i agree that tumblr has gotten somewhat worse over the years, but my own experiences haven't been as bad as this article suggests. i am not really involved or interested in specifically fandom-type content, though, and that's what this article seems to really heavily focus on

i feel compelled to defend tumblr because the only difference between tumblr and twitter is that journalists and other people with social cachet (at least social cachet that exists outside of tumblr) (and i use that term for lack of a better one) use twitter

while i completely understand and more often than not agree with negative descriptions of tumblr i think that often the way people dismiss it is gendered/racialised/etc in the sense that people view it as the SJW den of iniquity, where modern thinking around gender/transness was birthed. and obviously there are bad takes coming out of tumblr but i feel like we dont have this perception of sites like, idk, reddit (which i feel people sort of perceive as sort of obnoxious home for reply guys but nothing worse than that) or like even in the last few years 4chan??? obviously this is all based on my standpoint as a person who uses some sites and follows some people.

idk what my point really is. i suppose i just want people to not dismiss tumblr out of hand, because in some ways, doing so backs up years of misogynist freakery around tumblr as this hellpit where the tendrils of cultural marxism creep into internet society

Reading this is pretty curious because I sorta drifted onto Tumblr not for fandom but because it seemed like it was like the non-discussion parts of Reddit without the shit, or rather, you could filter out the shit somewhat effectively. When I was starting to use Tumblr, I liked Reddit most for its nice places for "porniverse" (great pictures of whatever from architecture to animals), learning focused subs from /r/askphilosophy to /r/languagelearning and some humor. The first and the last things were pretty well served by Tumblr and still is, but I think the leak of energy out of Tumblr has been noticeable.

And the alternatives to Tumblr have gotten better from my perspective. As much as I don't really like a lot of Instagram bullshit, it's probably the better platform for finding aesthetic pictures when you just have an acute need to see a field of cosmos flowers and Twitter seems somewhat less dysfunctional in the end and it's actually possible to interact there.

Tumblr is pretty much the first platform I've used for fandom and that usage has really decayed something fierce much like the article says. There really is something on the structural side of the service that causes much of the issues. The privacy options don't make much sense especially if you're creating a blog that's meant to be visible to non-members. Which is sad, because I'd love to have a little blog that's easy to set up and trivial to run for uncomplicated content, without the expectation of much social media engagement or setting or some Wordpress shit.