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Comment on Gen Z's safe space - Sick of Musk and Zuckerberg, Gen Zers are flocking to Tumblr

zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Fresh memes!

My theory is that the primary reason why the fediverse isn’t more popular with young people is cultural. For instance, I don’t think anyone in generation z would use the term “fresh memes” :)

But yeah I also think that tumblr has a nostalgia advantage. It represents the internet before it “turned bad”, while the fediverse represents a possible future for the internet. Both have different appeals, but I think that nostalgia wins out for a lot of people.

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quack@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think it does too, but the problem with nostalgia is that you forget about all the shitty parts and just remember the good bits. Tumblr is still owned by big tech oligarchs even if it is smaller than the other platforms, and is still vulnerable to the kind of enshittification that the fediverse is more insulated against. Enshittification actually came for Tumblr long ago but it looks positively tame in comparison with other platforms.

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- zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yeah I agree, I think looking towards the future is a better idea in general. I’m on lemmy but not tumblr myself
  
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tomenzgg@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s funny because, while not a 1-for-1 cultural fit, Mastodon’s site structure has felt much closer to Tumblr’s. I feel like the reason Twitter people keep saying Mastodon’s insufficient (while, eventually, flocking to BlueSky) is that BlueSky offers a more similar UX, in terms of shunting you along algorithmically. I don’t think there’s any issue with Mastodon’s UI (other than maybe PixelFed, I think it’s the closest Fediverse project to other mainstream social media UI) but I suspect the UX isn’t quite right for people expecting Twitter.

However, I, as a Tumblr transplant, felt right at home.

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- zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I don’t know that it’s the “algorithms”: a lot of people just use their following feed on twitter and although it changed a while back that was the default feed on bluesky for a long time. I think that there is a fairly large portion of bluesky users who mostly just look at following and still don’t really like mastodon.
  
  Imo, a big reason why bluesky has been a more successful twitter competitor than mastodon is cultural: mastodon has been around for years before musk bought twitter, and a big selling point was that it wasn’t like twitter, for example that its “less toxic”. A large part of mastodons userbase never liked pre-musk twitter that much and will tell you of for acting like you would there. Bluesky on the other hand has a large portion of users who liked pre-musk twitter and are happy to follow pretty similar social norms as they did in pre-musk twitter.
  
  This is to some extent reflected in the functions of the different sites as well, for example you can’t quote retweet on mastodon which iirc is deliberate because qrt dunking is “toxic”. Bluesky has quote retweets (although they allow you to untag yourself from a qrt).
  
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