Just This Girl

Catholic Church and (European-centric) Christianity version of Jesus:

And LISTEN.  I’m not saying anything revolutionary here.  I’m not the first person to say this, or note that the whitewashing of Jesus and his disciples has been used for centuries to oppress and erase the histories of people of color.  Nor am I the first to note the use of white = pure and good and black = sin and evil in the Bible, which has also been used to bolster racism and oppression of people of color for centuries.

This is not some magical revelation.  This post came about because I was sitting in my family’s living room, my mother and sister were once again watching EWTN, the “global catholic television network,” at top volume (so loud I could hear it even through my noise-canceling earphones), which was playing the movie Jesus of Nazareth, which gave us this image:

Hence, whitewashing.

That’s a yazidi child

What, did the evil catholic church white wash her?

How about Bashar Assad?

Did the evil catholics white wash him?

That’s Korean Jesus.  Was he…yellow washed???

Or could it be that Different Cultures make art depicting themselves?

*gasp*

So what has become of your stupid little argument? There is no DNA to go on (you appealed to a guesstimation) and Mideasterners can be downright WHITE. 

So using a CG GUESS, you have claimed that the BIBLE and the Churches INTERPRETATION of it were the original whitewashing because of ART.

Really? Since when does a painting = the BIBLE and the whole interpretation of it??????

example: Roman catacombs fresco, dated from 4th century A.D.

So you could call that a CG guess if you’re speaking in broad terms.  No, it’s not 100% proof, but it’s the closet we’re going to get without a time machine.

And you countered with…a modern-day Yazidi child (cherry-picking the whitest-looking one you could find, I might add) and one of the whitest-skinned modern Jews you could find.  Do you not understand the genetic differences between the Jews of Judea in Biblical times and the Jews of the modern day?  Do you not understand that there’s a 2,000 year difference there?  Do you not understand how appearance can change over time?  Do you not understand that modern-day Jerusalem is populated by the descendants of the Diaspora, and the effects that had on their genetics and appearance?

Then there’s the documented fact that as Romans/Gentiles took over Christianity, they began distancing themselves from the Jews, to the point they tried to deny Jesus’s Jewish status/ancestry as much as they could, including white-washing him.  That is the early history of the Catholic Church.  Which, yanno, is responsible for commissioning much of the art throughout history that depicts Jesus, his disciples and the women around him.  Hence “a painting = the BIBLE and the whole interpretation of it”, and that art being a concrete example of the Catholic Church whitewashing Jesus.

So to recap…you’ve tried to make counter-arguments with so-called “evidence” that doesn’t apply, and crowed about how that somehow means you’ve accomplished something, when in reality you’ve accomplished nothing.

Bashar Al Assad is an Arab genius.

And that wasn’t the whitest looking Yazidi

Face the facts,  People from the middle east can be WHITE.  Europeans, just like Asians, painted Jesus with a familiar face.

Of course then you have to apply critical thinking to those results to weed out the good sources from the bad/biased, which I’m sure is difficult for you being a conservative Christian and all, but do give it a try.

http://hoshanarabbah.org/blog/2014/05/21/how-the-church-divorced-itself

http://uptojerusalem.com/topic-antisemitism.asp

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/01/morris.htm

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Jewish-Christian.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/why-did-judas-betray-jesus_b_851613.html

Now that that’s accomplished - and I do hope you go and read those sources - let me give you a little biology lesson, using myself as an example.

I am, like, one of the whitest girls out there.  Very pale skin - what a lot of people have called a “peaches and cream complexion” - light brown hair, and blue eyes.

However, I am at least 1/8th Native American, which I have already documented through pictures of some of my ancestors.

That is just a 3 (or 4, depending on how you look at it) generation gap between me and my Native American ancestors (who also looked very First Peoples, dark coloration and all.)

However - and this is the important part of the example, pay attention - my whiteness does not somehow magically erase my Native American ancestry, nor does it somehow magically make my Native American ancestors white.  Just like the physical appearances of my brother and sister, who are of a darker complexion than me, don’t somehow magically erase the other parts of our family’s ancestry, the Acadians/French and the Scotch-Irish.

(If you’d like to learn more about genetics and inheritance, this is a good basic overview.)

Hence my rebuttal of your attempt at using modern Jews and Yazidi children to attempt to demonstrate that Biblical Jews, Jesus and his apostles in particular, were white/white-looking.  2000 years - that’s about 66 generations, using a conservative estimate of 30 years per generation (it’s probably more like 15-20 years per generation, making it 100 - 133 generations).  That’s at least 66 generations of living in more northern climes (slowly losing the darker coloration of their skin), intermarrying people with whiter genetics, etc, which happened because of the Diaspora, that influences the genetics, and modern appearance, of the Jewish people.

Genetics is also why people in the modern-day Middle East can be white/white-looking.

Furthermore, claiming that white-washing is a “natural” consequence of people painting people that look like them is hogwash, because a)it’s not like the Jews of Biblical times weren’t there to look at, as evidenced by that Roman catacombs fresco, b)the early Catholics were (mostly) converted Jews, the church was not legally recognized by Rome until Constantine in the 4th century AD, who is the one who moved the headquarters of the church to Rome and gave the Papacy it’s temporal power (there is conflict about this among scholars, some camps say the Papal Donation was a forgery, however without the legitimization and legalization of Catholicism/Christianity and appointing it as the state religion of the Roman Empire by Constantine, the Papacy would likely not have had the temporal power it has had) and b)is the foundation of modern white washing and it’s component/basis in racism.

