so-treu:

alexandraerin:

You know, I think one of the good/bad (or maybe just different) things about Tumblr is that it’s not actually divided into communities and there’s no way to do so, so any communities that do form will have boundaries that are both transparent and fluid.

On Livejournal or Dreamwidth, if a community forms for talking about natural hair or trans* health issues or whatever… yeah, there will sometimes be people playing cultural tourist or trolling it, and there will be some boundary issues, but by and large it happens in its own little corner and it’s possible for people who don’t find those conversations relevant to never, ever see them.

On Tumblr, you see any conversation that comes within one degree of separation of you… if anyone you follow is participating in it, you’ll see it.

And since it doesn’t take much for a privileged person who is used to everything being centered around themselves to feel like a space is taken over by “Others”, you get… well, you get people who honestly believe that Tumblr is a magical fairy land of sparkly equality for everyone but themselves. Where else but some promised land of political correctness gone wild would they have to see conversations between women about what body parts we’re not shaving, or between people of color about natural hair, or conversations about trans* bodies that have more actual trans* people in them than they have punchlines?

What are the actual demographics of Tumblr users? I’d imagine similar to Livejournal or any social blogging site. But the difference is that everyone and everything that exists on Tumblr, resides here in a very public way and spills over into every space.

If this really were the magical land of sparkly equality that the “oppressed majority” imagines it to be, this would be tremendously empowering. And sometimes it does have its benefits.

But it’s mostly tiring, because at the end of the day, the same rules govern Tumblr as govern real life. There are way too many people who want to shove everything they’re used to ignoring back in the closet, and they don’t appear to understand that Tumblr puts it on them to block out what they don’t want to see.