When Graham Craig wakes up in his apartment on 3rd St. between Ave A and B, he opens up his Mac Book pro and chooses to exists as his Tumblr account http://lightsonic.tumblr.com/. As Light Sonic, Craig monitors a space filled with colorful gifs of Crash Bandicoot, deep house songs from Sound Cloud, and humorous bumper stickers that are shared with everyone who chooses to be a guest to his online domain.
“While Facebook is all about everyone else’s business, and automatically has you wasting time in a world miles away from your comfort zone, Tumblr condenses your experiences in a more individualized way, “ says Craig
Tumblr is a social networking forum that has been in an existence since 2007. Craig had been introduced to it in 2010, the same year the website was named a finalist in the Lead 411 “New York City Hot 125,” A list of rapidly growing internet companies. Its specialty is centered on micro blogging, a type of Internet communication where people post small fragments of information, such as video clips, small groups of words, and images as the main function for an individual blog.
“The little things that help get you through the day are all on your personal page and it’s hard to push yourself back into an extremely disinterested world,” Craig explains further about his digital playground.
Craig’s reality includes a job working for author James Frey, and a full time academic career at Eugene Lang College. Entering the comfort of Tumblr gives Craig some time to himself without even leaving a room.
“Tumblr’s appeal lies in its simplicity,” Doree Shafrir wrote in the the New York Observer on January 5th, 2008.
Shafrir’s piece was covering the behind the scenes world of Tumblr founder, 24-year old David Karp. Karp has been a web entrepreneur and innovator since he was 17-years old. The idea that everyone who uses the internet has extremely particular tastes is one of the bricks of the foundation Karp laid down for Tumblr. When Tumblr first came out the most well known places on the web for users to have a personal profile were Myspace and Facebook.
“…There are no fields asking for where you went to college or even your name,” explained Shafrir.
This aspect of Tumblr allows users to reveal nothing about their true life experiences to their followers. Take for example, Winslow Laroche who is a 22-year-old former student, who spends most of his days reblogging interesting small pieces of information to his personal Tumblr page, http://jesuisperdu.tumblr.com/ Even though Laroche spends his days couch surfing, his enormous list of followers can count on the “Tumblr famous,” Jesuisperdu for perhaps a picture of the Rolling Stones hanging witb Bob Marley or a theme song to a forgotten 1990s television drama. Coincidentally the English translation of the title of Laroche’s popular blog is “I am lost.” Tumblr is a sort of compass for a lost generation.
“Tumblr has helped people who pretty much could be interested in the most obscure subjects such as washboard collections or a bunch of epic fails in movies,” says Laroche about the broad variety of users.
Some people who are not in favor of Tumblr have expressed displeasure in the self indulgent and lazy habits of a variety of the sites members. Their concerns are about the notion of having a window for self-expression that reduces human interactions to the regurgitation of irrelevant information with one click. This material is passed around from blog to blog and could be passed off as false originality.
“The idea of micro blogging is wonderful, but certain people on Tumblr fully function as filter for much richer material that took a lot more time and patience to achieve acclaim than a quick click to reblog,” said Noah Isenberg a professor of Screen Studies in the Media Studies department at Eugene College of Liberal Arts at the New School.
Isenberg has taken notice of blogs where users repost clips from films along with photos they didn’t take. The aspect of a reblog allows Tumblr users to place a carefully crafted piece of art, such as vast works of photography and films on an individual blog where the creators of the original works are not acknowledged. These images or movie clips often travel to many other accounts in a matter of seconds.
“I guess Warhol’s idea of 15 minute of fame can really breathe fully now that fifty people are able to grant a blogger enormous attention and the receiver of this Internet acclaim often ceases to maintain relevance within a short portion of a day,” Isenberg said.
The model of the website receives momentum from its ability to support large numbers of users in a rapid exchange of information. Included in this exchange is the redistribution of unauthorized content which represents a majority of the content hosted on Tumblr as well as many other social-websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Twitter. As a result many copyright lobbyist are now supporting legislation, such as The Stop Online Piracy Act otherwise known as SOPA. The intention of this bill is to prevent web users from accessing privately owned material and distributing it. SOPA targets domains on the web that are outside of US jurisdiction for copyright law enforcement. This would block Google and other search engines from linking users to websites that are liable for holding unauthorized material.
“When I went on the internet to check my Tumblr, I got freaked seeing the site censored and then realized that they were doing this to make it mandatory for users to help fight this SOPA shit. The idea of this potential bill seems hypocritical of our country to enforce laws that defy the traditional liberties our country was built upon,” says Craig. Tumblr made their site adhere to the laws suggested in the SOPA bill in order to get users to understand how powerful the impact would be. As a result of this method Craig signed an online petition against SOPA.
Tumblr is among the few websites that have outwardly fought directly against the SOPA legislation. Not only not only those with very individualized interests have utilized Tumblr . It has been a tool for the political campaigns of President Barrack Obama and news companies like NPR to assist in extending there outreach to web users.
“Despite the negative drawbacks to the viral spread of inconsequential material that looses its substance with each repost, Tumblr has proven to be a progressive leader in the unnecessary steps our government is taking in limiting freedom of expression, “Isenberg said.
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