Can we please stop it with the Tumblr hate?

[Madame_Lawliet]

I've mouthed off about this on another thread a little bit earlier but it bears it's own topic.

I am getting seriously sick of hearing about how evil Tumblr supposedly is, and I'm getting really sick of hearing people talking about Tumblr like it's one consistent entity united under some sort of Geth consensus.
"Tumblr hates this," "Tumblr hates that," "Tumblr is mad again," "why is Tumblr so offendable," It feels like every thread I go to these days always dissolves into a swirling vortex of Tumblr hate no matter what it's about.
What's really ironic though is the idea that Tumblr operates as one focal set of ideas or that it moves as one united force, because that simply could not be further from the truth.

In my 3+ years on Tumblr I have seen more infighting in that community then any other I've ever been a part of.
I've seen plenty of so-called "social justice warriors" but I've seen just as many people who seemed indifferent or un-involved in that whole scene, and most of the "SJWs" were very quick to call out other "SJWs" if they said something truly dumb. I've seen plenty of feminist blogs but the vast vast majority of them were run by completely reasonable people, as supposed to the so-called "straw femminists" you hear the anti-tumblr sub-reddits claim are running rampant. And I've seen boatloads of debate and differing opinions on every subject from Social Justice to the pronunciation of "tissues."
Tumblr is ANYTHING but a unified whole.

Plus, Tumblr is actually a very positive force in allot of peoples lives, it's a great way of learning about new things, sharing and recognizing art, and viewing perspecives that you may otherwise never have heard.

Spoiler: Here is a short, non-comprehensive, list of things I've become a massive fan of that I would never have learned about without Tumblr just to prove my point...

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt
Gravity Falls
Dangan Ronpa (and subsequently SDR2)
Little Witch Academia
Shadowrun
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Skullgirls
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Princess Jellyfish
Kill la Kill
Watamote
Gorillaz
Free!
Michiko and Hatchin
Catherine
Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann
The Amazing World of Gumball
Wander over Yonder
BLOOD

As well as countless professional and amateur artists who would most likely never have gotten off the ground without the aid of Tumblr.

We have our bad apples, sometimes whole trees of them, but that's the case with every community, especially on the internet. And you have to keep in mind that most of our bad apples are really just frustrated people venting their feelings in an environment free of consequence, isn't that 99% of what the internet is for allot of people?

And Tumblr gives you so many options in regards to filtering harassment so you don't really have to deal with those bad apples if you don't want to. Don't want Anonymous messages? Turn 'em off. Don't want to answer questions? Don't set up an ask box, don't want replies? You can turn those off too. Don't want to see posts of a certain type? Block the tag. Don't want to see posts from a certain person? Block the user. Don't like Tumblr? Don't go there.

Generally, I just do not see why The Escapist community, and the internet in general, seem to have so much ire for Tumblr specifically when, as far as I see it, the only real difference between it and Reddit is the background colour.

 

[Vault101]

I think its better to just ride it out rather than try to appeal to people

trust me all your going to get is more disdain over "PC SJW's Femenazis" it'll die down....

OT: there are some aspects of the Tumblr SJW thing I still havent wraped my head around (cultural apropriation) and somtimes I fine myself rolling my eyes and saying "...really?"

but ultimatly I'm far more annyoed by people who are scared of "the PC police" or misuse the word Feminists/ism than I am by the SJW's

EDIT: oh and I think Tumblr's pretty cool....I mean Reddit could be seen as a cesspool of bullshit but there are subs I freaquent

 

[Erttheking]

Just about every major website has bullshit. People just like to focus on the ones that they personally don't like and turn a blind eye to the ones that they do like. No one talks about all the bullshit on Reddit, because people don't have grudges to pick with Reddit.

Also, Vault has a point.

 

[tippy2k2]

In my 3+ years on Tumblr I have seen more infighting in that community then any other I've ever been a part of.

I resent those comments! Us here at the Escapist in-fight WAAAAAAY more often than any other website!

March Madness got us flooded with gore porn because users couldn't stand that a company like Zynga was going to beat Valve!

The Game of the Year discussion this year had people tearing out each others throats because some Russian dude sent his followers here to vote for Papers Please!

Don't even get me started on the shit-storm that was Extra Credits leaving!

...Join Date 2013. I get it now. You underestimate the powers of the Escapist hissy fights. You'll learn...[small]you'll learn...[/small]

Anywho, I barely know what Tumblr is and I'm guessing that the vast majority of people arguing about how Tumblr is a SJW haven and PC police and whatnot are going with the "everyone else is hating it online so I have to as well" (see Nickelback for further study).

