austinkleon:

Is Tumblr a machine for removing credit?

Clayton Cubitt asks a question I’ve asked often.

Is Tumblr a machine for removing credit? Above, my original Hysterical Literature post with @stoyatm, 3k notes. Below, an anonymized animated GIF, 8k notes. This is nothing compared to my Die Antwoord work.

In this case, I’d say Tumblr users are machines for removing credit.

(In this case, nothing in the Tumblr design would help credit the source — someone obviously went out of their way to make a GIF of Clayton’s video and repost it w/o credit.)

One hypothesis I have, which I have no data to back up other than my own Tumblr experience — video doesn’t spread as well on Tumblr, because it’s time-based. It takes time to watch a video. Images, short quotes, and animated GIFs (which are sometimes both) are instantaneous, and perfect for dashboard-surfing and mindless reblogs.

Filed under: attribution

i wrote this post. 

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4. burningfp reblogged this from austinkleon and added:

   I said it before and I’ll say it again, you’all should be making GIFs.

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25. meganwest reblogged this from austinkleon and added:

    Bolding the part I’ve had as a discussion 3 times in the past week.

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    i wrote this post.

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41. areyouthatguy said: What if Tumblr did a better job of capturing the source link?
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