My opinion about some social networks – so… why tumblr?

So, I’m posting in social networks and in my own blog.

I feel to share my opinion about my choice, what I will post on which medium. From worse to good (subjective view).

Tik-Tok

I don’t even have an account. But what I see from the outside (through reposting in other social media), Tik-Tok is ADHD in purest form.

Facebook

Disqualified. I posted a lot in the past. Topics were private posts. Mostly original posts, seldom sharing something from other sources, but if share, then always with my personal view as comment. I posted videos from the birds on my terrace, politics worldwide (like migration, Trump, pandemic, Ukraine), cat content and memes of course.

But there was a recent change in the posts, which facebook was choosing for me. And the amount of „recommendations“ and „sponsored posts“ is increasing massivly on the cost of post in my groups and from the (so called) friends.

F*ck on „I show you, what you are interested in“. Facebook knows nothing about me or it is simpy rotten now. I’m not interested in

  • Pakistani cricket teams
  • U.S. local car stores
  • U.S. local TV stations
  • Taiwanese … WHAT? I can’t even read the ads!
  • Vegan food (I really enjoy good meat and if someone is enjoying plant food, I’m very fine with it)
  • Gardening (from hemp seeds to the diversity of blooming flowers)
  • Truck drivers posts („I’m proud beeing a trucker“)
  • Motorbike drivers posts („I’m proud having bigass oldschool asshole tattoos“)
  • Football (= European Football aka „Soccer“ AND U.S. Football)
  • Basketball

It’s a nuisance. I started an experiment one week before and clicked „Don’t show me this anymore“ on all „recommendations“, which is not matching at all (~90%). I’m still waiting on the moment, Facebook has learned, what I’m interested in. But the recommendations are getting worser and worser every day.

So, Facebook is out, absolutely out. Useless. I don’t support useless tools. I made my last post in November and slow down active interactions (likes, comments…), now it’s under 10 per month.

Another reason are the stupid comments from stupid people. I wonder, how these ladies and lads avoid dead by natural selection on an everyday base.

Ok, enough hate about Facebook. Facebook is dead.

Instagram

I don’t have an account. Some relatives have and I don’t see any need for Instagram except image affine target groups. It’s hyped for other purposes, but I can’t handle it.

Twitter

I tried to post here. There are a lot of people, but I’m not getting to the point – literaly. Obviously (see this posting here) I’m  not the person for „short message services“. And with Elon Musk it is not getting better (I never liked him. He would give himself a blowjob and praise himself about it – as giver and as reciever. He is a tech-Trump, but (still) with money. Of course, I get a lot of pressure from fanpeople).

Xing

It is maybe only known in German language countries. I was there from the beginning, so 20 years now. It was good – some times before. My last post is 10 years away (except my hackathon-win-posts in 2021).

But they are shifting to bad with every „optimization“ of their service. The benefit of a paying user was „no advertising“. Now, there are sponsored posts even in my message list. And the monthly fee increases. The responsiveness of the website is reverse… means that for me as a desktop user, I get a mobile view: They are messing with white space and big fonts. On phones, it will be dense and informative, but on desktop… no efficiency in displaying information.

It was starting as a business network like LinkedIn, but now, some posts are just „facebook-izided“. I’m not interested about „wedding photos“ in a business network.

I have Xing, because the covering by recruiters is quite good. Additionally, I pay for „projobs“ subscription, so recruiters can find me even better. But the quality of inquiries is getting worser – I think, Xing offers recruiters some tools, which make it easier for them mass-contacting people, so the trend goes to spamming. Recruiters are searching for Java and so, I will getting mails, because I have Java… ehm… JavaScript in my profile. What is maybe a match… not very close, but the string is matching.

I will stop the projobs subscription soon.

LinkedIn

Need this for my career. I post sometimes, but not smalltalk. I assimilated the attitude from the other LinkedIn-Members to explain something what is good, why it is good and I’m good, because I’m used to this. Praise myself.

