The Power to be No One

The Power to be No One

Tumblr is a social networking platform “as of 2011, Tumblr was attracting 72 million visitors per month and it has the fastest multimedia publishing capabilities of all blog services”https://www.techopedia.com/definition/27517/tumblr. Tumblr allows users to anonymously create blogs in which they share images, quotes, music or other content that they feel is a reflection of their true selves. This anonymity is the main differentiating feature from other online communication networks.

The tumblr space is vast. It can appear daunting to an “outsider”. A possible reason for this, is, that the website has no seemingly obvious purpose or it could be that “space feels anonymous whereas place is familiar” (Kuttaien, 2016). The Tumblr space seems empty. In this way, the users themselves have taken an empty space on the internet and transformed it to a unique place. This action of transforming space into place can be better explained by Yi- Fu- Tuan (1977) “What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value”.  In this sense, tumblr space has been transformed by the user’s allocation of their own self value to a space that respects their desire to be “no – one” or at least not to be recognised.

Taking the findings from Sherry Turkle, regarding the notion of self- surveillance and virtual accountability, it is clear why Tumblr is so popular. It’s a space that appears to be free from censorship and this panoptic feeling that is imposed in regular society, the feeling of being watched. As Turkle (1995) states simply “People without power and resources in the real find a compensatory experience in the virtual”.

Excerpt: Turkle, S. (1995). ‘Panopticon’. In Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

Kuttaien, V. (2016). BA1002-TSV-INT-SP2 Our Space: Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, Week 3 Notes [powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from

https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_76323_1&content_id=_2412484_1

Tuan, Y-F. (1977). ‘Introduction’. In Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. (read p.1 to top p.