#and it's always the pillowfort “joke” or the “they lose their innocence” so annoying

[thediamondarcher]

Why is there always two types of people when it comes to nick and charlie's being sexualized, there's the ones that sexualized them which is fucking disgusting because most of these people are adults. And then there's the people that are like "nick and charlie are so innocent, they would never ever do something like that because they are too innocent for that" and both of them are awfully wrong, it's NOT either sexualizing them or talking about them like they're 9 years old, like, you can also just talk about it like a something that's normal (which is. what it is) and just leave it. If you're one of these types of people please it's better to just stop talking about two minors sexual life all at once !!

[donnerpartyofone]

eh.

What a time this is. I hardly know how to feel about it. Ironically, I think this is happening to me because a few years ago, Tumblr flagged my blog as explicit. I didn’t do anything about it because, while it was annoying and inaccurate, it didn’t make any difference to me. I didn’t even really think about the consequences of it. Now I suspect that Tumblr is using that explicit flag (among other insanities) to easily identify blogs to be shadow banned. I might have gotten pinched some other way eventually--perhaps by the same mechanism that deleted every video I posted of my gecko, and then sent me scolding emails about distributing obscenity--but now I find myself thinking, “First they came for me, and I did not speak out, because I just, like, didn’t really give a shit!”

I’m happy to see so many of my pals on Instagram already, and a little annoyed by the feeling that I have to learn to like Twitter. I’m skeptical of the alternative platforms people are talking about, like Pillowfort, probably just because they sound cute and I wasn’t too attracted to the cuteness of Ello. But maybe it would be fun to load one of those places up with all of the content we’re all frantically exporting from Tumblr? It could be cool to see everybody’s old school content that’s been lost to the fog of memory.

While I’m waiting for my blog to finish backing up, and steeling myself for the possibility that whatever it finally spits out will be missing tons of posts anyway, I’m thinking about what this all means to me. If I had the ability to port my entire blog over to another platform (I haven’t decided whether I’m desperate enough to actually pay for Wordpress, which offers that option), then it would be pretty simple--I wouldn’t have to see any of what I’ve done these last eight-ish years, but I could still ~have~ it. I started using Tumblr in my late 20s, which was a pretty dark time for me. The new way of expressing myself that I found here, and all the amazing friends I made, were a big help to me when I was in an intensely abusive relationship, barely managing an untreated mental illness that I didn’t understand yet, and still struggling to “find myself” or something. The positive impact of my Tumblr experience on my survival, my taste, my sense of humor, all kinds of shit, is inestimable. But at the same time, do I really want to see the person I was again? I don’t love the idea of losing everything I’ve done all these years, but if I had to save it all individually, looking directly at each bad joke and pithy thought and embarrassingly overworked prose and familiarly stylized image, would I? Mightn’t it be better to just cover my eyes and plug my ears, and pretend I don’t notice that it’s all sliding off the edge of a cliff into the void?

Like, I don’t know if I would have done a fraction of the post-collegiate writing that I've done if it weren’t for Tumblr. I probably turned out a couple hundred pages of memoir and film analysis and ranting and (truly valuable) self-reflexion that are at least occasionally interesting, or at the *very* least, funny. I co-ran a blog devoted to getting people to draw even when they didn’t think they could, or didn’t feel motivated, but just wanted someone to give them a reason. I mean, maybe I would have been driven to this work without Tumblr, but the truth is that Tumblr has inspired me every day. My shrink asked me what I’m always trying to get out of this platform, and I didn’t really know how to answer that question, except to say that when I work up a sweat writing some long crazy thing here, I feel enormously satisfied and relieved in some way when I post it, even if I know for a fact that only a couple of my most devoted friends will even notice it.

I changed a lot while I was here. Not just because I was literally growing up, late bloomer that I am, but being able to see this record of what I was doing, and simultaneously being exposed to what others were up to, really helped me evolve. I went from learning to enjoy my own vanity, to being able to put away my fear of looking ugly, and from showing off the best art I'd ever made, to feeling free to make bad art as long as I was still making something. As an ASD person with high social anxiety, I don’t do well at parties, but Tumblr gave me this beautiful opportunity to talk to all kinds of different people, about all kinds of things, and those people often asked me questions about myself that I had never even considered before. Of course this place can be an insulting mess, but also, people have been really, really incredibly kind to me, for no apparent reason other than that they wanted to. A lot of them are people I probably never would have met for any other reason; people I really fucking treasure.

I’m trying to look at this as an opportunity, in some ways. Like, I don’t think I really like the way that I write, but I sure like to do it! I’d been thinking for a while, should I have made more of a push, when I was younger, to publish? To “put myself out there” and “make a career out of it”? I still think, not really, but it’s hard to say, because the instant gratification of posting to Tumblr made me pretty uncurious about the potential benefits of going out into the world and seeking my proverbial fortune, entering into the competition of daily life, clawing my way toward some more recognizable achievement. Lately, I began to imagine printing a zine of my film writing--which would give me a change to rework a lot of that early tortured bullshit--and maybe including some drawings. I could probably even meet new people through such a thing, professional contacts maybe. (By “professional” I hardly mean anything smarter than like, Fangoria or something of that order, but that would be a big deal for me probably) But now that Tumblr is making itself increasingly frustrating to use in even the most innocent way, and now that I might have to move as much as I can over to a new platform, that could be an interesting chance to review what I’ve done right and wrong over the years, to say “I don’t want to do it this way anymore/I want to do it this way from now on.” I never even cared that much about improving before. I tend to think of competition as being an outlet for the chronically insecure, people who need to compare themselves to others in order to feel like there’s any meaning to their lives. It’s a vestigial impulse, I really believe that commercial and athletic and sexual competition just compensates for the obsolescence of survival in the wilderness...but uh anyway, maybe after sequestering myself in the semi-private masturbatorium that is Tumblr all these years, I could stand to be thrown out into the street to find my fortune?

So I don’t really know what to say now. I’m not quitting just yet, but I’m also not fighting my shadow ban. It’s just so stupid, and there’s so obviously no saving this place. I’m sticking around for now, but I’m going to start crossposting with a dang old blogspot: https://donner-partyofone.blogspot.com and I’ll make it clear when I’m starting to seriously add content over there. Hopefully some folks will find it interesting, and I hope those folks will also tell me if they take their business somewhere outside Tumblr. See you in the funny papers.