(Yes, there’s Oriental Jesus.  It doesn’t have the same implications/impact because it’s not backed by thousands of years of oppression and fundamental power structures that white Europeans created.)

I never argued that all jews and Arabs were white your frikkin tool.  I said they CAN BE. And that they COULD BE.  This means, for the heads of pure moronium, that some people among those populations were light skinned. We know this from egyptian depictions of the peoples in and around Canaan and Depictions from Anatolia

Your argument that No Mideasterners were light colored until recently is pure horseshit. So don’t come at me about education your ignorant, illiterate little punk.

Moving on…

This darker skinned christ was painted in 151…ooops you’re full of shit.

This comes from a whole article about Christology that includes discussion of how cultures make christ look like them

From Macedonia, 14th Century

Oh look at that, there wasn’t actually any medieval white washing of Christ, or even early Roman White washing of Christ!  You were just lying!  I realized that when I realized how LATE the images you picked were in time.

Go get a job flipping burgers.

You can’t even read captions right.  (This is getting downright hilarious, BTW.  At least you’re amusing.)

Caption reads: “Isenheim Altarpiece”  The Crucifixion, centre panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece (closed view), by Matthias Grunewald, 1515; in the Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France.

Of course, even comprehending the article you were citing instead of clicking the image gallery (included with the article) would have done it too, since it was featured in the Middle Ages section of the article, not the 2nd century as you’re trying to claim.

It was also painted in Germany, and allow me to clue you in on something that happens to art from the middle ages.  It darkens over time.  The original painting/colors are light-skinned/white.

The Macedonian Image, Christ Pantocrator painted by Mitropolitian Jovan Zograf in 1384, the style of it did not originate with Mitropolitian Jovan Zograf, but rather he was following the style of this icon that was established in the early days of Christianity/The Catholic Church.  You know, based off the Jews of that era.  It’s a miracle that he didn’t whitewash this iconic image too in his painting, like so many other Medieval artists did.  Of course, much like a white-looking descendant does not automatically make their ancient ancestors white, the paintings of the Middle Ages that didn’t white-wash Jesus does not somehow miraculously negate the fact that the white-washing was taking place, both in other pieces of art from that period and the Church itself.

Speaking of edumacation, where exactly did you get this edumacation in a hard science?  Auburn University at Montgomery, in Alabama?  You know, the one where only 27.1% of students graduate in six years, and only 9.9% of students graduate in four years?

(I based this guess off your grammar, which is absolutely atrocious BTW.)

Personally, I got my third college degree - in computer networking and security - at Park University, which has higher rates - 12.3% in 2/4 years, and 41.8 % in six years, but at least Park University has a good excuse, since a large portion of their students are comprised of active military service members studying while they are serving around the world.  (Personally I finished my Park University degree on time, in four years.)

Speaking of reading comprehension - don’t you source your images?  And don’t you read your own links before referencing them?  I mean, DUDE.  This is BASIC STUFF.

The first “Egyptian” image is from the Tomb of the Lionesses, an Etruscan tomb, and is showing the intermarriage and intermixing of Latin (you know, Greek and Roman) peoples with the Etruscans.  The Etruscans lived in Italy, and this is from an Etruscan tomb in Italy.  Not Egyptian, not African.

The second image is from Egypt, but it depicts captives of the raiding Sea Peoples - which are posited by scholars to have originated in the Aegean Sea area, specifically the Greek part and, as your own link pointed out, likely the remnants of Troy - raiders/pirates who harried the coasts of Egypt and Africa around the 5th century B.C..  You know, not Egyptian.  And captives, not citizens of Egypt.

The third image I’ll give you.  It’s an image of Faience tiles from the royal palace of Ramses the III, and depicts prisoners from the raiding population of the Berbers in neighboring Libya.  The Burbese come from all over including Europe, but yes, they were living in Africa at the time.  However, still not Egyptian.  And their existence does not somehow magically make Jesus, his relatives or his apostles white.

And again with the failure of reading comprehension.  From my first link:

“Hebrew roots scholar, Dr. Ron Moseley has part of the answer to this question in his book, published in 1996, entitled, Yeshua—A Guide to the Real Jesus of the Original Church. He says, “After the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, two new religious organizations grew out of the Judaism of Jesus’ and Paul’s day. The Pharisees had fled Jerusalem to Yavneh and were spared, while the Jewish followers of Jesus had fled to the mountains of Pella and also survived (Matthew 24:16). From these two groups came two separate religions known as Rabbinic Judaism and the Christian Church. Today, neither Rabbinic Judaism nor the Church, which formed much of its theology from fourth-century Roman ideas, hold the same views as the pre-[A.D. ]70 Judaism of Jesus’ and Paul’s day” (p. 69). Christian Hebrew roots scholar, professor and theologian Marvin Wilson argues the same points in his 1989 book, Our Father Abraham—Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. He writes, “A cursory look at the beginnings of Christianity reveals a Church that was made up exclusively of Jews. Indeed, the Church was viewed as a sect within Judaism, as the book of Acts makes clear in referring to early followers of Jesus as the ‘sect of the Nazarenes’ (Acts 24:5). They seemed to function easily within Judaism in that they were described as ‘enjoying the favor of all the people’ (2:47)” (p. 47). Wilson then goes on to write that between A.D. 70 when the Roman army destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and A.D. 135 when the Second Jewish revolt against Roman occupation of their country occurred the first-century Messianic congregation began to leave its Jewish roots.”

