Mix — Expand your mind 12+

I love the exotic and rare or even “far out” images and the feeling of gaining a substantial experience every time I get to use this app. MIX is for me a replacement of what (showing my age here) use to be paging through LIFE MAGAZINE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, and LOOK MAGAZINE: Seems that I am enjoying seeing amazing photographic essays, or simulated visual essays, and in my 80 years on this planet, now I have access to the whole world, and everything in it. Well, I like this app more than most. It outlived most apps as many are deleted and cancelled but MIX is always a clear choice when I want to refresh my mind. It is also my purpose in writing this review to recommend this app to anyone who likes photography, and INFP Meyers-Briggs type, and just a way of telling anyone who wants to know, this retired psychiatric social worker, novelist, and retired college professor, and meditation teacher, practitioner of Zen since 1969. I find nothing offensive in this app, and recommend it to you fully, but will write a more practical review in a few months more using it, or in a year. In the meantime, I believe you can benefit intellectually and maybe spiritually using this app. I don’t love it,, but I am glad to be known as someone who uses this.

Years ago, I used a website called stumbleupon, it was a website of essentially the exact same function. At some point it was purchased or merged and disappeared with the snap of a finger. Every year since I’ve longed to have that website back. I used it everyday, it filled my mind with possibilities and curiosity, showing me the coolest, weirdest, most fascinating things as well as things I’d already had an interest in. I’m realizing now something I hadn’t truly appreciated:

I was mourning the death of a website.

Bizarre, but real.

Occasionally I’d search for it on Google, just to see if she’d return, but to no avail.

Then today, I became fed up with social media. It’s exploitation, it’s reduction of us all to base instincts and convenient, marketable boxes. It’s so grotesque, and I hate some of the things it’s done to me. So I searched yet again for stumbleupon, this time in the App Store.

And what I found… was MIX.

It’s too good to be true, no ads, no popularity-hungry profiles, no lowest common denominators, no garbage, it’s just pure intrigue and fun. I’m so grateful I found it.

My heart is so full, but it’s also sad. Because everything that has a beginning has an end.

How long will this app exist in its perfect state before it’s sold or deactivated or both? No one knows. Could be years, months, weeks, or days. I guess the only thing I can do is Enjoy it while it lasts. Thank you MIX team.

StumbleUpon needed to be redone. It was designed to an older style of internet and honestly couldn’t keep up when websites started to flood in. Mix managed to make a more streamlined process for a wider variety and more organized system of websites but lacks any real usability. Isn’t an intuitive app. The explore/share/profile tabs are just strange choices. Share and profile aren’t pages, they’re options and settings. So nest “share” within each post as just a share button.. and profile should just be hidden in the top corner somewhere. Your explore page needs to be redone as well. Why do I have to view by specific interests? Why isn’t there just an endless way to scroll once I’ve set my interests? The way you introduce catagories was strange as well. “Science”?? And then if you select one of this vague topics and later check your subcategories, it breaks it out into tiny subcategories like nasa and psychology.. but those are vastly different. Maybe make the bottom tabs “explore” (to just scroll and have an algorithm slowly learn what people like and recommend new categories to like) and another tab called “topics” or “genre” “categories” whatever. Maybe a 3rd way to view too. Definitely keep the list/grid option in explore. Anyways still better than stumbleupon so I definitely plan on continuously using the app, I just wish it didn’t fight me