Virtual Birthday Party, Day 01

[wiseheart]

Hi folks! *waves" I know I'm late kicking off my virtual birthday party of 2013, but considering that I worked almost 11 hours today, I think I can be forgiven, right?

It's that time of a year again - I'm getting older. In this case, I'm turning 57 on October 9, so let's party!

Last years virtual birthday party yielded 1328 comments on 6 pages, before LJ crashed the whole thing, and 617 additional ones on 3 pages at the second coming. Which won't be easy to top, but we're good, aren't we? WE CAN DO IT! WE CAN BREAK THE 2000-COMMENT-BARRIER! Let's give it a try! In the recent years, it has always been great fun, so let's have fun again!

You're all cordially invited to help yourself to a slice of virtual cake of your choice. If you want to post your favourite recipe in a comment, be my guest. If not, just drop by and say hello.

Cheers!

Note: The party will be closed on October 9, at midnight, sharp. However, to avoid the same mishap that occurred last year, there will be a separate post for each day until the 9th. We will count all pages and comments together when the party is closed.

Join us and have fun! Feel free to start any thread, any topic you want; we can discuss it, mock the general stupidity of life and laugh at it. I tentatively started two topics, just to begin the fun somehow, but you may add anything you want.

Comments

[tyellas.livejournal.com]

You often find it via tags. But some of the tags are wacky and arbitrary - #SilmarillionHeretics is a tag, as an example.

I'm going to try and explain Tumblr because I have to explain it in a workshop tomorrow.

Tumblr was started as a blogging platform with two stated goals and one unstated goal: to be super-easy to use, to not even require fully finishing a thought to share it, and (unstated/unintentional) to be a communications platform for people who are aliterate - people who don't want to read anymore.

This article here describes backstage at Tumblr. http://nymag.com/news/business/boom-brands/tumblr-2013-10/

Importantly, it also provides some distance/hipness by association by introducing *reblogging*, sharing images or information. You can build a Tumblr entirely on reblogging visual content provided by other people, so that, instead of describing yourself or providing something new - inconvenient requirements of most blogging platforms - you can curate yourself from other peoples' creations. "The new blogging would be less about writing and more about declaring a personal sensibility. Thanks to an innovation called the reblog, users wouldn’t even need to create anything themselves; they could just post what they scavenged elsewhere and, Karp says, “use that curation to tell their stories.” He sees Tumblr as a tool for “the most talented people in the world.”

As a result, Tumblrs often seem strange, surreal, and opaque. I know two women who have Tumblrs and similar tastes and their Tumblr feeds look almost identical: airy shades of peach and white, delicate hip fonts, images of foxes and vintage dresses. One woman is a 25 year old model, dancer, and girl about town. The other woman is 45 and stays at home due to extreme anxiety disorder. But they have curated nearly identical online identities.

Tumblr has made being a fan artist or decent Photoshopper a lot more important in fandom. BNFs now often have these skills rather than being writers/forum explainers extraordinare.

My entry into Tumblr was one created by an LJ friend from my palmy fandom days ten years ago who is about my age. Because of this I found her stuff a bit more comprehensible than others, and even enjoyed it, and explored some more.

http://vulgarweed.tumblr.com/

Er, does this help?

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting -- it would explain why it's hard to find real-seeming content, if content creation is not a core function.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's aimed at those people who used to run LJs entirely full of quizzes & LOLcats & the like, but the popularity of the medium has swept in others who used to blog with content.

[a_starfish]

Yep! I think my own frustration with it was in part from misunderstanding what it was for and thinking there was a world of content I couldn't find rather than considering that the content might not be there to find.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Very interesting explanation.

I'm another one who has never managed tog get into tumblr (or stay on twitter much) -- guess when I want to talk to people or share links, I tend to do so on irc (or campfire - chat program otw volunteers work on), and when I want to post stuff it ends up on lj/dw. I suppose it is partly because I am much more interested in text than pictures....

[a_starfish]

Yes it does! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it. I can definitely see the aliterate aspect to it and the amorphous 'identity' Tumblr creates. I shall come back and read the article (and poke around Tumblr a bit more) when I've had some sleep.