…I’m not sure how you got “They show anti-semitism among europeans,against other EUROPEANS.” from that.  I mean, unless you never actually read the article.  The other articles reference the same time period, so….

Speaking of the “lateness of my images,” did you know?  Their style is traced back to the time of Leonardo da Vinci, who painted his lover, Cesare Borgia, one of the many illegitimate children of Pope Alexander VI (late 15th century).  Pope Alexander VI was one of the most corrupt popes in history, and chose to use da Vinci’s painting of his son Cesare Borgia as a new image of Christ for the church.

He wasn’t the first church official to whitewash Jesus, not by a long shot, but he certainly “went for the gold” by whitewashing Jesus in a hugely nepotistic way.  *facepalm*

And then countless artists began creating images of Jesus in that style, which led to the first images I posted.

Of course, if you want something earlier, there’s always the mosaic of S. Pudenziana in Rome, dated prior to 410 AD:

Where Jesus and his apostles have already been whitewashed to have lighter/whiter skin and Latin/Roman features.

Then what color did the face of the guy on the left, and the robes of the woman on the left darken from? That guy’s face is white you absolute imbecile

Yes, the sea Peoples….such as the PHILISTINES.

You are still laboring under the idiotic preconception that all the Jews in medieval Europe were dark.  They weren’t idiot.  They were white

The diaspora took place in 70 AD, and mixing takes place FAST.

Also, you have yet to deal with the FACT that your claim that all mideasterners were dark, is a lie, as can be seen by ancient art.

Therefore (stay with me now)

The appearance of the Philistines of Jesus’s time does not have any bearing on the appearance of the Jews of Jesus’s time, or on the appearance of Jesus himself.

I never claimed that all the Jews in medieval Europe were dark-complexioned.  I never claimed that all middle-easterners, of any time period, were dark.  (That was your reading comprehension/assumption, and you ran with it.)  Go back and read it again.  I even referenced that the Romans/Gentiles of the time were white, and doing the white-washing to portray Jesus to look they way they looked, to deny Jesus’s Jewish origins.  (You know, white washing.)

I claimed that the Jews, in the Middle East, in Jesus’s time, specifically Jesus, his disciples and his relatives, were dark-complexioned.  That’s it.

You were the one to bring in the argument that other people of the Middle East in Jesus’s time were white, and tried to base your claim of Jesus having been white/not been white-washed on that.  As if the skin complexion of other people of different ancestry has any bearing on the ancestry, appearance and complexion of Jesus.  Much like how Jews having white complexions today does not, at all, disprove that Jesus was dark skinned.  Yes, that particular diaspora took place that long ago.  Hence me mentioning it before on why the complexion of modern Jews has no bearing on the complexion of Jesus or his disciples.

And again with the failure to, yanno, read up on stuff before talking about it, and once again sticking your foot in your mouth.  (How’s that shoe leather tasting, BTW?)

The Isenheim Altarpiece underwent “unorthodox” restoration in Colmar, France.  To quote from this article about it:

“Mitterrand and his colleagues at the C2RMF (Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France), France’s main body of art conservators and restorers, have thus far observed the rapid, one might consider careless, work on the altarpiece. The yellowed varnish, found to be from 1946, has been mostly removed from the surface, and the C2RMF has exhibited fears that the solvent used could move towards the top layers of the paint.“

So there’s a possible answer to your inquiry of why the other people in the painting have light-colored skin.  Art restoration is (usually) a slow process, done by hand, one section of a painting at a time.  It also has a checkered history, passing back and forth between Germany and France, notable during WW1 and WW2.  Who knows what happened to it during those times.  (Especially since the varnish mentioned above was dated to 1946, 1 year after WW2 ended)

(That was a test, BTW.  I knew about it when I mentioned the painting in my last response, but didn’t mention the fumbled restoration, or the history, to see what you’d do.  And I knew you’d fuck it up.  As you did.)

I mean, come on.  This is basic stuff you’re fumbling.

I never said the Philistines = the Jews moron.  I thought, since you think you know it all, that you;d know that mixing took place between them and Israelites LONG before Christ’s time.

That was a test, you failed (dontcha love that game?)

The point, idiot, is that you have no idea what Color Jesus was, of what color his family was, or what color his pals were.  There were absolutely light toned Jews in Jesus’ time.

There were even MORE light toned Jews after they migrated to Europe.

And thus your claim that Europeans white washed the bible to distance themselves from Jews makes NO SENSE.

On your part

EDIT: Oh and of Course, How could I forget the Amorites?

 They were represented on the Egyptian monuments with fair skins, light hair, blue eyes, curved or hooked noses, and pointed beards. They were supposed to have been of great stature.

Really?  Let’s check.

“I never argued that all jews and Arabs were white your frikkin tool.  I said they CAN BE. And that they COULD BE.  This means, for the heads of pure moronium, that some people among those populations were light skinned. We know this from egyptian depictions of the peoples in and around Canaan and Depictions from Anatolia.”

“Yes, the sea Peoples….such as the PHILISTINES.“

Just curious, did your nose grow a few inches just then?

And JULIUS FUCKING CAESAR, how many times do I have to say it?  DO YOUR FUCKING RESEARCH.  DO YOUR FUCKING RESEARCH.  DO YOUR FUCKING RESEARCH.

Seriously, this should have already been drilled into your head during your “education in a hard science.”  How on earth did you come out of college education without learning this?

To quote from this article:

“Remember that it’s hard to distinguish between dirt in the varnish, dirt on the paintings, and actual pigments put on the painting by the artist. And even if you do know it, there’s no way to be sure that whatever you pick to clean it will only get the dirt. Two different da Vinci paintings have been damaged by attempts to clean them. One painting at the Louvre got several shades lighter when cleaned, and had the details washed out by extreme soft-focus. It was like the Virgin and Saint Anne, in the painting, wanted to airbrush out their wrinkles. A lost sketch by da Vinci of Orpheus being tormented by the Furies was destroyed when restorers dipped the sketch in alcohol and distilled water which took out the ink.“

And as this article shows, this restoration process is done by hand, one small area at a time.  And different pigments can react differently to the same solvent.  Hence the varying results.

You need a bigger jar of fail sauce.

Alternate scenario…they painted Jesus darker….

Your entire premise has been that evil Europeans did white paintings to cut dark Jews off from the bible. Your premise has been destroyed because it has been proven that even in the Levant, long before Christ, Light peoples inhabited canaan (this includes Jews who mixed in).  Add to this the fact that long before your hated paintings, they had migrated to Europe, and mixed more. Thus Europeans couldn’t use white skin vs dark skin to separate themselves from Jews….because of all the white Jews

There was no white washing.

I’m done with your idiocy

That’s the facts.

Facts trump suppositions.  (Really, I’m starting to seriously doubt the existence of your higher education here.)

And again with the failure of reading comprehension.  My premise:

The bible, and the Catholic Church’s/Christianity’s interpretation of it over the years, is the original version of whitewashing.

(Seriously.  It’s right fucking there in the original post, and all the reblogs.)

That’s not just Europeans.  That’s Romans/Gentiles, too.  That’s also from the founding of Christianity and the Catholic church.

And aw, come on.  Don’t be a sore loser.  I thought you were going to “ cook any goose you bring to this fair.”  Still looking pretty uncooked…

So that CG image of Christ you keep foisting was made from SKULLS>   To get skin tone, then said they used some art.  They didn’t say what exactly, so I had to go looking.  I found a lot of synagogue art from israel and from in Syria.

OMG, the Jews…

…where white washing……

…themselves!!!!

Get a life loser.  You have NO EVIDENCE of dominate skin tone in Israel at the time.  You are appealing to an image made from three skulls, with colors chosen from unnamed art.

“Why do you care if Jesus is white or not?”

I could ask the white people on this thread the same question. I can see the argument that different ethnic groups depict Jesus looking like themselves but insisting that he really was light-skinned like in the paintings is dumb.

So what happens when you take Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies from The Nutcracker, slow it way down and drop the pitch from F to C#?

You tell me. :)

https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/problems/factory-farming-food-safety

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/04/factory-farming-destructive-wasteful-cruel-says-philip-lymbery-farmageddon-author

https://www.foodprint.org/issues/industrial-crop-production/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oil-borneo-climate-catastrophe.amp.html%3f0p19G=2103

https://apnews.com/article/palm-oil-abuse-investigation-cosmetics-2a209d60c42bf0e8fcc6f8ea6daa11c7

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/

https://www.sciencealert.com/sorry-but-giving-up-on-meat-is-not-going-to-save-the-planet/amp

https://sustainruralwisconsin.org/traditional-farms-vs-factory-farms

https://farmvsfactory.org/

https://greenerideal.com/news/environment/0922-factory-farming-vs-sustainable-farming-infographic/

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/health/research/lenins-death-remains-a-mystery-for-doctors.html

https://matchgirl42.tumblr.com/post/167430702259/peasantprideworldwide-omgweatherunderground

https://matchgirl42.tumblr.com/post/170665650149/toxic-spill-femoids-itsaarnie-femoids

.

.

