Aerial Circus

Tumblr, Yahoo and Eternal Whatever

So I’m a 31 year old vaguely human person who is of the correct age to have run almost the entire gamut of the social internet. I remember when the internet was local BBS boards my friend Toni and I used to sneak down into her basement to “log on” to at night, covering the dial up modem with a pillow so her parents wouldn’t wake up. The internet has always appealed to me because it’s an interactive void, and I naturally gravitate toward “social” places on it that are void-like. Shit comes and goes, and that’s part of the appeal. I follow and am followed here by people who have been my friends strictly on the internet since I was 15 (in spite of my horrible teenage poetry, aw, guyssss).

Not only am I a tumblr user, I am also a former Geocities user (ruined by Yahoo), former WebRing user (ruined by Yahoo), former del.icio.us user (ruined by Yahoo) and former Flickr user (ruined by Yahoo). Maybe I’m missing some. Anyone else remember yet ANOTHER service that, once sold to Yahoo for an outrageously stupid amount of money by (a) savvy young web developer(s), fell to complete neglect, disrepair, waste, and black hole ad space?

I didn’t stop using any of those sites because of some anti-capitalist, post-hardcore DIY anti-establishment fury. I didn’t stop using any of those sites because crotchety old Yahoo was robbing me of my cool.  I stopped using them because soon after Yahoo acquired them they quickly became barren, soulless wastelands of suck.

I keep reading these articles talking about how the ‘average tumblr user’ only knows Yahoo from their parents, and so will be “resistant” to what they perceive as uncool grown up shit? Missing the point as usual, the issue with Yahoo isn’t that it’s “outdated” or “uncool” (two things it certainly is, but)— most old timey internet companies own a bunch of shit you have no idea they own.

The issue with Yahoo is that it seems to follow this surreal script of self immolation where it throws ridiculous amounts of money at “hip internet,” brands it immediately and intensely, and then has no idea what to do with it. Things start breaking, content starts disappearing and/or being censored oddly and somewhat indiscriminately, and social communities are decimated. Users disconnect from one another and then naturally drift away from the site. Before you know it little tumbleweeds of data are rolling by the waybackmachine archive of the abandoned BLOODYICECREAMGRRRL WebRing and a spacer gif of a dancing Dominos Pizza Dot on SunsetStrip/9270. Yahoo is unintentionally like the Jack Kevorkian of Internet, they buy shit on it’s way out and then ensure it’s quick, boring death. It won’t happen over night, but it’s highly likely to happen. There is virtually nothing in Yahoo’s past to suggest any other outcome. But!

Again, the appeal of the internet has always been that legitimately better spaces will crop up to fill the gaps. Whatever that space ends up being, I hope I find a few of you guys there. In the meantime, look forward to the veritable cornucopia of memes the buy out will birth before the yahoo account log-in requirement crops up.

And it will. Ohhhhh, it will. 

the-lonely-scottish-guy:

‘stop being overdramatic’ they say

‘i dont know what you mean’ i say as i descend from the ceiling, surrounded by mist