#for real though @ tumblr staff

[abaroo]

I realised I had to refine Ceroba for my au…

In the cowboy swap au, Ceroba is actually the Sheriff and leader of the Feisty Five. Clover is still the Deputy and goes by “Lucky Star”. He loves hanging around town with his Mama ☺️. I haven’t come up with a cool cowboy name for Ceroba yet, although she probably wouldn’t use one :/

Cowboy Swap Masterpost

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Okay so here’s my thoughts on the staffcon thing.

I still think collapsing reblogs so posts look more like other social media isn’t gonna work as a feature but they will probably roll them back a little and at least add a toggle off for it if they try it and enough people submit feedback. Edit: this is actually less of an issue, most of the discussion is based on a misrepresentation of what’s happening. They’re just making it easier to scroll past long posts. EDIT AGAIN: actually some people already have the initial roll out of the feature and it. Is bad.

I think submitting feedback is a takeaway. There was a pretty clear effort to just remind the user base that there are real humans on the other side of a paycheck having to read and respond to the inputs of every feedback method on the site, which is fair. It’s easy to be an asshole online in any semi anonymous platform and that is something that tumblr culture takes a certain bloodthirsty pleasure in.

And yes, of course, user complaints about issues such as accessibility and the many ongoing glitches and bots and the search function, etc. are valid and do need to be addressed. But at the very least it would be cool if we as users maybe try to cultivate a slightly less pitchforky social norm when submitting feedback about changes to the site. The ceo is not reading every @ to his blog. One of his employees is. The people reading all of the feedback are just people doing their jobs. All jobs suck under capitalism, maybe we could try not to make their jobs actively worse.

Would you be rude to an overworked server in a restaurant? No? Cool also try to not be a dick to the person getting paid to answer customer or user complaints.

Related to that, funding. Many current and former members of staff have been pretty frank about funding in the past. The company is trying to at the very least breakeven, which not a single company who has owned tumblr has managed because the hosting fees for this site are insane due to all of the stuff on it.

If they don’t get it to breakeven they’ll hopefully best case just open source the website which is a method they’ve done in the past. And it would probably work, and then the website would to my understanding be being maintained by users. Now this is where my understanding gets fuzzy so anyone with more knowledge of how this would shake out feel free to chime in. But my understanding is that the source code for the site would be opened up and maintained by the community likely through mostly volunteer work. I would guess largely uncompensated.

So personally I think maybe the vitriolic response to every change they make going forward to try and monetize the site and pay even some of the cost of operation is perhaps a bit overblown, because they’re still trying to find a way to keep paying those people to work on tumblr, and I think people continuing to be paid for the work they do is better than volunteers doing unpaid labor.

I do also think there’s a secret third option for automattic and every other company finding themselves with a worse outlook now the Silicon Valley bubble has started to really burst, and that is for all existing staff members to unionize and then turn the whole thing into a worker coop. Much more stable organizational structures. Worker coops are also one of my favorite short term solutions to many other systemic problems we are currently experiencing.

I do hope this site continues to exist for many years, especially as it is one of the only places on the internet where the culture makes it safer to talk about some of the more permanent and long term solutions to various systemic issues that function within societies. Also funny text posts.

[mieczyhale]

"i had to surrender my cat bc he's got incontinence issues and i'm just not equipped to deal with that"

i'm stealing your fucking kneecaps

[fiercynn]

okay, if you have ever made or reblogged a “hold your nose and vote for biden” post, this is for you.

here’s the fucking thing about these kinds of posts. i've been seeing them since i first returned to tumblr in, I think, late 2022? they've certainly increased in frequency since october 7, but they were there before too, ready to counter any kind of opposition to biden that has cropped up. many of them are not just trying to educate people about what positive things biden has done, which, like, at least I can understand the motivation behind those ones? but so many of them are directly in response to people criticizing biden, and their only real point is “sure you’re upset at this thing biden did, but have you considered the election?” starting YEARS before the next presidential election, mind you.

and october 7 only made that clearer. i don’t think it had been a week before i saw these posts cropping up. can you not see how fucking ghoulish that is? to look at the rightful pain and anger of those whose relatives and communities are being slaughtered with active american support, to respond to one of the few pieces of agency most americans have in influencing what their governments do – their vote – by saying “yes but trump would be worse.” as if the primary people you’re lecturing – palestinians, muslims, arabs, black people, indigenous people, disabled people, other marginalized people – don’t remember exactly how bad it was under trump!

and even if you think not voting is an empty gesture – something i, who studied political science at a mainstream american lib college, who has worked as a field organizer on a previous democratic presidential campaign and for several policy campaigns, who currently works in public policy in america, used to believe, but have absolutely changed my mind on – what is in no way an empty gesture is saying publicly that you will not vote for someone. the arguments people usually have about why simply not voting is bad are that you can’t tell why someone is not voting, so it is as likely to be apathy or disenfranchisement as it is a political statement. but saying publicly that you will not vote for someone, and why you will not vote for them, absolutely is a political statement, and potentially a powerful one! but you choose to negate and/or ignore that by trotting out the “lesser of two evils” bullshit.

and then there’s the whole “yes but people will DIE under trump”. PEOPLE ARE DYING NOW. even if you’re fucking racist and have decided that palestinian lives don’t count, have you forgotten biden’s ongoing covid minimalism and dismantling of the CDC’s covid research and prevention infrastructure? have you forgotten his increase in spending for law enforcement scant years after the murder of george floyd and his administration's surveillance of protesters, including cop city protesters? have you forgotten his recent ramp-up in deportations of undocumented immigrants, including the active continuation of many trump-era policies?

