That really depends on how you use it, I mean I've got a close-knit group of friends on there and it works out pretty well and oh who the hell am I kidding there is no goddamn escape whatsoever from the horrible bits they will seep in no matter how hard you try to stop that.
Only some of Tumblr's flaws can be mitigated, while the ones that bug me the most are fundamental to the platform.
Tumblr themes are the new Myspace themes. Yeah, there are obnoxious LJ themes, but generally (for better or worse) you need a bit of knowledge of CSS to really mess with or break them. I don't think I've seen any that brought back animated GIF backgrounds, autoplay music, comet cursor trails, and make obscuring or removing page or individual post UI elements as easy as Tumblr makes those things. And unlike LJ, I can't force my sane theme to display instead of Mr. Bonehead's theme when I view their Tumblr. I guess I could get past this by training myself to ascertain whether a given Tumblr is worthwhile with as little viewing of the Tumblr as possible and then adding it to my Dashboard or RSS, but it's far easier to just avoid exploring Tumblr.
This one deserves its own paragraph marker. Unlimited scrolling. We hates it. For a platform based on mobile use where connection and computing resources are limited, it's remarkably dumb.
Then there's conversations. I like commenting. I like getting replies. You know, interaction and stuff. I don't necessarily think every single person who follows me wants to see each and every comment I'm involved in, especially in long and contentious threads. Reblogging back and forth, forever, (between even two people, much less wide-participation threads) is not my idea of a good time. And while LJ can fumble in displaying long threads, Tumblr's fundamental limitations (see below) make that limit come far quicker. Sure, you can bolt on commenting systems like Disqus, there's no consistency from Tumblr to Tumblr.
Reblogging itself is flawed. I would rather see completely unsourced reblogs than ones that link a 'source' somewhere in the middle of a chain of reblogs that itself obscures its sources. It would be more honest, at least. This is only screwing over the content creators that Tumblr is trying to court.
Since this is getting a little bit long, I'll skip to my biggest Tumblr-Is-Awful reason: it harms the entirety of the internet. In addition to comments, I like pictures. Pictures are neat. I'm a member of a (formerly) big LJ picture community. And there, people who source their pictures from Tumblr are immediately obvious: everything is 500 pixels wide. Hey, that picture is neat, I'd like to save it! Wow, it sure is small. Guess I can't use it as a wallpaper or admire the detail of the art. I know! I'll take the URL and change the pixel number at the end... oh wait, either the original was uploaded at 500 pixels wide, or this bastard of a reblog chain discarded the original large version. Well, that's no problem! There's amazing technology these days that lets you search for pictures with a picture! ...oh wait, every hit is also 500 pixels wide, and every hit is just another unsourced Tumblr reblog. That's OK, I don't need to search with the picture, I'll use words to search for similar pictures! ...oh wait, all of those are 500 pixels wide, too, with the same sourcing problems. Animated GIFs are particularly hard hit by this, as Tumblr has a hard limit of 1MB for GIFs, and their resampling algorithm was formerly (maybe fixed? probably not) really inefficient size-wise. Everywhere you look, you see pictures tainted by their contact with, then mutation by, and virulence then propagated by... Tumblr. For all the other terrible anti-mobile decisions, this one is the worst, and furthest reaching - you don't even need to know what Tumblr is to be affected by it. And it's making the internet bad.
Alright that wasn't really what I was expecting when you said Tumbler was awful. But I do know that one of those problems has a totally straightforward solution that's a part of the system itself: Go into your settings and uncheck "Endless scrolling". Done! Also, I'm not so sure about the "platform based on mobile use" part. It's widely known on Tumbler that the mobile app was and is an afterthought that runs horribly, so people have been loading Tumbler through the web app instead, because yes, for some damn reason (not even endless scrolling here) the mobile app uses up tons and tons of data even though nothing freaking loads on it.
one of those problems has a totally straightforward solution that's a part of the system itself: Go into your settings and uncheck "Endless scrolling". Done!
What do you mean "your settings"? A web page I am visiting does not have a "your settings" page. This seems to be a statement like "Oh, stopping LinkedIn from spamming you is easy! Just validate their spamming ways, click on their spam links, sign up for a LinkedIn account, and use LinkedIn! Then they'll stop spamming you to become a LinkedIn user!"
More particularly: Okay, so if I sign up for a Tumblr account, I have an option to turn off the terrible-design on-by-default Endless Scrolling feature.... does that turn it off other people's pages?
(LinkedIn, by the way? Are spammers. LinkedIn sends spam. LinkedIn=spam. This association is important to make clear every single time LinkedIn comes up, even casually).
I'm not sure you can even use Tumbler without an account, short of visiting specific blog pages, and to answer that part of the question, it depends on their theme.
There are the usual fixes... greasemonkey scripts and firefox plugins, but no you can't turn off "choke-your-browser-and-make-it-impossible-to-find-your-spot" scrolling on others' pages.
Not to mention there's a new metastasization of it now, where you're reading a news article and scrolling doesn't take you to the comments, it takes you to another article. Often, this seems to break the link of the article you were reading and wanted to share, where it changes the URL in the location bar to the new article's URL, but the back button doesn't work because it didn't actually change pages. I think they got the bad idea from their TV news brethren, like when I foolishly indulge in the bad idea of watching a news site video clip and at the end of the clip it redirects to a new and completely unrelated clip.
