Tumblr

That happens a lot, I found. Just look at the Steven Universe fandom or the Undertale one... :/

edited 4th Aug '17 8:46:14 AM by DrunkenNordmann

Yeah, unfortunately there's a lot of younger teenagers on Tumblr that will take good things way too far. When it comes to a fandom built on being a safe space for diversity, that often takes the form of "If you're going against my view of diversity, no matter how harmless, minor, or honestly mistaken your actions may be, I will protect my safe space via threats, harassment, public callouts, and just generally destroying the sense of safety in this fandom for everyone who doesn't share my views 100%!"

Probably because, now that casting wider nets of representation is "in" (and in general it's good that it gets attention), it attracts a lot of selfish, self-righteous bandwagoners who don't actually care about progressiveness and just want an easy excuse to bully other people to vent their sense of id.

I don't think it's that pluralism in itself necessarily breeds this mindset, despite what rightwingers may claim, but it's the "hot" new thing right now, so there's social capital in aggressively presenting yourself as "inclusive". I would bed that once social progress has been made in most of these areas, you can bet these types will find new excuses to do the same shit. Before it was how canon you wanted to argue your ship was regardless of representation that tended to instigate this kind of bullying.

edited 4th Aug '17 12:11:39 PM by AlleyOop

I honestly find people who complain about social justice and political correctness to be confusing. Yes, I do find feminist/anti-racist/whatever extremism disturbing, but I find ALL extremism disturbing. After all, what’s so bad about justice and correctness? I’d say that we should just flat-out avoid using slurs/language meant to offend people based around their ethnicity/sex/sexuality/gender identity/religion/mental or physical conditions because it’s treating people with respect. I know that some people advocating for social justice take it too far, but unless they blow up a building or something, why should you complain about what they say?

Why shouldn't they?

They don't have to go so far as physical violence to inflict serious harm on people. If people are being targeted for trumped up harassment crusades and verbal abuse in the name of fauxcial justice, as frequently happens in modern-day fandoms, then they and their friends are entirely in their right to complain.

edited 15th Mar '18 5:37:15 PM by AlleyOop

There's a difference between that and the usual bullshit complaints about "SJW's" that permeate any discussion about Tumblr. Most of the people who harass people about shipping don't really care about social justice most of the time. What Bismuth seems to be saying, from what I'm gathering, is about people who talk about genuinely offensive shit and then get attacked for it.

edited 15th Mar '18 11:59:58 PM by AdricDePsycho

Word. It’s honestly so frustrating especially since these anti-SJWs are so vehement in their hatred that they refuse to think about the fact that real people are involved. Social Justice is basically a non-left winger’s boogeyman.

The worst part about it is that this kind of stuff isn’t just limited to Tumblr. It’s also become a part of its negative reputation off-site (never mind the fact that Twitter also gets just as political on a regular basis). Reddit tends to react very violently to anything that even looks Tumblr-related because the worst stereotypes of SJWs are constantly parroted there without question. r/ TumblrInAction is one of the most toxic subreddits ever (I know this from experience).

edited 16th Mar '18 3:54:54 AM by LegitimateIdiot

The funny thing about political correctness, is that until this very current decade, it was always a tool for the right to censor everything that went against the "wholesome American values".

The earliest example of political corretcness in American media would be the Civil War movies, that went out of its way to avoid offending the South, and thus contributed to this horrendous culture of Confederate apologism we see today.

That being said, Tumblr is a cesspool where mob harrassment thrives. But it's not fair to blame social justice for it, because it's far, faaaaar from the only thing you might get harrassed over. And it's far from the only such cesspool, most of which have nothing to do with social justice.

edited 16th Mar '18 4:09:53 AM by Luminosity

I mostly blame the mechanics in how tumblr works. The thing that lets things spread quickly, but makes impossible to create any sort of cohesive culture. Any post you make could be seen by someone unintended.

Really? Then how do you explain that the Russian propaganda machine read Tumblr correctly and created at least 84 accounts (that's how many Tumblr shut down when they figured something stinks) aimed directly at the social-justice-loving, African-American left-wing crowd?

I mean, seriously. Tumblr posted a list of the accounts they deleted, all following the same themes of "Black Lives Matter" and celebration of blackness. Compare that to obviously right-wing, white-supremacist, MAGA bullshit theme of their ops on Twitter and Facebook.

