Reflections on Tumblr and A New Start
Dec. 4th, 2018 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
draconic_flareIt has been a long year in many aspects for people all over the world. Politically, things are looking horrible
for a variety of reasons, environmentally, big corporations continue to ignore what's going on, and now, even the internet is coming under attack from a few different sides.
When compared to everything else, the Tumblr Plague is bad, but personally, it is not that high on my list of things that are seriously wrong in this world. Of course, I understand that different people are going to be hit harder than me, and I have no intentions of minimizing how it will impact them - artists whose work would be unacceptable under the new regulations were basically given no time to react, and even people whose work should not be flagged down are suffering. So, it makes absolute sense that a lot of people are jumping ship now. After all, the site has been suffering from a variety of different issues, including being plagued by Nazis, and the site has done little to fight back against them, leaving the community leaving very frustrated, rightfully so. But the second that something that impacts the company happens, that's when they choose to crack down (not that I believe child pornography to be acceptable in any way, shape or form - they absolutely should be doing something to make sure that it never appears on their website).
But I do not think that the Tumblr Plague will be the "death" of Tumblr. Will it fundamentally change the way the website works? Yes. Will a lot of people leave with no intention to ever return? I'm sure of this. But a lot of people will remain, as well, since, in all honesty, Tumblr is unique in how it operates, for better or worse. Perhaps, in a few years, a true contender will rise, serving as a true alternative to the website. But for right now, people are left with trying to find a site that suits their needs the best, and for some, that site will still be Tumblr. I'll probably remain on there for a while, going back periodically as I have been for the past few years. But I think, the day is coming when I'll stop visiting Tumblr altogether. Because the truth of the matter is, I never really formed a community on Tumblr.
I think part of the issue I have had with Tumblr is that I want more than what I get with it. For the last few blogs I have started up, I always went in with the mindset that my blog would be a place where I could get creative, record my thoughts in an honest manner, and provide me with a space to have meaningful interactions with those who share my interests. But while I have found people with similar interests that I have been able to form a bond with because we were both on the site, Tumblr itself has not really facilitated any meaningful relationships for me. I rarely talked to someone directly on Tumblr, and when I did, the conversations were typically a couple of short messages sent back and forth. Of course, part of this is simply because I simply stopped trying to talk to people, but I also never really felt like I could open up on Tumblr. I felt more like I was putting on some sort of front for everyone, and while I never lied about who I was, I also felt weirdly inauthentic on that site. Slowly, Tumblr started becoming like Instagram for me - a place where I rarely put out new content, and only like things occasionally.
In some ways, I wish that I could have been part of fandom in the 2000s. Since I only got into fandoms at the end of the 2000s, I missed those initial years of online communities, and I think I might have benefited more from them than I did from Tumblr. I quite enjoyed my time on sites like Neopets and the Nick forums, and for a while, I sorely missed TinierMe. I am not sure what I will find here, but I am hoping that I can find a community on here in a way that I have never been able to on Tumblr. It's interesting being in a space where a lot of the community on an initial viewing appears to be older than me, as I'm used to being in spaces where people are either within my age range or otherwise younger than me. I think it will actually be refreshing, in a sense, to write on a platform like this.
I am not hoping for this to be some new home for me, as I tend not to be all that active whenever I join something, despite how interested I might be, or how involved I am when I initially join something. I know that eventually, I will stop being an active member, and I accept this part of me. But I am hoping that I will find people that I can really connect with because of our similarities. Time will tell what will happen with this account, but I hope to at least make some effort to connect with others.
for a variety of reasons, environmentally, big corporations continue to ignore what's going on, and now, even the internet is coming under attack from a few different sides.
When compared to everything else, the Tumblr Plague is bad, but personally, it is not that high on my list of things that are seriously wrong in this world. Of course, I understand that different people are going to be hit harder than me, and I have no intentions of minimizing how it will impact them - artists whose work would be unacceptable under the new regulations were basically given no time to react, and even people whose work should not be flagged down are suffering. So, it makes absolute sense that a lot of people are jumping ship now. After all, the site has been suffering from a variety of different issues, including being plagued by Nazis, and the site has done little to fight back against them, leaving the community leaving very frustrated, rightfully so. But the second that something that impacts the company happens, that's when they choose to crack down (not that I believe child pornography to be acceptable in any way, shape or form - they absolutely should be doing something to make sure that it never appears on their website).
But I do not think that the Tumblr Plague will be the "death" of Tumblr. Will it fundamentally change the way the website works? Yes. Will a lot of people leave with no intention to ever return? I'm sure of this. But a lot of people will remain, as well, since, in all honesty, Tumblr is unique in how it operates, for better or worse. Perhaps, in a few years, a true contender will rise, serving as a true alternative to the website. But for right now, people are left with trying to find a site that suits their needs the best, and for some, that site will still be Tumblr. I'll probably remain on there for a while, going back periodically as I have been for the past few years. But I think, the day is coming when I'll stop visiting Tumblr altogether. Because the truth of the matter is, I never really formed a community on Tumblr.
