"I don't know why people think that Tumblr, and the web for that matter, has been a non-competitive utopic community of intimate friends. Not that you can't have that experience in a semi-public kind of way, but if you don't really care about popularity, then it shouldn't matter. If you truly want an "intimate" experience then have it. Stay in Facebook and add only the real real friends. Use your email, chats, and stuff that is truly more private and intimate. Make your Tumblr private. That said, I understand the concern. There's been this shift in the web with the whole web 2.0 ideal of participatory audience. The Social Media thing which is Web 2.0 gone haywire. People are giving themselves an unnecessary pressure to be "useful" and donate "valuable" content and I'm not sure if that has made the web better at all. In the end Tumblr is what you make of it. You can look at the stats, see what you can do about that and if iy matters or you can just ignore it and keep posting photos of..." - Jay Cruz