Why are some people so obsessed with getting followers on Tumblr that they rudely spam social sites?

Thank you so much for asking this. I flagged that last question that popped up and asked the mods a similar question. I have no clue what Tumblr is, so I cannot ask the question, but there must be something about it that makes so many of its members show up here recruiting people to follow them.

How about we make a spam tab? General, social, just for you, meta, spam. Then we can browse thru it and laugh at the odd ones.

@poisonedantidote Great idea! I love the ones like this profile, Could we add them too?~

:::edit::: Seems the stealth mods nuked the perfect breast bra ad. Good work mods!

Did you see the troll post earlier today from “My Mom Forces Me To Smell Her Stinky Week Long Worn Panty Hose Feet” guy? He shows up every couple of months. If not, it is a shame…The Jellies were hilariously ruthless before the question got modded. He’ll be back…the same with the Pink Panty guy.

Feeding the ego is the only reasonable answer.

I always wonder this, too. Why would you want random strangers following your tumblr blog? It’s not like you’re a celebrity, or even any good at writing, most likely. Also, why is it just tumblr users, and not those on, say, wordpress or blogger, who seem obsessed with it?

Wait…wait…there’s a “Pink Panty guy”, too? How do I keep missing these?

Is that what Tumblr is?? A blog site?? @augustlan Thank you for explaining it.

@JilltheTooth If one times it right, there is an occasional opportunity in the early morning hour (EST) that a troll can be spotted by the Jellies before the stinging tentacles of one of the moderators swoops in and slays it.

Tumblr is a micro-blogging site. Micro-blogging is just smaller, both in content and file size, from regular blogging. So it’s more about posting things that can be consumed in under 3 minutes (max), normally a matter of seconds. My favorite Tumblr is The Daily What, which I think gives a really good idea of what you can do with a tumblr. They do have tons of followers, and as such, companies advertise with them, so it earns them money. I don’t know if it’s enough money for that blog to be the owner/s only job, but it’s still money.

A key thing to notice about Tumblr is that there’s very little interaction. You don’t post something, and then have a thousand comments discussing the matter. If you have any comments at all, it’s usually something short and a bit of a non-starter like “LOL4RL”. Instead, people “reblog” your post on their tumblr, so that it gets passed around quite a bit.

I think that we get more Tumblr spam than other blogs for a couple reasons: One, I think it’s the same mentality that makes people try to have 4 thousand friends, 3,938 of which they’ve never even met once on Facebook or Myspace. It just turns into a popularity contest. Two, you don’t have to put as much work into a Tumblr blog as you do into each post of a different blog (or, at least, it appears that way). There aren’t a whole lot of posts deconstructing the latests speech from that up-and-coming governor, or recipes in which someone has painstakingly made a dish a few times to perfect it and taken pictures of the beautiful gourmet layout. It’s more “Hey, look at this cute video of a cat I found” or “Hey, look at this amazing stand-alone quote I found” or “Hey, learn about an important news story in 15 seconds”. So it appeals to people who are looking to make a quick and easy buck, and be popular in the mean time.

Answer’s in the question: because they’re rude! Doesn’t matter the social networking or blogging site, aggressive follower-crazy folks will always spam websites because they love seeing their number rise and because they’re inconsiderate. I don’t think self-promotion is a bad thing, but there is certainly a line one must draw.