Exploring Tumblr today, I accidentally ended up getting a funny little ribbon on the bottom-right corner of my avatar. This signified that I had donated money to Haiti relief, which I hadn’t done. To remedy the situation, I tried to remove the ribbon. This proved to be impossible. Left with no other options — except hypocrisy — I gave some money to Doctors Without Borders.
A bad user experience created a good outcome. Go Tumblr!
PS: I really do wish I could easily remove this ribbon. It’s not a big deal, but I just don’t like:
- Joining some faceless online army for any reason
- Changing — or even noticing — my avatar. Avatars are like small, mean mirrors that pop up on your computer screen with minimal warning. I guess this is rooted in deeper issues.
- Gestures of support that inevitably conclude. Remember when Iran had that election and everyone on Twitter made their avatar green? I don’t see any more green avatars. At this point, a green avatar would be ridiculous and dated. But I would hate to be the Twitter user deciding who, for the sake of aesthetics and timeliness, changes their avatar back to normal and in so doing essentially withdraws support from Iranian dissenters.
PPS: I might have donated money anyway, even without the ribbon! But we’ll never know. The events that transpired rendered impossible any understanding of my own actions; forever — at least in this particular case — closing the door to self-knowledge.
I did the same thing and had more or less exactly the same objections. Not a complaint — seems over the top to complain about something like this, given the circumstances — just a nod to Tumblr: this was confusing! The donation links don’t even look like links.
Tint your avatar Tumblr-blue if you think this is an outrage!
Yup. They got me this way, too.* I kinda hope this was a deliberate design decision, so that I can think of it as deviously clever, as opposed to just poorly thought out.
I hope they do unveil some way to revert your avatar at some point in the future. Having to have the ribbon on there forevermore seems like a bit of a pain.
* I probably would’ve donated without this extra impetus, but this way they** got my money quicker.
** Médecins Sans Frontière, because they have the coolest name.