Of course, that’s just a small sampling of people taking your post as 100% anti-communism, so it’s odd that you’d choose to single out me as the person misinterpreting your post.  But, you don’t even need to look at the notes on your post, you only need to go into the anti-communism and anti-socialism site tags to see all the rampant anti-communism on this website, and it’s only gotten worse since actual fascists took power here in the US in 2016.  (Yes, people from other countries use this site, but again, it’s fairly US-centric because a majority of users are here in the U.S.)  It’s gotten even worse in the 6 months since Feb 10, 2020, which according to Tumblr’s time keeping is when I reblogged this from you.  As I said in the third linked post of mine, since there’s been more and more anti-capitalism sentiment and pro-communism/pro-socialism sentiment here in the US over the last decade or so, there’s been a ramping up of propaganda about communism/socialism and McCarthyism/Red Scare booga-booga-booga and anti-Russia stuff (which equates modern day Russia with the USSR, conveniently forgetting that modern day Russia is CAPITALIST, but also to be fair, their one connection IS the one-party nationalism.  Please note, I’m not trying to say that modern-day Russia is a paradise or that they haven’t been trying to interfere in the US, far from it; I’m specifically referencing the trend of blaming everything wrong in the U.S. right now on Russia, which is...hilariously wrong, and is also being used as propaganda to help prop up the failing oligarchy/capitalist empire.  I also am not and never have tried to paint the USSR as some kind of communist paradise, FAR FROM IT.  My entire point is that the USSR wasn’t true communism.) that equates communism with the USSR.  It’s the go-to method of trying to discredit modern socialists, while trying to get people to forget that modern-day socialists are democratic socialists.  Any form of government that doesn’t have true democracy is going to naturally fall into despotism/fascism/nationalism.  That’s just how it goes, as evidenced by history, including the history of the U.S. itself.

2)When linking to posts on tumblr, I tend to link to my own reblogs of them if I can because a)I have had links in the past to other blog’s posts go bad because the other blog deleted them and b)I rarely delete stuff on my own blog, so at least until I decide to quit this website for good or my entire blog gets deleted for any other reason, I know those links will still be good.

3)Two of those links are my reblogs of other people’s thoughts.  (Just because it’s someone posting their thoughts on Tumblr does not automatically mean those thoughts are wrong, although I grant you, that happens often enough that you have to take what people say here with a grain of salt, and do your own research and apply critical thinking skills.)  The third is my own thoughts, yes, but they are backed up by linked sources for the most part; and the other parts are just common sense.  (But again, do your own research and do apply criticial thinking skills, because a lot of what is masquerading as “research” and “truth” right now, even in academic circles, is just propaganda.)  The third is also me debating/arguing with someone who is determined that everyone view USSR = pure communism, and me rebutting that, and pointing out that even though one of my own ancestral groups was subjected to attempted genocide by the “democratic” United States of America, I don’t take that and try to paint democracy as inherently genocidal.

4)As already stated in that third linked post of mine: Lenin himself “concluded that one-party dictatorship must continue until it enjoyed unshakeable popular support.” [x]   “Both anti-Communists of the left and the proponents of perestroika in the Soviet Union insisted that Stalinism was a criminal betrayal of the revolution and of Marxist ideals. Stalin’s commitment to Marxism and even to socialism only served to camouflage the establishment of a new oriental despotism.” [x] (That 2nd link is to the Yale.edu listing of USSR historian Robert V Daniels’ book “The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia,” a collection of his articles on the USSR over the decades, which is both a fascinating read and a pushback against the idea that the USSR was communist and not a one-party nationalist state.)  Even Lenin himself betrayed the ideals of communism/socialism while supposedly “fighting” for it, through his program of terror - mass executions, slave labor and starvation.  He was looking to take power for himself and his cronies, not wanting true freedom for all, which Daniels himself points out in his book “Red October: The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.”

You can filter usernames with Tumblr’s post content filtering:

“Keep in mind that you’re limited to 200 of these, and each filtered word or phrase can only be 250 characters max.“

Me, looking at my current blacklist that has well over 3,000 entries and my block list which is currently 2,000+ names and counting:

“Each piece of text you add will be filtered in a “case insensitive” manner, so filtering “horses” will filter “HORSES” and “hOrSeS” in the same way. Also, these are very greedy filters: filtering “horse” will filter “horses” and “horseman” and “abhorsement” (is that a word?). If you add a phrase to your filtered list, like “horse friend,” we’ll filter out occurrences of that entire, exact phrase.“

Me, knowing how this is going to backfire extremely badly:

First of all, XKit never provided the old dashboard toggle. That was provided by Tumblr, but only to XKit users, as a grace period to allow us (XKit’s developers) some extra time to update extensions.

Tumblr is deleting the old dashboard because the old dashboard’s codebase is likely a huge, ancient and difficult-to-maintain mess (much like XKit is, which is why updates aren’t coming as fast as anyone would like). This post from Tumblr Engineering touches on this:

This has been a very long time in the making, and the primary reason behind it is to make the desktop web experience of Tumblr easier to maintain and build on top of.

While the old dashboard may seem simple enough from a user perspective, the new dashboard is miles simpler from a (first-party) developer perspective, since it isn’t powered by a bunch of custom server-side code. This means Tumblr’s frontend is now actually a frontend - not a website, but a web app that uses the Tumblr API directly. Hopefully, adding features to the new dashboard should now be almost as easy for Tumblr’s developers as it was for XKit to add features to the old dashboard.

Because like…hoooo, lawd.  That’s some CYA bafflegabic bullshit right there.  And like…it’s the same old staff bullshit of “we’ve been told repeatedly by our userbase that we need to fix [thing that makes the website unsafe] but instead we’re going to fix [item that didn’t actually need to be fixed].  See!  We listen!  Give us all the applause!”

It ain’t gonna matter one iota how “easy” the site is to “maintain” if you drive away a majority of your userbase by making your website more and more unsafe to use.  Or is driving away a majority of your userbase the point, because staff thinks it will be easier to maintain a website with a small userbase than it is to maintain one with a large userbase?

