What I, Ham, found frustrating about conventional blogging platforms like twitter and tumblr was that despite their convenience, the format doesn't really encourage introspection. As I was clearing out my twitter bookmarks before deactivation, I found myself feeling a bit frustrated. Because of the nature of twitter, and recent API changes (thanks, elon musk) posts are completely inaccessible without an account, and threads are difficult to screenshot and save into one consolidated file. I'm a bit of a data hoarder. I like being able to come back to cool ideas later.
Then there's tumblr. The classic blogging tool. Tumblr has support for long-form posts and multimedia embeds, making it a bit more free-er than twitter. The audience is definitely a bit more tech-y than twitter because of that support. So why not use tumblr for this joint blog instead?
Posting on tumblr definitely lets you be more substantial than twitter, but it's.. well... how do I put it? Posting on tumblr gets you all the cons of a panopticon and a rubber room, paradoxically. You're always being surveilled, watched, by the nature of tumblr as a social media platform, whilst also posting into a void. While there are many, many very interesting long-form posts about various topics on there, it's considered kind of ..weird..? to post all of your thoughts in one long, neat post. It's unofficial site etiquette to segment your thoughts into multiple reblogs. Why? I don't know. I guess long tumblr posts just feel like too much to read, clunky and awkward. Point is, the most popular users make short-form posts. Tumblr users like to feign superiority over the "normies on instagram" or whatever, but on the tumblr economy, your 5 paragraph post with 1 like has about as much value as any instagram post about your food.
I also don't like the idea of posting an idea on tumblr only to get immediate hatemail from someone that interpreted my idea in the worst way possible, as tumblr users are ought to do. (Once, on my fan-blog for a certain television show, I posted about the rushed pacing in a season- and promptly recieved a message, on my fan-blog for said television show, claiming I wasn't "a real fan", but just a miserable hater). Tumblr users can be quite vicious in a way that is rather unproductive at times.
Anyways TLDR; I have nothing against the blog format of these short thoughts with additional, more fleshed out addons- it just isn't for me.
these thoughts are what inspired me to make my own blog with my friends. Somewhere where we can consolidate our thoughts into a nice product. like eating a big meal and not a ton of snacks. i just feel so frustrated posting on social media, and backing up those posts onto my computer, and then making a new account and repeating the ordeal over and over- this lets me consolidate everything.
my friends
a completley tangiental point (my friends tell me i go on tangents too much- another reason i made this blog is to practice writing) is that my friends have so many novel ideas but never fucking express them. They have so many cool, small ideas that they bring up but then never write down. i want to force them to reflect on these ideas, because some of them are really insightful (like their opinions on certain video games: i never would have thought of it that way, but you did, and now you're saying "oh, i'm so dumb" and "my ideas aren't important"? Really?) and i want to force them to be better writers as well. same goes for me. i want to improve!