Technology can make you feel old. Really old. It outmodes itself with such veracity that you feel old even before you begin to catch up. How to keep youthful in the face of merciless progression? Join micro-blog phenomenon Tumblr and forget your Facebook. Well, almost.
Yeah, I didn’t know what a Tumblr was either until our then 17-year-old trans* work experience intern mocked my use of Gen Y speak and let slip the secret of Tumblr. The ease of it. The inherent coolness of it. The inherent lack of agenda it embodies.
Now I have two. I can actually say at dinner parties ‘Yes, I blog. Regularly. And with gusto. I Tumblr..umbl..rrrrrr.’
So what is Tumblr? It’s micro blogging that emphasises the ease of use. Since its birth in 2007, and with a staff of 17, Tumblr now boasts over 2.6 billion posts across 12 million blogs, with an estimated daily average of 2 million posts.
Then there’s the 15,000 new users who join each day. Of these, 85 per cent maintain their accounts, as opposed to that other micro-blogging platform Twitter which loses 60 per cent of those who open an account. This is Web 2.0 at its best. So far, that is.
You could call Tumblr perpetual mind vomit. Relentless. Or, as I refer to it, the secret to being young. After all, the onslaught of information is exciting if you abandon your caged aged notions of controlled input.
All kids Tumblr. Us old skool cool kids too. You can post text, pics, quotes, links, chats, audio or vids. It then enters a stream of updates from all those you follow, your posts appearing in the streams of those following you. From there, it tumbles, perpetually, through cyberspace.
Your followers can ? your posts. They can also reblog them. As such, your humble post, or micro-blog, can gain momentum as others love it and pass it on. I know one Tumblr user whose blog on the apparent transphobia in Attorney General Christian Porter’s decision that trans* men should not be legally recognised because they failed to comply to community standards of what a male looked like, garnered 720+ notes, a mixture of ‘likes’ and ‘reblogs’.
What makes Tumblr so cool is that you can queue posts. This is what sucked me in. Imagine it: queuing up a month’s worth of posts in a few hours one evening and then letting them roll out like clockwork at a designated time each day. Link your Tumblr to your Facebook and it’ll post to your profile, taking people through to your blog if your pics pique their interest to click them.
And trust me, more and more people are turning to Tumblr. I’m no longer an anomaly trying to recapture my youth. Thank god. Although now, the secret is officially out.
Scott-Patrick Mitchel
