Sometimes something gained throws something lost into sharp relief

[lenyberry]

 Goddamn it, I really am gonna miss tumblr. Specifically, the way it facilitated communication between just... any and everyone. Sure, that had its downsides with shitty people throwing fits about any and everything, but. Well. 

Someone just reblogged a thing I'd commented on about my stupid painkiller sensitivity, with info about how some people have extra copies of an enzyme-coding gene and that enzyme does stuff with metabolizing painkillers such that, if you have extra, you can easily OD by accident because stuff converts faster and hits you harder. 

I obviously haven't confirmed for sure yet that that's what's up with me, but if it is? This random tumblr person who somehow stumbled across my bitchin' about how the side effects I get from opiates just aren't worth the pain relief when my general sensitivity also means that there's very few pains that a high dose of tylenol won't fix for me anyway... might have given me info that could literally save my life from an accidental medical overdose one day. 

And yeah, this time it's really personally relevant sorta shit, not generally-interesting stuff, but even when it's "just" a biochemist dropping facts about why one should not use malachite as a dildo and tying the whole explanation into how Flint's water system got so fucked (seriously, if you're bored and haven't seen it yet, google "don't fuck the malachite")... Well, this is the kind of thing that tumblr really shone at. Letting conversations occur across such a wide and diverse userbase that it's near impossible, for any post that gets any kind of reach, to not be seen by someone who has personal and specialized knowledge of the weird specific thing that the post's talking about and can Explain A Thing. 

Comments

[cuda]

That's fair. Our only alternative here is to link to the original content on our own blogs, which only alerts our own followers, unless the original writer is alerted to our addition and chooses to link to it and/or extend their own post.

I remember that Don't Fuck the Malachite post. Tumblr's incredibly diverse user base educated me on so much, from big issues to historical minutiae through the way a single post crowdsourced multiple perspectives. Sometimes that could get shitty and brutal, but it could also be incredibly beautiful.

I'm going to miss that, too.

[lenyberry]

Yeah. It got shitty when people made it shitty, but that at least wasn't the fault of the site management for allowing conversations to be so easily had.

It's a shame that site management IS so shitty and that the diverse userbase that made the experience so interesting and varied is being driven away. I have a suspicion that those who remain will end up being heavily skewed toward the abusive side -- they'll keep the antis, who will be crowing about getting rid of all those "nasty" "problematic" shippers, but the people who were in there dropping knowledge wherever they could and playing running-joke about phallic rocks and everything else are gonna leave in search of greener pastures.

[kalldoro]

I know what you mean, I'm gonna miss all the random stuff and the whole "science side of tumblr" thing (and history and medical and whatever), I did quite like that and I loved being able to just browse through the tags and all kinds of shit. But while there I always missed the journaling thing from LiveJournal and I'm happy to get that back.

[lenyberry]

Yeah, honestly I really wish someone would make something combining the best of LJ with the best of tumblr. Where you can BOTH have your longform blog AND have those sometimes wacky, sometimes informative, sometimes stupid conversations via the reach of the reblog function.