And I wouldn’t be surprised one single bit if they’re aiming to make tumblr more like WordPress/a WordPress clone, ignoring that there’s a REASON people are using tumblr instead of WordPress and that doing so will be the deathknell of Tumblr and just a waste of the $3 million Automattic paid for it.

JFC.

But, this is tumblr staff we’re talking about here.  They’ve been fucking up the website and chasing users away since at *least* 2014 if not longer.  Automattic never cleaned house and started over like they should have when they bought Tumblr.  That right there was the second biggest mistake they made, the biggest being buying tumblr in the first place.

AFAIK, blacklist hasn’t been updated for the new dash yet.  It’s not working on my dash.  And I go to tumblr every day since tumblr yanked the old dash and I force an xkit update including all installed extensions, too.

(And as others have mentioned, tumblr blocking/filtering doesn’t give you an option to look at the content anyways.  Which is also…problematic, because then you miss the dunking/takedowns of awful people, which can be enjoyable to a certain degree, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

Another thing is that PostBlock also isn’t yet working on the new dash, which is a secondary measure to catch stuff that blacklist doesn’t because of so many people not tagging their stuff/people not tagging reblogs.  Somewhat less about unsafe stuff (although that still gets through from time to time, necessitating the usage of PostBlock) and more about getting more aggravating stuff off your dash (if you think one long post about shit you don’t care about hitting your dash is annoying, consider how aggravating it is to see 10 different reblogs of it in a 10-minute dash window.  With PostBlock, you block it once and it never appears on your dash again.  It was awesome.  While it worked.).

In non-xkit news, the other extension I use to make the dash usable and not give me a migraine - stylus - and the tumblr-centric styles I have installed are also no longer working with the new dash, either.  So now if I look at the dash too long with it’s early 90′s 1st-gen HTML style I get a screaming headache from all the godawfulness.

ETA: I mean, seriously.  Look at this shit:

That not only fails web design 101 but also makes navigating it WORSE.  Back in the days of early HTML I coded geocities websites that looked better than this crap and certainly navigated better.  JFC.

And that’s not even getting into the pagination issues or how, when I go to reblog something from my dash, it pops me back up to the top and refreshes the dash, thus losing my place and making me have to start over again.  JEEEEEEEEEESUS.

All in all, it’s just horrifyingly hilarious to me that Tumblr/Automattic ostensibly gave us back the old dash to give xkit time to get their extensions working with the new dash, but then yanked it before xkit was ready, and the response has basically been “well, but we gave you tumblr-based blocking and filtering” which, as many of us have already explained ad nauseum, in no way gives us the same blocking and filtering capabilities xkit gave us.

First of all, XKit never provided the old dashboard toggle. That was provided by Tumblr, but only to XKit users, as a grace period to allow us (XKit’s developers) some extra time to update extensions.

Tumblr is deleting the old dashboard because the old dashboard’s codebase is likely a huge, ancient and difficult-to-maintain mess (much like XKit is, which is why updates aren’t coming as fast as anyone would like). This post from Tumblr Engineering touches on this:

This has been a very long time in the making, and the primary reason behind it is to make the desktop web experience of Tumblr easier to maintain and build on top of.

While the old dashboard may seem simple enough from a user perspective, the new dashboard is miles simpler from a (first-party) developer perspective, since it isn’t powered by a bunch of custom server-side code. This means Tumblr’s frontend is now actually a frontend - not a website, but a web app that uses the Tumblr API directly. Hopefully, adding features to the new dashboard should now be almost as easy for Tumblr’s developers as it was for XKit to add features to the old dashboard.

Because like...hoooo, lawd.  That’s some CYA bafflegabic bullshit right there.  And like...it’s the same old staff bullshit of “we’ve been told repeatedly by our userbase that we need to fix [thing that makes the website unsafe] but instead we’re going to fix [item that didn’t actually need to be fixed].  See!  We listen!  Give us all the applause!”

It ain’t gonna matter one iota how “easy” the site is to “maintain” if you drive away a majority of your userbase by making your website more and more unsafe to use.  Or is driving away a majority of your userbase the point, because staff thinks it will be easier to maintain a website with a small userbase than it is to maintain one with a large userbase?

And I wouldn’t be surprised one single bit if they’re aiming to make tumblr more like WordPress/a WordPress clone, ignoring that there’s a REASON people are using tumblr instead of WordPress and that doing so will be the deathknell of Tumblr and just a waste of the $3 million Automattic paid for it.

JFC.

But, this is tumblr staff we’re talking about here.  They’ve been fucking up the website and chasing users away since at *least* 2014 if not longer.  Automattic never cleaned house and started over like they should have when they bought Tumblr.  That right there was the second biggest mistake they made, the biggest being buying tumblr in the first place.

First of all, XKit never provided the old dashboard toggle. That was provided by Tumblr, but only to XKit users, as a grace period to allow us (XKit’s developers) some extra time to update extensions.

Tumblr is deleting the old dashboard because the old dashboard’s codebase is likely a huge, ancient and difficult-to-maintain mess (much like XKit is, which is why updates aren’t coming as fast as anyone would like). This post from Tumblr Engineering touches on this:

This has been a very long time in the making, and the primary reason behind it is to make the desktop web experience of Tumblr easier to maintain and build on top of.

