# Tumblr, anyone?



## Noma Galway (Mar 7, 2015)

Hey, guys, so I wasn't sure where I should put this but I was wondering who among the Scribes were on tumblr? Mine is here.


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## DaFlaminUnicorn (Mar 7, 2015)

Hello Noma. Nice to see you again. ~ I have one as well. My username is the same as it is on here.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 7, 2015)

Until a couple of years ago I did have a Tumblr. It was a great place to get attention for my art and writing for a while, but then the excesses of the site's wannabe "social justice warrior" subculture ended up chasing me out. Especially when it started to infect certain individuals I used to consider close friends. I've come to see the site as like the mirror image of 4chan, for while 4chan hates on anyone outside the Straight White Male demographic, Tumblr hates on anyone _within_ it.


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## Noma Galway (Mar 7, 2015)

Yeah, that's one thing I actually don't like much about it. Like, yeah, I'm all for representation and expressing pride in your minority status, but when it turns to hate speech...hate speech is hate speech. I do reblog a lot of social justice things...but only the ones that are really about tolerance...if that makes sense.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 7, 2015)

Noma Galway said:


> Yeah, that's one thing I actually don't like much about it. Like, yeah, I'm all for representation and expressing pride in your minority status, but when it turns to hate speech...hate speech is hate speech. I do reblog a lot of social justice things...but only the ones that are really about tolerance...if that makes sense.


Honestly, it's most uncomfortable when you're a Straight White Male who nonetheless identifies with the sociocultural left wing and agrees with _some_ of their causes. You can nod in agreement with 90% of the statements they make, but when you object to the remaining 10%, they yell "check your privilege" or call you an oppressor.

And then you have the problem of conflicting interpretations of what's offensive. For example, I've gotten negative reactions to the African jungle heroines who hunt dinosaurs in my art, whom they perceive as "fetishistic" or "exoticizing" stereotypes. Thing is that I developed that theme in response to all the _white _(usually blonde) heroines like Shanna the She-Devil who fight dinosaurs in the exact same kind of brief leopard-skin getup. For that matter, _all_ my sexy African heroines came about because I felt black women's beauty and sex appeal didn't receive enough attention in media relative to their white and Asian counterparts. Even the "Jezebel" stereotype of hyper-sexuality came about to make them look unattractively filthy, and then you have the nasty "Sapphire" and obese "Precious" archetypes (often combined together).

And yet when I set out to buck this racist trend by giving my black heroines the same beauty and allure that their white and Asian sisters have enjoyed in mainstream media, the tumblr trolls call _me _racist and sexist. They seem to think I'm tantamount to antebellum slave-owners who raped their female slaves because I draw black pin-up ladies.

Thankfully _most _black people haven't give my art and writing that kind of reaction. They have much more supportive attitudes.


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## Tom (Mar 7, 2015)

I'm considering getting a tumblr once I can produce digital art. It's a good platform for visual media, and quite a few people who now work as professional comic artists, illustrators, and concept/animation artists were discovered through tumblr. 

Usually the social justice side of the site doesn't intersect with the art blogs I visit, but I also visit a few dedicated to women in media--eschergirls and bikini armor battle damage being two of them. These sites never hate on the Straight White Male demographic, instead poking fun at them a little and trying to educate them on how to fix what they're doing wrong.


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## Noma Galway (Mar 7, 2015)

Both of those are pretty cool! 

And yeah, Jabrosky, I see so much hypocrisy in tumblr and I try to stay out of the inevitable drama. Basically...I don't tolerate hate. Period.


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## Lunaairis (Mar 7, 2015)

I have a tumblr. I like to post anything I find funny,reference for future art/animation works and my own art.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Mar 7, 2015)

The only thing I've seen from tumblr are the crazy posts. And quite frankly the site frightens me. That said, how common are the nutty posts? Seriously, I have to know if the site is that crazy.


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## Noma Galway (Mar 7, 2015)

Define nutty. If you mean the insane SJW posts, depends on who you follow. There are a lot of different factors to the site and it can be either fascinating or, yeah, a little scary.

And I'm following you, Lunaairis.


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## Tom (Mar 7, 2015)

I try to stay away from the nutty posts. A lot of SJW stuff is a little tricky for me to evaluate properly; one half of me is going, "I get what you're fighting for", while the other half is like, "God, these people are insane". Tumblr can be pretty scary, but I think the benefits outweigh the risks.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Mar 7, 2015)

32 Of The Greatest Things That Have Ever Happened On Tumblr

This is an accurate, albeit underwhelming, representation of why tumblr scares me. I have seen crazier posts.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 7, 2015)

Brian Scott Allen said:


> The only thing I've seen from tumblr are the crazy posts. And quite frankly the site frightens me. That said, how common are the nutty posts? Seriously, I have to know if the site is that crazy.


I agree with Noma that it depends in part on whom you follow, but I'll add that the subject matter of your own blog posts can also have an effect. Since my art has always featured an abundance of non-European characters, it was perhaps inevitable that the SJWs most fixated on racial issues would be drawn to it. Of course, it was also true that certain people I followed turned into SJWs the more time they spent on tumblr. In fact, the reason I joined tumblr in the first place was to keep in touch with a former friend I knew from DeviantArt, and I had a horrible falling out with her the day I called it quits with that community.

I suppose if you are completely disinterested in anything with political undertones and just reblog Dr. Who fan art or whatever, you will be relatively safe from SJWs. But there are a lot of people out there who don't have such extreme apathy for politics.


