Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

i wonder how many people would unfollow me if i actually spoke my mind on here.

lapetitefigue

I wonder how many followers you would gain if you did. The proof is in the pudding.

Things about Tumblr that make me want to stop tumbling

• Fifty last.fm posts in a row made by several different tumblrs

• Uber-reblogged religious Obama iconography with his noble messiah-face

• I am losing followers with this post

• But why are they following me anyway?

etrangere

I don’t think I feel quite as forcefully as etrangere (I actually quite like the Last.fm posts, and they’re only once a week. Plus I have one too), but I agree that there are some things which are a touch irritating to read.

Not on the first time, but when it’s again and again and again as you catch up on the overnight Tumbling, it can get a little tiresome. I’ve dumped a few people today as a result of going to their pages and seeing very little other than reblogs.

When these posts are in the dashboard, you don’t really realise that one person is just endlessly reblogging, as they kind of get swallowed up in the stream of posts. It’s taken a trip to their page to realise it and give them the big Unfollow. No names, though.

The Obamamania is definitely one of those topics that is overly reblogged. Every bloody week there seems to be some event which is the catalyst for 100 nicely framed photos and inspirational quotes from the guy. We get it. But for us non-Yanks, it’s a touch OTT.

Having said that, Tumblr is what you make it. I post in my own individual style, and choose whom I follow. I no doubt post much longer pieces than most people, but that’s just the way I choose to use Tumblr.

I’ve noticed on my Following list that I’ve recently started to get semi-corporate non-person Followers who seem to Follow others just to get their own projects noticed.

I’ve decided not to link to them, to save my precious GoogleJuice, but these are the ones that I think are a bit iffy:

• recordjunkie

• interview

• facebookgangsta

• clubninja

Just thought I’d share.

So everyone’s seen that unread books post going around, I take it? Interestingly, a lot of people cut off the introduction where it explains that the list is taken from the “unread” tag on LibraryThing.

It’s not just a random list; it’s a list of books which a lot of people own but haven’t yet got round to reading. Maybe they just don’t have time to read them all. Maybe they’re trying to make their bookshelf look pretentious and uber-smart.

Anyways, it’s been reblogged 25 times at the time of writing, and I took it upon myself to check which books have been most commonly started but not finished. I couldn’t tell on some people’s lists, as they quoted the entire list, which put it all in italics, so I had to go look in the source code. I’m such a trooper.

Out of 106 books in the list, we’ve started 62 of them without finishing them. That’s nearly two-thirds! Most were only begun by one person (38), but almost half of the unfinished books cropped up in more than person’s list.

Moby Dick was the winner, if that’s the right word, defeating 5 different people before they finished it. I’d be interested to know how far they got, as I found it utterly unputdownable. The structure is a bit awkward, admittedly, in a diary-like form interspersed with what seems like academic asides. One of my favourite chapters in this novel was the one about the different kinds of whale blubber and what they’re used for.

Catch-22 stood out for me, with 4 people failing to finish it. I can understand why, as it’s a very convoluted and odd book, but I loved it. I’ve got Closing Time, the sequel of sorts, on my shelf, and should read it but I want to re-read Catch-22 first.

Anna Karenina and Love In The Time Of Cholera also gave rise to 4 failings each. I don’t know the latter, but I loved Anna Karenina. Yes, it’s epic in scale, but within that there is the opportunity to follow a couple of characters very closely indeed, as they begin to break down.

For 3 people, Les Miserables was too much. I’ve only heard bad things about it, with regards to its length and heaviness, but maybe should give it a go. War And Peace also had 3 people fail to finish, possibly for the same reason. That’s sitting on my shelf, staring at me, mocking me for not having read it yet despite buying it about 7 years ago.

Two more modern novels had the same number of unfinishees: The Grapes Of Wrath and On The Road. I’ve not read either, but understand that they are modern American classics. Why did these go unfinished?

On this side of the Atlantic, the first ever great literature in what we would regard as English, The Canterbury Tales had 3 people fail to complete it. Seeing as this is a collection of, erm, tales, and that most people probably read it at school, it’s not hugely surprising that not everyone finished it. The Hobbit, a slightly more modern British book which harks back to medieval times, had the same number.

So, what does all this mean? There’s very few books that I’ve stopped reading halfway through, but I’m generally a half-decent judge of my own tastes and don’t bother even picking something up if I think I won’t like it.

I like that the list is a mix of modern classics and genuine classics. It shows that people of our generation are at least attempting to read the classics, and I’m happy to report that the number of completions was much, much higher than the number of failings.

As with many others here, I see some value in the reblog and the additional follower, that somebody out there thinks that there’s something to my thoughts, whatever it is. I’ve skimped on reblogging myself, because I am aware that the reblogging cycle becomes an annoyance, particularly when many of us carry the same followed tumblrs. Problem though - in a way, I’m not doing my part. I expect to get some feedback going, yet don’t hand it out as much as I should. That’s not right. So you can expect to see a healthier balance of original content and reblogging, but I’ll pass if the reblog is some inspirational quote about just being yourself and not buying fancy cars. Lovely quote, 40 times over.

fatmanatee

I think fatmanatee gets this about right. I don’t reblog too much, as I tend to use my blog as my own outlet, be it creative or just plain ranting. But I am constantly checking to see whether anyone has reblogged my material, or if I have any new followers. Obsessively, almost.

But I don’t reblog massively, and definitely don’t unless I find something which inspires me to go off on a tangent or make what I feel is a worthwhile addition to the original.

I like how my blog is evolving and how it is right now, I have to say. Hopefully you do too.

Tumblr is evolving

I’m trying not to turn this into a running commentary on Tumblr, a kind of meta-blog where I talk about how I blog, but I have to say that the new feature added this week by Tumblr is amazing. It really has changed the way I read these tumblelogs, and it illustrates how viral the web is.

On the Dashboard, you can see how a post gets picked up and spreads its way around various people. It’s like realtime meme evolution. I’m trying not to get caught up and just spread the same content around as everyone else, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself.