#the only posts

Seth Macfarlane is a great voice actor but needs to quit telling horribly biased and socially unconscious jokes

Argo looked like a nice flick and I probably should have seen it

Paperman completely OWNED that Oscar you go Paperman 4 for you Paperman

I'm not about to make a judgement on Life of Pi because I haven't seen it, and anybody complaining about Spielberg being snubbed who precedes their statement with "Now, I haven't seen Life of Pi, BUT" should probably stop there

The outcomes of these awards really don't have a bearing on which films get remembered for longer (How many people still talk about Slumdog Millionaire?)

Hate as a Reaction

It isn't. Hate is not a reaction. You do not look at something and feel instant hate for it. Hate is produced after feeling another emotion, and that emotion causes another reaction to plant the seed of hate in your mind. You don't start by hating something, you start by being shocked/angry/sad about something and the repetition or duration of the stimulus causes that emotion to become habit. That's hate.

Hate as a Mentality

This is how hate has been traditionally found throughout society. Whether conditioned by exposure or repeated through generations, hate is a nasty, unhealthy mentality which does more to harm the individual suffering through it than benefit anyone involved. There are cases in which hate can be directed at a source which well deserves it (poverty, injustice, inequality, violence, ignorance, etc) but that does not mean that it is in any way productive. You can hate something all you want, but real change is not born from hate.

Hate as a Definition of Self

Here's where the majority of my post is going to fall, because it is a startling new trend that I've seen mostly on tumblr that denotes a horrifying new way to express oneself. There are blogs where people post about things that they enjoy. These are normal. There are blogs where people post things that irritate them or blogs where they critique things with a balanced eye. These are also fine.

And then there are blogs whose only purpose seems to be to ridicule and alienate those who enjoy different things than they do. These blogs posts things that actively aggravate them and make long-winded text posts about things that they despise to no one in particular, shouting into the wind, educating no one and furthering their desperate spiral of disdain. Blogs like "fuckno*insertfandomhere*" go out of their way to find instances where a particular fandom has intruded upon their hallowed ground (read: their fandom, a public forum, or just the same website) and get all bothered and irritable about that. These blogs exist for the purpose of -hate-. This is horrible.

This can also be observed from the recent militant veganism movement. For every one picture I've seen where someone was sharing a vegan recipe that looked quite tasty or extoling some virtue of the vegan diet that made a it of sense, there have been ten which screech unerringly about the horrors of people who eat meat and how they have no conscience and are filthy, horrible, stupid, ugly people. Not even about the meat industry, mind you, but about the actual people who consume meat in general.

Goodness gracious.

"You cannot shout the truth into people," I've said. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. You cannot let your hate for something be the driving force of your actions. The more personal vitriol you put into a post, the more you alienate the people you really need to reach.

In the first sentence of this post, up above the read-more, I originally said that "militant veganism doesn't deserve its own post." Which was incorrect. It might not need its own post, but I'm not going to belittle something which people so obviously feel strongly about just because I wholeheartedly disagree with it. Those were my feelings creeping in, not the facts. Realize when that occurs, and correct it.

The Counter-Movement

To combat this attitude of hate, I've added a link at the top of my blog called "SHIT I LIKE" which has a list of, well, shit that I like. Fandoms I'm in, music I dig, food that I would put in my facehole, given the opportunity, etc. I plan to add to this, so that I can know what all that I enjoy and figure out where I can find some more. Other people can look at this list and go "Oh, hey, you like X, Y, and Z? Why not try this Q, too?" To which I can say "Oh, Q? I've never heard of Q! Gimme some of that Q," and I'll have made a friend and/or gotten something out of the deal.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

"I'm a nerd, and I'm proud of that." "I'm a geek, and I'm not ashamed." "I like comic books and science fiction and nerdy things and I don't care who knows it!" etc, etc, ad both infinitum and naseum. The main problem with spouting these sorts of diatribes is that it becomes entirely too obvious that 1. You really, really, really like being thought of as a geek, not just being a geek, and 2. You really do care who knows it. On the whole, there's actually not much wrong with these statements. You shouldn't be ashamed to enjoy the things you enjoy, unless those things are intrinsically amoral (Lookin' at you, misogynists/racists/sexists/stock brokers). The problem comes in when you enjoy "being a nerd" more than actually doing nerdy things.

A History of Tragic

Way back when, in the days when ships were made of wood and men were made of steel, being smart was fucking great. You got a sweet gig with a noble to just study shit and everybody knew that you were working on unraveling the universe. Nerds were KINGS back in the day. Leonardo da Vinci? Polymath and geek. Ben Franklin? Arbitrarily assigned charge values to positive and negative during his experiments with electricity and declined the presidency to go hang with the French. And they let him do it. Because he was King Nerd.

