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I’ve had a Tumblr account for years, but only recently reactivated it, having finally found a use of sorts for it. In the period I wasn’t paying attention, the Tumblr team have created a thing called Tumblarity: a number derived from your recent activity on your account. If you get a new follower, you get a certain number of tumblarity points. If you reblog something from another Tumblr user, your tumblarity goes up. And so on. If you leave your Tumblr unused for a while, your tumblarity starts to drop. The bigger your tumblarity number, the higher your Tumblr blog is ranked. It’s obviously just a bit of fun.

But now I see this number winking at me on the dashboard. And I start to realise how clever this is. It’s a Tamagotchi number. You log in, see your tumblarity’s dropped, and you can’t help but suddenly think “oh my god, my Tumblr’s dying.” There’s almost an urge to do something to feed it, to pipette precious drops of life-giving tumblarity into your Tumblr.

Until, obviously, one day you look at it and say, “ah, fuck it, let’s watch the little bastard die.”

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Comic book author Warren Ellis on the new tumblr feature “Tumblarity” (via:warrenellis.com) (via danhacker) (via switchblades)

I love this, and I love FreakAngels which he writes, illustrated by Paul Duffield.  Free, online.  Check it.