There is a sort of energy around tumblr that seems to have attracted interesting people, not a cultural vanguard, but close enough.
I’m not going to tell anyone what to write. Instead I’ll make the following promise to you, my lovely readers:
- I will not re-post anything from digg, boingboing, kottke, metafilter, reddit, etc., because we all got it already.
- I will not post a link without a description, because a) it’s annoying and b) it gives the reader no incentive to investigate.
- I will try to post material I find interesting, and/or provide comments or insight on material that is floating around.
Most of the tumblogs I follow already adhere to this, which is probably why I follow them and that’s great. That is all.
It turns out that there’s a bit of confusion over what’s counts as manly. The posts were about 1/3 a celebration of all things masculine, 1/3 oggling the objectified female body, and 1/3 outright misogeny.
…
Then there’s that third group. These posts (or portions of posts) amounted essentially to “get back in the kitchen at cook me something.” I know that most of the authors are joking or think they are joking with these posts. It’s not a particularly good or original joke—but no comic can be on 100% of the time, particularly if the comic sucks. I’ll let somebody else complain that such statements are offensive. My complaint is that such statements have no place in a community celebrating everything masculine. Who thinks this sort of garbage is manly? Did somebody decide that masculinity is defined as the opposite of feminism? Did people get the patriarchal and the masculine crossed somehow?
Hey, it’s my first Tumblr crush! I’ll take this a step it further though: I don’t like Testumblrone. Sure, at first I was all overly upset and then apologetic for being overly upset, but I kind of take that second part back. (But hey, I’m a woman! I’m supposed to be indecisive, right, guys?)
Let’s use Stuff White People Like as a counter example. Yeah they’re slightly different models, but same premise: both are ‘taking the piss’ (as gooneruk stated using a cute Britishism) out of something establishmenty—either masculinity or whiteness (or perhaps more accurately—white yuppiness). But Stuff White People Like has no pretense of actually upholding upper middle class white values, wherein lies my problem with Testumblrone. Basically: I don’t know when they’re joking and sometimes I’m not sure they know when they’re joking. There seem to be moments of earnestness, mixed with moments of humor, rounded out with totally offensive bullshit even if the writer’s tongue was planted ‘firmly in cheek.’ (For example, Hillary getting bitch slapped by Obama. Domestic violence: LOLZ!) And I just have to wonder what undercurrents of real misogyny are running through some of these men’s minds if this is what they find hilarious.
It’s kind of how I feel about Howard Stern—sure people can say he’s sweet and respectful in his real life, but does it really matter? The degrading shit he says as his ‘on-air personna’ should not be out there in the universe. Period.
Final verdict: I am not entirely humorless and there was a way to make this funny, but it has totally missed its mark. Individually, I’m sure most of these dudes are lovely and hilarious. (Not Siddman! Tumblr should allow me to remove followers who are fucking creeps!)
(Oh, and fuck Tumblinas too. While I would never wish not to be a woman, sometimes I do wish that other women weren’t actually women.)