Voices
We all just know that if Yahoo
advertises as much as expected,
soon enough our great aunts are
going to be asking for our Tumblr
URLs, along with our brothers and
our parents. Once we know that everyone in our real lives is tracking
what’s happening in our Tumblr
lives, the former will overtake the
latter: Tumblr users will become
self-conscious and fake, performing for their audiences, robbing the
site of the element that makes it
such a powerful experience now.
It may seem strange that a site
bringing together strangers from
points around the globe can create
a space for interactions that feel
more real than those with people at
school and at home, but that’s how
it actually is.
Tumblr is so much more than a
website at this point. It has grown
into such a huge community, one
that could be easily destroyed by
the sort of reckless marketing that
Yahoo must be about to unleash.
Tumblr users seem to function
together differently than any other
social networking site. In fact, I
wouldn’t even categorize Tumblr as
a social network. Originally, Tumblr was a blogging platform but it
has grown into something much
different: Most of the Tumblr com-
LEAH
GOODMAN
HUFFINGTON
06.09.13
munity, myself included, has categorized themselves into so-called
“fandoms,” a term that simply refers to a group of people who share
a passion for a certain book, show,
movie, band or person.
Now, we worry that our deepest
Tumblr users will become
self-conscious and fake,
performing for their audiences,
robbing the site of the element
that makes it such a powerful
experience now.”
thoughts and our shared interests
are about to be used by a company
we do not trust to try to sell us
things we don’t need. For people
my age, Yahoo is just about advertising. It’s a sell-out that stands for
nothing other than making its logo
pop up all over the Web. For us,
Tumblr feels real, and Yahoo is the
thing that will make it feel like a
fraud, or at least inclusive of people
who have arrived for no other reason than that some giant search
en