I actually think the real advantage tumblr has over other websites is the ability of "reblogging" to create posts with contributions from multiple users. This allows people to build on others' posts, whether that's derailing them with a terrible joke, drawing the scenario proposed as a comic, answering the question posed originally in lively essay format, or rewriting the previous interaction as a scene in Shakespearean iambic pentameter.
This is also why Tumblr is hard to make profitable. Individual users have relatively little power to create good content. It's interactions between users that actually creates the good content, and therefore, no one involved in the good stuff on Tumblr can really claim to "own" it or be the "creator."
Posts have to navigate through Tumblr to pick up the people that can add to them in a constructive way, and then when users interact, the whole interaction can spread across the website as a new evolution of the content. There's no way to simplify this process.
Theres a whole ecosystem running here. It's not as simple as Creators and Consumers, and you can't simplify it to that. That's not how ART works, let alone posts. There's symbiosis. The users that do the nitrogen fixation aren't the ones photosynthesizing. The detritivores can't also be the predators. The "rappers doing normal shit blog" has a different niche than the person that asks why Lil Wayne has socks on in the jacuzzi, who has a different niche than the person who says "those are his hooves, you bitch!"
It's like bioavailability, you see. The user that responds "Those are his hooves, you bitch" is like a predator on a high trophic level, unable to directly feed on producers, needing primary consumers to convert the post into a form that makes a punch line possible.
[ID: A screenshot of the original post with almost every line fully blacked out. The only letters still visible spell out "cocks." End ID]
Enter THE HOTEL OF THE MINDSCAPE.
HOTEL I think the sole advantage of this place, This hellish, warping, twisted tumbler, Lies buried in collaborative art. When sings again the song, another may The words repeat, and add upon their tale. To make a jest, or illustrate the piece, To answer, mock, or Shakespearificate.
This, too, is why 'tis hard to draw out gold: Thou cannot draw a pail from show'ring rain, Thou cannot catch the desert in a net, And, similar, thou cannot find the source Of so-called "content" when 'tis all around.
When written first, a song begins its life, But not the whole of art it has within -- To breathe the air of life and light and wit It must be shared, improved, attached upon, And then, at last, the multi-headed beast Can reach its full potential in its song.
This place is like a forest, ground to leaf, With bears and fish and bees and trees and worms. 'Tis not the simple "made, and then consumed", For, truly, art 'tis never simply that. There's symbiosis in these darkened woods, There's ebb and flow, the predator and prey: When songs are written of the Little Wayne, And of his hot tub stocking hooves most fine, The gentles here who say "they're hooves, you bitch" Are just as vital as the author's song. Each word in verse is sung by someone new, And in this way, the poem comes to fruit.
For though the wolf who stalks across the heath Takes diff'rent station than the grass beneath, Still, both are needed in this wood we carve, For with no grass for sheep, the wolves would starve.
Enter FALSE PUCHIKO, the CLOWN.
CLOWN 'Tis well and truly said, Madame Hotel, But please consider this riposte: a cock.
This is a old post and I have never seen this addition. Brilliant.
