IRL, OMG

So it turns out there’s a place where people can go and be free! Free from the real world! It’s called Cyberspace.

You can enter into a world where the laws of reality are limitless! Where there are no restrictions on who you can talk to and when you can talk to them! Where you can post whatever you want and look up whatever you want! Where you can just be yourself!

Sounds ideal doesn’t it? This concept of freedom, a “rare example of a true, modern, functional anarchy” where there “are no official censors, no bosses, no board of directors”, as Sterling aptly states in his A Short History of the Internet.

Well, allow me to jump right in and introduce you to Tumblr. Oh, you’re already well acquainted? Well of course you are! Tumblr currently hosts 131.3 blogs on its site and has had 80,377,569 posts uploaded on there just today!

Tumblr is a social networking site that has two identifying features showing how the proximity between Cyberspace and Real Space can be decreased and how the “functional anarchy” that Cyberspace prides itself on can come under attack when gatekeepers decide to make their mark.

Enriching the Cyberspace and Real Space Experience

Tumblr allows you to create a blog where you can follow and post whatever you want and find people who have the same interests. In this cyber world, you have control over who you follow, who can see your posts and who can message you. You can decide to remain anonymous.

Lessig writes of four scenarios of Cyberspace and how in each scenario, the individual in focus is able to express themselves however they want due to the freedom that Cyberspace supplies them with, being outside the rules of any nation or government. Lessig states that in Cyberspace, “one builds the world one inhabits here”.

Tumblr, however, has gone beyond this. When I asked several users what they found the appeal of Tumblr to be, they answered both that it gave them a means of self expression, and also that it gave them the ability to connect to people with similar interests. And that is one such aspect that Tumblr promotes: connecting with people.

Once you have a blog up and running with content you are interested in, it is not long before you start interacting with other like-minded people. Tumblr has a ‘Meet Ups’ page in order to allow users to create events and meet up with their followers in – get this – Real Life. Here, Cyberspace converges with reality, allowing people who have met over the internet to actually meet in physical, human form.

While the laws of reality aren’t limitless, and social norms must be followed in real life, these people have come together over mutual interests that have been developed due to the fact that there was a social networking site that promoted a Real Space connection with Cyberspace. You could even say that Cyberspace has enhanced Real Space.

Who Knew About the Yahoo Issue?

Recently, Yahoo announced that it was buying Tumblr for like, a couple of dollars (1.1 billion of them) and fears were raised that the global corporation would destroy the freedom of the site and all these issues about censorship and gatekeeping and adult content all came flooding out. OH THE HORROR, THE HORROR!

However the CEO emphasised that she wanted to “let Tumblr be Tumblr” and all the X-rated porn blogs breathed a sigh of relief. Their Cyberspace was safe.

Well, maybe. For even more recently, there has been concerns raised over the fact that tags such as #gay #lesbian and #bisexual have all been blocked on Tumblr’s official mobile app as Yahoo believes that the majority of the content under these labels is pornographic. Which of course has been considered discriminatory. This is an ongoing issue.

So, Tumblr: a prime example of how Cyberspace works and doesn’t work within the confines of the real world.

With thanks to the Tumblr users who replied to my survey.

REFERENCES

Sterling, B 1993, ‘A Short History of the Internet’, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1993.

Lessig, L 2006, ‘Four puzzles from cyber space’, in L Lessig (ed.), Code version 2.0.