Good target, bad faith.
Dec. 9th, 2021 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
general_radixNot sure I want to go on a big "actual reasons to dislike tumblr" tear just yet, in part because there's no way to do so without directly addressing a certain bear that I try not to poke. But I've had a related thought looping around me head that I want to get down somewhere.
Back in 2018, I got about halfway through a long, angry post by a bitter ex-LiveJournaler (as in, this person was literally a long-time LJ user before LJ became non-viable). This person described the problems with LJ's culture circa the mid-late '00s and came thiiiiiiis close to admitting that its culture was toxic as hell and not something we should try to revive...before pulling a one-eighty into "BUT AT LEAST IT WAS STABLE!" and whining about the "chaos" of tumblr. At which point I noped out, because no one who can outline that many problems with LJ's culture from the time and still not admit that it was terrible has anything worthwhile to say.
What insights have a few years of separation from tumblr given me, in light of that? Well, I still think that rant was stupid and in bad faith (IIRC it tied back into "survivors don't want me reducing their trauma to a fun kink, WAAAAAAH"), but tumblr does have serious issues with its semi-permeability and lack of stable community spaces. Not that LJ and DW are water-tight, but on tumblr, you're getting exposed to shitstorms whether you like it or not--the only way to visibly reply to someone is through reblogs, and there's no way to effectively "contain" anything (as many a roleplayer on tumblr discovered the hard way, I bet).
Plus, well...it's hard to have decent fan communities when the prevailing discourse is "all fandom is bad, fuck you".
One of the nice things about Pillowfort is that it was designed from the start to combat this: posts have actual dedicated comments sections, making it a little easier for things to stay put. Proper communities (and not "here's a normal tumblog that mimics a community") help, too. And DW is still here, though as bemoaned several times here already, activity dropped back to pre-Botched Porn Purge levels--goddamn impatient social media users, grumble curse mutter...
I think Bitter Ex-LJ User blew past a lot of valid concerns and landed right in "it's a moral failure on the part of The Damn Kids(TM) that social media platforms that they didn't create and have no control over are designed to be hostile to privacy and stability, and we should all return to the platform that I explained right in this very post was a toxic drama magnet". Shit like this is why I was so hesitant to move to DW until I had to.
Back in 2018, I got about halfway through a long, angry post by a bitter ex-LiveJournaler (as in, this person was literally a long-time LJ user before LJ became non-viable). This person described the problems with LJ's culture circa the mid-late '00s and came thiiiiiiis close to admitting that its culture was toxic as hell and not something we should try to revive...before pulling a one-eighty into "BUT AT LEAST IT WAS STABLE!" and whining about the "chaos" of tumblr. At which point I noped out, because no one who can outline that many problems with LJ's culture from the time and still not admit that it was terrible has anything worthwhile to say.
What insights have a few years of separation from tumblr given me, in light of that? Well, I still think that rant was stupid and in bad faith (IIRC it tied back into "survivors don't want me reducing their trauma to a fun kink, WAAAAAAH"), but tumblr does have serious issues with its semi-permeability and lack of stable community spaces. Not that LJ and DW are water-tight, but on tumblr, you're getting exposed to shitstorms whether you like it or not--the only way to visibly reply to someone is through reblogs, and there's no way to effectively "contain" anything (as many a roleplayer on tumblr discovered the hard way, I bet).
Plus, well...it's hard to have decent fan communities when the prevailing discourse is "all fandom is bad, fuck you".
One of the nice things about Pillowfort is that it was designed from the start to combat this: posts have actual dedicated comments sections, making it a little easier for things to stay put. Proper communities (and not "here's a normal tumblog that mimics a community") help, too. And DW is still here, though as bemoaned several times here already, activity dropped back to pre-Botched Porn Purge levels--goddamn impatient social media users, grumble curse mutter...
I think Bitter Ex-LJ User blew past a lot of valid concerns and landed right in "it's a moral failure on the part of The Damn Kids(TM) that social media platforms that they didn't create and have no control over are designed to be hostile to privacy and stability, and we should all return to the platform that I explained right in this very post was a toxic drama magnet". Shit like this is why I was so hesitant to move to DW until I had to.