I think part of the issue I have had with Tumblr is that I want more than what I get with it. For the last few blogs I have started up, I always went in with the mindset that my blog would be a place where I could get creative, record my thoughts in an honest manner, and provide me with a space to have meaningful interactions with those who share my interests. But while I have found people with similar interests that I have been able to form a bond with because we were both on the site, Tumblr itself has not really facilitated any meaningful relationships for me. I rarely talked to someone directly on Tumblr, and when I did, the conversations were typically a couple of short messages sent back and forth. Of course, part of this is simply because I simply stopped trying to talk to people, but I also never really felt like I could open up on Tumblr. I felt more like I was putting on some sort of front for everyone, and while I never lied about who I was, I also felt weirdly inauthentic on that site. Slowly, Tumblr started becoming like Instagram for me - a place where I rarely put out new content, and only like things occasionally.
In some ways, I wish that I could have been part of fandom in the 2000s. Since I only got into fandoms at the end of the 2000s, I missed those initial years of online communities, and I think I might have benefited more from them than I did from Tumblr. I quite enjoyed my time on sites like Neopets and the Nick forums, and for a while, I sorely missed TinierMe. I am not sure what I will find here, but I am hoping that I can find a community on here in a way that I have never been able to on Tumblr. It's interesting being in a space where a lot of the community on an initial viewing appears to be older than me, as I'm used to being in spaces where people are either within my age range or otherwise younger than me. I think it will actually be refreshing, in a sense, to write on a platform like this.
I am not hoping for this to be some new home for me, as I tend not to be all that active whenever I join something, despite how interested I might be, or how involved I am when I initially join something. I know that eventually, I will stop being an active member, and I accept this part of me. But I am hoping that I will find people that I can really connect with because of our similarities. Time will tell what will happen with this account, but I hope to at least make some effort to connect with others.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 08:05 am (UTC)I think you're right; tumblr will keep going, but not nearly as well or at all trusted. It's all just so tiring, all this crap in the world.
I've never heard of TinierMe. What was it like?
If it's comforting, when I started on LJ most people were older than me, and it's weird being on the other side of that, but really, we're all adults and fans and the age differences sort of vanish after a while.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 10:13 am (UTC)I meant to say this in my other reply to you, but I really like your icon as well. Peggy Carter was one of the first Marvel characters I liked watching the MCU, and Agent Carter was the first live-action show from Marvel that I enjoyed (though I also enjoy Jessica Jones and Legion, and don't mind the Runaways).
It's a little disheartening thinking about how much Tumblr has changed, and how this trend is also reflective of how the internet is changing overall. At the same time, it's nice to see that there are sites like DW that want to combat this issue, so it keeps me somewhat hopeful.
TinierMe was a pretty simple avatar based site with forums where people were able to form small communities. I wasn't really that active there, but it was the site that got me into roleplaying. The site shut down probably five(?) years ago due to copyright issues, though I hadn't really been active on that site for at least a year before that. It was an interesting experience because I had been jumping around between different forum communities (mostly for roleplaying purposes again), and aside from those that were strictly for roleplaying and GaiaOnline (which had and still has its own set of issues), I never really got into other sites like TM and GO. That said, TM definitely had a younger vibe to it and was full of teenagers, partially because the design was more visually appealing and the main functions and items on the site appealing to a younger audience.
Good point. Honestly, over the last few years, I felt more comfortable talking with people who were nearly a decade older than me than talking to those four or five years younger than me in quite a few circumstances. I think the main reason that the age differences caught my eye is because it was something that definitely informed my Tumblr experience. With so many young users on the site and being someone who was an adult in a space full of teenagers, there was a lot of careful navigation when it came to interacting with others. It's nice to hear that these differences won't really matter too much being as the users on this site are primarily adults.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-07 05:41 am (UTC)Honestly, even on tumblr when I joined, people were more willing to engage and to be a part of a community. I think that was probably a carryover from sites like LJ and the text-heavy internet, though. I think that the ease of lurking and scrolling and liking and reblogging kind of let people let down their online social skills, particularly in an era of the mobile app.
I really hope that you succeed in your goal of connecting with others here!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-07 08:34 am (UTC)That's actually pretty interesting. It's a little hard for me to remember what Tumblr was like when I initially joined back in 2012 because I didn't really get too involved at first. I think it was around the time that Homestuck got really big, and I think SuperWhoLock was also a thing that was starting to grow? I do remember that cosplaying was pretty big by then, and things were a lot more visual based than the forums that I used to frequent. But yeah, since then, I was also more of the lurker type.
Thank you! It's definitely going to take some work, but I think this time, unlike before, I'm actually going to take the effort to make it work.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-07 10:00 am (UTC)Change always makes me a bit sad, and I'm going to miss what tumblr was, but then..... change is inevitable, and life without change would suck. I held on to LJ/DW with all ten fingers way after fandom internet had changed and gone tumblr, and I get it, and I never expected there would be a resurgence here because that's not how life works. I'm kind of expecting it to fall over actually, but that's probably my pessimistic side coming out to ruin everything. *stomps on pessimist*
I see why you missed TinierMe. I'm sorry it went :(