Advertisements are everywhere, all the time. They’re on
television, billboards, buses, and YouTube. They’re plastered all over your
clothes, too. (How many shirts have you seen with a giant Nike “swoosh” on them
today?) Advertisers don’t ask your permission to assault your eyes with their
flashy products and logos, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid
them.
During the week I try to limit my time spent on social
networking sites, but Tumblr has been an addiction of mine for a while now. For
the benefit of those who don’t know exactly how Tumblr works (consider
yourselves lucky, it quickly becomes an obsession), allow me to explain. You
follow bloggers who post what you like and you “reblog” their posts. When you “reblog” a post, the image or text they
posted goes on your blog as well. The posts from all of the bloggers you follow
are lined up on your “dashboard” for easy viewing.
Recently, even Tumblr CEO David Karp has caved and allowed advertisements
on his site. I’ll scroll down my “dashboard” and see a picture of a cell phone,
say the new Droid. Hmm, I think to myself.
Why would anyone I follow post that?
With a closer look, I see that the top of the post says “Motorola” and has a
little dollar sign in the opposite corner. This signifies that it’s a sponsored
post. After two days of keeping a running tally of the ads I saw, I came up
with seven. This may seem like a small number, but the principle of the matter
is that I never followed any of these advertisers––they infiltrated my "dashboard" without my permission.
The fact that Tumblr did not have these ads in years past
leads me to believe that earning money, not providing a quality social media
site, has become the main goal. Out of all the social networks I’m on, Tumblr
is the one with the most crashes and maintenance requirements. But who cares,
right? People still log on when the site is back up, they still see the ads,
and money is still being made.
That being said, I actually don’t mind the ads too much. I’m
a self-proclaimed cheapskate, and if a few ads here and there allow me to
continue to use sites like Tumblr and Twitter for free, then so be it. I barely
notice them anymore. The omnipresence of advertisements has desensitized me to
them. By constantly bombarding me with their ads, business tycoons aren’t
grabbing my attention––they’re losing it.
Thanks Shannon, this is an interesting and well written post. So far, I am excited that each of you has chosen a different form of media to explore. I know nothing about Tumblr, so it is nice to learn something. Your final paragraph interests me the most. I suspect that most of us would agree. The excessive ads do not bother us. We are either desensitized to them, or we just ignore them. Either way, they allow us to enjoy our favorite forms of entertainment, free of charge.
ReplyDeleteI don't really know how to respond to this. Although I personally have grown slightly more impatient with the amount of advertisements in our lives, there is really little I can do about it - except use ALL OF THE COMMERCIALS IN THE PATRIOTS GAME to get work done and respond to online journals. Like you write, Tumblr appears to have a poor maintenance record, but "who cares?". We still log on. Pandora runs an ad every two or three songs, but "who cares?". I am going to keep listening. I wonder what this indifference says about us as an audience? Maybe nothing. I don't want to be too cynical. But maybe it does say something. I believe an indifferent audience is probably exactly what corporate execs want.