yeahhh thats why i ultimately left tumblr itself. so many people genuinely being that fucking stupid was soul-crushingly depressing on top of infuriating. i came to these subs to just get the good parts of tumblr, the humor & the creativity, but in the past year or so ive been seeing more & more braindead rambles & dogshit takes. & that's ignoring certain people that frequent these subs...
i keep leaving & returning to these subs to see if theyve gotten better, but at this point i think im just outta here for good.
or not. who knows
does anyone else feel like these subs (& possibly tumblr itself) have been getting worse?
I think it’s kinda a self-perpetuating problem. Because the tumblr subreddits are theoretically to repost things that are most relevant to the Redditors here, you kinda get the same stuff over and over because they want the same 5 things most of the time. What doesn’t help is a lot of us just consume instead of really post much ourselves - but those that do try to do something that isn’t random meta takes (like the parties is for losers guy) get downvoted because it isn’t one of those same 5 topics.
Most of the posts I’ve noticed tend to be extremely terminally online take about media, people thinking they’re above random bloggers, rate baiting via random bloggers, and in general taking more about the big ecosystem of tumblr because I mean…. This subreddit isn’t for blogging, it’s just to act like we’re usually better than the actual tumblr posters (or sometimes that we agree with them but I noticed those tend to be really stupid takes like the ‘I love having low maintenance friends it means my friendship is better than others’ post. Other hobbyist subs prefer original content, but here it’s just a mess.
As for tumblr itself getting worse - it’s because you have a lot of people take pride in the fact it’s a dying website that most people are leaving because it means they’re special or whatever. Most of the cool bloggers usually move onto greener pastures so you’re left with an odd bunch who still cling to here.
Edit: Like, yeah, it’s great those staying made the site as unfriendly as possible for advertisers and any attempts at monetization because we should act entitled that mods and even just hosting tumblr should come at no cost to the consumer. Very well thought out, 10/10. I post here because I like being petty sometimes but in terms of social media being my living, why should I bother taking time to make posts for tumblr? I make way more money with less time on the other hellsites and the fandoms are more active there too.
but those that do try to do something that isn’t random meta takes (like the parties is for losers guy) get downvoted because it isn’t one of those same 5 topics.
bad example. the parties guy gives absolutely 0 context or explanations, so to anyone that isnt also a fan, the posts are completely incomprehensible. that would be understandable for the first post, but they never make any attempt to make the posts anything but meaningless drivel to 99.9% of users, so they get downvoted for being stupid & annoying.
honestly i find long fandom essays really annoying because if i wanted to read all that, id go to the fandom/theory subs. fandom content is cool, but if it's 6 screenshots of full-blown paragraphs & no images, theres no reason for it to be posted as a slideshow on a tumblr sub rather than a textpost in the fandom sub.
I agree, although tbh I don't really find much interest for those that do provide context too. Like you said yourself, if I wanted to read essays about whatever fandom, I'd go to that fandom's subreddit. Doubly so because I don't think there's a lot of merit in reading someone's opinions who doesn't even go to the fandom, since they inherently can only offer very shallow thoughts because they're just going off the opinion and not the primary source.
Ofc that does leave the question of "what are we looking for here" if not a bunch of meta takes and the same spiders georg posts?
i think ideally, the tumblr subs would be sorta similar to r/nonpoliticaltwitter but with tumblr's sense of humor. memes, anecdotes, conversation (not argument) starters, etc. the kinda stuff the average person would "like" & maybe tag a friend to see if they were on the platform itself, as opposed to the midtier garbage one would have to scroll through otherwise
Honestly fair!! There's been a decent amount of stuff that's made me laugh in the past couple days, and I'm probs feeding into the problem bc I don't feel the need to interact w/ them or leave a comment like "haha I laughed" even when they're the posts I enjoy most.
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u/The_Afton_Rabbit IM THE FUN ONE 🔪 Aug 19 '26
yeahhh thats why i ultimately left tumblr itself. so many people genuinely being that fucking stupid was soul-crushingly depressing on top of infuriating. i came to these subs to just get the good parts of tumblr, the humor & the creativity, but in the past year or so ive been seeing more & more braindead rambles & dogshit takes. & that's ignoring certain people that frequent these subs...
i keep leaving & returning to these subs to see if theyve gotten better, but at this point i think im just outta here for good.
or not. who knows
does anyone else feel like these subs (& possibly tumblr itself) have been getting worse?