Last week I was strung out on Tumblr, yet another form of Internet crack. That is why I was hardly here last week. I started a Tumblr blog – it already has hundreds of posts! It was pretty easy to do:
- Most posts are short, very short. In my case instead of being mainly thoughtful, 500-word posts like here on WordPress, most are just pictures of pretty women.
- Most posts are copied from other Tumblr blogs. Tumblr makes that extremely easy.
- Tumblr makes it easy to find content you like, so you are more likely to find stuff you would want to copy in the first place. More on that below.
- Tumblr gets you hooked so you wind up spending way more time on it than you intend.
Tumblr, like WordPress or Blogger, is a blogging platform. You sign up and start blogging. But where a Blogger or WordPress blog is like a public diary or a little magazine, a Tumblr blog is more like a scrapbook – one that would seem like magic 20 years ago.
Imagine if you had a scrapbook that the whole world could see. Further imagine that every time someone copied something from it to theirs – or liked something they saw in it – you were given a link to their scrapbook! You would quickly find scrapbooks of those who shared your interests. In addition imagine that you would be told whenever a scrapbook you liked had new content.
Well, that is what Tumblr is.
Copying posts from other blogs to yours is called reblogging. A record of where a post has been copied and who likes it is kept in a part of the post called notes. When you “follow” another blog you get told when something new appears on it.
Not mass culture but microculture: One of the cool side effects is that in place of mainstream culture or even subculture you find yourself in a sort of microculture (my word for it). So instead of seeing posts on television shows I never watch or even singers I cannot stand, like Beyonce and Lil Wayne, I get stuff like Erykah Badu, Kelis, Edward Said and C.S. Lewis. Wow! I also get to see a sort of female beauty that is way closer to my own tastes than anything I have seen in a magazine or on television.
How you get hooked:
- Like with YouTube you find yourself saying “just one more” and the next thing you know it is two hours later. Because most content is short and when you are done you see links to yet other related content.
- If you follow enough blogs there is always something new coming in – of content that you will most likely find interesting.
- When someone new reblogs a post of yours it makes you curious to look at their blog.
On the other hand, searching and commenting are terrible. Which makes it worse for the sort of writing and debate that goes on here. So I am not about to do most of my blogging there anytime soon.
– Abagond, 2010.
See also:
- Tumblr
- Abagond’s Pics – my tumblr from 2010 to 2018
- abagond etc – my tumblr since 2018
- blog
- TV Tropes
- The women I most reblogged on Tumblr in 2013
- In memoriam: Tumblr
Haha Abagond, welcome to the world that is that of a tumblr addict. I discovered your tumblelog a few days ago, its great isn’t it? Its amazing what you can find on there, I will admit I am an addict myself.
LikeLike
So I am not about to do most of my blogging there anytime soon.
Good. A part of me dies when I come on this blog in the morning and the same post that was at the top of the page the day before is still there.
LikeLike
Abagond,
I have checked out the tumblr site and I love the pics. Did you take any of them? Also, I agree with you that the site can be a tumbled mess if one were to try and blog there. By the way, this is my first post, I am generally more of a lurker, but I just had to speak up on this one. Great job on this blog, by the way…Take care.
LikeLike
Did I take any of the pictures? I wish!
LikeLike
Ok, I joined tumblr a few days ago, to post and re-post random things that I don’t think would fit on my main blog (because they’re… well, random).
I am still learning about tumblr and how it works. I have one question: what happens if I want to follow you, Abagond? Does that mean I’ll be getting all the images of sexy woman you post in my dashboard every day? lol
LikeLike
Right. Every time I post something new it will appear in your dashboard.
LikeLike
Oh, well. I think I can live with sexy women if it means I’ll also catch more interesting stuff. 😀 I’ll follow you.
LikeLike
Thanks!
LikeLike
Now I really have to ask: HOW can I post my comment on something??? I know how to “like” a post, but I wanted to comment on one of the things you posted… And I admit I don’t know how to do it.
Not to mention their help section is crappy.
LikeLike
Well Abagond, you should do Pinterest! I never really got into tumblr but the way you explain it, sounds just like Pinterest. I will admit I have gotten a lot of stuff from your tumblr 😉
LikeLike
[…] This post became a lot more popular than I expected. If you want to instantly increase your web traffic, post pictures of attractive Asian women. Actually I can’t recommend that. I recommend you never blog about calves or human anatomy as it will attract some very strange individuals. It will also lead to people stealing your bandwidth. And since I never had the copyright to most of these images I’m taking them down along with most of the text. If you want to look at pictures of women, Tumblr is the place to be apparently. […]
LikeLike