Here are some account names I got in a warning e-mail from Tumblr:

• bellygangstaboo
• blackness-by-your-side
• black-galaxy-magic
• postingwhileblack
• ghettablasta
• honestinjun
• nativewolveshere
• blvckcommunity
• classylgbthomie
• swagintherain
• blacklivesmatterusa

edited 28th Mar '18 8:49:34 AM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

...that I am correct and that tumblr mechanics allowed information to spread without a lot of checks and balances, and it took an investigation for it to be revealed?

Tumblr does have multiple cohesive subcultures within it (it is a fandom space, after all). Evidently those “Russian hackers” wanted break into the left-leaning, interested in social justice crowd that is quite prominent there, which would make sense if they were looking for a way to radicalise people.

Your summarisation of tumblr’s mechanics not allowing for fact-checking is accurate, though. A post with false information would already be widely spread by the time someone disproves it, and not everyone would be able to see the correction.

Unfortunately the Russian agents seem to have done too good of a job, because now lots of people in the left blogosphere are angry about Tumblr for booting these people out instead of members of the ultra right-wing userbase (would be a fair complaint if they weren't trying to treat this as a zero-sum game or also doing the next two at the same time), trying to downplay the Russian agents' actions because "it's just how Realpolitik goes, Russia is in their rights and also fuck the US", or still mad at Hillary and claiming the Tumblr siteowners are biased towards her for doing this.

It's entirely possible those people might also be still undercover Russian agents themselves, but I've been on that site long enough to know it's full of people who are legitimately that stupid.

edited 28th Mar '18 2:12:27 PM by AlleyOop

The word "Realpolitik" is so frequently abused it's going to need a domestic violence shelter.

Russia doesn't have that big of a Tumblr culture, though... any Russian agent in there will be obviously outed before they come up with something to blend in with, like "I'm a fictionkin trans Bakura"(it's real and I've seen this real person harrassing people).

edited 28th Mar '18 2:20:59 PM by Luminosity

Legitimate: Subcultures definitely exist, but compared to other websites, I think the walls aren't nearly as rigid. Like if you read of fandom drama of old, it could involve different live journal groups feuding, or different forum website feudings, or a split in community.

Here, it's divided by tags, but it's oh so easy to slip into other cultures without even intending to, as opposed to the more intentional nature that some other sites had

They managed to bamboozle both sides so hard that the dumbest on both left and right bought in like it was Poyais and tulip bubble combined.

Damn. Russia's scary.

So porting over discussion from this thread:

I think you just described every social media platform.

Yeah, I find it a bit ridiculous to try to paint the whole site and/or its userbase with such a broad brush. To be blunt, pretty much all "subcultures" are toxic since people are people, and people are the worst. This isn't to say that certain communities aren't founded on toxic ideals, and are therefore inherently toxic, but as pointed out, singling out websites like Twitter or Tumblr over some users is missing the forest for the trees.

Edit: This is divorced from the privacy and ethics issues directly from the teams of these social media platforms by the way.

edited 1st May '18 10:57:16 AM by Kakuzan

Tumblr has a specific variety of toxicity unique to its formatting. And that is that it is VERY hard to create an echo chamber. We tend to think that's a good thing, but some of the bitterness in tumblr can be attributed to the fact that it's very hard to isolate. So the only way to not see something is to chase it off the site. This has its own issues.

All social media sites have unique issues based on how it was constructed, and that's one of tumblr.

I can see that being a problem, though Tumblr being bad for isolated spaces is ironic considering its reputation. I pretty much never use Tumblr since the format is weird, though all of these platforms seem to be counterintuitive in some sense.

edited 1st May '18 11:03:43 AM by Kakuzan

I just use Tumblr for the hentai Re blogs myself.

Uh huh

I do feel like tumblr has special kind of self congratulatory vibe to it though regardless of the subject whether its fandom or politics or both ._. Like, it sort of becomes weird form of echo chamber were everyone is like "I so really agree!" and then if somebody disagrees everyone gets angry about person who disagreed. Like, sure all other social media have self righteous or obsessed people as well, but I think tumblr reblogging and commenting makes it easier to create chain of people congratulating each other for how much you agree with them

So in other words, tumblr has weird quality of creating isolated spaces, but having enough of leak that someone can unknowingly step into them and then get ganged up upon for being outsider. Also shows that people who get into echo chambers seem to gain temper issues when forced to interact outside of the chamber :p

edited 1st May '18 11:26:36 AM by SpookyMask