On that Tumblr subscription service thing

[soc_puppet]

So Tumblr's offering a new subscription service, where you can pay them a few bucks a month and they won't show you ads. I think this is a good move for them! It has plenty of potential, and it's a lot better than Posts+; the tip jar option they floated a little while ago wasn't too bad either, aside from the whole "all or nothing" bit, where you couldn't turn it off for posts that would get you dinged for intellectual property theft.

That said, I'm rather torn about whether I'll be subscribing myself. I do spend a lot of time on Tumblr, but that's mostly because the people whose content I want to follow are mostly on Tumblr rather than my preferred platform. I understand the value of being able to share images, sound, and video with a wide audience, I just don't know if I personally like the methods of content aggregation.

In short, I... don't know if I would mind if Tumblr went down. I'd be a little upset if it happened, say, tomorrow, without me having a way to back up the stuff I've added since the porn ban, and I'd feel bad for the people who really love it there, and I'd feel extra bad for anyone who'd have to scramble to find new ways of making money or any friends they've made there, but I ultimately prefer Dreamwidth. I don't know if I want Tumblr to stick around enough to pay a minimum of $40 USD per year for the privilege.

Methinks I've got some weighing of priorities to do.

Comments

[soc_puppet]

Yeah, Tumblr is, in general, a little too fast and a little too "shallow" for me. I mean, it's not that the people there are necessarily shallow? It's that the culture there doesn't encourage the same kind of in-depth discussions or back-and-forth that happen on sites with threaded comments or other forum-style interaction. And because things move and especially spread so fast, it can be hard for someone to make a meaningful apology or correction and have other people see it and take it seriously. I definitely understand that people who like sharing images, videos, gifs, and the like enjoy Tumblr a lot, because it's optimized for sharing those things, but it's that very reason that means they need a lot of money to work with, and not a lot of Tumblr-user-approved ways to get that money.

I downloaded my whole journal in December 2018, but I need to dig up the steps of how I did it so I can do it again. Tumblr's native download option apparently stalls out after something like a few thousand posts, and I have... more than that.

[type_wild]

I suppose it's the inevitable result of social media taking over the internet and fandom with it: the visual is more interesting than the verbal. This is how people interact online these days, and it's hardly surprising that it's impacting fandom both as the old guard change our ways, and the new people coming in grew up on an internet that is wildly different from what ours used to be. Tumblr was designed to be visual, and fandom somehow manhandled it into being semi-functional for verbal exchanges - but yeah, far from ideas, compared to forums or old-styled journals. And I'm frankly kind of vary about posting anything that can be controversial over there, since I have already had posts passed around as bad takes they were never meant as :/

I haven't followed tumblr's history too closely, but my impression has always been that it's a bit of a problem child in that it is wildly popular but also difficult to turn a profit from exactly because it was designed for content that demands a lot of server space, and for a generation that is alien to the concept of paying money to publish their content.

[soc_puppet]

Tumblr is also designed as a content aggregation site, while Dreamwidth is... a content creation site? IDK, I'm not entirely sure how to categorize Dreamwidth at the moment. Anyway, I read a Twitter thread (I think?) by denise (definitely) about how the actual technological specs of various social media sites can impact how people socialize on them. Because Tumblr is optimized for sharing things quickly, it doesn't allow for quite so much slow conversation or communication. The fact that it's harder to share things on Dreamwidth can facilitate deeper conversations, IMO.

I keep feeling like I shouldn't really be surprised that so many Tumblr users are so opposed to paying for Tumblr directly, considering the bi-annual shitstorm over AO3's fundraisers, but I was still a bit taken aback by it. I wonder if some sort of basic Internet History course wouldn't be a useful class to add to high school or junior high/middle school electives—except it's hard to tie that directly into big test scores, so that means it'll definitely never happen (even if anyone manages to find a way to teach it without covering Goatse).

[type_wild]

The reblogging ability makes it possible for people to participate in fandom even if they're not creating new content, but only with the recent updates could you count on having something approaching functional discussions on Tumblr. And even THEN things are happening simultaneously as comments, as reblogging with comments, and reblogging with tags. LJ/DW functions more like a clasic forum, with the extra benefit of threaded comments so that you CAN have those five different conversations happening, but they're easily visible for everyone, and you can come back to them later without them being buried beneath five hundred likes.

I'm not at all surprised by people being hostile to paying for tumblr. I did pay for LJ, but that was mainly for the userpics. I donate to AO3 and I might get a subscription to DW, but in that case it's because I want to support platforms custom-made for my community. I guess I'm just cynical ennough to assume that any social media is selling my data anyway.

I happen to teach the subject that is probably the closest to anything like "media awareness". The political realities of "middling language community where a lot of traditional media only thrives because of considerable public subsidies" are... really something I should probably bring up even if it isn't on the curriculum, huh? Not that that'll do much with the economical model of the entire internet, but at least it'd make the kids appreciate that there's no such thing as free lunch.