  • „Hi, I won this hackathon“
  • „See this article, there are mentioned three projects, I was involved“
  • „As a Developer, it is important to…“

I get more contacts from recruiters through LinkedIn now than from Xing and the quality of  recruiter approaches is getting better. The design of the webpage is better (but the chronological approach of the timeline is a mess). Except for viewing with the tablet – I prefer the regular desktop view, but LinkedIn always asks of „yeah, you surely like the mobile view“ and doesn’t accept a persistant „NO!“, it asks every single time, sometimes on reload.

The posts themselvs are mostly scraping just the surface, but are professional.

I love the „Internationalism“ and I learned a lot about foreign views through the shares and comments of my (primarely dev) contacts from nigeria, india, slowakia… it pulls me out of the bubble of the usual „white & western“ peer group. I enjoy seeing posts with a colorful people and the impact of „oh, this is a perspective I was not aware of“.

Aside of the career aspect, LinkedIn get me an insight in worldwide culture.

Tumblr

Now we are at this point.

For first, I was there due to pictures (drawings) only. Formerly, tumblr was defined as platform for artist and open, free speech about anything.

Then cames „THE PURGE“ after aquiring tumblr by Oath/AOL/Verizone/Yahoo, introducing the typical american way of „clean platform“ – so killing babies with automatic rifles in a kindergarden is acceptable, but not a flash of flesh. A lot of artists leaved tumblr. That was really bad, because the followers of these artists were leaving tumblr too … 30% member loss in two month. After one year and a lot of damage, tumblr was sold to the guys behind wordpress. Unfortunately the compliance rules were not reversed, so any artist on the verge of nastiness is threatened with potential banning – and the tumblr search bot is bad at deciding good & bad content.

I’m on tumblr since about 2016 with an account. Since 2010 (I think earlier, found saved files from 2008), I was subscribed to many member via RSS feed without an own account. Then RSS was more and more a problem and I set up this account.

Since my own account, I was actively subscribing other members and there was another kind of culture as in other social media. There was a sense of intelectual awareness, a lot of perspective of queer people, disadvanteged groups (people of color, women, many autistic people), mixed with pure anarchy and controversity without popularism, creative. This was condensing over time, tumbler was turning to an „emo inspired fringe group insider“. I cannot really explain it, it is more a feeling than rational description.

Some artists or members are back (or new) from Twitter since Musks regency, but most of them can’t adhere to this culture, which differs to other platforms.

And I’m feeling good here, because tumblr itself is bad and unsuccessful as a social platform!

  • They are messing with ads (I get 90% ads for Viagra and female contraceptives. On a porn ban platform), maybe they have NO working and useful post measurement/statistics and they are fully aware and (maybe) proud of this fact.
  • The search is a catastrophe and „trending topics“ is more a raw guess from the hashtags in the posts. „You may like“ category is mostly members, I actually follow – so they are right, but it is useless. I really appreciate this as a philosophical joke in the sense of pure Zen.
  • They are making actively trolling twitter ON twitter, starting with enjoying, that social links to other social media platforms are not allowed anymore – but tumblr is not on the list of the twitter threating social media. So – sad-face on Musks posting about not allowing, then party-face for not beeing on the list – and immediately posting a link on Twitter TO tumblr.
  • As Musk introduced the blue badge for $8, tumblr introduced two blue badges for $7.99. You can buy the two badges 12 times, so you have 24 blue checkmarks beside your profile name. And „this is not a verification sign for an account, it is simply an important blue checkmark, which is legitim in 2023. Please consider, the checkmarks can maybe changed in a bunch of crabs at any time“ (crabs are a tumblr thing too).

So, tumblr is funny and anarchic, the members too and at the moment, it is a mirror of my own mindset.

I can proudly say, I’m here for Goncharev, two cups of vanilla extract, white lady and all the other inside jokes in 2022 and 2023. Every year has it’s highlights.

So, that are the reasons, I will post to tumblr in the future, even if I know nobody will read it and interact with the post. Maybe someone like my post, but literaly no user on tumblr (as far as I know) posts for likes and that is a difference to other platforms too.