Why is Tumblr good at creating lolcows? -

[Pikonic]

It's not just SJWs (I believe Jace got his start there.)
I think it's become such a welcome and accepting community people feel no hesitation to post about just about anything in their lives, leading to TMI and attention whoring.
That's the sad part of it all, because there are tumblr users who post their art or writings and are pretty cool people, but tumblr's reputation has been trashed by the "Tumblristas."
Tumblr could've been a great blogging site (the fucking President uses it), now it's a joke.

 

[Meowthkip]

It's not just SJWs (I believe Jace got his start there.)
I think it's become such a welcome and accepting community people feel no hesitation to post about just about anything in their lives, leading to TMI and attention whoring.
That's the sad part of it all, because there are tumblr users who post their art or writings are pretty cool people, but tumblr's reputation has been trashed by the "Tumblristas."
Tumblr could've been a great blogging site (the fucking President uses it), now it's a joke.

I still use it if only because it's handy.

And yeah, Tumblr isn't all SJWs. Sadly, there's a sizable presence of neo Nazis, white supremacists, fangirls of serial killers and mass murderers, what have you. I saw a neo Nazi spread around a post reminding everybody that you don't have to feel guilty for being white, and it had a ton of notes. I often wonder if they see Tumblr as an opportunity to recruit disenfranchised moderate and liberal young adults.

 

[HoloSkull]

Beyond the SJW phenomenon on the platform.
There is a general carelessness with users in regards to broadcast media.
"To much information," never entered into their lexicon.
The spirit of the times has skilled content creators keep pace of hacks.
The infinite Rolodex scrolls ever downward why look for quality with all that quantity?
This extends beyond tumblr to the general malaise of our era.
The times are asymmetrical in conflict and resolution.

 

[Gerion]

There's a million different reasons why tumblr's the perfect storm it is. Facebook's a factor, specifically that all these under 16s that make up the ridiculous side of tumblr have their damn parents on Facebook, so Facebook's no fun to use and an anonymous platform is necessary. On tumblr, not only do you not have to give your real name, you can change your username an infinite amount of times while retaining the same list of followers, so accountability goes right out the window. You can make a fool of yourself and cover it up as many times as you can respawn.

As was stated above, the echo chamber effect also plays a big part. Why do celebrities go crazy? Because they overdose on attention, and because no one ever contradicts them. This happens on tumblr all the time to a much smaller scale. If the bulk of your socializing is done on tumblr, as is often the case with these teenagers, you're only ever talking to people who will validate you no matter how batshit you sound, and that isn't healthy. When people feel too safe, they feel like they can get away with anything.

That said, I haven't encountered many truly great lolcows on tumblr, apart from the absolute lunatic fringe like Riley and that frightening Pokemon person. What I have encountered is a lot of very young people who don't know their own minds at all and are feeling all these emotions at once, and are therefore desperate for any and all identity signifiers they can grab on to. I may be an incurable optimist but I truly believe that most of these dragonkin goofballs will be coaching Little League in twenty years, and remembering their teenage years with stark embarrassment if they remember them at all.

Also, you guys can feel free to downvote me for this, but I really do think it's important to remember to not throw the baby out with the bathwater when talking about tumblr's social justice bloggers. Is tumblr full of people screaming about nonsense under the guise of social justice? Yes! But without tumblr and twitter, no one would have any idea what the hell was going on in Ferguson. A tumblr post taught me shit that I didn't know about the history of First Nations people in Canada, and, like, I work with First Nations men as part of my job, so I'm not exactly a moron on that front. As awful as tumblr can be, I think it's amazing that this information is out there, and I really do think that the support group it provides can help people who are mentally ill, or people who are just figuring out that they're transgender, or otherwise in a tight spot that mom and dad and the principal can't be much help for. Tumblr didn't save Leelah Alcorn's life, but it may just be enough to help a few others get through the misery and uncertainty of adolescence. Tumblr is a low-stakes place to fail and to embarrass yourself. Teenagers have never really had that before. I can't laugh too hard at these kids. When I was their age I thought I was Trent Reznor. o_0

 

[AnOminous]

Tumblr didn't save Leelah Alcorn's life, but it may just be enough to help a few others get through the misery and uncertainty of adolescence. Tumblr is a low-stakes place to fail and to embarrass yourself. Teenagers have never really had that before. I can't laugh too hard at these kids. When I was their age I thought I was Trent Reznor. o_0

I suppose I'm partly an Internet snob. I just hate the look and feel and interface of tumblr, so pretty much rejected it on sight. I have a FB but ignore it because I find it's easier to like my relatives and friends when I don't know the stupid shit they're saying online.

