If I’m using a computer, I’m ALREADY listening to music
So if viewing your tumblr causes some random song to start playing while I’m currently listening to MY music I’m slightly annoyed. This rule goes double if said music is some god-awful teeny-bopper ear poison which seems to be favored by people who rig their tumblrs to catch me off-guard like that (I use such terminology because it feels like I’ve walked into a trap whenever this happens… I immediately start scrambling to close your window, which you deserve, in all honesty.)
I hate to bitch and whine and I certainly don’t want to tell people what to do with THEIR blogs so let me couch this rant in an opinion on design theory: good web design is uncomplicated and gets the hell out of the way, allowing the user to interface with content as simply as possible, without being bullied or steered to experiencing content they don’t want to. Text and images can be scrolled past quickly, provided the layout of your blog is minimalistic and straightforward, but video or audio that jumps up and demands that you PAY ATTENTION is just incorrect. Someone should have to push a Play button at their own discretion before having to listen to “TiK ToK” by Ke$ha or else there’s a problem.
Elegant web design is one of the best reasons to use Tumblr. It was always such a nice escape from the never-ending widget clusterfuck of WordPress (I’m talking hell’s own smorgasbord of widgets here) and the less said about the searing eyesore that was each and every MySpace page, the better. Let’s keep it that way by not having your own “surprise jukebox” on your main page.