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## Noma Galway (Mar 7, 2015)

Brian, there are definitely a lot of those posts...Personally, I enjoy them, since I use tumblr primarily to have a laugh, and I find those funny.

Jabrosky and Tom...the SJW posts are wonderful when done right, at least in my opinion. And the subject of your own blog can attract unwanted asks, this is true. Like I said, tumblr is my space for laughs and basic recreation, and I stay away from the craziness as much as I can.


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## Ireth (Mar 7, 2015)

Can someone explain to me what an SJW is? I keep seeing the acronym but have no idea what it means.


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## Tom (Mar 7, 2015)

Social justice warriors. They mean well, but some can get carried away.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 7, 2015)

Ireth said:


> Can someone explain to me what an SJW is? I keep seeing the acronym but have no idea what it means.


"Social Justice Warrior". It doesn't name a singular, coherent ideology in the vein of, say, Trotskyism or Objectivism, but is rather a catch-all sarcastic putdown for various trolls and nutcases associated with certain "liberal" social and cultural movements. It's a bit like how "wingnut" is used for any trolls and nutcases who are further to the right side of the spectrum.


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## Tom (Mar 7, 2015)

I wouldn't go so far as to call them all trolls; some of them are just more aggressive than others, and, just as with any other group of people, there are some bad apples in the barrel. Most SJWs are actually well-meaning people who want to make a difference. They come up with clever ways to subvert the status quo and show how inherently biased it is. A good SJW can make you realize that you've been unconsciously buying into biased ideas, but won't make you feel bad about it, just make you want to change your viewpoint for the better. (This is personal experience talking.)


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## Noma Galway (Mar 8, 2015)

I second Tom. Hateful SJWs give the whole community a bad rap.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Mar 8, 2015)

Shouldn't there be a better way to differentiate the good SJWs from the bad SJWs? To me, being called an SJW is inherently a sarcastic put down. This is similar to arm-chair quarterback, Monday morning coach, or something similar. However, someone who fights for social justice should be something different. Or if the good SJW types want they could start calling the bad SJWs Social Justice Highwaymen, or SJH.


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## Noma Galway (Mar 8, 2015)

You've got a point. SJW definitely has a bad connotation. SJH is really appropriate, actually.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 8, 2015)

Brian Scott Allen said:


> Shouldn't there be a better way to differentiate the good SJWs from the bad SJWs? To me, being called an SJW is inherently a sarcastic put down. This is similar to arm-chair quarterback, Monday morning coach, or something similar. However, someone who fights for social justice should be something different. Or if the good SJW types want they could start calling the bad SJWs Social Justice Highwaymen, or SJH.


If they say things that are obviously hateful of white people, heterosexuals, men, or the cis-gendered, it shouldn't be hard to count them as "bad SJWs".

In other cases it isn't so straightforward. If they use vicious, intolerant tone when addressing anyone who disagrees with their particular view of righteousness, you might conclude they're the bad kind of SJWs too...but honestly, I can't say I always stand on the moral high ground when it comes to tone. Like many other autistics, I have a problem with melting my composure when arguing over sensitive topics, so I can be very abrasive when my buttons get pressed. And then there are certain types of people whom I have no respect for whatsoever, so I have few qualms about treating them rough. I will never apologize for seeing white supremacists as insecure chest-beating knuckleheads, misogynistic "PUA" pick-up artists as blustering omega-males who scare off _way _more women than they (pretend to) have ever "gamed", zealous religious fundamentalists as mindless slaves to obsolete superstitions, and all three of those groups as pathetic and/or psychopathic. Those camps all fall outside my moral compass because I see their ideologies as fundamentally evil and irrational, but then the SJWs see my own worldview the same way.

I guess that, when we interpret certain beliefs as wrong or harmful, we naturally perceive their strongest adherents as somehow unintelligent, corrupt, or at best misled. It's the only way we can make sense of people embracing beliefs antithetical to our own. In my own case, the autistic tendency towards moral absolutism, or black-and-white thinking, may exacerbate my reactions even more. But honestly, it's been my experience that those individuals who pride themselves the most on righteousness, the ones who cast themselves as the fiercest moral crusaders fighting for cultural reform, can be some of the most toxic to be around. They always interpret the slightest step out of line---the line they draw themselves---as a deep offense (and that's when they're _not_ nudging that line to suit themselves). Step out of line more than once, and you might as well be their enemy.

Never mind good versus evil, some of the fieriest, bloodiest conflicts can happen between different concepts of goodness.


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## cupiscent (Mar 8, 2015)

I think part of the problem with Tumblr is that it's a platform for statements, not for conversations. Every time you reply to something, it posts again to your own blog, so it becomes about making a statement, which tends to lead to less-nuanced interactions. Also, there's an amazing culture of fakery and not checking information that leads to viral transmission of misinformation - especially when if you note a correction on a post, only people who see that from your blog will be aware of the correction, so the cycle just carried on. It's a platform that doesn't make reasoned discussion and exploration of matters at all easy. But with careful curation of who you follow, it's no more toxic than twitter.


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## Nimue (Mar 10, 2015)

The good thing about Tumblr, though, is that you can completely control who you're listening to.  I don't see anything on my dash but well-informed, reasonable people, and when the crazies pop up, they're accompanied by a rebuttal from the aforementioned people.

I mean, I don't think that Tumblr is really a single entity, in the way that there're default subs for Reddit or the front page of a more curated website.  You have to actually seek out the awful people, and at that point, why would you want to do that? (also, from what I've seen, conservative and/or racist people are just as much a problem as radical people in the other direction. Can't escape that stuff no matter where you go.)


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