Bits 'n' Bobs.

Why I’m “leaving” tumblr; Why The Kindle Monologues will be returning, albeit in a different guise and on a different platform [Wordpress] and some thoughts on why this was inevitable really.

Do I expect anyone to read this? Not really. Do I care? Again, not really. But given the amount of time, energy and honesty that I’ve pored into tumblr, across four blogs [this one, The Kindle Monologues, £10 a week challenge, and a private one that focuses on my treatment and recovery from a serious illness]?

It just feels “right” to let it all out of the bag.

- - 

I joined tumblr on October 7th, 2009 [907 days ago]. I’d read about tumblr prior to that - the site / platform has, after all, been around since 2007. Initially I had no real inclination to join up, however two of my friends from the Geekscape forums - Chris & Katherine [Two unbelievably awesome people, who’ve put up with my crap for all these years] had both been using the system since the year before, so I decided to create an account / blog, primarily to follow their content¹

A quick look through my archive for that first month seems to suggest that initially my personal blog reflected my personality rather well. There were also foreshadows of endeavours to come - as this post from October 9th shows.

Within a few days, I’d posted my first review - of the BBC4 programme “Micro Men” a programme co-starring a certain Martin Freeman, whom I’m sure most of tumblr are now aware of.

Speaking of Chris - there were also references of what would eventually happen with this very blog, given the following quote:

Hiro, Hiro, Hiro. Singlehandedly destroying databases since FOREVER.

Chris.

[Hiro was part of my username on the Geekscape forums - HiroProtagonist was the full name, a pseudonym plucked from the Neal Stephenson novel, Snow Crash.]

Between then and now, my original blog - i.e. the one you’re reading now, continued to grow - according to the stats on my Dashboard, this’ll be post #1907 from my “main” blog. In that time I’ve “liked” 1467 posts - not bad given that the largest number of blogs I’ve followed during that time was 26.

For those of you wondering - my first post that was kinda related to eBooks? That’d be this post here, written after Borders [UK] went into administration.

During the time I’ve been using tumblr I’ve experienced a few setbacks - some decidely minor, some significantly more major - being told to prepare a will when you’re in your mid 20s is, to put it blunty, something that fucks with your head.

Fortunately, I’m still here - well, not “Here” here, obviously as this’ll be my last post, but I’m still around, as ‘twere.

Also during the time I’ve been using tumblr, it has exploded in popularity. I believe tumblr is now the second biggest “social network” / “blog”-esque site on the internet, behind Facebook. If it isn’t already, it will be pretty soon - tumblr recently surpassed 20.5 BILLION posts. That’s 20,500,000,000 posts, split across around 51M blogs [How many of those are spam posts, one wonders?]

In short, tumblr is expanding in almost every way possible - new users, new content, new investment - and more importantly, new features. Tumblr has recently announced much, much closer integration with Facebook - an excellent facility imo. The platform itself is also significantly more stable than a few years ago - notice any 24hr outages recently? Or even a 1hr outage?

All excellent - and proof that tumblr is “the platform of choice”.

So why am I leaving?

Unfortunately it’s because the very aspect of tumblr that has made it such a success - the “community” is also one of its biggest detriments.

Let’s cut to the chase - the number of times I’ve been called a “Cunt” or “a fascist” [I have, btw, no fucking idea how supporting Amazon makes you a fascist.] or have been told that I [and I alone] am responsible for the demise not only of Borders bookstore, but also independant bookstores - hell even the demise in the number of new books.

That’s right - I was once told my little Kindle / eBook blog, which has never had more than 500 “followers”, was responsible for soo many things.

That’s perfectly fine - what isn’t, is the way tumblr staff handle this.

The last time I received a PM - from a registered user btw [said person is still active], calling me a “stupid cunt”? I forwarded that onto tumblr support.

Said post was eventually removed, though the person is still active. [at least as of the typing of this]

I’m going to go “off rail” a little here, and quote some parts of the tumblr Community Guidelines - it’s my last post, I’m allowed to take a Tarrantino-esque approach to the narative!

From the tumblr Community Guidelines - admittedly the recently revised version², but - after all, everyone has to adhere to these guidelines:

As a global platform for creativity and self-expression, Tumblr is deeply committed to supporting and protecting freedom of speech. At the same time, we draw lines around a few narrowly-defined but deeply important categories of content and behavior that jeopardize our users, threaten our infrastructure, or damage our community.

