why tumblr?
Carleton: What is it that's different for you about Tumblr? Why after multiple attempts at starting a blog and multiple failures you actually stuck with tumblr? I don't mean to single you out, This seems to be a almost universal phenomenon. Countless people I know have stuck with tumblr after so many neglected blogspots and livejournals. As someone who has been more or less consistently writing online for almost 4 years now I'm a little perplexed as to why tumblr has taken off as it has. Is it just the expectation or lack thereof for longer a more detailed text posts? As far as I know there's not much difference between tumblr and other services on a technological basis. What are your thoughts on this?
Me: i'm very interested in this, but for now, for the sake of brevity, i'll say that the most captivating thing about tumblr is the framework. you're right; technologically, it's nothing new. however, i think tumblr has succeeded in creating a new paradigm for bloggers - one in which the 'blog' typology is reimagined as a scrapbook or exhibit....
i know you read lodwick, rvv, zklein, etc....they've all written (i think) about their fear that tumblr is another way of devaluing written word in favor of a text-message-slang mentality...i share that fear....twitter especially scares me...there's this idea that tumblr is an oscar wilde "life as art" thing, and that's kind of interesting, but again, also a bit scary....i believe in objective quality of creative work and i don't think that every joe on the street shooting self-portraits on his iphone is "good." however, reading jakob lodwick, who, in the past, has been good at "curating" his life on tumblr, is interesting and good to me. he's testing new ideas and trying new things and that's exciting to me.
does this make sense?
Jan 14th