Design and culture microblogs/aggregators are a booming trend. Anchor Division, FFFFOUND, Convoy, Pinterest, Designspiration. For the most part, I love them all. I love the short, semi-snarky, always-drooly write-ups. I love the aesthetic sensibilities that develop over time. I love the idea of curation as criticism. But I also have a beef with some of my favorite blogs. This snapshot culture seems to recognize—and celebrate—the “sharer” more frequently (and more lavishly) than it recognizes the creator.
Think about your favorite blogs, Tweeters or Tumblrs. How many cite their sources? How many give credit to the creators of their content? Exactly. What’s even more interesting is that the standard, accepted online citation conventions are often flawed when it comes to acknowledging the original creator or author of content. Current online etiquette seems fulfilled as long as there’s a “RT”, “reblog” or “via” soundly in place. But who’s that even crediting? Again, more often than not, it’s linking back to another sharer rather than the actual creator. Thus we end up celebrating the act of sharing rather than the power of creating.
If you think about it in 10th grade term paper standards, we’re totally plagiarizing. Remember “proper citation?” It’s not like you could just write “via public library” on the bottom of the page. This new short-form blogosphere seems intent on establishing just who exactly is the best collector and sharer of all things cool. And I’ll be the first to admit that there’s something fun and addicting about being you’re own little curator of cool. However, in order to form a more perfect internet—it’s incumbent upon these new legions of collectors, sharers and curators to research and cite creators.
Yes, that takes time and effort. And no, sometimes it’s not easy. In fact, robust services like Google Images and handy functionality like reblogging make it way too easy to not research what the original source of an image actually is. But just because we can post thing very quickly, doesn’t mean we should. If we can start thinking more like our high school English teachers, a better web is just a citation away.
PS: The image above is a screen capture from the archive of ryjohnson.com.
