Tumblr Humblr
I started this as a Central Village tumblr, but it’s now jeff baum’s tumblr. Central Village is a lot of things, and even tho I’m not writing much these days, it will still exist however I see fit. But this is my tumblr. Jeff Baum. That’s me! It’s separate.
I was just telling Kelly how I just read another article about the commercialization of web 2.0, how Amazon reviews are now solicited by publishers. Another article about how nothing is sacred anymore and big business has co-opted everything you used to trust on the web to be their own. Seems like I discover this to be the case more and more every week. I used to like reading and writing blogs because it was unfiltered thought. That is no longer true. Rather than leading the way for a new way to digest music, we’ve been roped in by the old format. I’m as guilty as any. Big labels spending over their head to impress me and everyone else with banner ads, VIP list spots and free shit. And because everyone likes money and free stuff, and there were no ethical rules in place for us like there were for old media, we gave in. If felt like a reward for all the hard work we put in that nobody asked us to do, but since it worked, everyone on both ends kept at it. So now we’re just supporting the old model. Which still doesn’t work, by the way. This could have turned out better, but there’s a reason the old model keeps at it. People are easy.
I don’t even think that is necessarily a bad thing. It has its plusses and minuses. But it’s just the way it is. And it’s not what I expected. And it’s not what I was looking for when I started.
tumblr seems to be an escape from all that. It’s stripped down. It’s what blogs used to feel like when people were embarrassed to have a blog. There is nothing I can do here that I couldn’t do on CV, but somehow it feels more appropriate. There are expectations of Central Village that I have no interest in meeting. That is still my blog. My name. I’ll use it again someday, I suspect. But the internet…at least the blogosphere…needs a reset, and tumblr seems to be it. And here I am. I hope we both enjoy it. So long as you don’t expect much from me here, I think we’ll all get along just fine.