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Ya know I've heard so much crap about Tumblr I have no desire to ever use it.

I think its better to just ride it out rather than try to appeal to people

trust me all your going to get is more disdain over "PC SJW's Femenazis" it'll die down....

OT: there are some aspects of the Tumblr SJW thing I still havent wraped my head around (cultural apropriation) and somtimes I fine myself rolling my eyes and saying "...really?"

but ultimatly I'm far more annyoed by people who are scared of "the PC police" or misuse the word Feminists/ism than I am by the SJW's

EDIT: oh and I think Tumblr's pretty cool....I mean Reddit could be seen as a cesspool of bullshit but there are subs I freaquent

Ironically I never heard about Reddit until you mentioned it, and I still feel much the same.

I'm quite happy in my little Escapist bubble.

In my 3+ years on Tumblr I have seen more infighting in that community then any other I've ever been a part of.

I resent those comments! Us here at the Escapist in-fight WAAAAAAY more often than any other website!

March Madness got us flooded with gore porn because users couldn't stand that a company like Zynga was going to beat Valve!

The Game of the Year discussion this year had people tearing out each others throats because some Russian dude sent his followers here to vote for Papers Please!

Don't even get me started on the shit-storm that was Extra Credits leaving!

...Join Date 2013. I get it now. You underestimate the powers of the Escapist hissy fights. You'll learn...[small]you'll learn...[/small]

Anywho, I barely know what Tumblr is and I'm guessing that the vast majority of people arguing about how Tumblr is a SJW haven and PC police and whatnot are going with the "everyone else is hating it online so I have to as well" (see Nickelback for further study).

I remember when Extra Creditz left. People where like "ESCAPISTS IS GONNA DIE", it was like watching wrestling fans doing the weekly TNA Deathwatch.

 

[Vault101]

...Join Date 2013. I get it now. You underestimate the powers of the Escapist hissy fights. You'll learn...[small]you'll learn...

2013 was a very dark year....[quote/]

Don't even get me started on the shit-storm that was Extra Credits leaving!
[/quote]

arguing over what games get what "award" is par for the course in any site...but this is the one I most remember

I think I started hating EC when they defented ME3's ending ont he basis of some artistic wankery

 

[sneakypenguin]

I vote we switch the hate to gawker media, like tumblr except they actually get paid to write their garbage .

 

[Ratty]

It's an easy target that you won't get in trouble for attacking here and other places. (Like say if an openly anti-console or anti-PC thread popped up.) And people get to feel superior and dismissive about issues of social progress. It'll die down eventually when a new soft target comes along.

But you're right. In my years on tumblr I've spent far more time looking at cool antique photos and vintage sword and sorcery art than anything else. The perception that tumblr is a hivemind is pretty laughable.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I like tumblr, but I'll admit, in the few times I've wandered onto the rabid SJW side I've found it to be downright frightening. Fortunately, that sort of stuff is easy to avoid. I guess it's akin to liking the city you live in, but knowing which neighborhood not to wander around in at night.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Ya know I've heard so much crap about Tumblr I have no desire to ever use it.

I tried using it for a few weeks. I know people hate it when you say "It's like Facebook, but...", but it's a Facebook clone, except instead of seeing pointless stuff posted by your friends from high school, it's pointless stuff posted by a bunch of people you've never met. Site format is buttugly and it uses that damnable endlessly scrolling newsfeed instead of pages to flip between. Very good chance that if you some something good get reblogged, you're going to see it reblogged ten or more times because it was reblogged by other people you follow. There's very little in the way of a NSFW filters and images are already opened and cannot be minimized on your dash, so try not to browse it in public. There's absolutely no form of content quality, it all comes down to the quality of the people you follow.

Only thing I can say I really liked about it was that it allowed you to edit the CSS of your blog, because frankly the default Tumblr theme is, I repeat, buttugly. Lots of cool ways people would customize their blogs with cool color schemes and high quality graphics, but that would be juxtaposed next to opening a blog where your cursor is a skull, the background blends in with the text, and for some ungodly reason they set up their page to play the Kokiri Forest Theme from Legend of Zelda.

Very laissez-faire moderation on the site, but I fall back on "It's like Facebook, but..."