While the old dashboard may seem simple enough from a user perspective, the new dashboard is miles simpler from a (first-party) developer perspective, since it isn’t powered by a bunch of custom server-side code. This means Tumblr’s frontend is now actually a frontend - not a website, but a web app that uses the Tumblr API directly. Hopefully, adding features to the new dashboard should now be almost as easy for Tumblr’s developers as it was for XKit to add features to the old dashboard.

Because like...hoooo, lawd.  That’s some CYA bafflegabic bullshit right there.  And like...it’s the same old staff bullshit of “we’ve been told repeatedly by our userbase that we need to fix [thing that makes the website unsafe] but instead we’re going to fix [item that didn’t actually need to be fixed].  See!  We listen!  Give us all the applause!”

It ain’t gonna matter one iota how “easy” the site is to “maintain” if you drive away a majority of your userbase by making your website more and more unsafe to use.  Or is driving away a majority of your userbase the point, because staff thinks it will be easier to maintain a website with a small userbase than it is to maintain one with a large userbase?

And I wouldn’t be surprised one single bit if they’re aiming to make tumblr more like WordPress/a WordPress clone, ignoring that there’s a REASON people are using tumblr instead of WordPress and that doing so will be the deathknell of Tumblr and just a waste of the $3 million Automattic paid for it.

JFC.

So I contacted tumblr support and told them that the new dashboard changes has made tumblr unsafe for me and they’re driving users away, and they basically told me “too bad, so sad, sucks to be you.”

Like

If anyone was operating under the delusion that this hellsite would somehow be better or at least not worse with new owners that’s now thoroughly debunked.

Seriously exploring creating a social media alternative at this point, with all of the good parts of tumblr and none of the massive fuckery, because fuck this shit.

Captions:

My email to support:

“Y'all need to bring the old dashboard back.  The new one makes tumblr completely unusable.  Xkit’s postblock and blacklist are no longer functioning with the new dashboard for starters, which means all of the effort I’ve put into making my dashboard a safe place and avoid all the pedos, nazis and abusive members on here is now useless, and my dashboard is now a minefield.  I’m going to boycott using tumblr until this is fixed, why you guys keep messing it up instead of leaving something that’s working alone I’ll never understand but you’re just gonna keep driving people away with this nonsense fuckery.“

Their response:

“Hello,

Thanks for reaching out about the new dashboard. We previously did allow folks with XKit installed to use the old dashboard, but as of July 1, 2020 that option no longer exists.

The XKit team has been working on a complete overhaul in order to make their extensions compatible with the new dashboard, and they’ve made a lot of progress. You can check to see which extensions have been updated here:

https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/1802

While we don’t plan on bringing back the old dashboard, know that your feedback is helping to shape the future of Tumblr. If you have any additional feedback, or a specific feature you’d like to see supported, please let us know.

Best,

Dave

Whatever “improvements” or changes they were making to the platform were temporarily staved off by xkit’s extension to revert to the old dash (with tumblr’s cooperation), which was certainly designed as a temporary “fix”.

It was never a matter of “IF”, just of “WHEN” it would happen. And as always, the end result is - adapt or go somewhere better. 

And I guarantee that LOTS of us will be interested if you create or find something better.

I've been on this site since...2014 I think? And yeah, plenty of changes, mostly shitty ones that made it worse.

But this is the first one I can remember where they not only deliberate broke the thing (xkit) we use to fix tumblr's god-awful broken code, but also broke it in a way that made the dash/user experience unsafe (and it's hilariously awful that we have to use a browser extension like xkit to make this website safe because Tumblr never wants to remove the toxic elements like pedos and bigots themselves), then offered an opt-out supposedly to give the xkit people more time, but then took away the opt-out before xkit was fixed.

Don't get me wrong, I am in no way blaming or trying to abuse the xkit people here. They're volunteers. But Tumblr staff? SUPPOSED to be professionals. And the sale to Automattic, owner of WordPress? Was SUPPOSED to make the site better, or at least keep it from getting WORSE.

But nope, same old shit, now with an extra helping of fuck you to a vast portion of their user base.

It's been a while since I got my computer networking and security degree (which included some programming, and as others in IT have already noted ad nauseum every time Tumblr pulls shit like this, makes the experience of seeing supposed IT professionals failing useability 101 so fucking badly pretty fucking galling), so I'm currently squeezing in brushing up my programming skills along with all the other stuff I've got going on. If nothing else I might volunteer for xkit once I'm back up to snuff; but I'll keep starting an alternative site in mind, too. That'll be a while though because I'm on SSI disability right now and only get $522/month to (try to) live off of. And startups can be expensive. But at the minimum I'd include:

- import function to transfer your Tumblr(s) WITH notes/comments.

- basic, streamlined, easy-to use dash and post editor

- 5 strikes & you're banned rule for stuff like bigotry, pedos/kiddie porn, Nazis, harassment, threats, etc; with human eyeballs-on appeal process.

- marketplace to connect advertisers with experienced users/photo & video editors so the advertisers can hire them to create advertisement that will integrate well into the site, not be bothersome and actually be enjoyable

- marketplace for themes, both free and paid

- plus option for a modest fee for extra features, but no fees for all of the functionality needed to fully enjoy the site

- blocking that actually keeps those you blocked and their content off of your dash/out of your sight.

