thinking about tumblr

• I have some frustrations about tumblr which are less about it as a medium, or as a network, than they are about the kind of engagement/discussion that the medium enables/encourages. I didn’t start blogging until pretty recently, but what drew me to it wasn’t so much the opportunity to collect, amass, or to share. I was more interested—especially as someone who is pretty shy/reclusive/socially awkward in most contexts—in finding new ways of interacting with people I do and don’t know. And ways of starting to work things out about which I wasn’t so sure yet. The cool thing about tumblr—as opposed to facebook, or even livejournal, which i used back in the day—is that I’ve been able to actually connect with people I haven’t met—and probably never will meet or interact with—beyond this medium. I dig the low-stakes feel, but along with it, I think I’m starting to get used to how low the stakes are.

• Or maybe the stakes aren’t that low; it’s just that the way that conversations are generated is—and someone might disagree with me on this—individualistic. Everyone does their own thing, but there’s not a lot of room to have extended conversations that build on one another. It’s too easy to get lost in this continuous stream of text and data that is your dashboard—conversations don’t really get deeper. They don’t get qualitatively different, we just kinda get more and more information; as a result, it’s always possible (and for me, the seduction always seems to be looming) to retreat into the seemingly endless stream of data without doing much to change it. At times, reblogging ends up being a way of mimicking the absolute minimum of democratic participation: you co-sign a post like you might a petition. Or supplementing: you add something by adding little to nothing. A lot of folks negotiate the limitations of the medium creatively—i’m looking at you, curate and isabelthespy (oh, and abbyjean!). But I think the problems that move hand in hand with those limitations are more fundamental than any one person, that is, any individual intelligence, can really undo.

• Part of this stems from the fact that I actually need to start limiting my own internet use in order to really focus on writing a dissertation. Part of it comes from my own inability to stay current on everything that happens here. Part of it comes from the fact that I know that people I know IRL and care about are reading this blog in when we could and probably should be having real conversations/arguments about some of the stuff I’m writing in it. In other words, my fear is that my own participation in this medium or community may be forestalling—rather than enabling, and even if unintentionally—the kinds of confrontations and collaborations that I actually want to see happen. I’m talking, of course, about modes of interaction more involved than pressing the “like” button. (However self-affirming that kind of positive response may be for me, clicking a button does little to nothing to teach me about what you actually think about what I’m writing. It simply acknowledges your presence in the form of agreement.) How might it be possible to make that happen?

• In the meantime, I’ll still be around, but I’m going to try and actually do something more with my other, neglected site as well. I bought that domain name in the interest of fomenting conspiratorial work alongside dialogue. So, I hope you’ll visit that as well. Or, if you’re interested in collaborating, or writing something, think about contributing to it! (Or—and I know this is old-fashioned—send me an e-mail. It would be nice to get to know you all on a different level.)