lazyphotographer2k-blog

[lazyphotographer2k-blog]

It just so happened that I went home due to COVID-19, and suspended my study for this semester (at least). My bad for those who did not know. Anyways, here were some photos I took in my quarantine facility, where I was taken right after landing in Hanoi, Vietnam. Things were cool, though. I went home last month.

[lazyphotographer2k-blog]

MDA 20009 - How does Tumblr function as a digital community?

Before anything else, Tumblr has been, and always will be, a microblogging site. This means that it functions as a social platform where people can upload and share contents of various topics and sizes, though usually in smaller format than traditional blogging, hence the term “microblogging”. And unless you are looking into the more niche type of posts, most will not be as lengthy and in-depth as traditional blogs. It certainly helps when you are able to use many other visual flairs such as animated GIF, images, video links,... or even just “re-blog” others.

For a long time, Tumblr has been known to have spearheaded various political moves and activism due to its loosely monitored nature and the inherent anonymity. One recent example is the #Issues2020 campaign on Tumbr, where people would try and "help spark conversations” about political problems within the users’ local government and even international, particularly in the U.S. This creates an interesting observation, seeing that the majority age group ranges from 18-24 years old. (Source: Statista, 2018 statistics). As stated by Phillip Howard, from the Digital Activism Research Project of University of Washington, “Tumblr is kind of like a gateway drug for activism, Once you connect to other people who feel strongly about race or crime or gay marriage, you stay engaged on that one issue area.”  

One interesting thing to note is that, unlike other famous social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, where it is about connecting with people, Tumblr operates on the basis of connecting with ideas and hobbies. Which means that users are encouraged to explore and follow communities with anonymity and ease, even those that may be severely frown upon by their own physical communities. This would include a lot of LGBT, sexual kinks and  sexual identities communities.

However, their vast number of niche and sexual communities would later come back to haunt their future, after a widespread reform happened within Tumblr, in December 2018 with the adult content ban. With this ban, no content of sexual and/or erotic nature would be allowed within the platform. However, it is unaware that many activism and political moves can relate to sexuality and adult contents, therefore purging most of the LGBT, sexual identities and kinks communities, and by all means alienating a large portion of its users. In fact, global traffic within Tumblr dropped 30% only after several months (Source: The Verge)