Maybe We're A Little Too Sensitive...

One reason that I love digital scrapbooking is the wonderful community. There are so many message boards, so many galleries, and I have yet to see a digital scrapbooker slam paper scrapbooking- in any way.

Things have changed in the three and a half years that I've been involved in this community. Message boards that were once predominantly paper are adding digital teams, galleries, tutorials. Paper scrappers are turning to digital scrapbookers for help answering questions. Threads slamming digital scrapbooking have pretty much disappeared (I'm sure that they still pop up from time to time, but I don't see them).

Today- A Cherry On Top published their April Newsletter. In that newsletter, there's this commentary on digital scrapbooking. I saw the link at 2Peas, and went to check it out.

I laughed. Seriously- this is a funny article. I began reading the comments- both at ACOT and at 2Peas and began to wonder something for myself.

Why are we so sensitive about this? It's a funny article. It's written by a paper scrapper who doesn't quite 'get it', but it's not written to be mean. It's her being honest about her feelings. She doesn't want to try digital scrapbooking (and hopefully nobody is forcing her), and she lists her reasons (in a hilarious manner) as to why she wants to stick to being a paste eater.

The comments. Oh boy, the comments. Now I'm wondering if maybe I should take a second look at that article- maybe I'm missing some underlying current of hostility of something. I re-read it. Three times. I laugh each time.

Nope- not seeing the hostility.

Now I'm left wondering if maybe we're a little too sensitive? Maybe we've seen too many people bash this hobby that we can't allow anyone to poke a little fun at themselves for not understanding it- or not even wanting to understand it. We need to poke fun at ourselves. We need to say 'ok, life isn't all that serious, and it really doesn't matter whether I'm a pixel pusher, a paste eater, biscraptual, or- heaven forbid- I don't scrap at all! *Gasp!*'

Yes- there are misconceptions about digital scrapbooking. Number one: you can be either a pixel pusher or a paste eater, you can't do both. *Buzzer noise, because I don't know how to write it* Wrong. You can be biscraptual. Being bi might mean that some layouts are paper, some are digital. Or it might be some sort of combination between the two, where each layout is part digital, part paper.

Another misconception: Digital scrapbookers don't print their layouts. *Buzzer noise again* Wrong, yet again. One of the beautiful things about being a pixel pusher is that my layouts can either sit on my hard drive, be burned to CD, or be printed and put in an album.

And I need to go clean my house really quick because apparently Mike is inviting people over. *Sigh*