To me, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and various other social media sites that mostly involve photos just look like a giant collage maintained by a crazy person with expensive tastes.

When I first discovered Tumblr, it appeared to be largely devoted to pictures of empty Starbucks cups framing a slightly out-of-focus Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the background. When I joined Pinterest, the boards automatically assigned to me, which the system seemed to think I would like, consisted mainly of pictures of tiaras. I am not kidding. Instagram was closed off to me for most of its still-short life, on account of my not having an iPhone. I remedied that last summer, but I wouldn’t say I entirely understand what Instagram is all about. Thankfully, the comical folks at College Humor have let me know that I am not alone:

Here’s the thing, though. Several wise friends have pointed out that hating on hipsters and hipster-y things has reached a point of becoming pretty hipster-y in and of itself. I’m not going to stop ripping on the most annoying of the hipster tropes, but I am going to try to be a bit more thoughtful about it.

Instagram and its ilk brings to mind Sturgeon’s Law: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.”

This applies to any and all forms and genres of media, be it visual arts, television, or cleverly-filtered smart phone pictures of half-eaten gnocchi from a deli on the Lower East Side. (Do they have delis on the Lower East Side? I haven’t been to Manhattan in eleven years, and even then I was not required to navigate.) (Also, do they serve gnocchi in delis?) (What exactly is gnocchi?)

Somewhere amid all the detritus (and by detritus, I mean “pictures of finger mustaches”) are a few bits of awesome. Yes, there is more detritus out there, in part because there are more people in the world, but mostly because more of the people have access to the internet, and the means to take and post pictures. Some people genuinely believe their pictures are meaningful, while others believe posting bad pictures is a good idea. I’m sure we have all fit in both categories at times. If you can get past the coffee foam and blurry sunsets, every so often something good will pop up.

And while you’re waiting to find it, you can join me in derisive laughter at finger mustache guy.

Photo credit: ‘Fingerstache’ by Vorhese [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikipedia.