At least once a week I find myself banging my head and gnashing my teeth and rending my garments over the fact that I chose Tumblr as a blogging platform.
I did it because Kelly Oxford had a tumblr and, well, she’s KELLY OXFORD. What was good enough for Kelly Oxford would be good enough for me, I figured.
But, what I failed to note was that Kelly Oxford doesn’t write long winded monologues about her innocuous coffee addiction, nor does she spend 2000 words whining about her kidney condition and last of all she never, NEVER posts rambling stories about that time her sister almost shat too close to the cupcakes.
Guys, I’m a writer blogging on a platform that caters almost exclusively to people who simply re-blog other people’s content.
The word count of most Tumblrs is probably under 5000 total. The original word count is sometimes limited to the two sentences used to introduce the Tumblr author themselves.
It’s like trying to write War and Peace on twitter.
But it’s too late to change things, right? There’s nothing I can do. Yet every week or so I find myself moaning “Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”
“Whyyy didn’t I choose WordPress” I lament to no one in particular, “Hell even Blogger would have been better…anything but Tumblr.”
Tumbr is quick and pithy and pitch perfect for the generation I work with, who just wants to whiz in and out and absorb content in a .gif or a picture or a quote that’s been re-blogged 345,267 times already, but it’s less than ideal for interaction, for exploration of ideas, for building a community.
The “like” function that so many love, I think serves only to detract from actual interaction- who’s going to take 30 seconds to enter their name and email and actually take the risk of voicing an opinion or making a counter-point or sharing their own experience rather than just taking 2 to click the little heart?
What I’m saying guys, is that I’m considering breaking up with Tumblr. Tumblr is my high school boyfriend here and, look, I need a MAN! An ADULT! Someone who has a drivers license, can buy beer and hold his own in a debate about the merits of Aboriginal reserves in Canada, or the pros and cons of the Occupy Wall St movement.
I need more than just dreamy pictures and .gifs, Tumblr.
I don’t know how this will work, I am not terribly blog-technology-literate, the most I can do is mangle my html and click “publish” every day, so whether I can simply migrate the entire blog over to another server remains to be seen.
Lets hope this doesn’t get messy.
Any advice?
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