One of those days.

[krait]

I'm having an awful week with regards to finding out that fic I love has been hiatus'd/discontinued/abandoned... and I'm not saying anything further, because most of the authors are part of the Tumblr crowd and that seems to be the HQ of I'm A Delicate Snowflake How Dare You Say Anything About My Fic Are You Pressuring Me Everyone's So Mean I Wish All My Readers Were Unable To Communicate With Me At All.

There are several people on Tumblr who don't fall into that category, of course; and I would like to be friends with them/comment to them/babble excited feedback in their virtual ears! But they're on Tumblr, where it's impossible to start a 'conversation' more complex than a 500-character, no-line-separation anonymous ask. *sadfaces*

Also I'm just feeling old, because I still cannot figure out the point of Tumblr -- like, how is it satisfying to just... what, collect a random stream of images and 'reblog this if' memes? What does that do for Tumblr users that I'm not grasping, because to me it's roughly analogous to saying that your hobby is cutting random pages out of magazines. Not articles, or not mostly; not special-interest magazines on topics you enjoy; just grabbing a big handful of random magazines from a dentist's office recycling bin and pulling out random pages to keep. Some stuff's from 2008, some stuff's fun to read, but most of it's just advertising or out-of-context pictures without context. And you spend hours doing this, then for a break you go look through the cutout piles of twenty other people. [/oldfan]

I suspect a third of this annoyance I'm feeling is really me redirecting my frustration at my current painting project, and/or the tension of fighting with the new laptop for hours to get everything set up and copied over and reset and such. Doesn't make me feel better, though.

Comments

[sylvaine]

I spent a couple of months doing basically nothing but tumblr! I have since gotten bored and moved aback to DW, but I do understand some of the appeal.
- much like twitter, it's very immediate.
- it doesn't require as much brain power as text posts on traditional journaling sites!
- endless stream of pretty!
- you get caught up in the general fannishness squee - like, it's nice to see that you're not the only one flailing about [thing]!

Anyway that's how I used it. It's not really much use if you're not a fan of visual media much! And it can get really tiring because it feels like you HAVE to check your dash every day. Possibly multiple times a day. Because everyone posts so much and OMG what if you *miss something*?!

Also :|||||| at you're favorite fics being abandoned. I hate when that happens.

[krait]

Heh, well, it's probably very telling that I took one look at Twitter and knew instantly that it wasn't for me. 140 characters? That's not even an entire sentence for me!

And I guess the 'endless stream of pretty' just doesn't... do anything for me? At least not compared to the frustration that builds when I want to A) comment on the pretty, or B) not see the same bleedin' pic twenty-five times because the person keeps 'replying' to something said under it!

And since most of my flailing is textual, I suppose I just can't feel the squee on Tumblr. When I like something, I talk about it! Not just, y'know, look at pictures of it. But then, you're right too about the 'limited to visual media' thing: a lot of my fandoms aren't very visual! I'd be super-screwed if I wanted to squee about, say, the next Foreigner novel or my recent re-read of the Chanur series. To squee with me about that, people have to type. :D (Dear Tumblr people, it's not hard, I promise! Just, y'know, move your fingers! It's probably easier than posting an image!)

I hate when that happens.

Yeah, I... I really do! There's a reason I never used to read WIP things; Homestuck being such a new fandom, though, practically everything's a WIP! But learning that Hemostuck's now on indefinite hiatus was a pretty huge blow, and I ran off to DW to sulk and feel like a fandom grampa, grumbling about kids-these-days and haven't-got-the-gumption-we-had-back-when. :D

And SeasonsStuck is indefinitely hiatus'd, too; and 'Jewel in the Scarlet Crown' appears to have been abandoned; and 'Isolation'; and...

A bit of good news today, though -- I was beginning to worry that 'Season' had been abandoned, but it just updated! :D

[sylvaine]

Yeah, I see your point! If you're not much of a picture person then most of tumblr is utterly *useless*. :-) (Though people do post some really interesting meta there, too! Which is kind of a shame, because it's so difficult to have an actual discussion on tumblr.)

Yay for Season updating! \o/

[krait]

Yes! The other huge problem with Tumblr is that, when something really cool does happen there, it's impossible to find it! :P