the-stars-have-already-exploded - Tumblr blog

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getting older is odd because i swear just a few moments ago i was a little kid and it was june and i was picking wild strawberries in our backyard and everything felt like a movie and it was all so perfect. but now it’s september and i’m going to graduate high school soon and i feel the crushing weight of every expectation on me and yet its still somehow perfect because it’s september and i’m sitting on my windowsill reading a novel with a cup of hot chocolate and my friends are laughing over text and i’m going new places to see new things and everyday i wake up and i pick a cute sweater so i can go learn something and i look around and i just want to smile all the time and of course i cry sometimes but it makes everything feel okay again and everything is perfect.

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not only this, but it's also more inaccessible than ever!!! i'm visually impaired and the big icons at the top were helpful so i don't have to read as much and i could easily see what i'm clicking on. now everything is close together and tiny. FIX THIS TUMBLR

Bye, I guess

Hi folks: I’ve enjoyed my time on tumblr while it lasted. Unfortunately, the new dashboard makes the site so unpleasant to use that I’m afraid that enjoyment (and thus my use of the site) has come to an end. I still have some reblogs queued up, and I may pop in now and then, but don’t expect me to be around much anymore.

For the record, here is the support request I put in yesterday:

Why is my dashboard now twitter. This format sucks. It's always sucked. It feels absolutely horrible to use on desktop (which I do exclusively and that will not change). This horrible ui is a big part of why didn't really use twitter (it sucked then to).

Here is tumblr’s answer:

Hello,  Thanks for reaching out to Tumblr Community Support and sharing your thoughts on the new dashboard layout. We often test new ways to make Tumblr better. It sounds like your account may have been selected to experience a test of one of these improvements. Thanks for your patience while we work on this! You may see your Tumblr experience return to normal as we continue testing.  Kind regards,  Chris

(Please note, this appears to be a copy-paste form response. You can see another example of it here.)

Here was my response:

Hi Chris! I "may" not see my Tumblr user return to normal, because I'm not returning to Tumblr until it is reasonably usable again for me. This "experiment" is effectively an update that has made the site so unpleasant for me to use that I will not be doing so. What will tumblr being doing to allow me to use the site? I do not appreciate being told that my support ticket is "sharing [my] thoughts on the new dashboard layout." I neither asked or appreciate being selected taking part, without my knowledge or consent, in an experiment to allow a company to do product development. My ticket is not my "thoughts on the new dashboard layout." It is my report that the site is effectively not usuable. Furthermore, while not illegal, human experimentation is generally considered unethical without proper consent and review process. If my dash returns to a status that I can use: 1) What guarantees do I have that tumblr will not experiment on me again?  2) What other experiments does tumblr think it is ethical to do on me without proper consent? Kind regards to Chris, and explicitly not to your employer.

24 hours later, I have not received a follow up response.

I was originally going to write a lot more about why I think this is such an atrocious set of moves and responses by tumblr, but I realized that being on the site long enough to format and post it (I’m doing this writing on my desktop) would be too unpleasant to make it worthwhile.

Instead, I want to make two quick notes about traps I see people falling in to:

1) Tumblr is not your friend. It is a company that wants to use you to extrude profit. This hold true regardless of whether it is shaped like a shareholder’s report, a formal staff post, or a blog that looks just like a user like you. Regardless of its form, it is no more your friend than the “intern” who runs a corporate brand account.

2) It is fine to pay money for a product you enjoy. This product might be a digital sticker or a minigame on a website, or some form of subscription to the site itself. However, if you are not enjoying a product, or if you feel that the product is bad or exploitative, you have no obligation to invest in it. And you should be particularly wary when a for-profit business is attempting to make you, as a customer, feel emotionally and personally invested in supporting that business (whether that be in terms of time, energy, or money).

Anyway, I’m still hoping that I will be able to unpin this post at some point, but for the foreseeable future: bye!

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hate HATE the new desktop format. save me.

FUCK 

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WHO CARES!!!! I don't mean this in a self-deprecating way, but who cares???? why does it matter???? Because right now you are a living, breathing being, and after all of this the sun will still rise and set, and the earth will still spin, and time will go on with or without all of us. trees have scars too but right now they're still reaching up toward the sun and soaking up water and living. Don't let one mistake, one argument, one moment in time drag you from the fact that right now you are alive and you are made of beauty that has existed for millions of years and will continue to exist for the rest of time. Time goes on, and so will you <3

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god, i wish i could be a poet.

i've been writing poetry since i was a kid

making notes and lists and rhymes

i've written thousands and thousands of words

but they don't seem to stick

god, i wish i could be a poet,

but i never will be.

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From Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another by Jan Heller Levi (via hush-syrup)

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i think about this thread every day

Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

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how am i supposed to tag posts???? i'm mostly an instagram user and i find hashtags so overrated but i don't want to just not tag my posts????

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i love listening to MUSIC!!!!!! and imagining things happening

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I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

-Sylvia Plath

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Look at your wrist, see the blueish veins? The blood flowing through them contains hemoglobin, a protein that has four iron atoms incorporated into its structure. Iron is only naturally produced in one place, it can only be forged in the core of dying stars.

Every time you look at your veins, remember that you are built from, and kept alive by, pieces of stardust.

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The moment I can actually articulate myself while talking it’s over for everyone

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in another universe i wake up to those stupid brown eyes

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in another universe, you don’t exist to me. i live in peace.

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i am, as the poets say, a loser.