I also just don't think it's ultimately healthy to live in a hugbox. I don't think beliefs are inherently worthy of respect, either. They're as worthy of respect as they are able to be defended.

Finally, the environment on tumblr seems it's just as likely to turn on some kid and bully and dogpile them as it is to help them. After all, if their weirdness doesn't fall within a protected range of political correctness, they'll be treated as an oppressive shitlord.

 

[Meowthkip]

I suppose I'm partly an Internet snob. I just hate the look and feel and interface of tumblr, so pretty much rejected it on sight. I have a FB but ignore it because I find it's easier to like my relatives and friends when I don't know the stupid shit they're saying online.

I also just don't think it's ultimately healthy to live in a hugbox. I don't think beliefs are inherently worthy of respect, either. They're as worthy of respect as they are able to be defended.

Finally, the environment on tumblr seems it's just as likely to turn on some kid and bully and dogpile them as it is to help them. After all, if their weirdness doesn't fall within a protected range of political correctness, they'll be treated as an oppressive shitlord.

It's very much a double-edged sword. It's equally as capable of giving young people support they don't find anywhere else in their life as it is to bolster the ego of a bully who discovered a very new and effective way to harass people.

 

[melty]

I think Gerion really nailed it. I just wanted to add that a lot of this stuff began on Livejournal, at least in the sense that these individual communities and traits all existed on one social media platform there first. Otherkin, fake DID, insane fangirls, the beginning of social justice, all of it was sort of festering there until Tumblr came along and it exploded.
If you look at it like that, LJ and Tumblr have a lot in common. They both allow you to have a personal blog that can be made private and anonymous as necessary. It made it easy to "try out" an identity and there was a ready community willing to accept you and discuss your unique self. There is some pressure to WANT to stand out. It also makes for easy access to some of these weird views. Like, if you are kid in middle school and you sometimes feel like you're someone else, you might just shrug it off, not seek out a DID forum and try to self diagnose, and if you did, it would probably be a more legitimate resource. But on Livejournal, you could just be going about your business and happen across any schmuck talking about their headmates and think "hmm, that sounds like me!" and check out that user and their communities. On Tumblr, you could be following anybody and they just start talking about their headmates out of nowhere. Most other places (FB, forums, blogs) that is crazy behavior.

It's also just offtopic to discuss some of these things other places. If you're on reddit or a forum somewhere and start going on about how you think you're a wolf people will tell you to fuck off because it's not relevant. But you can't tell someone to fuck off out of their own journal or tumblr because they're specifically for discussing your thoughts alongside all the other content. So that probably attracts a lot of people that aren't accepted other places.

My last $.02, I noticed LJ really went downhill when community mods started banning anything that might offend anyone.
I hope this isn't too off-topic, I just think it's interesting to compare the two because I think there's a lot of similarities. Also practically everyone that left LJ went to Tumblr. So I think some of that culture of coddling, and a lot of the weirdness migrated.

I'm sure most of you know this but I love the term "chuunibyou" for covering a lot of this behavior.

 

[Bluce Wee]

I think it's because a whole lot of its users are at that age where they take "things" and incorporate them into their identity as a person. Remember being a teenager and having Linkin Park mean so, so, so much to you that you plastered your Myspace or Facebook or LJ with pictures of the band and your first internet username was papercutzx1x and that anytime anyone insisted that Linkin Park was anything less than the best, most greatest band in the world, it triggered an emotional reaction to the level of someone attacking your very identity as a person? (Replace Linkin Park with whatever band/movie/tv show/book/video game was your "thing".)

Reblogging lets you take a nearly infinite number of pictures and videos and things related to your "thing" and attach your name to them. It's like flair or identity badges: "I'm papercutzx1x and I'm a Linkin Park fan and a Superlockwhovian and really like Disney movies". Older platforms let you do that too, but copying it into an entry on your journal wasn't as easy as clicking the reblog button.

At least that's the way it seemed to me in the early years. I was an LJ user that made the transition to Tumblr when the former site started to get handed from company to company in the late 00s along with half the site's userbase and that's the thing that eventually drove me away. LJ, at least, encouraged people to create their own content in the form of journal entries while a lot of the blogs I followed on Tumblr were endless streams of pictures and shit cribbed from elsewhere on the site.

