Just to be clear, that’s not what I was arguing… I think you know that, but I want to make sure.
A fair bit of that seems like it’s people using academic ideas that came out of Queer theory and gender studies who have no idea how they actually work. But I wonder how much of this is the squeaky wheel getting all of the attention? At the risk of saying not all tumblrs, #notalltumblrs! What is the ratio to these sorts of tumblrs versus ones about other things. And what is the Tumblr in Action Reddit about - what’s the point of the forum in the first place? To discuss tumblr or to make fun of it?
I think it’s less that and more dogging something specifically because it is connected to teenage girls, more like “how dare teen girls try and express themselves except in what ways we deem acceptable”.
To make fun of it. Usually in ways that would be considered bullying offline and in ways that are often sexist or racist (both, sometimes, depending on the tumblrite they’re going after in that particular post) just for the sake of being sexist and racist.
Oh, sure, I do think there are a lot of people who are annoyed with the “culture” of tumblr, either the largely young girl demographic or the “social justice warrior” (I don’t like the term, but I have no problem with most of the people)…
I just can’t stand the functionality and I needed to take the opportunity to gripe about it.
Making fun of oddballs and the easily offended, to be honest. One of the top posts right now is of someone who got offended because they thought their white friend was wearing a hijab, but it ended up being an icepack tied to their head because the person had their wisdom teeth removed. Or people who think that being thin is a privilege akin to white privilege.
Some of the crap they post on there makes me cringe, though, because a lot of the readership ends up pointing out that, hey, the Tumblr user actually has a point. And some stuff would make Boingers angry, I’m sure.
And honestly they have a habit of taking tumblrs that actually do know what they’re talking about and mocking them, too, for using ‘words no-one understands’ that are really just the proper academic terms for what they’re discussing.
They also devolve from hating on tumblr to hating on people really quickly. Overweight, female, transgender or intersex…if you’re outside reddit’s usual young straight cisgender white guy demographics and post about not being a straight white cisgender guy, tumblrinaction will (usually quite ineptly) try to punish you for daring to have an opinion that’s different from theirs.
Like many parts of reddit, /r/tumblrinaction stopped being about what the subreddit name says it is long ago, and now seems to be about proving that, given the opportunity, Redditors can be even worse than 4chan’s users.
I doubt it. Women, and young women specifically, tend to use social networking sites more (see e.g. the same report you linked). Part of the hate might stem specifically from the feminism/social justice angle (i.e. bigots don’t like that stuff). I guess, opinionated young people tend to make more divisive/incendiary posts.
Going back to something…sheesh, I like how we went from “Here’s how this Tumblr conventon ended up being a disaster,” to “Quit shitting on teenage girls” in nothing flat. Yeah, apparently Tumblr is popular among teenage girls. That doesn’t mean that pointing out that supporters got taken for $17,000 is misogyny. Do we really want to build a brave new world where women are exempt from criticism?
Some parts have gone past the point where it could be attributable to severe incompetence and on to the point where someone is definitely a con artist (not saying everyone or even most of the people involved in organizing were pulling a con job).
None of this is a reflection on the attendees or the general audience. Unfortunately, the perception of Tumblr has a tendency (as with anything perceived in our culture to be for or by women or teenage girls) to focus the attention negatively on the victims (in a culture which is already pretty big on victim blaming as it is). It can be hard for an outsider to the Tumblr culture to get an idea what’s going on there.
Much of the coverage has been pretty mocking toward participants. It’s not unreasonable to bring that up or to try to put the kibosh on it.
Right or wrong, if I had a financial emergency, I have more confidence that Tumblr folks would see me through it than any other social media site I’ve ever been on. It’s not exaggerating to say “that’s what we do.” We bail each other out.
Whatever Tumblr’s cultural failings may be, our willingness to help others in need isn’t, I think, a part of that failure. Could we as a group use a bit more skepticism? Yeah, probably.
The people who take advantage, though, are kicking puppies.
Yes, the only complaints I tend to hear about Tumblr is from artists/photographers whose work is being endlessly reblogged without credit (or credit being given to whoever first put it on Tumblr).
that’s probably my fault (well, no it’s totally my fault), because I was pointing out that the comments on the stories about it quickly devolved into shitting on teenaged girls… I meant it as an aside and it got turned into a long back and forth between @retchdog. I still think being shitty to teen girls sucks.
Sorry that I get pissed that young women and teen girls are given such a tough time. I don’t really understand why that makes ME the bad guy, but apparently it does. As the parent of a pre-teen girl, this stuff matters to me, because given my daughter’s cultural interests, these are likely to be issues she will have to deal with on a regular basis. I wish that I didn’t have to defend that, but apparently, I do.
No, I don’t think women are exempt from criticism, but we still don’t know exactly what went wrong or who is at fault. And as @Ignatius pointed out, they were the primary victims here, not you, not the people on a sub-reddit dedicated to mocking tumblr, but the people on tumblr who wanted this to take place were the ones who got screwed. How about we not turn that into a meditation on how dumb teen girls are? I’ve been hearing that shit all my life and I’m really fed the fuck up with it. I want something better out of our culture for my daughter… sorry if that hurts your sensibilities, but really, this isn’t about you. None of it, actually is about you. You weren’t hurt in anyway by this whole debacle. You aren’t hurt when I bitch and complain about sexism or racism. You aren’t hurt when people post things on tumblr that you think is dumb. So why are you here lecturing me about tolerance?
What is the ratio to these sorts of tumblrs versus ones about other things. And what is the Tumblr in Action Reddit about - what’s the point of the forum in the first place? To discuss tumblr or to make fun of it?