 

[Super Cyborg]

Never been to Tumblr, and never will, but I'm indifferent because I don't know anything about it. I will just say this, anything that has a huge following with get flak because of a small percentage of followers, whether it's religion, political party, website, show, etc. The bigger it is, the more it seems like a place that is terrible, only because the small percentage is bigger. Let's say 10% of people with any group are the loud obnoxious ones. A sight with only 100 followers will only have ten, so it doesn't seem that bad. A giant sights with 100 million people will and 10 million people that are terrible, so it looks really bad, despite the fact it's only 10% of the people. It's also still a new scapegoat at the moment, and a new sight will take over eventually.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

In my 3+ years on Tumblr I have seen more infighting in that community then any other I've ever been a part of.

I resent those comments! Us here at the Escapist in-fight WAAAAAAY more often than any other website!

March Madness got us flooded with gore porn because users couldn't stand that a company like Zynga was going to beat Valve!

The Game of the Year discussion this year had people tearing out each others throats because some Russian dude sent his followers here to vote for Papers Please!

Don't even get me started on the shit-storm that was Extra Credits leaving!

...Join Date 2013. I get it now. You underestimate the powers of the Escapist hissy fights. You'll learn...[small]you'll learn...[/small]

Anywho, I barely know what Tumblr is and I'm guessing that the vast majority of people arguing about how Tumblr is a SJW haven and PC police and whatnot are going with the "everyone else is hating it online so I have to as well" (see Nickelback for further study).

I also seem to recall a massive flamewar over math happening here.

OT: All sites get notoriety for having bad communities by other communities. Its just a fact of tribal internet life it seems.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

What? Give up an easy punching bag that doubles as a stress reliever and scapegoat any time an irritating user or opinion pops up?

For the love of god, why?

Seriously though, people, myself included, always need something/someone/somewhere to blame. Tumblr is easy because it has greater concentrations of cunts. Of course they're still a very small minority of the actual site, but they're more vocal there than anywhere else. The hatred will continue until another internet boogeyman appears and no amount of pleading for civility will change that.

Also in my case, I really dislike how Tumblr is laid out and operated. The whole look and use just irritates me.

 

[loa]

Isn't tumblr some sort of porn site or have I been using it wrong all along?

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I will stop hating laughing at Tumblr (or to be more accurate that small percentage of Tumblr) when it stops treating me stops treating me as a (insert feminist quote here) monster for existing, rather than something I actually did.

Until then, Tumblr will remain 'that site where all those funny/depressing/hilarious screencaps come from' when I do my occasional Reddit/Imgur walks.

 

[L. Declis]

Sigh. Right, I'll try to explain.

I am getting seriously sick of hearing about how evil Tumblr supposedly is, and I'm getting really sick of hearing people talking about Tumblr like it's one consistent entity united under some sort of Geth consensus."Tumblr hates this," "Tumblr hates that," "Tumblr is mad again," "why is Tumblr so offendable," It feels like every thread I go to these days always dissolves into a swirling vortex of Tumblr hate no matter what it's about.
What's really ironic though is the idea that Tumblr operates as one focal set of ideas or that it moves as one united force, because that simply could not be further from the truth.

The issue is that Tumblr attracts a certain kind of person. The kind of person who is very vocal about their opinion. Then it becomes an echo-chamber for good ideas until they become twisted, over the top version of themselves, and then these vocal people are given a massive support network and a huge victim complex as well as their very vocal personality.

They then take these vocal people, find a target, someone shows everyone else the target, and then Tumblr kinda vomits onto that target and swarms them.

Not only that, but Tumblr has become the centre of angst in the internet. Imagine all the stupidity of your teenagehood. The self-diagnosises of serious psychological conditions, the misunderstanding of very complex issues, black and white thinking, the arrogance and the need to be different and interesting.

All the worst habits of this are then encouraged until they begin to act similar to serious psychological patients, which means they occasionally harm people who actually need help and telling them to stop taking medication. Or they get a community of seriously obese people and create a world where everyone saying they are killing themselves is wrong and they need accept their fat.

Or you end up with the frankly insane need to be different. The trans-wolf trans-black middle class white girl/boy/transsexual dragon headmate and so on and so forth. People say it's not common, but it is vocal and these are the people who represent Tumblr.

There is also the problem of fandoms, where people will very publicly and sometimes very creepily show the worst parts of geeky obsession, which don't help either for perception.

The problem with stereotypes is that they only stick if there is some truth to them. Gamers are seen as anti-social because gamers tend to act anti-social publicly. The British are seen as ravenous tea drinkers because we tend to drink many cups of tea each day as a nation. Tumblr is seen as insane because those who represent it online and have become infamous are acting pretty insane.