 

[MW 002]

Misery loves company.

tumblr as a whole manages to attract people who are, simply put, eternal victims. They all want to pull the victim card so that they can shut down any discussion which may or may not cause them to question their own beliefs.

They tend to relish in victim hood because it's almost guaranteed they would have mass amounts of ass patting.

 

[melty]

I think it's because a whole lot of its users are at that age where they take "things" and incorporate them into their identity as a person. Remember being a teenager and having Linkin Park mean so, so, so much to you that you plastered your Myspace or Facebook or LJ with pictures of the band and your first internet username was papercutzx1x and that anytime anyone insisted that Linkin Park was anything less than the best, most greatest band in the world, it triggered an emotional reaction to the level of someone attacking your very identity as a person? (Replace Linkin Park with whatever band/movie/tv show/book/video game was your "thing".)

Reblogging lets you take a nearly infinite number of pictures and videos and things related to your "thing" and attach your name to them. It's like flair or identity badges: "I'm papercutzx1x and I'm a Linkin Park fan and a Superlockwhovian and really like Disney movies". Older platforms let you do that too, but copying it into an entry on your journal wasn't as easy as clicking the reblog button.

At least that's the way it seemed to me in the early years. I was an LJ user that made the transition to Tumblr when the former site started to get handed from company to company in the late 00s along with half the site's userbase and that's the thing that eventually drove me away. LJ, at least, encouraged people to create their own content in the form of journal entries while a lot of the blogs I followed on Tumblr were endless streams of pictures and shit cribbed from elsewhere on the site.

That's a really good point. Tumblr is a very very easy way to say, "this is who I am." It's ten times easier than putting stickers on your binder or buttons on your jacket. The tumblr platform in general is like crack for teenagers who want to be unique. It's almost like someone sat down and said "hey, you know how kids like putting pictures and stuff in their locker to show off their interests? How can we make that into a social media platform?"
But a lot of teenagers want to be extra unique. Maybe they are the only Homestuck fan at their school, but they get on Tumblr and they are one of thousands. At first it's cool to relate to people, but eventually they want to stick out and they realize there are no other Homestuck fans who are also demisexual tortoisekin. Bam, now you are 1, alone, out of thousands! Without any of the hard work of cultivating a skill, having a life experience or developing any real personality traits.

There is also a lot of one-upping. Artists are really respected members of fandom on tumblr. But learning to draw well is hard! What is another good way to prove you are THE BEST Homestuck fan? Maybe you're actually one of the characters, reincarnated! Or whatever these people think. Then you are suddenly an integral part of the Homestuck fandom without, again, having to do any real work.

 

[Meowthkip]

That's a really good point. Tumblr is a very very easy way to say, "this is who I am." It's ten times easier than putting stickers on your binder or buttons on your jacket. The tumblr platform in general is like crack for teenagers who want to be unique. It's almost like someone sat down and said "hey, you know how kids like putting pictures and stuff in their locker to show off their interests? How can we make that into a social media platform?"
But a lot of teenagers want to be extra unique. Maybe they are the only Homestuck fan at their school, but they get on Tumblr and they are one of thousands. At first it's cool to relate to people, but eventually they want to stick out and they realize there are no other Homestuck fans who are also demisexual tortoisekin. Bam, now you are 1, alone, out of thousands! Without any of the hard work of cultivating a skill, having a life experience or developing any real personality traits.

There is also a lot of one-upping. Artists are really respected members of fandom on tumblr. But learning to draw well is hard! What is another good way to prove you are THE BEST Homestuck fan? Maybe you're actually one of the characters, reincarnated! Or whatever these people think. Then you are suddenly an integral part of the Homestuck fandom without, again, having to do any real work.

"Drawing is hard, and writing takes too much effort, uggghhhh. I just wanna write 500-word porn snippets sometimes and beg people to draw me mpreg art."

 

[NZDROW]

I still use it if only because it's handy.

And yeah, Tumblr isn't all SJWs. Sadly, there's a sizable presence of neo Nazis, white supremacists, fangirls of serial killers and mass murderers, what have you. I saw a neo Nazi spread around a post reminding everybody that you don't have to feel guilty for being white, and it had a ton of notes. I often wonder if they see Tumblr as an opportunity to recruit disenfranchised moderate and liberal young adults.

You forgot about the shoplifting fandom.

And yes, Tumblr has a shoplifting fandom.

 

[melty]

You forgot about the shoplifting fandom.

And yes, Tumblr has a shoplifting fandom.