I’ve seen that interpreted to mean that you shouldn’t criticise people when they post content - if someone posts something saying “eKindles are liek sooo stupid” and adds 20 tags? In the eyes of some, you’re supposed to merely roll your eyes, and leave it at that.

Personally? I interpret that to state that you can’t harass someone based on their comments. To some, the re-blogging and replying to content counts as harassment - to me, it’s not. I’m a firm believer that if you put something “out there” on the internet, you should be prepared to defend it.

Also from the Community Guidelines:

Spam. Don’t abuse social gestures, send unwanted messages, or aggregate content in a less-than-meaningful way. Don’t put tags on your posts that will mislead or deceive searchers (for example, tagging a photo of your car with “#lady gaga” and “#britney spears”); of course, meaningful uses are always fine (for example, ironic “punchline” tags that add to or playfully subvert a post itself). Don’t put deceptive links or dubious code in your posts. That includes using Javascript to inject unwanted ads in blogs, or embedding links to interstitial or pop-up ad services. Don’t use deceptive means to generate revenue or traffic, or create blogs with the primary purpose of affiliate marketing. Spam doesn’t belong on Tumblr.

[I emphasised the last part.]

Part of what makes tumblr unique, is the tagging system. Interested in Books? Then search for it, and “track” the tag by pinning it to your Dashboard - you’ll then be able to at a quick glance, see posts that relate to books.

To run The Kindle Monologues I tracked numerous tags relating to eBooks, books, and the book & publishing industry. Those tags were in addition to tags that I “tracked” or “followed” for my own personal interests.

I’ve just looked through the Block settings on my account - I’ve blocked almost 200 accounts. At least 80% of those are spam accounts - accounts that constantly post garbage, to popular tags.

Every account I find spamming the tags? I report them to tumblr for spam. At most, 10% get removed. That hardly fits with “Spam doesn’t belong on tumblr”.

Moving on…

Impersonation, Stalking, or Harassment. Treat the community the way you’d like to be treated. Don’t attempt to circumvent the Block feature. If you want to parody or ridicule a public figure (and who doesn’t?), don’t try to trick readers into thinking you are actually that public figure.

A few weeks ago I was accused of “bullying” people. Suffice to say, I don’t appreciate being called a “bully” and you can find my response the accusations by clicking this link, which lists all the parts. Messaging someone to call them a “cunt” - I’d argue that qualifies as harassment.

Re-blogging a persons’ post - a post they’ve published onto a public platform, and tagged, and using logic and common sense to point out a different perspective…

Is that bullying? If the teenagers / young adults on tumblr think that’s “bullying” - I really, really think you’re in for a shock when you leave your insulated little bubbles, and have to live in the real world. Based on that logic, I’d be sent to jail for some of the project critiques I’ve written in the past. In the real world? I was commended for it, and got paid.

Now, I’d like to move onto what for me, is an interesting part of the Terms of Service - namely the part I violated [according to tumblr, and the person[s] who submitted the initial ticket] - the Privacy part:

Privacy Violations. Don’t use Tumblr to deceptively obtain personal information. Don’t post content that violates anyone’s privacy, including personally identifying or confidential information like credit card numbers, social security numbers, unlisted contact information, or private photos of your ex’s junk (no matter how attractive).

The post that caused me run afowl of the tumblr staff, was a print screen of a comment I’d received on one of my posts. It showed the persons quite frankly absurd comment, as well as their email address and IP address.

According to tumblr, those last to parts - the email address and IP address, were in violation of the privacy policy. I accept that - contrary to what you might think, the decision to remove my content isn’t what’s causing me to leave - it was merely the final nail in the coffin. Although personally, I fail to see how print screening a comment that was submitted freely, to a service that tumblr don’t own or run, can constitute “deceptively obtaining information” - the person submitted the comment in question of their own free will.

Anyways, that’s all, to an extent, beside the point.

No, the primary reason I’m “moving on” - the “tumblr” community has changed over the last year. And with respect of what I wanted to do with The Kindle Monologues?

It’s not been a positive change.


