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

[sahiya]

I don't get Tumblr either. It looks cool for some things, but for posting fic? No thanks. And it was recently brought home to me just how drastically different Tumblr fandom and LJ fandom are. Someone who was used to Tumblr fandom took over an LJ comm and eep. Talk about culture shock.

[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.

[cumuluscastle]

As an artist I find a constant stream of attractive images to be very inspiring. But then I have my tumblr set up to my liking and there aren't many reblog this memes or advertisements that I see. But it is very hard to communicate with anyone on it and I don't think I'd find it satisfying if I was doing a lot of writing/reading on it.

[tropicsbear]

For me the appeal of Tumblr is seeing the fanart/GIFs relevant to my fandoms/official art of my fandoms. Plus, depending on your fandom, it's a good way to get updates sometimes.

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

THIIIS. I've seen some people make a big fuss out of deleting their account and saying goodbye to all the people they've met on Tumblr, just because they received a couple of critiques or someone reblogged their stuff and added how they don't really agree with the OP's POV. I mean, I get you'd be upset or irritated, but WTF it's the Internet.

[blnchflr]

What I understand of tumblr is that there's very little communication, so I have no interest. But I definitely sometimes think I'll soon be left almost completely alone in livejournal-clone-fork-based corner of fandom :)

[feuervogel]

I don't use tumblr for fanfic or meta, just for looking at pictures. Today I reblogged: a video of the free kick that got us a draw in yesterday's match and a gifset of Gollum writhing captioned "favorite character is dead." Not much today.

Sometimes I reblog cute animal pictures, cool photos, political stuff, boobs don't work that way, and the Hawkeye Project. I don't mind the repetition--I can scroll. (I also scroll past the huge gifsets of football teams I don't follow or actively hate. I suppose I could install tumblr savior and make my life easier...)

[edenfalling]

What I use Tumblr for is basically to read supplementary world-building blogs for stories/writers I already like, look at pretty/fun art, read random interesting stuff people post links to, and sometimes get updates on fics I'm following faster than AO3 can process and email me about said updates.

Also I like Tumblr's "like" button because I am a massively lazy person and appreciate a way to say "hey, this is neat, thanks for posting it" without having to actually type those words over and over. Plus you can do the equivalent of giving kudos for each chapter update on WIPs, whereas AO3 will not let you give kudos more than once to any single fic regardless of how many chapters it has, so it's also a useful way to signal to a writer that people are, in fact, still reading a multi-chapter story... again without requiring me to actually type up a comment when I have nothing to say beyond "hey, still reading this."

[fandork]

Re: Tumblr, Hemostuck

I feel you, bro. I feel you.