Defining My Problem with Retweeting and a Certain Kind of Reblogging
It’s regurgitation, nothing more. I understand the noble desire to attribute but copying someone else’s post verbatim is less attribution, more mindless duplication.
If you like something someone’s said, give it a star, it’s built right into Twitter. If you like it more than a single star can express and you just have to share it with the world, link to it, it’s built right into the internet. Link to it and say why, add something of your own, add something original.
I make an effort to not follow people who retweet, those who don’t must have streams filled with constant repetition of not only the same information but the exact same words. It’s got to feel like a mail client that delivers every email five times over.
Reblogging in Tumblr is great for linking posts that respond or add on each other. I use it often when quoting a passage from a post or linking to the same thing someone else has. I always add my own thought, it’s the only reason I’m reblogging at all, without it, reblogging is duplication, just redundant data in a database.
It’s abused. Popular posts have a string of nested “quotes” that contain nothing more than the name of another copycat.