My “Dashboard” experience has always been a positive one. I’ve never embraced the “Follow me, I’ll follow you” mindset some people have - If someone choses to “follow” my blog? That’s nice, but I feel no obligation to “follow back”. If you count the maximum number of followers to both The Kindle Monologues and my personal account [not including people who “followed” both?] - Almost 700 followers. As I said at the start of this post, the number of blogs I’ve followed? 26.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t other blogs I read. A quick look through my browser history shows that I read the blogs of:

Now don’t get me wrong - I’m not particularly obsessed with “Follower” numbers. I can tell from the number of notes / likes my posts get, that not everyone reads them - though I’m still not sure why you’d follow an account you’re seemingly not interested in?

But the community aspect of tumblr - followers, tags etc, etc, are partially what I’ve become annoyed with.

I know that anything over 1000 words is unlikely to be read by as little as 10% of the people who “follow” TKM [And at 1902 words so far, this qualifies!]. Which causes the dilemna. On the one hand - I honestly don’t care. The blog is supposed to be for me, and for my own self-gratification. It’s about using my brain for something different - to the extent that I contemplated creating an “Anti” eReader blog, just to argue a different perspective - possibly with myself :)

I guess my problem was - who am I writing for. Me, the people I’ve known for years, or the “Followers”?

The other problem was the change in focus from original content, to taking others and using that as a platform to offer my own suggestions. And ultimately it’s that that has caused the problems.

I’ve been accused of “Stalking” peoples blogs - “How would you feel if someone came onto your blog and posted hateful comments about you?” was how one idiot put it [I’m leaving - fuck you, I’ll say what I want, and address people accordingly.]. Nothing could be further from the truth.


ALL “TUMBLRSPHERE” CONTENT RE-BLOGGED OVER ON THE KINDLE MONOLOGUES, WAS SOURCED FROM THE TAGS.


Are we clear on that? Your precious “I’m a real booklover, Kindles are for fucktards because of these reasons which anyone with a brain can tell you are usually wrong” posts? They all come via the tags.

At no point do I stalk peoples accounts - for one, how is that even possible? How would I find the accounts in the first place?

Nope, I’d simply browse the tags, and if I found a post that interested me? I’d re-blog it in full and offer up my opinion.

And now I’m going to rant against two “feminists” here on tumblr. I won’t dignify them by mentioning their tumblr urls, but I’m going to address a point they raised.

A few months ago I tore apart an “Anti Kindle” post that I found whilst browsing the tags. There was no profanity, at no point did I call the poster stupid or anything similarly disparaging - I simply took their content, and systematically tore it apart.

I expected my response to be re-blogged, and for a rebuttal of sorts. That’s been the overriding goal of TKM - to get a dialogue started. Instead I was accused to being “a coward who gets off on bullying teenage girls”.

That statement? You could effectively condense this entire post - and the reason why I’m moving on, to it and others like it.

To me, the biggest insult I could offer a person, is to suggest their opinions aren’t valid, due to their gender, their age, or both.

Should I have checked the tumblr blogs of everyone I re-blogged? If so, what should I have looked for? I would hope you see my point - for a professed “Feminist” to claim that I shouldn’t consider content from teenage girls as viable content to re-blog and address? Surely that goes against everything feminism is supposed to represent?

Why the fuck shouldn’t a teenager -of any gender - be expected to “hold their own”. Are we really saying teenagers are dumber than adults?

It honestly boggles my mind.

My belief has always been this: Your gender, age, sexual orientation, nationality, colour? I couldn’t give a fuck either way. On tumblr - and the internet as a whole? I judge people on the content they create / post.

That is, after all, what people my age, who’ve used the ‘net for as long as I have, have celebrated - that you could find an amazing piece of work, and have no clue as to the identity of the person who wrote it - if they wish to remain anonymous.

That doesn’t seem to be the case on tumblr - it seems there’s a presiding view that you’re allowed to post your content, but if someone comes along and uses a bit of logic & common sense to explain why, in their opinion, you’re wrong.

You get called a bully.

I really, really believe the experience I’ve had with supposed “feminists” saying a teenager shouldn’t engage in a debate with an adult; that the teenagers who post their content and cry to the tumblr police when someone takes it apart.

I Really, really hope it’s not indicative of the wider world - I really hope they’re not representative of their generation at large.

Or else we’ll have a lot more to worry about, that what constitutes a “real” fucking book.

—

¹Which I’ll still do. Tumblr allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds - so even if I never log back into the service after today, I’ll still be able to follow peoples’ content. And, of course, you can just access the blogs as websites [name.tumblr.com]

²Though said latest revision doesn’t really differ that much from the original version, at least not in regards the parts I’m quoting.

