Nothing of me is original...

I'm not an avid tumblr, I'll admit though I do have an account which I occasionally use to browse through "pretty" pictures and get a sense of the people behind the compilation of images.

What really intrigues me about Tumblr, (the various friends and family members that are obsessed with it can attest to this) is the way in which you're given this medium that allows content to be so easily put together. Take, for example, the simple interface that you get on your primary dashboard - personally, I love it. But kobieta, your questions about this digital medium are very intriguing.

Initially, I was inclined to agree with both you and EGrumer about how you don't credit the original source. When you reblog something, there is a small tag at the bottom that tells your reader about where the image was sourced. In the link that EGrumer put up, there is some text under the image: (via Sacrebleu!). This "stamp" is where the image was first appeared on Tumblr. If the image was downloaded from somewhere else, there is a Google Picture Search engine which could allow for you to find it. While this seems like a huge effort for just one thing (hell, I'll admit, I don't do it), I do think that this is an important thing to consider.

On the flip side, I want to consider the idea that everything that you put on the internet will be prone to reproduction because of how easy it is. Especially if you place your image on a medium like Tumblr, you know that whatever is on there has the possibility to be reblogged by anyone that may see it. There are very few privacy settings on the website and anybody that puts an effort to find your tumblr with your images can "steal" them. But I've been considering the reasons for someone to have a Tumblr - they aren't the same as the reasons for a Facebook. Of the active Tumblr users that I've met, there seems to be a desire to gain as many followers, post often and on a regular basis and have as many reblogs as possible. In fact, I recently came across an image that said something along the lines of "____ reblogged YOU. Yes! <3" which speaks to this desire. There seems to be a "free giving" culture on the site which allows for people to just "take." My younger sibling got excited when an image that they took and placed on the website got reblogged 60 times in a couple of hours. My main point, however, is that citation also is greatly dependent on the medium through which information is passed in.

Additionally, I'm also really interested in what kobieta said about originality. The image (and words, consequently) "Nothing of me is original, I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known" is true, drawing on the same concept that "no man is an island". However, I'm really curious to think about this in terms of Tumblr because both kobieta and EGrumer have written about creating a sort of 'identity' online. While this does speak to the constructedness of the idea of the 'individual', I do think that there is also some agency here. A Tumblr user has control over the content that appears on their account which in turn, reveals a part of themselves. An "extension of themselves" if you will. Thus, couldn't that "selective usage" of content be interpreted as "independent" and "original"? Though there are sources for the content, the final product itself (the tumblr account) is actually greater than the sum of its parts.