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On Tumblr

In the past month, Tumblr fell by the wayside for me. I no longer read page after page of my dashboard until I see a post I saw before so I know I can stop reading. Neither do I post every day, or even every week.

I am not kind to blogging platforms. I typically use them for a few weeks at best, a few hours at worst. It surprises me that I have almost 2,600 posts on Tumblr spanning almost three years. It totally goes against my character.

I wondered: why don’t I post or consume any more, and why did I post and consume so much before? The answers, it turns out, are connected.

Before (meaning anytime prior to about three months ago), I used Tumblr as a brain dump. My thoughts on the day, neat stuff I found, stuff I made that I wanted to share, and so on. I had no audience in mind and didn’t particularly care if things were popular (“Tumbular”, if you prefer). I also used Tumblr as a way to feel connected to people. By reading about the minutia of other people’s lives, I felt like I knew them, at least a little bit.

Now, I keep a journal. I go to therapy. I don’t need a brain dump. By cutting out the broadcasting side of Tumblr, I was left with the consumption side. And it wasn’t appealing any more.

I recognized that knowing the minutia of someone’s life doesn’t mean you know them — especially when it’s the minutia they choose. Sure, you may know things about them that others don’t, and that might make you feel close. But reading someone’s Tumblr (or blog, Posterous, Twitter, whatever) tells you less about them than spending a few seconds with them in person. The “Tumblr drama” surrounding the Austin Tumblrs can attest to that.

So, in a way, I’m saying goodbye to Tumblr. If their stupid backup feature worked, I’d delete it.

Don’t take this as some grand gesture, though. I’ll still check my dashboard and post occasionally. And everyone I’ve met through Tumblr is good people. If you want to hang out, drop me a line.

Tags: tldr tumblr meta
November 30, 2010
28 notes
Photo
Tumblr Trends supports up to eleven arguments before it repeats colors. It takes a looong time, though. And yes, I am bored.

Tumblr Trends supports up to eleven arguments before it repeats colors.

It takes a looong time, though. And yes, I am bored.

Tags: meta tumblr trends
February 06, 2009
1 note
Link

The End Of Empathy

somethingchanged:

We’re all canaries in the coal mines now… We’re harvesting our lives and putting them online. We’re addicted to gaining followers and friends (or email subscribers, as the case may be), and reading comments we get in return. As we look for validation and our daily 15 minutes of fame, we do so at the cost of our humanity.

Today, we’re destroying each other with words, but teaching ourselves to objectify individuals and to identify with aggressors will result in more than psychological violence. This behavior will find its way into the real world, like it did when Wayne Forrester murdered his wife Emma over a change in herFacebook status, from married to single.

It’s only a matter of time, sadly, until this loss of empathy will hit the real world. We’re training ourselves to destroy other people, and there’s a generation growing up with this in their DNA.  They don’t remember a world when communications were primarily in the real world.

Via soupsoup

I cannot let you use Wayne Forrester as an example. There are, according to Facebook, 150 million active Facebook accounts. One person represents 6×10-7 percent. (6×10-7 percent of the world population is 41 people, for reference.) You cannot make assumptions about Facebook, let alone internet, users based on Mr. Forrester.

Furthermore, before leaving to murder his wife, Mr. Forrester “drank alcohol and took cocaine.” Once again, not typical behavior.

I don’t understand how you can reach the conclusion that real-world communication is disappearing because of social networking. That’s akin to saying letter writing destroys human contact. Yes, it certainly has the ability to, but more often than not, for the vast majority of people (who don’t make the news), social networking (and letter writing) helps real-world communication. It’s an addition, not a substitution.

This email baffles me. I think the point is that people can be mean online, mainly because they are anonymous. Um, duh? Hasn’t that been known for quite a while? When you combine easy (direct) forms of communication with complete anonymity, you’re bound to end up with some assholes. For Mr. Calacanis, the ratio seems to be 1 out of 12,000. (“The 12k suffered due to a three sentence flame by just one person.”)

Tags: internet meta rant
January 29, 2009
17 notes