In my 3+ years on Tumblr I have seen more infighting in that community then any other I've ever been a part of.
I've seen plenty of so-called "social justice warriors" but I've seen just as many people who seemed indifferent or un-involved in that whole scene, and most of the "SJWs" were very quick to call out other "SJWs" if they said something truly dumb. I've seen plenty of feminist blogs but the vast vast majority of them were run by completely reasonable people, as supposed to the so-called "straw femminists" you hear the anti-tumblr sub-reddits claim are running rampant. And I've seen boatloads of debate and differing opinions on every subject from Social Justice to the pronunciation of "tissues."
Tumblr is ANYTHING but a unified whole.

I was on Tumblr for... I'd say 3 months.

Yes, many of the users are fine. But those are the ones who have ended up representing Tumblr (see above).

And while many of the SJW are calling out other SJW, many SJW are supporting the silly SJW. And much like politics, it is the extreme feminists who get the interest, and as such, are the ones who are represented.

Tumblr may not be organised, but neither is 4chan. It doesn't mean that certain types of people are attracted to either, and that while the average user is pretty much normal, it's the extreme ones that get notice.

Plus, Tumblr is actually a very positive force in allot of peoples lives, it's a great way of learning about new things, sharing and recognizing art, and viewing perspecives that you may otherwise never have heard.

Spoiler: Here is a short, non-comprehensive, list of things I've become a massive fan of that I would never have learned about without Tumblr just to prove my point...

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt
Gravity Falls
Dangan Ronpa (and subsequently SDR2)
Little Witch Academia
Shadowrun
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Skullgirls
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Princess Jellyfish
Kill la Kill
Watamote
Gorillaz
Free!
Michiko and Hatchin
Catherine
Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann
The Amazing World of Gumball
Wander over Yonder
BLOOD

As well as countless professional and amateur artists who would most likely never have gotten off the ground without the aid of Tumblr.

Well, I'm glad you learned about these from Tumblr. But I learned about all of these from other sources. Tumblr isn't the sole source of these things, so it's not entirely relevant. I laughed to see Catherine on here, as it's an Atlus game and therefore has a huge cult following among gamers. And Shadowrun is a massive property as well, so it's also not a hidden secret.

And this is a bit of a strawman; no one is saying that Tumblr doesn't know video games. People are complaining about the over the top obsession with blame, accusations and self-flagellation with a seeming lack of self-reflection.

We have our bad apples, sometimes whole trees of them, but that's the case with every community, especially on the internet. And you have to keep in mind that most of our bad apples are really just frustrated people venting their feelings in an environment free of consequence, isn't that 99% of what the internet is for allot of people?

Yes. And they do vent, and they vent at people who are seen as generally having done wrong. And they do so without seeming self-reflection and often hypocrisy or misunderstanding the issues. They pretend to an education they never received and they skew the reality to fit their fantasy so they can be right when evidence suggests otherwise.

Not only that, but many people wish they would be using this energy for a more worthwhile cause. For example, where are the Tumblr feminists for India, who desperately need more pressure put on their government for female rights? You can say "Well, I care about many things" but people only seem to put the effort in for the pointless.

If you have time to write an essay about how shitty Dragon's Crown is, why didn't you write some letters instead? 1 for the developer of Dragon's Crown AND one for the Indian government which you could also send to some Indian news medias and support for the feminists in India.

People could respect that.

And Tumblr gives you so many options in regards to filtering harassment so you don't really have to deal with those bad apples if you don't want to. Don't want Anonymous messages? Turn 'em off. Don't want to answer questions? Don't set up an ask box, don't want replies? You can turn those off too. Don't want to see posts of a certain type? Block the tag. Don't want to see posts from a certain person? Block the user. Don't like Tumblr? Don't go there.

People don't go there.

The problem is that Tumblr seems to be going everywhere else and pushing their attitudes on issues where they are pedantic at best. Hell, even 4chan is now absorbing some Tumblr users.

Generally, I just do not see why The Escapist community, and the internet in general, seem to have so much ire for Tumblr specifically when, as far as I see it, the only real difference between it and Reddit is the background colour.

Also, Reddit users don't tend to be as preachy and they don't pretend to mental issues and... Go read this post.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

The reason Tumblr gets so much shit, is that horrible things keep spawning there and are given light. Much like 4chan.

That's not to say Tumblr or 4chan aren't great. 4chan has it's dark cesspools, /b/, /pol/, etc, and Tumblr has it's own dark corner filled with morons who spout crap like "All men are rapists", or "Cultural Appropriation", "Mansplaining", and the like.

It's stupid that these sites get a bad rap because of their vocal minorities, but that's not gonna change until a larger vocal group organises and overrides them.