Tumblr Asks Are My Personal Hell

[osteophage]

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Nov 6, 2020.]

Okay, CT suggested I write the darn post, so I'm going to write the darn post. Who knows if this'll become relevant to anything again, but in case it does, I'll have this on hand to link.

Let's say somebody says or does something objectionable and I'm motivated to respond to it, but that person has no public contact info available -- save for their tumblr askbox. Supposing I take on the challenge of going this route (and I usually don't), here is an attempt to spell out some of the difficulties involved.

• Is anon on?
  • Step one: I click the link to open up the askbox page, and that's when I see if the box is greyed out because the person has disabled the anonymous option. This is relatively common, so this stops me in my tracks much of the time.
• "But Coyote, why not just go make an account so you can message them? Don't you technically already have one?"
  • Technically, but by that point I'm already so daunted by the prospect of what lies ahead of me that this is enough to tip the scales and put me off.
• If anon is on, then it's possible to start typing, and then the next hurdle to face is the tight character limit. How do I indicate exactly which post(s) I'm talking about as well as identify the problems and clearly spell out my reasoning for--
  • You don't. There's not enough space to clarify to that extent.
• Well I guess that's fine, I can save space by using links--
  • No links allowed.
• So how do I cite my sources or bring in any proof that I'm not just making stuff up?
  • You don't.
• Can I sneak a link past the filter by breaking up parts of it with spaces and using code words?
  • You can, but that cuts down on the characters you can spend on the rest of the message.
• Can I at least send multiple messages?
  • You can, but some of them might get "eaten" or lost, unpredictably reducing the message to fragments.
• Assuming they all get through and it's possible to tell what order they're supposed to go in, reassembling the messages will require effort on the recipient's part to copy & paste them over as a blockquote.
  • By this point, the recipient may not have the patience or inclination to do that for you, seeing as you just sent them a barrage of anonymous criticism.
• Well then wait a minute, how do I know if the message has even gone through?
  • You don't.
• There's no way to check?
  • You could send a followup message saying "did you get my message?" which will then be subject to the same problem.
• This is already a comedy of errors at this point, but say I do bother to go through all that trouble to write a concise linkless message and the message is received and the (now likely annoyed) recipient deigns to answer it, where do I find that reply?
  • Indeterminate. The url of the original message isn't generated until the reply is posted, so there's not one specific page you can sit on and refresh to check if there's an answer yet. It just gets thrown into the rolling feed of that user's blog, meaning that (for an indeterminate amount of time, with no way to be sure how long this will take, or even if the person will choose to answer you at all) you'll be expected to refresh that person's whole blog and comb through every single post to see if the reply has shown up somewhere in the jumble.
• But at least once that reply gets posted, then there will be a static page we can have the conversation on, right?
  • No. If you want to reply to their reply, you'll need to start all over again with a new, separate, linkless, tightly-constrained ask message, which again would be posted separately (if at all).

That's a lot of issues built into the structure of the system, and that's before we even get into my own personal communication troubles.

But hey, given that the ask message system is extremely fraught with all these failure modes and limitations, at least there's a sitewide cultural expectation to be accommodating and respond generously to anonymous ask messages, even the ones that bluntly (concisely) introduce criticism, right?

...Right?