Uhh. So. Maybe a thread where we can discuss/share the things tumblr taught us that are actually wrong or just general bewildering experiences and perhaps validate each other that our current opinions are actually correct and so on. I am actually someone who ended up here because of a friend, even though I have been off tumblr since dec 2014 when I finally flipped and deleted both my fandom and my sj blog. Haven't looked back since. Being here has helped me to see how many people there are like me, who have been hurt by tumblr's various problematic (haha see what I did there) ways of behaving and seeing the world, and it has also helped me to realise that all the time that I was questioning the things people were saying, that I was right. I've just felt like I've sort of been getting my tumblrrecovery over other people's threads and I don't want to keep doing that. Feel free to move if not the right place.
ahh, this is the thread for me i also had a period of time where i was sucked into the tumblr culture and had to delete after a while because it started to become unhealthy for me one of the most interesting things i learned in tumblr-recovery was the word "problematic" and how most people are misusing it when i was like 15 on tumblr, not knowing any background about social justice every time my friends would say something is problematic i actually just though "this is something evil/detrimental to society" and it could be any seemingly small thing, so i was terrified of everything i did and asking if it was "a problem" which is the common definition of the word problematic "problematic" would mean being cut off from my friends like a tumor before my evil ideas (which i had no clue of, and had to be told by others) could infect them, but in reality the way "problematic" is supposed to be used is just "something that needs to be examined further & MIGHT reveal some basis in fucked up ideas" https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/althusser/index.htm http://www.trevorhoppe.com/blog/archives/2010/02/what_does_it_me.html learning this helped me get rid of some of the yucky tumblr is right/i'm always wrong/i need to always be afraid of tumblr/i could be evil and only tumblr would know conditioning i had picked up cause in reality? the people that are so convinced they can tell you what's right and wrong haven't even done the research into their own terminology that i learned about in a simple google search that i grudgingly decided to do after 5 years of being afraid of what i would see they don't even research their own shit...! they don't care! they just want a club to bludgeon people with. they don't even understand it. so no, they don't hold the moral high ground over you and in fact you probably take social justice more seriously than them! ain't that some shit huh
tumblr basically was and is hell on my anxiety and motivation to Make Things, mostly 'cause how people constantly go about saying shit's problematic and therefore evil like i end up constantly worrying that people will look my art, fic and/or opinions and declare me Problematic and my ability to do shit in fandom will be Ruined Forever also, it's really sad when i see other people with anxiety and stuff get crushed by the tumblr machine, maybe not in the same ways or by the same things but nonetheless... yeah... and i want to help them but at the same time, i don't wanna push, i don't wanna patronize and i worry that they won't take me seriously anyway so yeah... that really makes me hate tumblr fandom was better in the 2000s, back before the sjws, when people mostly fought over ships and didn't bring this shit into it like i'd take a billion fanpeople doing the 2000s fandom misogyny (bashing of girl characters for interfering in ships or just existing) thing over a billion fanpeople doing the fucking 2010s sjw thing i mean, i hated 2000s fandom misogyny and was glad to see it go but... what replaced it (and all similar shit) is much worse
and like, tumblr just has this way of sucking you in, making you believe it's nice and sweet and going to Save The World... then when you realize it has your claws in you, that it's hurting you and other people, it's too late, you're in too fucking deep, your friends are in too fucking deep and and and there's nothing you can do but go somewhere that's Not Tumblr can't fight the tide when it's that much stronger than you and you just... lose hope yeah...
haha with tumblr i have this cycle where i get really mad or sad, bottle it up, explode spectacularly and then redo the cycle again which basically was what happened there saw this thread and was like... oop! here goes the volcano! 'cause that's what this thread is for, i assume also this thread would be good in fine imported drama, i think i see that as the subforum for talking about tumblr and its fucked upness
To file under bewildering experience: that thing where when you're looking at the notes on a post, and it shows when people have reblogged it, but it only links to the reblog (and not the blog itself) if the reblogger has added something to the post? Bewildering, and also spectacularly unhelpful when I want to look at tags on reblogs of an old post. ...And in another line, I rarely, if ever, experienced feelings of anxiety relating to other people's opinions of me until I found Tumblr. Now I get them fairly frequently! Whee.
@Elaienar yep, that is frustrating haha yeah my anxiety got really bad around when i first got tumblr (still is really bad, btw) which could've been a coincidence 'cause puberty was also going on back then but... it's starting seem less and less like one
Well, I was twenty-three by the time I was active on Tumblr, so it definitely wasn't puberty for me! And I seriously doubt that encountering Tumblr during puberty would make things less awful, so... yeah.
oh god, I just started thinking about me and tumblr when I was 12 and just want to shudder all over. gah. I was 22. even then I internalised so much guilt, even as I felt growing resentment towards all these people who were saying I was a cracker and not to take it personally because then you are a terrible cracker, and so on and so forth. ugggggggggggggh.
I was taught that any majority opinion is unwanted, and also that wearing clothing from a different culture is appopriation. And some other bs I since struck from my brain. It damanged some friendships, and I went on an unfollowing spree to cut the most egregious shit from my dashboard, because those friendships were more important, and it went flat-out unhealthy. So much anger. Tumblr has some good, but you need to be very, very careful, and have an educated opinion or people with educated opinions and reality-checks (Luka's brigade was a huge reality check for me.)
I was trying to explain to my family earlier that yes, there are really people out there who think you're a bad person simply for disagreeing with them. This was a completely foreign concept to her. Unfortunately now Tumblr is "teaching" people that this is not only normal, it is to be expected, and you, too, are horrible, and in turn others are horrible for disagreeing with you. I realized that I'd had an IRL friend like that and I thought she was horrible. Turning around to realize that I was once on a website with thousands of people who think like that in my direction is. Not.
i only very briefly and mildly bought into any of the tumblr sj stuff, mostly because at the time i didn't have the spoons to think things through or boundary up. as soon as i got some of my irl shit handled (cortisone injections for my arthritis, antidepressant that works, etc) my head cleared and i was like, "wait, this is obnoxious as shit, i'm not playing anymore." like, yeah, people get mad at me for not playing along (see also: somebody recently called me out for being 'transphobic' because idk i refused to quit reblogging march eridan art a year ago or sth?) but the truth is, they get EVEN MADDER if you TRY to play along, because it is impossible to do it correctly! it's kind of... designed to be impossible? because a) it makes no sense, b) it's totally emotional, c) it's totally subjective, d) questioning is forbidden, and e) it is the tool of abusers and manipulators who don't want their leverage taken away, so they will freak the fuck OUT on anyone within the game who starts to push back, but they don't bother with anyone outside the game. buuuut there's another way tumblr got me. i have sensory processing issues like whoa. and cognitive overload problems. the wheels of my brain grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine -- i have to fully process every single bit of information that comes my way, or else exert a great deal of willpower to wrench my mind off the topic. and tumblr is the information equivalent of connecting the outlet of a shopvac directly to my frontal lobe and then running the nozzle along a hardware store shelf. i might get flower seeds, i might get carpet tacks! who knows! i just know i'm going to have to take it all! so i am on vacation from tumblr rn mostly. i'm logged in on my rp-only account, and every so often i check my close friends' blogs, but there is no dash to scroll. i've been feeling... remarkably clearheaded since i did that. :D
