rambling: adieu, tumblr
Last night, I deleted my entire Tumblr account - the last "major" social media I was using (Discord and Pinterest don't really count to me - I'm not in any super huge Discord servers to be social in and I have never once interacted with anyone solely within Pinterest in the time I've used it). It's rather cliche to announce your departure from a website, but Tumblr played a large role in my life, so I wanted to write about it.
I'm a little sad about it, but despite the current ongoing events (which I'll get to later), I think I really just needed an excuse to be done with it already. It was the last thing stopping me from kicking my analytics obsession, the bane of all artist types on the Internet. It'd be remiss of me to not recognize the privilege in being able to just jump ship, especially when I know of so many that rely on social media as a core part of their businesses that help put food on the table. I've emphasized before, making the exodus from major social medias to the Indie/Small/Personal/90's e-LARPer Web (what is the general term for "websites that exist outside of the major Internet at Large", anyway?) is career suicide. Although the prospect of having your own site has become more in vogue what with the platform decay of major social medias, it is still a fairly niche prospect. Plus, many of my friends still use major social medias as a way to keep in touch. Still, though my Tumblr following was considerably larger than that of my Neocities, it's not something I rely on for anything other than serotonin and sating that aforementioned analytics obsession, so it lends me the privilege to hit the bricks.
I’ve used Tumblr since 2014 - a really long time for some folks, not very long for others that have been around since the beginning in the mid-2000's. I think the main appeal of it was the art and fandom culture there. Unlike sites like Twitter or Instagram, where initial impressions are core, Tumblr’s more slow-paced environment encouraged looking at and interacting with everything, including your older posts. “Spam likes” and “spam reblogs”, while a blockworthy offense in other social medias, is encouraged on Tumblr. Lauded, even. In terms of social medias for artists, it’s probably among the least hostile towards the visual (and even audio) arts without being a proper DeviantART/Artstation replacement, though the whispers of a supposed deal with Midjourney could obliterate that notion, or in a less fatalistic sense definitely sour it.
Regardless - it's a given that this quirky, fandom-centric site would also become the place many queer and/or neurodivergent call it home. Tumblr feels more “niche” than more contemporary social medias, less “corporate”, though that feeling beyond its userbase is more or less just veneer. It has received both affection and loathing for the kind of place it is on the Internet. That being said, Tumblr is also whatever it is you make of it, and my experiences as a serial fandom shitposter artist on the site differ from that of, say, activism-focused pages or aesthetic pages. It can be a vitriol-filled cesspool as much as it can be a place of comfort and positivity. Still, there are some constants with the eccentric folks that live there, with in-jokes and heritage posts most are familiar with aplenty.
Tumblr’s had a lot of issues over the years, some more grievous than others. The Tumblr team itself has been known for being rather tone deaf towards its own userbase at large and making rather dubious changes most people do not want, though some dubious choices such as the late Tumblr Live and its successor Tumblr TV (as far as I can tell) are choices not from the team itself but rather Automattic et. al. trying to find new ways to draw blood from stone. There is, also, the famous porn bans of late 2018 driving a significant portion of the userbase away to the likes of Twitter and obliterating much of the revenue Tumblr had - most for the simple fact of porn being banned, but also notably how it disproportionately affected queer users on the site to the point of a settlement with the NYC's Commission on Human Rights. Not to mention the evergreen issue of spam pornbots flooding popular tags with malicious links rendering the porn ban redundant and the Tumblr team’s reoccurring inaction or even advocation to the abuse and silencing of marginalized users while touting the site as “the queerest place on the internet”. That’s not to say some of these issues are exclusive to Tumblr, however it is these issues compounded together over time that have damaged Tumblr’s reputation and driven users off the site. There is, also, the numerous controversies involved with many vocal users on the site.
The targeted harassment and censorship of trans women on Tumblr is a notable point of contention for queer users on the site. This particular point came to a head recently what with predstrogen, a trans woman who was banned for posting before and after transition pictures which were deemed "too explicit" despite being fully clothed and wearing common punk accessories, being personally targeted by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, going so far as to be harassed by Matt off-site, on Twitter. Now on sabbatical until May, the Tumblr staff are now left playing damage control and have made a response approved by the interim CEO Toni Schneider. Though this is better than nothing, it is nothing but hollow words, pixels on a screen - and still is functionally nothing for all the trans folks that have been driven off the site, and does nothing for Avery who was personally singled out. It is infinitely frustrating to me how few social medias are actually committed to the safety and well-being of its marginalized users, especially during a time where our very rights are at stake.
Looking at it on a macro level, the situation with Tumblr is but a small part of the overarching enshittification of modern social medias. From chronically online CEOs that make magnitudes more money than the peons that reside on their site showing their entire assholes to the world to companies trying their damnedest to make as much money off of unprofitable social medias at the expense of the very platform they manage, shit sucks! But that's more or less just preaching to the choir here, where everyone dogs on social media. It's not without cause, I mean, see above - but it is where the people are.
At the very least, that’s one source of distraction and doomscrolling I can finally take off my list, to the relief of my girlfriend. While I feel social medias are a neutral digital place, it’s important to identify when it starts to cause issues for you, and in the case of Tumblr - yeah.
If you are a fellow Tumblr user looking to exit, the only thing I have to add is to export your blog. It's an option in your blog settings, right before the option to delete it. It'll take some time, but it exports all your posts, messages, and content to a big ol' ZIP file for you to keep forever.
In the meantime - most of the links referencing the Fatgrrlz Tumblr blog have been taken down, and I've began setting up an RSS feed for the website to serve as a means for providing updates on the site.