I’ve been on Twitter lately since it’s part of my job (not in the sense anyone told me to do it, just in the sense lots of traffic comes from there and lots of conversations happen there which I need to stay on top of) and the ways it’s different than Tumblr are interesting.
I actually like Tumblr’s atmosphere a lot better. I super don’t know how much of this is who I choose to follow on each platform, and it’s plausible that this is 100% selection effects, but I feel like most of the people who are mad here are mad from personal experience about bad stuff that’s affecting them, even if they’ve picked a wildly unproductive or inappropriate paradigm to use to engage with it. People are upset that their community doesn’t have stuff they need, or upset that the words they use to describe their experiences are getting used differently by other people. And – even when I think they’re wrong, it’s really valuable to understand what things are hurting people.
On Twitter people are mostly mad about the news of the day. And it’s not that the news of the day doesn’t matter and doesn’t affect thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people, but the vast majority of the reactions are not about how the news affects people, by people affected. They’re broader and more narrativizing and more focused on who wins and who loses, and unless you have the pitch-perfect personal angle I think it’s regarded as a little self-centered to engage with the news by thinking about the things that are hurting you and why they’re hurting you.
Also, most people on Tumblr are young and I see them grow and evolve a lot over time. Most people on Twitter are older and it’s kind of rare to see them change their minds.
I think serious ideas from way outside your bubble are more likely to reach you on tumblr, since people have enough time and space to spell them out at enough length they seem interesting even to people who don’t already agree.And… I’m less sure about this one, but I think tumblr might have already built up some immunity to some of the pure-outrage conversations that I see on twitter a lot. Most people here are survivors of at least one fandom blowing itself up over disagreements that were deeply felt and deeply hurtful but, ultimately, didn’t make the world a safer place for a single person, and I feel like most people who I follow on here are pretty good at identifying those dynamics when they crop up. I do not think most people on Twitter has gotten good at this yet. And wow, I hope they do soon.
Tags:
#interesting #Tumblr: a User’s Guide #Twitter #discourse cw?
Brinens and Things 