Haha seriously?
Well, since most big businesses are owned by cis het white men that kind of makes sense.

 

[Meowthkip]

You forgot about the shoplifting fandom.

And yes, Tumblr has a shoplifting fandom.

Oh shit, you're right. I forgot about them.

 

[NZDROW]

Oh shit, you're right. I forgot about them.

Yeah. If they had just a bit more outside influence, and a few more people backing them up sincerely you can bet your life that they'd be prime lolcow material.

 

[RecordStoreToughGuy]

Tumblr is the Sauron of social media. It does not create, but takes concepts and ideas and warps them to suit its own purposes.

Lets look at a favorite SJW buzzword: Cultural Appropriation. When used by activists (people who, for the purposes of this argument, are actually trying to make a difference and improve society), it means taking aspects of a different culture and cynically using them for profit or other frivolous use, such as a brand using an ethnic mascot to sell corn chips, or a centerfold wearing a war bonnet and buckskins. It's essentially trivializing significant aspects of one culture, (usually marginalized) for the dubious benefit of another (usually dominant.)

This is generally agreed to be at the very least tacky, and at the worst a systematic method of disenfranchising a minority and keeping it in its place.

However, when the term Cultural Appropriation made its way to Mordor, it was thrown into the Pit of Doom echo chamber and twisted into the mockery of itself that we are familiar with and now means that I'm a racist shitlord for putting "California Love" on my workout playlist.

 

[Shotgun Ronnie]

I'm not sure about the echochamber thing actually. Maybe I don't see the average Tumblr user enough, but too often I just find people complaining about what they see on their dashboard, what people they follow say, and that people who they do not wish to associate with start to follow them... Like, just unfollow, and the ignore feature exists for a reason.

Another common thing is I encounter users who post content with the tag "don't reblog" or something to that similar effect, and then get upset when others do reblog. Or they are upset strangers that they do not like are viewing their blogs or commenting on their posts, et cetera. It's like as if they didn't know how the Internet works.

 

[Meowthkip]

I'm not sure about the echochamber thing actually. Maybe I don't see the average Tumblr user enough, but too often I just find people complaining about what they see on their dashboard, what people they follow say, and that people who they do not wish to associate with start to follow them... Like, just unfollow, and the ignore feature exists for a reason.

Another common thing is I encounter users who post content with the tag "don't reblog" or something to that similar effect, and then get upset when others do reblog. Or they are upset strangers that they do not like are viewing their blogs or commenting on their posts, et cetera. It's like as if they didn't know how the Internet works.

I suspect quite a few of them honestly don't, or believe that people will follow an honor system in regards to their requests.

 

[Shotgun Ronnie]

I suspect quite a few of them honestly don't, or believe that people will follow an honor system in regards to their requests.

Now that reminds me another lolzy thing Tumblrinas do. Whenever they have a sissy fight, whoever having a breakdown over receiving anon hates and such would post on their blogs about having a breakdown. It is almost like they also don't know how sissy fights work (you are supposed to at least pretend to not be affected by the other party's "cyberbullying" attempts, especially given how easy it is to do that on the Internet.. But I'm no sissy fight expert.) That alone is so lolcow-like when it comes to endlessly feeding the trolls.

Similarly, they tend to put stuff on the Internet that they still feel uncomfortable talking about/if others bring it up. For example, a recovering anorexic user would put in her blog description explicitly that she is recovering from her eating disorder, and then get "triggered" when she gets into some internet drama where anons would exploit this and maybe call her fat in order to upset her, while in fact this user could have omitted the fact she was still recovering so as to protect herself from this kind of situations, if she knew she was legitimately going to get triggered and needed some more time to overcome her eating disorder completely.

Overall I think a lot of Tumblr users compulsively see their Tumblr profiles as not a means to socialize/share fandom stuff/enjoy themselves or whatever that is Tumblrinas do, but as an extension and complete reflection of themselves, as a form of identity, that they almost routinely overshare, and then overreact, which then begin a cycle that would eventually descend to lolcowdom. And a lot of these people simply lack the emotional maturity to take care of themselves but instead rely entirely on the goodwill of others to tolerate and look out for them, like how small children believe the entire world would pleasantly cater to them, would care about them on a personal level, and that malice or indifference simply doesn't exist.

Edit: typo.

 

[AnOminous]

Similarly, they tend to put stuff on the Internet that they still feel uncomfortable talking about/if others bring it up.

They may call it a trigger list, but I see it as a to-do list.