Yadda Yadda
If the internet were all Benny Hill, Evanescence, and self-harm diaries, we’d still be on fucking LiveJournal.
Poking fun at Livejournal on Tumblr seems rather odd to me. Clicking on the ‘Popular’ tab in the Tumblr dashboard and just running your fingers through the Tumblr Zeitgeist sometimes feels indistinguishable from watching the Livejournal image stream (which is pure car-crash internet-viewing).
What started out as a neat service that had a useful bookmarklet (“it’s like Del.icio.us bookmarking but it builds a useful website out of your links!”) has, for better or worse, become a full social network, with the attendant butthurt, popularity contests and tween following that only an Easy-Bake blogging service can offer.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. The discussions (be they on Slade, social media or animal stacks) evoked by a blogging service that is geared specifically toward discussion are fascinating and a great idea. And, as always, “just don’t fucking use it then” applies. I’m just saying what I’ve been thinking for a while: Tumblr has changed, both in users and services, from what it once was, and it’s an interesting, mass-appeal direction I wouldn’t have thought the service would take back in ‘07. I’d be interested seeing what the next few services they roll out will be, because at some point, should they really start to focus on appealing solely to their seemingly mostly tween users, it might be worth finding (or building) a more mature alternative.