And then somewhere along the way we kinda fell from grace. Or maybe we diverged, after a sort. Instead of having charismatic people who were brilliant, we had these warring factions of "Pretty" and "Smart". You still see that dichotomy today. In almost every piece of media there are Daphnes, and there are Velmas. The rare fusion of the two tends to be "a very interesting and unique take on the character archetypes" (read: the media has no idea how people can be pretty and also do math). Guys got split up too: poindexters and football players, the stereotypical D&D players and the "Cool Kids" at the "Popular Table". 

Until recently, when being a nerd has suddenly become this big amazing thing that everyone loves to do. A light switch has randomly been flicked on in the social consciousness that says "Hey! We like fantasy and sci-fi and big epic movies and stories and at that neat stuff!" Celebrities are "coming out" as nerds, even, being asked about the trivia or otherwise out-of-the-norm things that they do in their spare time. It's become a growing trend to celebrate all those things that are geeky, things that people have been doing for years but have just now decided to throw a party about.

...Really?

One of the great things about most stereotypically geeky past-times is that they don't require a pat on the back from society. You don't need a trophy for getting your D&D character to level 20 because you've just spent those past 20 levels with good friends having a wonderful time in a world all your own. You don't need a ring for finishing the collected works of Tolkien because you loved the crap out of the ring you just read about and you want to go write or read MORE. It's about the Unexpected Journey, not the destination. Finding things, learning things, making things, that is what being a geek means. Which is why it grinds my gears and makes my hair stand on end when I see the generic "nerd power" T-shirts and random, tangential statuses suffixed with "omg im such a nerd!!!"

I'm not trying to bash people who call themselves a nerd, and I'm certainly not trying to turn its meaning back from a term of endearment to an outright insult, because the only insults I approve of are those too vague to demean a specific group ("fucker", "shithead", "dumbass" etc). What I am saying is that there is a very big difference between a random person waking up in the morning and saying "I'm going to dress like a nerd today" and then proceed to put on big-rimmed glasses with no lenses, and a geek saying "I'm going to get dressed today" and put on a Doctor Who shirt. The term is being used archaically by the media and general populace and this stereotype is a major issue.

Fake Nerd Girls

Now I don't want my previous statements to be considered an attack on anyone who wants to use the term "nerd" to describe themselves. There's no actual qualifications attached to the "nerd" status. I'm not allowed to make that decision and even if I was I don't think that I would. I've made a post about this before but I'm going to be 100% clear-cut here: questioning the integrity of members of a social group is a witch hunt of self-destruction that ultimately paints the whole group in a negative light. This goes back to loving the label more than the activities associated with it. If all the people who spent their time demeaning and interrogating people over whether they deserved the social label they chose for themselves took that time and applied it to their own development in their geeky area of interest, you would see a hell of a lot more happy people. When you feel the need to ask someone "What would YOU know about X?", instead ask "What don't I know about X? And how can I change that?" If the answer is "Nothing" then you are either a bold-faced liar or you need to expand your horizons.

The Manifesto

I'm not railing against "Fake Nerd Girls" or even "Fake Nerds" for that matter. There's no such thing as a Fake Nerd. What I am railing against is twofold, with one foot against either side of the opposition.

To the long-time geeks who (ugh) Did It Before It Was Cool: Keep doing what you're doing. You enjoyed those things before, you can still enjoy them now. Yes, there may be some newcomers with only a cursory understanding of your particular hobby, but that gives you a chance to spread your love of these things to new people. Not everyone will listen. Not everyone will learn. That's okay! That's part of how a community grows. You're going to get backlash. Maybe things about what you like will change. If they change for the worse, I'm sorry. I really am. That's not a fun experience. But don't blame these new people. Blame the creators for folding to pressure, maybe. But the majority of these people are just trying to find something fun to enjoy with their friends, and to make new friends. That's all you've ever wanted out of your pastimes; don't hold them to a double standard.

