Look, I’ll be real, a part me is really glad that this website is going to be somewhat revitalized by the inevitable migration of Twitter refugees post-Elon purchase. Staff has been doing great! Tumblr deserves an active userbase because this website fucks harder than any other social media bar none! It is unequivocally the best social experience online!
But oh my sweet Lord god in heaven help me the existential terror of having Twitter slither in here to promote its normalization of persistent social abuse, its puritanical means-testing of surface level ideological commitment, and its disgustingly narcissistic perpetuation of pervasive cultural pessimism is a genuine nightmare that I am not prepared to deal with.
Like, Tumblr has a such a unique and rare method of social interaction that disincentives the kind of low-effort, low-stakes (until it’s suddenly not) engagement that runs wild on Twitter. Beyond all odds, Tumblr’s culture of artful shitposting mixed with thoughtful consideration has SOMEHOW managed to survive the whitewashing of the internet. We’re a living fossil in a fragile ecosystem. Twitter is an obliterate of any positive subculture; it panders exclusively to the lowest common denominator of online engagement, and then further feeds that into a toxic mentality of enabling the weaponization of internet clout. It’s a race to the bottom where the loser wins. You can’t get clout on Tumblr because engagement has largely been anonymized, and the userbase in general has deliberately fostered a culture of not giving a shit about being popular. Follower counts here do not matter. And that is a good thing – that is something we should want to protect and encourage.
And don’t get me wrong, Tumblr is built on the fundamental lowbrow. We all appreciate being crass, being strange, being ‘unmarketable.’ But this is Shakespearean lowbrow at its core. It’s shitposting painted by Picasso way more often than it is shitposting sold as a fucking NFT. Our reverence for quality stupid actually contributes positively and uniquely to engagement (most of the time), and that feeds into even more positive and unique engagement as users reblog and add their own contributions to the post. Retweeting something will just never have that effect.
I cannot remember the number of dumb, one-off jokes I’ve seen reblogged into beautiful efforts of collective poetry. I’ve seen posts asking if Ezra Pound and T.S Elliot fucked like rabid animals turned into significant contributions of literary analysis for their respective works. I’ve seen the stupidest fucking takes morphed into powerful pieces of social commentary by people who cared enough to contribute their time, their effort to do so: to create something worthwhile. That one post about the value of gold and silver in the post-apocalypse comes to mind. Like, that’s the kind of thing that could never have survived, much less become prominent and valued, on Twitter. It would sink to the bottom there and never resurface: digital echoes that promise something special, something worthwhile, but are fundamentally wasted and buried in the chaotic din of scramblingly awful takes.
I guess I’m just saying that I don’t want that to happen here. I like Tumblr, and I want Tumblr to prosper, but not at the expense of all the things that make it wonderful in the first place.
Listen, I don’t care if you don’t understand Hindi. You HAVE to listen to Hindi Ballister’s delivery of the “Let’s break stuff” (toh ho jaye tod-phod) line. Sexiest line in Nimona.
somehow instead of saying “as a treat”, I’ve started using the phrase “for morale”, as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.
and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.
I’m not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me
I don’t get it, man. why. why do we have to homogenize everything. why does every product have to look and behave and feel the exact same way. why can’t tumblr maintain its individuality? why can’t it lean into the things that make it a unique and refreshing offering instead of scrambling to make it a carbon copy of twitter? sucks, man. sucks.
the problem: tumblr is extremely extremely in debt. the current model is not profitable. this is why they are trying to turn the site into a shit clone of every other social media site, so they can attract new users and their money.
solution: not a ton of people can afford a long-term subscriptions like ad-free. however, many of us CAN afford $3 to inflict crabs on another unsuspecting user. (and those that can’t, can still enjoy crabs everywhere)
the idea: in the grand traditions of mishapocalypses and goncharovs and tumblr users’ obsession with [random inconsequential thing] Days, we create a fund drive/holiday on July 29th, dubbed Crab Day. buy your friends crabs. buy your enemies crabs. blaze posts. post memes. change ur icon. whatever. actually put your money where your mouth is and show @staff that there actually IS profit motive to listen to the current users about what we want this site to look like. (and yes, that means accessibility features too. we currently have zero leverage to demand these features. let’s change that.)
i don’t know if this will actually go anywhere. worst case scenario, a few of us have fun, tumblr gets a small amount of money, and nothing changes. best case though, we actually provide incentive to keep our stupid hellsite unique.
