I think the apologeticness about backlog reading is more about *avoiding* attention than *attracting* it. A lot of Tumblrites are very aware that too much attention is bad, many of them to the point of assuming (or at least thinking others will assume) that anyone scrutinising their blog like that is probably up to no good (that hate-searching thing). I understand that, though I've done enough archive-binging out of love that I generally assume good faith in others doing the same.

Also it seems like people tend to disavow their old Tumblr stuff a lot, so they wouldn't *want* others reading their old posts and thinking that's what they're "about". The people saying they disavow anything more than one day old (or even two seconds old) are joking, yes, but there's a grain of truth to it. I've known at least one person who disavowed anything older than six months, and I think she was being entirely serious.

(I probably shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that, four years later, she is a very different person, and one I like rather less.)

(I think I have to go back about five *years* to start seeing significant amounts of stuff I don't currently endorse, and even then I both see a lot of my present self in past!me and tend to respect her even when I disagree.)

Personally, I link to my relevant old posts a lot, because I love making contextual posts but know I can't reasonably expect others to have memorised large chunks of my blog like I have. I'm very four-dimensional, and I too tend to find ephemeral post-streams sad.

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I do like the curation aspect of Tumblr, though. I don't think I could--no, I *empirically* could not jump straight into journal-style blogging. Curation gave me a chance to build my confidence, gradually ease into posting, and make connections so that I wasn't alone when I first started posting on Dreamwidth.