On Tumblr, Animated Gifs, Fandom and Creating
Going to have to unfollow a bunch of people who insist on posting animated gif after animated gif. Tumblr makes it waaaay too easy to post mindlessly, without considering what you’re doing. It makes it even easier to repost things other people have posted mindlessly without considering what they were about to do. I try to follow people who post interesting, thought-provoking things, but so often, folks are just lazy or too busy to post their own thoughts. I don’t mind the occasional reblog, but when your stream is nothing but someone else’s photomontages or graphics with sayings on them (I CAN HAS 2 MUCH TIME ON HANDZ) or the bane of my existence…animated gifs, I feel like you’re missing the point of having a blog.
A blog is for self-expression. It’s one thing to find someone else’s content, repost it and add commentary. That’s cool. That’s a discussion. But to repost someone else’s shit and just add “This.” ARG. WHY AM I FOLLOWING YOU???
And those animated gifs!!! What is this? 1997? WE HAVE VIDEO NOW.
And what’s with all the shameless (shameful?) gushing over scifi shows? I hate animated gifs from scifi shows more than any other kind of animated gif.
Why is it that people are so excited by a show or a movie that they grab some frames of it and make an animated gif rather than using that show or movie as inspiration for their own damn content!?!
Back, before the Internets, fandom would write their own fanfics—short for Fan-written Fiction (aka, fiction written with characters and settings by someone else—who usually got a paycheck while you don’t). They’d even print them out (or have them printed out at a real printing service!) and try to sell them at scifi conventions.
The whole thing just seemed so sad to me. I mean, come on, man, take yourself seriously! Don’t just be a fan, take that inspiration you are feeling and DO something with it! Create something OF YOUR OWN. OR: have some balls and submit your own story/script for XYZ franchise directly to the company that makes your show/movie. Why do you expect people to take time to read your stuff if you consider yourself only a fan?
This is one reason I don’t go to conventions any more and really don’t like hanging out with my fellow fans most of the time. Fans who are just fans and have nothing else going on are kinda boring. I don’t want to be a fan. I want to be a colleague.
It’s easy to write a fanfic, it’s easier to make a half-dozen stupid animated gifs of David Tennant looking goofy and it’s even easier to just reblog someone else’s content. But why not challenge yourself and create something on your own? Of your own invention? Or just examine your own feelings and then express them in a blog post?
Life is short. Create something now.
