The Ever Frustrating Tumblr

So, today, I'm more or less just going to complain and tell a very short story of the issue I've had with one of my tumblr blogs that has spanned over three years now... Yes, I typed that right, three years.

Just a quick backstory:

I run four blogs on the lovely website that I have enjoyed for many years; I have my main (anime, bands, personal photos, my fish, the cat, etc.), my writing blog (where all my writing goes), and inactive blog (it used to hold NSFW content), and one in honor of my sister (small conversations she and I have had, text messages, videos, she's a literal meme).

This blog right here is about my main.

In October of 2014, I saw that I had a message in my inbox. My blog being over two years old at the time with only a handful of followers, I was excited to see that I had received a message, but when I went to look, I got the dreaded message that said, "Your inbox is empty." This was before tumblr started putting those quirky messages instead of something straightforward as the message I got.

Confused, I ignored it for a bit before messaging tumblr support about it, telling them I had a "ghost" message that didn't seem to exist, but told me was there.

Tumblr support got back to me less than a day later to tell me that the message was probably corrupted, meaning it was probably some harmful spam that got the person who submitted the message banned. They told me that it would be fixed "soon," but they couldn't give me an estimate on how long it would take since they already had a pile of tickets from other users that they had to go through.

I just shrugged, thanked the person for the quick response and went about my day.

Around six months later...

I'm using tumblr frequently by this point and the ghost message still exists. I message support again, asking them if they knew how long it was going to take and they said that it would be a short amount of time, but they couldn't give me a specific date. Again, I just shrugged, a little frustrated and went about my day.

I used tumblr frequently up until about six months ago because they changed the whole mobile layout to where it was funky and the blogs you followed weren't in alphabetical order anymore, so I wasn't checking content more since I never spent too long on my dashboard. Nowadays, mostly what gets posted to my main is the occasional meme and whatever I post to Instagram. The writing blog is used not as often as it was since I haven't been writing, and I recently made the NSFW blog inactive due to the creepy messages I was getting on it that just made me really uncomfortable.

Going back to my story though, in October of 2015 and 2016, I sent a message to support, bringing up my issue once again, hoping to get a response, but nope; they all came back with the same message telling me that they didn't know when it'd be fixed, support knows about it, and they'll have the issue resolved "soon." There's always a "soon" in the message somewhere.

So, I was killing time last night, checked tumblr on my phone, saw the ghost message again, remembered that it's now November of 2017, and decided that I was going to vent my very long awaited frustrations to tumblr support in hopes of getting maybe a better answer this time.

This is the message I sent to them:

Okay, so it's been three years now, three Octobers have gone by, and I still have a ghost message in my inbox on my main blog; as in, it says there's a message in my inbox, but there's nothing there. You guys have told me to wait and that it'd be fixed "soon" in the past three years since I've reported this in October of 2014, but I've still been waiting. This corrupted message, which is what I was told it was the first time, that doesn't exist in my inbox has been a real nuisance to me in all this time and I'd really appreciate it if someone would look at it and maybe fix it. Like I said, it's been a while, and all this time, it's been very annoying.

Usually at the end, I'd thank them for the help, but I was so annoyed at this point that I just kind of threw the thought of that out the window. I wasn't trying to come off as rude, but I was very annoyed.

The response I got wasn't satisfying:

Thanks for taking the time to write in about this. I really wish I had a date or any additional information to give you, but I haven't been given a specific estimate about when it will be fixed. I do know our engineers are aware of it, and that it's on their list. My team will continue to update them with any new reports we see, but as of right now, I don't have any more news for you. Please let me know if I can help you with anything else.

Now, I'm not one to complain about petty issues, but this one kind of pushes my buttons at this point. I know that tumblr wants to put out new features of the site and tweak the ones that have been a little wonky on the site and the app, and I know that they have a ton of things to worry about on a day to day basis, but this was an issue that I reported well after a very high priced company bought them out in 2013.

So, yeah, I don't use tumblr much anymore, but I do enjoy the site and this one dumb corrupted message has me all in a tizzy.

Maybe they'll have it fixed by the time I'm thirty (which is eleven years from now).

Thanks for reading about my complaints.

Kayla V