Tumblr is weird

[schneefink]

While I was thinking about a Tumblr account name (because I'm weird that way) I collected almost two pages of links to Tumblr posts in a Word document to eventually reblog. I'm slowly going through them one at a time, it's funny to see what kind of stuff ended up there. I still think Tumblr is weird, but I'll get used to it, and have I mentioned the pretty pictures?

On this list I found a gorgeous "Spirited Away" artwork today. I clicked reblog, almost posted, and then noticed that there was no artist credit. Huh, strange. This post has over 15,000 notes and nobody thought to add credit to the artist? I thought about just leaving it, but the art is really pretty, and after ten minutes I found the source via google. I also found another Tumblr post that included artist credit. This one had less than 200 notes.
I'm sure that in this case it's mostly coincidence. But as an artist I'd be disappointed at the very least.
From my limited view gif sets are even less often credited than "traditional" fanart, which is a shame because they are no less "artistic" or whatever and many of them are really well done. But I'm not even sure how I would search for a gif set creator. I might have already reblogged some without credit and didn't even think about it. And Tumblr makes it unnecessarily hard to find out who first posted something, unless I'm missing something.
(I looked it up on Fanlore just now, where the article on gifs is woefully stubby, but it mentions reposting, which is apparently downloading and re-uploading a gif, i.e. reposting, often without credit, i.e. a new form of plagiarism. Tumblr makes it so easy.)

I heard of complaints before, of course, but idk, I was just reminded of this just now (and also I'm procrastinating as usual.) (That might explain why so many artists seem so panicky about Fanlore? Hm. Different topic.) Tumblr seems so fundamentally flawed for so many aspects of fandom that I'm surprised over and over again that it's become as popular as it has. It probably has something to do with the cooler things one can do with graphics these days, but also imo the shorter attention span needed for images, and that it can be sort of an in-betwen of blog and news platform and twitter and youtube etc. The interaction is also very strange (I haven't even found a "reply to messages" function yet.)

Comments

[extempore]

Ich habe vor einiger Zeit einen kleinen Tumblr für mich angelegt, in dem ich ausschließlich Fanbezogenes poste (eigentlich nur für mich archiviere, so das überhaupt bei Tublr möglich ist), und auch nur mit Nachweis. Es ist erschreckend, wie egal es vielen Leuten ist, dass keiner die Quelle eines Bildes kennt. Reverse image search ist ja nun wirklich nicht so schwer...

Tumblr hat allerdings oft auch Grauzonen. Es gibt genug Künstler, die auf anderen Plattformen posten - Pixiv z.B. - bei denen ein "embed"-Button aufscheint. Und trotzdem beschweren sie sich furchtbar, wenn jemand diesen Button nützt und das Bild bei Tumblr hochlädt (inklusive der respektiven Credits). Für mich ist hier ganz klar: der Künstler ist verantwortlich dafür, auf welcher Plattform er erstveröffentlicht, und hat die Konsequenzen zu tragen. Sobald ein Embed-Button da ist, ist das für mich eine explizite Einverständniserklärung des Künstlers, das Bild anderweitig vermittels des Embed-Codes hochzuladen.

Wenn Du Deinen Tumblr hast, gibst Du den Namen bekannt? =)

[unjapanologist]

Tbh, I'm losing faith in the very concept of "aspects of fandom" as something real and enduring. It often seems like we think stuff like crediting or comments or whatnot are somehow essential for "fandom", and then it turns out that fandom can function just fine when it's on a different platform with a technical makeup that encourages different priorities.

[astridv]

Yeah, it's frustrating. Before I got my own tumblr account I googled my name + tumblr, and the pics that came up had notes in the hundreds. When I post stuff to my own tumblr, it gets completely ignored, unless I'm lucky and it gets picked up by one of the larger tumblrs.

That might explain why so many artists seem so panicky about Fanlore? Hm. Different topic.

Oh, not different at all. That is why I have problems with Fanlore's policy - because it reflects the general fandom attitude toward fanartists... which is that they respect the art but not the artist. But I have a much larger problem with tumblr. (And I don't have a problem with any fanart of mine on fanlore personally; just the general policies and the way the discussion was sometimes handled.)

[rainsometimes]

It's excruciating to try to hold conversations on Tumblr. Also, there's no way to lock information in posts, so I hear sometimes people join in on something they found through a fandom tag only to be told the original blogger meant that post only for themselves and close friends. It's all such a confusing mess of a system. Not to mention that for every update it seems to get harder to add a comment to someone else's post, too...

And I agree about sources - this is something I honestly didn't consider much at the very start, but now I've come to refrain from reblogging art that isn't credited. And I don't reblog things from Pixiv, since I've learned Japanese fan artists don't like it when people repost their stuff elsewhere. (But I must admit I still push the "like" button at adorable and awesome Japanese fan art that other people post on Tumblr, so in that way I'm still part of the problem.)