In the future, this is how you’ll determine how long someone has been on tumblr:

• I remember the “Leaderboards”.
• I remember tumblarity
• I remember the great 24hr server outage
• I remember when they introduced highlights, and 5 mins later people found out how to do it for free.
• [Whatever happens next]

So yesterday, for a wee-while, Tumblr “censored” the Dashboards of all U.S. accounts, in order to raise awareness of this draconian SOPA bill

Two things:

1. Good for you Tumblr.
2. The number of people who complained about tumblr doing this - and more worryingly, given there was a HUGE FUCKING BANNER AT THE TOP OF PEOPLE’S DASHBOARDS EXPLAINING WHY - the number of people asking why it had happened, was amazing.

You think that was annoying. Try not being able to use most of the internet.

All those Sherlock / Doctor Who / Twilight / Hunger Games / Whatever animated .Gifs / Screencaps y’all post? Make the most of it, ‘cause if that bill gets passed into law, shit’ll be 100x more “annoying” than what tumblr did yesterday.

If only Google had the balls to do the same - censor, if only for an hour, all their search results. It’d be awesome.

Tumblr secures $85M funding, as traffic goes through the roof.

13 Billion page views in one month? That’s a lot.

Anyways, Congrats Tumblr - hopefully the days of rolling outages are well and truly a thing of the past.

“Social Networking” update

I think I posted something similar to this, a month or two back, in the form of a queued post - though if memory serves, that was more focused on podcasts.

Either way - here’s another one :)

Reddit: New entry.

I’ve been ‘aware’ of reddit for a while, as a Diggnation viewer - Reddit seemed to be the piss-poorly formatted site that came along when Digg started its downward spiral, and took over. That was about the extent of it, until I got an Anonymous message telling me my Kindle / e-book stream had been submitted into the Books reddit [I now know who did that, and should probably get round to thanking them].

As a result, I had a look round, and have now started using the site. Not hugely - one or two visits per day, but I mostly check out the /books and /Kindle reddits. I expected somewhat of a ‘chan’ mentality, but it seems, so far, alright.

Facebook: Still using.

Something that’ll come up time and time again, during this post, is the word content. Content is king - you can have the most fantastic website in the world, but if it’s dead as a dodo, or full of idiots, then what’s the point? I’ll be upfront - I don’t get this whole ‘accumulate as many friends / followers as possible’ mentality. I’ve got 14 11 [I removed a few more whilst typing this up] ‘friends’ on Facebook. I could probably have ~100 if I accepted every Friend Request I get - but too be honest, there’s already a wealth of content on the ‘net - I don’t particularly wanna read through even more. That, and I get people who barely know me, sending in requests.

However - most peeps are still using Facebook, so for the foreseeable future, it’ll remain on the ‘active rota’

Tumblr:

I would have thought this one was somewhat obvious. Aside from the fact I’m typing this on Tumblr - I’ve typed up close to 10,000 words worth of content here on tumblr, in the last few weeks.

Google Plus: Waiting for content…

The problem I have with Google+ is that it’s somewhat empty. It has the potential to be an awesome social network - but for the moment, it’s devoid of good, and consistent, content. I’m hoping this improves as the year progresses.

Twitter: On the decline.

My usage of Twitter has been on the decline for a while now. It’s great for ‘breaking news’, but again - in terms of content, the people I follow, don’t use it all that much. I’d love to have my Twitter ‘timeline’ show up in Google Reader, but it seems Twitter removed that option a while ago. So, for the most part, I check it every other day.

Sites that aren’t technically ‘social networks’

Lifehacker / Gawker / io9: Quick browse via RSS.

The above sites, I used to read quite a fair bit. Then they changed their design, and it just didn’t ‘work’ anymore for me. Not on a technical level - it just became somewhat of a chore to visit. What I do now, is ‘subscribe’ to the sites via Google Reader, and have a quick browse through their respective RSS feeds, once or twice a day, clicking on anything that catches my attention.