- and more

So I contacted tumblr support and told them that the new dashboard changes has made tumblr unsafe for me and they’re driving users away, and they basically told me “too bad, so sad, sucks to be you.”

Like

If anyone was operating under the delusion that this hellsite would somehow be better or at least not worse with new owners that’s now thoroughly debunked.

Seriously exploring creating a social media alternative at this point, with all of the good parts of tumblr and none of the massive fuckery, because fuck this shit.

Captions:

My email to support:

“Y'all need to bring the old dashboard back.  The new one makes tumblr completely unusable.  Xkit’s postblock and blacklist are no longer functioning with the new dashboard for starters, which means all of the effort I’ve put into making my dashboard a safe place and avoid all the pedos, nazis and abusive members on here is now useless, and my dashboard is now a minefield.  I’m going to boycott using tumblr until this is fixed, why you guys keep messing it up instead of leaving something that’s working alone I’ll never understand but you’re just gonna keep driving people away with this nonsense fuckery.“

Their response:

“Hello,

Thanks for reaching out about the new dashboard. We previously did allow folks with XKit installed to use the old dashboard, but as of July 1, 2020 that option no longer exists.

The XKit team has been working on a complete overhaul in order to make their extensions compatible with the new dashboard, and they’ve made a lot of progress. You can check to see which extensions have been updated here:

https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/1802

While we don’t plan on bringing back the old dashboard, know that your feedback is helping to shape the future of Tumblr. If you have any additional feedback, or a specific feature you’d like to see supported, please let us know.

Best,

Dave

And guess what?

Tumblr-based filtered tags and filtered post content do not:

keep high-note reblog chains with content from abusive people you’ve blocked from appearing on your dash, it’s like a slap in the face every damn time, I have those people blocked for a reason, they’re abusive, they’re bigots, they’re pedos, they’re nazis, they’re trolls, that taints everything they do even if they’re saying something I would otherwise agree with, and tumblr has done fuck-all to address them infesting this hellsite besides the block feature which, unlike the block feature on twitter for example, doesn’t actually keep those people and their content off your dashfeed.

filter by username like xkit’s blacklist does

keep stuff that isn’t tagged off of my dash like xkit’s postblock does (sure, the first one is there until you block it, but afterwards reblogs of that post never appears again.)

And BTW?  You only have access to those two settings on your own blog(s) to get your screenshot from, which means you’re telling someone else to use stuff that you yourself aren’t using, which is another total Karen move.  Just like your entire blog has a total Karen motiff, JFC.

Maybe think about how you shouldn’t go around calling other people Karens when you’re acting like one yourself.

Like JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESUS what a Karen (and a dick) move.

So I contacted tumblr support and told them that the new dashboard changes has made tumblr unsafe for me and they’re driving users away, and they basically told me “too bad, so sad, sucks to be you.”

Like

If anyone was operating under the delusion that this hellsite would somehow be better or at least not worse with new owners that’s now thoroughly debunked.

Seriously exploring creating a social media alternative at this point, with all of the good parts of tumblr and none of the massive fuckery, because fuck this shit.

Captions:

My email to support:

“Y'all need to bring the old dashboard back.  The new one makes tumblr completely unusable.  Xkit’s postblock and blacklist are no longer functioning with the new dashboard for starters, which means all of the effort I’ve put into making my dashboard a safe place and avoid all the pedos, nazis and abusive members on here is now useless, and my dashboard is now a minefield.  I’m going to boycott using tumblr until this is fixed, why you guys keep messing it up instead of leaving something that’s working alone I’ll never understand but you’re just gonna keep driving people away with this nonsense fuckery.“

Their response:

“Hello,

Thanks for reaching out about the new dashboard. We previously did allow folks with XKit installed to use the old dashboard, but as of July 1, 2020 that option no longer exists.

The XKit team has been working on a complete overhaul in order to make their extensions compatible with the new dashboard, and they’ve made a lot of progress. You can check to see which extensions have been updated here:

https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/1802

While we don’t plan on bringing back the old dashboard, know that your feedback is helping to shape the future of Tumblr. If you have any additional feedback, or a specific feature you’d like to see supported, please let us know.

Best,

Dave

And guess what?

Tumblr-based filtered tags and filtered post content do not:

keep high-note reblog chains with content from abusive people you’ve blocked from appearing on your dash, it’s like a slap in the face every damn time, I have those people blocked for a reason, they’re abusive, they’re bigots, they’re pedos, they’re nazis, they’re trolls, that taints everything they do even if they’re saying something I would otherwise agree with, and tumblr has done fuck-all to address them infesting this hellsite besides the block feature which, unlike the block feature on twitter for example, doesn’t actually keep those people and their content off your dashfeed.

filter by username like xkit’s blacklist does

keep stuff that isn’t tagged off of my dash like xkit’s postblock does (sure, the first one is there until you block it, but afterwards reblogs of that post never appears again.)

And BTW?  You only have access to those two settings on your own blog(s) to get your screenshot from, which means you’re telling someone else to use stuff that you yourself aren’t using, which is another total Karen move.  Just like your entire blog has a total Karen motiff, JFC.

Maybe think about how you shouldn’t go around calling other people Karens when you’re acting like one yourself.