What do you mean "your settings"? A web page I am visiting does not have a "your settings" page.
*mumblemumble something about Churchill on democracy (http://theweaselking.livejournal.com/4575030.html) mumble*
(Oh, and yes, fuck LinkedIn and their spam. ) (And if you tell me I need to have a LinkedIn profile for you to consider my resume, well, that's my "crap job" filter at work.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 08:08 pm (UTC)BTW, do you have a tumblr?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 08:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 03:22 am (UTC)But it can still be fun sometimes!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 05:49 am (UTC)Tumblr themes are the new Myspace themes. Yeah, there are obnoxious LJ themes, but generally (for better or worse) you need a bit of knowledge of CSS to really mess with or break them. I don't think I've seen any that brought back animated GIF backgrounds, autoplay music, comet cursor trails, and make obscuring or removing page or individual post UI elements as easy as Tumblr makes those things. And unlike LJ, I can't force my sane theme to display instead of Mr. Bonehead's theme when I view their Tumblr. I guess I could get past this by training myself to ascertain whether a given Tumblr is worthwhile with as little viewing of the Tumblr as possible and then adding it to my Dashboard or RSS, but it's far easier to just avoid exploring Tumblr.
This one deserves its own paragraph marker. Unlimited scrolling. We hates it. For a platform based on mobile use where connection and computing resources are limited, it's remarkably dumb.
Then there's conversations. I like commenting. I like getting replies. You know, interaction and stuff. I don't necessarily think every single person who follows me wants to see each and every comment I'm involved in, especially in long and contentious threads. Reblogging back and forth, forever, (between even two people, much less wide-participation threads) is not my idea of a good time. And while LJ can fumble in displaying long threads, Tumblr's fundamental limitations (see below) make that limit come far quicker. Sure, you can bolt on commenting systems like Disqus, there's no consistency from Tumblr to Tumblr.
Reblogging itself is flawed. I would rather see completely unsourced reblogs than ones that link a 'source' somewhere in the middle of a chain of reblogs that itself obscures its sources. It would be more honest, at least. This is only screwing over the content creators that Tumblr is trying to court.
Since this is getting a little bit long, I'll skip to my biggest Tumblr-Is-Awful reason: it harms the entirety of the internet. In addition to comments, I like pictures. Pictures are neat. I'm a member of a (formerly) big LJ picture community. And there, people who source their pictures from Tumblr are immediately obvious: everything is 500 pixels wide. Hey, that picture is neat, I'd like to save it! Wow, it sure is small. Guess I can't use it as a wallpaper or admire the detail of the art. I know! I'll take the URL and change the pixel number at the end... oh wait, either the original was uploaded at 500 pixels wide, or this bastard of a reblog chain discarded the original large version. Well, that's no problem! There's amazing technology these days that lets you search for pictures with a picture! ...oh wait, every hit is also 500 pixels wide, and every hit is just another unsourced Tumblr reblog. That's OK, I don't need to search with the picture, I'll use words to search for similar pictures! ...oh wait, all of those are 500 pixels wide, too, with the same sourcing problems. Animated GIFs are particularly hard hit by this, as Tumblr has a hard limit of 1MB for GIFs, and their resampling algorithm was formerly (maybe fixed? probably not) really inefficient size-wise. Everywhere you look, you see pictures tainted by their contact with, then mutation by, and virulence then propagated by... Tumblr. For all the other terrible anti-mobile decisions, this one is the worst, and furthest reaching - you don't even need to know what Tumblr is to be affected by it. And it's making the internet bad.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 08:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 10:42 am (UTC)What do you mean "your settings"? A web page I am visiting does not have a "your settings" page. This seems to be a statement like "Oh, stopping LinkedIn from spamming you is easy! Just validate their spamming ways, click on their spam links, sign up for a LinkedIn account, and use LinkedIn! Then they'll stop spamming you to become a LinkedIn user!"
More particularly: Okay, so if I sign up for a Tumblr account, I have an option to turn off the terrible-design on-by-default Endless Scrolling feature.... does that turn it off other people's pages?
(LinkedIn, by the way? Are spammers. LinkedIn sends spam. LinkedIn=spam. This association is important to make clear every single time LinkedIn comes up, even casually).
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 02:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 04:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-07 11:10 am (UTC)Not to mention there's a new metastasization of it now, where you're reading a news article and scrolling doesn't take you to the comments, it takes you to another article. Often, this seems to break the link of the article you were reading and wanted to share, where it changes the URL in the location bar to the new article's URL, but the back button doesn't work because it didn't actually change pages. I think they got the bad idea from their TV news brethren, like when I foolishly indulge in the bad idea of watching a news site video clip and at the end of the clip it redirects to a new and completely unrelated clip.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-06 08:55 pm (UTC)*mumblemumble something about Churchill on democracy (http://theweaselking.livejournal.com/4575030.html) mumble*
(Oh, and yes, fuck LinkedIn and their spam. )
(And if you tell me I need to have a LinkedIn profile for you to consider my resume, well, that's my "crap job" filter at work.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-08 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-05 09:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-01 06:56 pm (UTC)Kitty!