It’s quite likely no coincidence that that most ‘mismanaged’ and least profitable social media site is also the one that turned out to be most amenable to the formation of actual communities
To clarify, Tumblr is indeed horribly mismanaged, but notably, it’s mismanaged both in ways that harm us (e.g. doing little about pornbots, nazis, etc.) and ways that have greatly benefited us – not asking for real names, hiding our follower counts, a chronologically-sorted dashboard, etc. are big draws, but in the eyes of other social media monarchs, they look like unforgivable mistakes. If I don’t have to give my real name, that’s that much less information to sell to advertisers. If posts are listed chronologically, Tumblr can’t shove the posts of ‘influencers’ in front of me willy-nilly. Tumblr was a ‘success’ because it was too poorly managed to sufficiently atomize us, and so we actually had conversations and communities instead of being the best products for advertisers.
as someone who wrote my dissertation on tumblr and community: consigned. there’s a reason people talk about facebook as a tool for keeping up with people they already know, and tumblr as a place for forming new connections, and it’s that where other social media is specifically built to profit off of sticking as many virtual tendrils into your offline life as possible, this place lets you generally just be the person you came here to be. the fact that tumblr has built such a great space for community by making decisions that are ultimately bad for their business is a great illustration of how the negative social impacts of social media giants are because of capitalism, not inherent in the category of technology.
the animation in this is so mouth-wateringly good… why can’t animation companies just make movies look like this all the time. please. look how beautiful animation can be
i just had the weirdest moment, i was feeling my front teeth with my tongue because they’re the tiniest bit crooked, and then i had the thought “i’ll check if they’re also crooked in my other mouth” and then i realized to my shock and confusion that i have only one mouth, leading me to believe that in a past life i was a terrible monster with two mouths
A few months ago, I thought to myself “Mmm I’m so tired… how much longer in this one again?” and I knew instinctively what I meant by ‘this one’ was this body and this life. I then spend a few wide-eyed moments having an identity/existential crisis like how many times have I been on this earth to have such an instinctive response to being bone-weary to my soul? No one can really answer, especially not me.
In July 2017, one night I woke up around 2 a.m and blurted out in a quasi professorial voice “the Equinox Bird has infinite beaks, all in the wrong direction, and infinite eyes” and I don’t know what the fuck I was dreaming about but it still haunts me. It seemed like a very important information for a few seconds.
I have long said that in order for any comedy to truly succeed as a story, there has to be meat beneath the jokes. There has to be that moment when it is not funny any more.
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