To the new Geeks who have taken up the mantle because of the aesthetics: Understand what you're emulating! Don't just wear the shirts without knowing what they mean! I know that sounds hypocritical, but hear me out: Just because we shouldn't mock you for enjoying the look of things doesn't mean that you don't have an obligation to try to understand the things that you're advertising. I'm not saying you have know everything about the series/band/movie/comics/porn adaptation/trombonist that's on your t-shirt, but a quick google search might lead you into a really cool fandom! The more people we have getting really into something instead of just having a tertiary understanding, the more creative and happy people we have. Besides, if you walk around wearing something from a product that ends up going against your beliefs and don't know it, you're projecting a dangerously incorrect image of yourself to everyone else around you! That's no good for anyone involved. I'm not asking you to become a Whovian overnight or to read through Homestuck in a weekend, but give these things a shot. They may have caught your eye for a reason.

To anyone who demeans someone immediately based on their tastes, either intellectually or aesthetically: Ffffffffffuck you. You're part of the problem, not the solution. Talk to these people. Don't shut yourself out, don't ignore anyone, because everyone has something to teach you. Often when you think they don't.

I got one about Evolution, possibly with a religion tie-in

Basically I'm tired of waiting for issues to come up before i write long rambling posts about them

I like when people reblog my The Only Posts because those are the ones that I actually put effort into.

The Push and Pull of a Social Network

People on Tumblr who dislike the update and try to reason about it are typically berated by those who don't mind it (or just want to argue) for taking it too personally. The truth of it is, Tumblr is not angry at you. It does not hate you. It is not personally trying to make you upset over these changes. However, it is not doing a very good job of handling the criticism, given the influx of form letters and a lack of response either way from the staff. This is not a surprising fact. One of the most popular browser addons for Tumblr, Missing-E, has only ever been acknowledged by the staff as dangerous and something that should be removed at all costs. It is a reminder of something that they did not create that is "fixing" their site which they do not feel is broken.

This is a natural response for humans. They're hurt. They're proud. They're insulted that anyone ever thought that their site was incomplete. And it's a bit of a brazen move on Missing-E's part to assert that they complete someone else's work! It's one thing to write a fanfiction and have people assume it as their headcanon. It's quite another to write an alternate final chapter and preach that it's how the story SHOULD have ended. To have people choose a fanwork as the definitive finale must be grating on their nerves.

The Poor Reactions

So what has Tumblr done in this update and in the past to account for Missing-E? Well... mostly just tried very unsuccessfully to repress it. Not replicate its quality features in their own code, not integrate the functionality within its own systems to make its users safer (which would be the mature thing if it was actually concerned about "a dangerous browser hack"), but to ignore the backlash and chug forward on other projects. Most notably, if you use this app, you are considered a secondary Tumblr user for the purposes of support. This is a poor reaction. It's juvenile, underhanded, and to deny anyone help based on the apps they use is pretty poor management when you've got an App System built in already.

So they chugged and chugged and now this update, so groundbreaking, years in the making, etc etc. It's here. And people dislike it. Intensely. Let's break down what they're selling here and explain why it is that people are having such a negative reaction to everything that's being touted here. I, for one, blame the marketing team more than the coders.

"Tumblr posts are the canvas.": I agree. This is a good sentiment to have. A canvas is a big open space where I can throw out my ideas at will, with enough room to make them reality by shifting them around and organizing my thoughts. Why, then, did you feel the need to move my canvas from its nice, wide, own page, to a cramped corner in the middle of everyone else's finished artwork. This is like putting a work studio in the middle of an art gallery. You don't have the room to make a quality piece of work and you're stuck looking at everyone else's finished products to boot. This is not an enjoyable way to create content.

"Distilling 5 years worth of functionality into a much more cohesive interface": Huh. That's... nice, I guess. It's another coat of polish. The problem: Tumblr was polished as fuck to begin with. It's one of the reasons I've stuck around for so long. The interface is already pretty minimal, but not to the point of losing anything. it had room to breathe. Having space is a good thing.

"After spending the last year working on mobile-": LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE. Ho-lee-crappola. Here it is. I've found the source of the entire problem. This is the reason the interface is so cramped, nasty, and constrained now. It's not for your computer; it's for your iPad! Mobile devices thrive on the instant-satisfaction style of aesthetics, so these changes are moving in that direction. Personal computers and their handheld counterparts are not the same beasts whatsoever. You cannot design things for the two in exactly the same way. You need to recognize when you've become enamored with a design before working out the implications and step back when you've gone in the wrong direction. This is the wrong direction.

"Now you're making posts the same way that you're reading them": Allow me to ask you something. If people made television shows the same way that people watched them, would quality improve or decrease? If people wrote books in the same way that they read them, would more or less books get finished and published? If people painted in the same way that someone critiques a painting, would it end up being too pretentious? Do you see what I'm getting at? You CANNOT create things in the same way that you use them. This is not intuitive. This is not useful. This is getting closer to the Twitter style of updates being constant, in the row with everyone else, and completely inconsequential beyond the noise of the masses.

