I rarely visit tumblr because of a lot of the reasons you mention above - it's great fro finding gifs and pretty pictures but utterly barren for conversation. Plus the way it's structured means even if you do follow people, you have to trawl through reams of posts to find something good, by which time you've spent three hours in what is effectively a productivity black hole from which nothing escapes...
I will have to think about these concepts. I am constantly trying to figure out why I find Tumblr simultaneously so annoying, compelling, stifling, and frustrating. But I tend to be a very regular, fairly long-winded blogger here, as well as being a commenter on other peoples entries. My interests have been the process of writing and fannish stuff, while my appetite is for communication and community (an extrovert actually).
I like the sounds of this: -- a space that easily lets you build your own presence and reputation out of even small interactions, curate rather than create, but still helps foreground creation and encourage it, and build community and conversation. And when it comes along, we'll all move there! :PAt the moment, I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time on Tumblr with very little to show for it. I followed my main fandom there (Tolkien--mainly geeky book-verse Silmarillion fans) when I discovered that there were a bunch of new, bright, young people with the same interests (or a variant of mine) very
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It's harder to exchange words, and it's also harder to see what other people are like to communicate with. If you go to someone's tumblr, even if they do mark the posts that are original and not reblogs, they don't usually mark their own replies to things.
On lj, when I was on someone's journal for the first time, and I saw them contributing in lively discussions in their comments, that would make me more likely in turn to comment, to join the discussion. On tumblr it's a lot harder to get that sense of a person, to get a feel for how they'll respond if you do reach out to them in some way. When I reblog someone's tumblr post and leave my own comments, it's always with some trepidation, because I'm not sure how the OP is going to feel if it's not someone I know. Which is something I rarely felt on lj.
I'm late to the party, but thanks for this post. I feel very conflicted about Tumblr and you've articulated a few of my feelings, including the realisation that you really don't know anything about the people on your dash if they're just reblogging other people's content. I hadn't thought about it that way, but it makes perfect sense.
I got a tumblr because my art was being reposted, and I thought having a presence there would help stop that. It hasn't. While it's definitely lessened it, every visit leaves me feeling drained and negative. It's not a healthy place for me.
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I like the sounds of this: -- a space that easily lets you build your own presence and reputation out of even small interactions, curate rather than create, but still helps foreground creation and encourage it, and build community and conversation. And when it comes along, we'll all move there! :PAt the moment, I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time on Tumblr with very little to show for it. I followed my main fandom there (Tolkien--mainly geeky book-verse Silmarillion fans) when I discovered that there were a bunch of new, bright, young people with the same interests (or a variant of mine) very ( ... )
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On lj, when I was on someone's journal for the first time, and I saw them contributing in lively discussions in their comments, that would make me more likely in turn to comment, to join the discussion. On tumblr it's a lot harder to get that sense of a person, to get a feel for how they'll respond if you do reach out to them in some way. When I reblog someone's tumblr post and leave my own comments, it's always with some trepidation, because I'm not sure how the OP is going to feel if it's not someone I know. Which is something I rarely felt on lj.
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I got a tumblr because my art was being reposted, and I thought having a presence there would help stop that. It hasn't. While it's definitely lessened it, every visit leaves me feeling drained and negative. It's not a healthy place for me.
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