re: tumblr contrarianism about AI; instead of learning about and accepting things that are true and real the average tumblr user instead tries to forcibly bend facts to show that the status quo they enjoy has been Woke the whole time, actually, and nothing in their life ever needs to change. it's very obvious with any posts about environmentalism, AI and animal agriculture in particular are topics that typically bring out the worst in users
I think the user base is chasing the high of when this site was considered āavant gardeā like a 40 year old ex-athlete still chases the high of āalmost going proā when they were a teenager. But what made this site culturally relevant was not only the humor and social justice politics but the constant engagement with revolutionary and academic texts. We were producing commentaries, even whole new theories, but being academically informed and sharing educational materials weāre reading fell out of style. Thatās like trying to excite people about music here - thereās no audience for it anymore, total disinterest. And without that, how can we claim to be more politically advanced than other websiteās user bases? Weāve fallen behind and delusionally we think weāre ahead.
I think we became complacent when we noticed Twitter was recycling old tumblr arguments we moved past and developed a sort of undeserved superiority complex over the rest of the internet. Meanwhile people think this site is full of pathetic jokes.
I also think about the nostalgia for this begotten era - āwe used to be the feminist antiracist website, etc etcā which ignores how much backlash and conflict these basic ideas faced then. I mean, the backlash was part of the āculture warsā which went from online 4chan vs tumblr wars to offline lethal Nazi rallies and mass shootings. Rose colored glasses about how popular these ideas were while also not investing in the type of intellectual work that made those ideas āpopularā to begin with. Nobody wants to do the homework.