"It's a step towards making things smaller, without sacrificing utility": I've got a laptop that's at least a foot across horizontally. I don't need smaller. The things that need smaller are (wait for it) mobile devices! Which already have their specific apps to handle that! So this does not benefit me! At all! If anything, it makes my dashboard more cluttered and does the exact opposite of streamlining things. You're two steps back now.

"So much of the effort went into refinements that hopefully you won't even notice": ...yeah. That didn't happen. So much of the product we received was in the overhaul that we DID notice. Painfully so. The unnecessary alterations overshadowed any performance upgrades. Loading images in the background? Nice, but it's an image file. Unless you're on dial-up or an awful connection, this is gonna be taken for granted. Oh, and loading the whole dashboard any time you want to make a post completely negates the advantage of uploading stuff in the background.

"In-line reblogging": Alright, here I'm going to concede just a little bit to admit when something is fair. In-line reblogging is actually the only time when I'd consider manipulating posts in the dashboard to be a reasonable idea. You don't need to open a whole new window just to add your tags or a short response. That's fine. Edit it there and send it on its way. You're not creating, you're sharing. The problem is when every post is treated like a reblog, smashed into the same tiny window and shoehorned in with the crowd.

"Photosets were cool, but making them was painful": Whoever came up with the idea of drag and drop photosets needs a smack on the back of the head. The old style of photoset creation made so much more sense that I'm honestly puzzled as to why they added this. Before, you just hit the upload photo button several times getting all the pictures you wanted from your folders, usually the same folder to begin with. Now, the "streamlined alternative" they offer involves navigating your mess of folders to wherever the pictures are beforehand (or just having the folder open continuously which... doesn't make any sense either) and maneuvering the windows to drag and drop your pictures. This isn't straightforward, comfortable, or sensible. I'm not sure why it happened.

And that's it.

That's It?

Uh, guys? When you make a major update, most people tend to tout the best features and then make a list of all the other cool stuff that's changed. You've enumerated everything that's included in this update minus the tiny little background performance features, and your list is three entries long. This isn't a major content update. This is an interface change more than anything else. This is like if Valve gave a fanfare for "The Spy Update" for TF2 and then proceeded to release one weapon for that class. And made a video saying how nice this new weapon was and how much they liked it. And then the weapon sucked.

Oh and also you can't have community skins for your hats anymore because they're dangerous. Sorry. (I'm getting off on a tangent.)

What Needs To Happen

Number 1: Tumblr needs to stop looking to the mobile market for their PC users. They just don't work the same way. The aesthetics are different, the people are different, the expectations are different, and the needs and capabilities of their respective user bases are very, very different.

Number 2: Tumblr needs to stop trying to minimize Missing-E and start beefing up its own feature set. Here's a short list of things that Missing-E has that would be useful for the regular tumblr user's experience:

Widescreen Dashboard. Stop cramping my canvas if you care so damn much about it.

Tag wrapping. Don't make me scroll when I can just read. Let me read tags the same way I'm writing them. THAT is something small enough to make the idea work.

Alternatives between pictures and words for post options. Because it's really not that hard to have a check box for that.

Mass deletion buttons for drafts, queue, etc. It's a clear switch. That's pretty handy.

Additional keyboard shortcuts. Because your target audience here is people with KEYBOARDS. Not the mobile market.

Bring back tracked tags in the dashboard as an option.

Bookmarking features, because liking a post isn't always enough to recall it when it's not tagged well.

Safe Dash. Not as high a priority but options are good.

Creating new posts in a new tab because DID YOU READ ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS ESSAY

Timestamps.

Keeping original tags when reblogging. Because if I want to retype all the characters or elements of a post, then I'd make my own damn post.

1-Click reblogging.

Reblogging long text posts as text automatically. Although this one might be implemented already? Not certain.

Most of these aren't impossible. Most of them could probably be made optional. Those are two hallmarks of a good update. Something that people can use if they want, and that don't cost much energy to make. I think Tumblr's just gone the opposite route: an intense update to do things that people don't like. 

Number 3: Tumblr users need to understand that these people are humans. They did something you don't like, yes, and that makes you frustrated. I am also frustrated! I made a big post detailing the nature of my frustration! But you can't expect these things to get changed back overnight. They are examining the situation and coming up with alternatives for what's been causing the fuss (if they're wise), and with an organization, that takes a lot of time and discussion. Give it another week or so and if we don't see results, then take action. These things take time.

I promise.