dear tumblr,
today i realized how repetitive everything i posted was, and how all the pictures i reblogged seemed to pop up on my dashboard with no impact whatsoever on the wellbeing of my soul or my artistic experience; the same photographs circling through the internet, through the pages of the people i followed, are basically passed on repeatedly until the number of notes reaches the thousands, and upon reaching that ultimate "pinnacle of tumblr success" the image is gradually exhausted and washed out of the system. sometimes i just find myself wondering: why do i even bother posting all this vertical stuff? why did i consciously change my blog, so that i would just post nice pictures? why didn't i post more prose or poetry? why do i even care about my follower count, and why am i pandering towards an audience, which panders towards others in this continuous, never ending process of monotonous scrolling and clicking? honestly, most of the stuff i reblog isn't even artistic. it's not beautiful. a lot of the "photography" i post is clichéd and overdone, and it's so fucking obvious. the same picture of mountains, made black and white, made vertical, uncredited to the original photographer. a piece of art, a baroque painting, rendered black and white and vertical just to suit the taste of "vertical art blogs." i've read so many posts by people who "love to read" but ironically, the great poems are not popular here. among the so-called "cultured" audience, keats is generally abandoned by the "educated and well read" masses. a single "i am depressed" written in kiddish cursive on a relatively lackluster film photograph receives thousands upon thousands of notes because of its "deep insightful message." coffeshops, books, landscapes; all are run through the system until everyone's basically seen the same photo one too many times. what's the purpose of reblogging something, if the same image will merely be circulated tenfold, producing no significant effect whatsoever on the next person who scrolls down and sees it? what impact does "artwork" truly have on she or he who clicks the re-blog button, only to expect its re-appearance two seconds later on a fellow blogger's page? to feel gratified whenever someone they "follow" reblogs them? what's the point?  the number rises, your follower count is boosted, but do you feel any happier as a result of your narcissistic, shameless pandering? are you any more cultured or smart or educated or influenced by posting that Nietzsche quote? by remixing mozart? i'm not trying to insinuate that i'm a better person or in any way less pathetic by making these assertions. i've been caught up in the entire movement. and i've been indignant. post-modern feminism, hipsterdom, veganism, vertical photograph communities, horizontal blogs, color oriented blogs...a lot of things circulated here all depend on propaganda and popularity, and fed to a certain extent, internet propaganda can get dangerously influential. i understand the circulation of good poetry and highly respect the communities of fandom bloggers or writers and artists who genuinely dedicate their blogs to artwork, who actually spend time to curate and appreciate and write, but what sort of benefit do we really derive out of the oh-so-popular shameless and pathetic picture-circulation? from the indignant claims that we are politically informed and well educated and insightful? so much of it is fake. out of all the people who reblog Nietzsche, there are only a few who have really read his books, who know the quote in context of his entire philosophy. why, why, why do we feel the need to sell ourselves so shamelessly?
needless to say, this blog will be deleted soon, and i will no longer actively post. unfollow as you wish.
p.s. if you have a counter-argument, feel free to enlighten me.
