Dear Tumblr: I used to recommend every Tuesday religiously. But I don’t anymore because I realized that what you call the Tumblr Directory is not such a thing. It is a popularity contest that requires people to beg, every week to be recommended again if they wish to remain in said directory. This is, in fact, a popularity contest that adds people based on the weekly recommendations, not on a total number accumulated through time. A directory involves some kind of comprehensive taxonomy and the aggregation of items within that structure. This is not such a thing, I am afraid. To remain in your directory, we have to actually expect our readers/ followers to never like anyone else again because otherwise they miss voting on us. Not only is that unfair to the myriad good Tumblrs that deserve recommendations, it is just a misuse of the idea of a directory in the first place.

Moreover, your Staff Picks seem to get very little recommendations, but those, in some seemingly arbitrary way, remain untouched through the weekly cycle.

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