On Tumblr

[mark_asphodel]

I'm kind of not seeing the point of it, at least for me.

I have no intention of forwarding SO COOL stuff, however cute, funny, or instructional. That's exactly what I meant when I posted on tumblr comparing social media to chain email forwards. So there's this awesome cat gif or neat recipe or cosplay thing that 17,000 other people have already liked? That's cool, but I'm pretty sure those 17,000 likes and 5,000 reblogs don't need me adding to the noise.

And really, it's mostly just a noise machine.  Tumblr is not designed for dialogue.

So the real point of it, as far as I saw tumblr, was showcasing fan art. Well, the ethics of posting fanart basically leads me to this-- I'm not going to do it myself, and you basically have to "vet" every single piece that someone else posts to determine it's been sources and THEN whether or not the artist approves of reposting before you reblog no matter how much you like something, so I may as well just post a fanart roundup (links and all) of what I like every now and again on my DW like I've been doing these past few years. They'll get about as much traffic either way.

I'm not deleting my account there because there are some interesting things that take place on tumblr, but it's not fulfilling my needs for either fanart adoration or discussion.  I can use it as a dumping ground for ideas too frivolous for this journal, but eh.

ETA: Raphi pointed out that tumblr is at least all public-access so friends-locking and such is not an issue.  As someone who dislikes information being siloed I have to admit that's a huge point in its favor.

Comments

[raphiael]

For me, I think of the reblogging "cool" stuff as more self-reference, I guess. I have tags on my own blog that I go to when I want to look at cute stuff to cheer myself up, or awesome art to inspire myself. That kind of thing. I think the goal of tumblr for me is less sharing, more curating -- with a side of the "too frivolous for my serious journal" stuff. But it's definitely not for everyone, and I think if I didn't have a lot of friends who used tumblr exclusively, I wouldn't still be there.

[mark_asphodel]

I think the goal of tumblr for me is less sharing, more curating

That makes sense-- and for tumblr, you do have pretty excellent taste. But for me, it kind of crosses the line between watching some awesome cat video on YouTube and MAYBE sending it to my husband via IM or spamming that same video to my entire address book. I have my little picture hoards and bookmark hoards and such and I guess it'd be nice to have them all in one place with tags, so I can see the appeal there.

But in terms of interaction with other people/entities? Deeply dissatisfying experience.

[queenlua]

Amusingly enough, I had a tumblr many moons ago (2010ish?) that I used exclusively as a place to dump links/art/etc that amused me. Using it at a social platform didn't even occur to me at the time; I didn't know anyone else who used Tumblr and the only blogs I followed were topic-specific ones.

I ended up moving away that time when I discovered a platform I found more suited for curation: Pinboard, which is less visually sexy but just as functional for the purposes of "save this link and tag it for me." As an added bonus, it gives you privacy controls (which was important for me, since I didn't want to link, say, too many articles related to my university or hometown on a public platform, bla bla personally identifying info).

I still use the service and am very pleased with it, in the event you ever want to move off Tumblr or would like the option to curate with privacy locks.