Detail of Mark Kramer’s “Space Around”
Artist powered hamster wheel.
Barbara Polderman’s “Sleeping Monkeys”
After the over the top glamour of Art Dubai, this is the entrance to Art Amsterdam. Let’s see what the interior has to offer.
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In the past 24 hours no less than 5 “weight loss experts” have started following me on Twitter. They all claim to be able to make people lose weight fast. WTF is the universe trying to tell me?! I am happy the way I am. Really, I am. I DON’T BLOODY WANT TO BE THINNER.
Since this obscure algorithm has been put in place, it has become aparent that the best way to keep the “Tumblarity” up is to post and post, and post… and then post some more. It seems that content is pretty irrelevant, what matters is a bunch of people “liking” what you post and reblogging it, preferably ad infinitum.
What will probably happen in the future, is that all top blogs (the most popular ones) will be those manned by very young people with lots of free time in their hands. The kind that has many on line friends who can act as an echo chamber and replicate this content in other Tumblrs. However, this index, will not necessarily reflect quality.
What will happen to those Tumblrs who post maybe once a day? Those who write very elaborated posts, and provide original content? (and no, I have no delusions of that being me, I just agreggate stuff I like and hardly produce anything original, which was never, in any case, the main purpose of this blog). But I am talking about someone like typewriterblues (which I meantioned before), or even someone like this guy who’s chronicling his sabatical year in Buenos Aires (but only posts once or twice a week). Are we saying that these Tumblrs should be less popular than this one? or this one? So, let me try to understand this: Tumblr is rewarding the echo chamber effect, giving cookie points to people who use the system to replicate content endlessly? Are they creating a platform that should only be suitable to replicate memes and spread content internally?
The best argument for using Tumblr so far has been the ease of posting and the lack of “High School” mentality, effectively making Tumblr a platform which could potentially be used for content rich blogs. Send bloggers into a rat race to compete with one another in some juvenile contest to see who’s more popular, and some people might consider migrating to greener pastures. Of course one can always ignore the Tumblarity. But Tumblr developers appear to have ignored the number one hindrance in any development: the value of human ego. Because, let’s be real, who wants to be told they are worthless and less important than others on a daily basis? But that knowledge doesn’t come with any programming language. That? That is just human nature.