Squashed

marco wrote:

I stopped reading this article here:

Nothing posted on a tumblelog is original content. Tumbleloggers are a bunch of people sitting on the internet, expending just enough effort to click a button on their bookmarks toolbar and typing in “Awesome, found on Digg.”

Without elaborating past the point of boring my readers, that’s far too ignorant, short-sighted, and generalized to lend any credibility to this author whatsoever. It’s not worth my time to finish reading an article from someone who actually believes that. 

I have more time than Marco, and I don’t mind boring my readers.  (Seriously,  I have readers?  Who are you people?)

I don’t think there inconsistent with thinking that a series of pictures, links, and reblogged content is sharing yourself.  Zetahydrae seems to have a fairly antiquated view of the self.

We are made of pictures, links, and reblogged content.   

Sure, I “create my own content,” but only in the sense that I reframe my experiences a bit differently than others.  I might take a screen shot of a funny juxtaposition.  I might pull a quote from a printed source.  I might add a comment agreeing or disagreeing with an article I read.  But ultimately, I am parsing other’s ideas.  There is nothing in this post that you can’t find by reading a bit of postmodern literary crit.

But this is not just about the difficulty of creating original content.  It is about crafting our identity with the ideas and thoughts of others.  We are influenced by what we see on TV or read in books.  We relate to eachother through shared cultural experience.  If I recommend a song to somebody I am sharing something important of myself.  If you look through the history of books I’ve read you may not know everything about me—but you could learn some very important things about me, some of which I may not be aware of.

By sharing media we find interesting, we share something of ourselves.  If a girlfriend recommends a book to you, you interract with the girlfriend when you read that book.  The difference between reading a friend’s selected links and aimlessly browsing digg or stumbleupon is the difference between masturbation and sex.  As Zetahydrae writes, “At least [masturbation is] personal; you have control over what’s being shoved in your face - you only pursue topics of interest to you.

Of course, Zetahydrae may have had a bad experience with cold, distant, and unemotional … er … tumblings.  Some are better than others.  There’s a technique to it, just like there is a technique to traditional blogging.

I’m glad Zetahydrae enjoyed the Marco.org articles, though. I’ve worked hard on some of the ones I’ve written.  But sometimes you have time and energy for a full article and other times you just want a quickie.  But Zetahydrae doesn’t like the quick tumblings, so he found a new platform:

“This new platform, allows me to actually expose myself.”

I say more power to you, if that’s what gets you off—but not everybody has the same…eclectic tastes.