The Famous Males Forums: Done

I haven’t actually posted here for years. As seems to be the case when you get a group of gay men in one place [be it a physical location, or a virtual one], it eventually ends up turning into a cesspit. This place is no different, hence my using the following text as my ‘signature’ over there since I left:

466f7220612047617920736974652074686572652073757265206172652061206c6f74206f662043756e74732068657265

That said, from time to time, I do browse through the forum, especially the piccys section. However, it seems recently to be full of pics of Z-List boybands, and Tom Daley. And I don’t particularly wanna keep clicking past threads full of a teenager in his speedos - even if he does have a better body than I’ll ever have.

Geekscape - Done.

I’ve mentioned Geekscape a fair few times. Which makes sense - most of the people I follow on these social networks, I know through the site - which is true of tumblr. I posted thousands of times on the previous iteration of the site / forum - helped run the book club, became a member of the staff, pretty much ran the news section, and played an [I believe] somewhat significant part in the development of the new site [in terms of feedback / suggestions etc, etc].

When I originally signed up, the site was pretty much run by two peeps - Jonathan and Brian. By the time I came ‘on stream’ as staff, a third had been added - William. Now at first, I thought that it was just me, who thought the guy was an opinionated asshole, but from conversations with other staff members, it quickly emerged that wasn’t the case - it might not have been universal, but a fair few people didn’t like him.

Other than that, however, I really enjoyed the place. Sure there were a few ‘cringe inducing’ posters on the forums, but it was cool.

Then I started getting sick, right around the time the site and forums were transitioning to the new iterations.

Flash forward to now. The annoying ‘editor’ / Administrator - Bibbiani, has been replaced by two new ones - a former forum member who, I always thought was a bit of an ass-kisser, and a new bloke.

Who is a bit of a cunt, to put it mildly.

That aside - the site itself? It’s lost its appeal. The news section is awful - two days for a news post about The Dark Knight Rises trailer being released? What makes it worse - from the datestamp, it had been submitted fairly promptly - only to sit in the moderation queue, for someone to approve it.

Which smacks of piss-poor management, especially given the fact that almost everyone on the current iteration of the site is a member of staff! There are people with four posts on the forums, who have Staff access!

Back to the site, however - the advertising really is bad. I use Google Chrome to browse the ‘net, and do so without an Ad-Blocker. Which means, I can now ‘experience’ Geekscape unaltered - complete with somewhat NSFW Adverts at the bottom of every news post.

That said - they do compliment the actual pornographic content that appears on the site, in the guise of ‘exclusive pics’ from whatever Geek orientated XXX ‘spoof’ is currently in production.

But the main problem? The forums are dead. When the site transitioned to the current version, it seems a lot of people were lost along the way [along with virtually all the content - I saved the Book Club posts, that was about all that was ported, via the Movie Club podcasts]. Sure there are a few good people still there, who were on the version of the forums, I used, but for the most part -it’s empty.

There are [at the time of writing] 586 unique accounts over on the site. At most - AT MOST, 12 people post regularly. And by ‘regularly’ I mean a few times per month.

And the people who are there, and are interesting - I can ‘follow’ their content via any number of other places.

I’d already put the podcast onto a ‘case by case’ basis - if the guests were interesting [such as Ian Kerner - comic genius extraordinaire], then I’d watch, but I’m watching less, and less.

So I made a decision - something helped by that cunt of an Administrator, who has, for the record, never had a nice thing to say about me.

I’m done, fully, with both. I’ll watch bits of the recent Comic-Con episode, but that’ll be it.

I wish them luck - I really do, but there’s nothing there that does anything for me - just memories of the old forum, a few of the old faithful, and [seemingly] 80 members of ‘staff’ doing bugger all.

I wish the Tumblr queue system was easier to use.

I’m queuing up posts, and while I know you can go into each one in the drafts folder, and specify when you want them to appear, it’d be far, far easier, to queue up the posts, pick the time you want them to appear, and more importantly - the date you want them to start.

Meh. It’s hardly the end of the world.

Also - on a totally unrelated note. It’s a Bank Holiday over here in the land of F1 Drivers who throw their rattle out the cot, when things don’t go their way. This means:

• It’s raining.
• Nothing is open [at least where I live]

Ugh - My eyes, MY EYES!

Someone just started ‘following me’. Being a curious so-and-so, I decided to look at their Tumblr stream, to see if they were worth following. Turns out it was a spam account, with three pics that looked like embeded porno clips, with disguised ‘click through’ links to what I’d imagine would be some kinda spammy site.

Annoying Spambots need to fuck off and die.