblr, no matter how sincerely introspective, there is an expectation of either acknowledgement, or engagement.

    What’s most disconcerting is finding that when I re-blog something that is totally inane and it gets dozens of notes, I immediately wonder if I’m just annoying people with my endless rants and rambles about issues that most hardly appear to relate to. Which leads me to question whether I should be posting these thoughts here, or would it be more appropriate to establish a private blog or diary to store them?

    I’ve also often toyed with the idea of creating an email account for my daughters, and just emailing all these thoughts to them at random. Like little notes about what to look out for in life in case I’m not around to annoy them with fatherly advice. When they eventually reach the age of 16 or so, I would give them the details to access their respective email accounts as a gift to help them step into the adult world that awaits them.

    I’m rambling again. I guess the gist of it all is simply this. I tend to engage often with the bloggers that I follow on Tumblr, and I’m still naive enough to believe that I should expect the same in return. But when it doesn’t happen, I wonder if I’m just an annoyance factor that they’re tolerating for follower counts, or should I really stop behaving like a troll and just get the message that they’re not interested in engaging.

    Either way, it sucks. Needing, being needed, being needy…it all smacks of desperation that everyone feels but no one is willing to own up to. So I guess it’s official then. I’m a Tumblr-whore that has just come out of the closet. 

  • roxygen:

    I have quite a difficult time sifting through the judgmental tendencies of people though most people are guilty of that sometimes (I’ve done it), but I often think that the speed, anonymity and false sense of ‘space’ online makes it easier for some people to attack one another. 

    Its so easy to say that stuff to another Muslim online but would you do it in the more tangible community that includes your family, friends and colleagues right to his or her face?  

    Do you honestly care as to whether or not they will be affected by your “advice” or are you blowing off some steam? Its not going to make you feel much better. At the end of the day, no matter how much time you waste here, these exercises are futile. The most they can do is hurt you.

    These sort of webs that we create for ourselves and ensnare one another in are not often the most accurate representations of reality, let alone sources of pertinent and nuanced information that we can actually apply to our own contexts and practical affairs.

    Lots of truth in that. I’ve often pondered much on the same issue. People that are so proud and arrogant in their proclamation of who is or is not deviants, which scholars are misguided, and who’s kafir would barely say a word if they came face to face with the people they so easily accused of all these things online. The anonymity of the url has bolstered some people’s egos to the point where they believe that if their url is known, and they’re not deliberately anonymous, then it makes them sincere. 

    What a delusion. Sincerity can only ever be truly tested face to face, if then also. The manners and etiquette that many display online would land them in fist fights and well-deserved beatings in real life if they displayed such gall or callousness to their adversary’s face. Tumblr, if nothing else, is a good litmus test of your iman. Act with impunity under the guise of standing up for what is right without due consideration for the feelings of a fellow Muslim, and it will be a very real reflection of the void in your soul that should have been filled with the love for Allah and what He loves. 

    We delude ourselves all the time, while Shaytaan sits behind us giggling his butt off watching us plot and plan his next move because he has so successfully made us believe that our arrogance is in fact rooted in piety. What a disappointing joke.

  • roxygen replied to your post: Further to my earlier post, I find it morbidly…

    I think the problem is few people actually believe democracy works, therefore they do not exercise justified measures to prevent some of the things you listed. I mean it in the very general sense of democracy. It requires emphasis on self-reliance.

    The problem I have with democracy is that the majority will always over rule the minority regardless of how many millions that minority may be. So it’s a game of numbers that trivialises the real issues.

    But I’m still more intrigued and disgusted by how men can behave with such ruthlessness when attacking men, women and children from their own communities. In South Africa I could still rationalise it. It was based on racial and cultural hatred albeit based on gross ignorance. But in the Arab world, it doesn’t make sense to me. I struggle to understand how a man can gun down, brutally rape, torture or maim people simply because they don’t support the man that’s paying his salary? Let’s forget that this is often Muslim on Muslim violence, because that would take the insanity to an entirely different level.

    This is just beyond my level of comprehension. Every single one of those men that shoot innocent civilians is a father, or husband, or son. How deep must their allegiance and hatred run for them to act in such a barbaric manner sincerely believing that they’re carrying out a justifiable and meritorious duty for a dictator? The brainwashing and indoctrination is just absurd!

  • Scenes of sadness

    cynicallyjade:

    Scenes of Sadness

    (c) Cynically Jaded

    South Africa

    The African Sun…