Why Tumblr Makes My Skin Crawl.

As you guys most likely know, I recently left my tumblr blog for good. I've got 400-ish followers and 4,500-ish posts on there so it was kind of painful to abandon it. Tumblr helped me grow my faith, gave me a safe place to speak openly about my history of abuse, and just vent when I needed to; but after a slew of hate mail, hateful "reblogs" and a changing culture on there, I decided to take a short break. After coming back from my "short" break, I now can't scroll through my dash or read a single post without my blood pressure going through the roof. Here is a (very) short list of why I've now come to loathe tumblr.


1. Follower Count
As much as it's nice to know how many people read your blog and care what you have to say, the follower count breeds a competitive spirit among blogs that should be allies. As I've said before on tumblr, it's flattering that people followed my blog, but my follower count means next to nothing to me. The fact that people interact with me, respond to my posts, and ask me questions shows me a great deal more than the number of people who have clicked one button to "follow" my blog. And people actually compare these things! Somehow a higher follower count means your blog is better than someone else's. If that doesn't bread hostility, competition, and contempt, I don't know what does. So stop asking about my followers!

2. Extremists
It seems like tumblr is a hot bed of people with very myopic worldviews. There is no such thing as being "moderate" - and if you truly are moderate, you will get attacked by both sides until you settle into a comfortable, albeit dangerous, extreme stance one way or the other. When an entire group of people swings so violently to one side of the spectrum on any issue, it terrifies me. From the Catholics who don't believe nearly any Church doctrine, to the Catholics that say that anyone who doesn't believe every little nuanced thing the Church has ever said isn't a real Catholic... both sides are dangerous to Catholicism.

3. Pride
We all know pride is a major sin and it is rampant on tumblr. Everyone seems to think they know all there is to know about the one topic they've chosen to get into and absolutely cannot accept any differently or listen to other opinions. The follower count contributes to this, as does the hero-worship of favorite blogs and "fan mail." We are just ordinary people. Living ordinary lives. Some of us have a particular interest in something (mine being Christian Sexuality), and some of us know quite a bit about certain things. That does not make that person an authority. However, tumblr seems to convince these people (myself included) that we are authorities on whatever we choose. I fell into the trap, and I would urge you all the take a step back. Honestly, I feel like I had to take such frequent breaks mainly because of my pride.You can only have people tell you wonderful things about yourself so many times before you start to believe them. I see this all over the tumblr community and while I think it's wonderful that we support each other, I also think it's very important that each person ensure they are not getting too prideful (more on this to come in a later post).

4. Tumblr Support
After a string of really hateful anti-Catholic sentiment popped up, one blog decided to up the ante and devote an entire blog to anti-Catholic hate. I sent tumblr an email (the first time I'd ever done so), bringing the blog to their attention and pointing out a particularly hateful post that I hoped they could address for me.

Their response?
The exact same response given to others who email about the blog.
Word for word.
Defending the blog's freedom of expression.
With no attempt at addressing the specific post I had linked them to.

I sent a follow up email asking if they would defend the freedom of expression of other dangerous, hateful blogs (such as a racist, or anti-semetic blog). No one bothered to answer my email. Bottom line? Tumblr support doesn't care about us, doesn't protect us, and doesn't have the time to respond to emails.


[if anyone has a link to a blog like the ones I mentioned, send it my way and I'd be happy to rescind my statement]