On Communication

A while back, John Doucheyguitarguy famously declared Twitter dead, stating that the real action was on Tumblr, where people are trading ideas and concepts and engaging in conversations and it was one big free-love hippie commune of thoughts and expression.

Well, I’ve been doing this for over 100 posts, now, and I’ve noticed that Tumblr does not, in fact, enhance or promote communication.  A lot of blogs aren’t even set up to accept comments, you can’t reply to comments on your own fucking blogs without coming up with a pain-in-the-ass workaround, and there’s not even a decent private message system.

When I look at Twitter, and post on it, I see people replying to eachother and communicating ALL THE DAMN TIME.  Not a day goes by that I don’t get some satisfactory interaction from somebody on Twitter.  Tumblr seems limited to people “liking” your stuff, which is the simplest, most brain-dead and superficial way of granting validation I’ve ever encountered.  I blame Facebook.

There is nothing communicative or interactive about Tumblr.  It is narcissicm distilled to its basest component, and I’m deeply disappointed with the whole system, to be honest.

Tumblr has the capacity to be something special, the real marketplace of ideas that John Mayer thinks it is.  But it’s not there yet, and as long as we’re all content with “likes” on our “Feet Up Friday” photographs, it’s never going to be.