maybe you have forgotten all those things and do purport to care about palestinians, but you just think that biden is doing his best to influence netanyahu and is getting nowhere! but then you must have forgotten all of the things that biden and his administration themselves have done to further this fucking genocide, including:

continuing to send arms to israel

putting together a military task force within days of yemen’s red sea blockade and attacking yemeni ships

bombing yemen

bombing syria

bombing iraq

vetoing three ceasefire resolutions at the united nations

testifying to defend israel and its genocide and occupation at the international court of justice

refusing to rescue palestinian-americans stuck in gaza

halting funding to the united nations relief and works agency for palestinian refugees (UNRWA) based on israeli claims that 12 of UNRWA’s over 30,000 staff were hamas agents, even though u.s. intelligence has not been able to independently verify this

lying that he’s personally seen photos of babies beheaded by hamas when he hadn’t because they didn’t exist (and even when his own staff cautioned him that reports of beheaded babies may not be credible)

questioning the number of palestinian deaths reported by the gaza ministry of health (when even israel has not questioned them, since they are in fact proud of those numbers)

perpetuating lies about hamas having committed the attack on al-aqsa hospital

questioning united nations reports of adults and children raped by israeli soldiers while claiming to have proof (that no one else has seen) of hamas doing the same

honestly so many more things that i can’t remember them all but others feel free to add

or maybe you haven’t forgotten any of that, and think that you’re still justified in lecturing people about why they should vote for biden, because you genuinely believe trump would still be worse. if that is the case, you have still failed to see that by saying you will vote for biden no matter what, you are part of the problem of biden continuing to act like this. because biden is counting on fear of trump to win him this next election no matter what else he does. despite his appalling polling numbers, despite the knowledge that he is losing the palestinian-american vote, the arab-american vote, the muslim-american vote, the black american vote, the youth vote – despite all of that, he is secure in the idea that he will still win because he is better than trump. can you not see how that allows him to act without impunity? how it becomes increasingly impossible for his base to influence what he’s doing if he thinks that they will be with him no matter what? this is how you make yourself complicit to biden’s actions, by not affording anyone even the slightest power to hold him accountable for anything.

and in most cases, the “hold your nose and vote for biden” thing is the response of people who aren’t even being instructed by others not to vote for biden. it is their response to people saying they themselves are choosing not to vote for biden. fucking ghoulish.

[helloidkwhatimdoing-0]

i hate post limits and i also hate the new features, im in tEARS

OPENED THIS ASK AFTER SEEING YOU REBLOG A POST FROM ME 19 TIMES IN A ROW

[sequentialprophet]

😫😫😫😫😫😫

[knightinink]

we’re getting bots through our messages now? 

Lovely.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

100 songs to get to know me

I posted this image over on the bluesky, and it got like 100 likes, so now here we are. I was going to write them all up here, but Tumblr imposes a 10 video limit on embeds per post which I find infuriating.

So! You can read the first ten entries here, but you can read the entire list here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

1. ABBA - Lay All Your Love On Me

I genuinely don't quite know if my enjoyment of ABBA is something I came by honestly, or something which is simply genetically engineered into my Scandinavian soul. I remember hearing my mom blasting their songs on the home stereo in my childhood, and the association has put permanent nostalgia blinders on me for all of ABBA's greatest hits. Still, I think the beat is undeniable and the mournful tone of the chorus adds some real melancholy to the dramatic plea at the core of the song.

2. Afenginn - Oestrogenmanipuleret Basilisk

Afenginn describe themselves as "bastard etno-punk" which is probably as good a description as you're going to get. There's a lot of klezmer and eastern European folk influences here, but what is more important about Afenginn's best songs is that they go hard as f*ck and it's an absolute blast to dance to them at a show. They played this the first time I saw them live, and the rhythm comes back every time I hear it again. Good times!

3. Afenginn - Ralli in D Minor

With 100 slots to fill, I am giving myself permission to allocate two slots to Afenginn, and for the same reason. Ralli in D Minor is less of a dance tune to me, and more of a headbanger, but with a sufficiently loud subwoofer and a game crowd, you could f*ing mosh to this.

4. Anamanaguchi - Prom Night

I discovered Anamanaguchi as the composers of the title track to the Nerdist podcast back in the day, and being unfamiliar with the concept of chiptunes, I was drawn in initially by the sheer novelty of hearing the squeaks and bloops of my gaming childhood employed towards rock tunes and combined with "real" instruments.

Beyond the gimmick, though, Anamanaguchi won me over fully with the Scott Pilgrim game soundtrack, and then 2013's Endless Fantasy, where the gimmick of chiptune nostalgia noise (at least for me) finally coalesced into something that felt entirely like its own thing. Plus I'm a sucker for exactly this kind of bright dance pop, and Bianca Raquel's vocals here are a perfect match for the tone of the music.

5. Jennifer Hudson - Memory

2019s Cats is a fascinating fucking disaster. Tom Hooper is the worst director of musicals in my living memory, the abuse of the VFX staff extended beyond brutal crunch and absurd challenge imposed by a director who had no idea what the hell he was asking them to do all the way into an astonishingly arrogant and condescending joke from Rebel Wilson and James Corden at the expense of workers who were the last people at fault for the disaster that the movie became (look in the fucking mirror, Wilson and Corden, your performances were rancid).

Still, the silver lining of Cats is we got to hear Jennifer Hudson shake the world on its foundations with her rendition of Memory. I don't give a shit what anyone says, this performance is transcendent and no amount of institutional failure can dim its quality.

6. Annette Bjergfeldt - Min Bærende Bjælke

Annette is one of my mother's oldest friends, and a prolific singer-songwriter now turned author. I've been going to her concerts since I was a little child, and while I am absolutely not the target audience for any of it, it has stuck with me as part of my musical vocabulary deep into adulthood.

She has experimented with brass band accompaniment a few times, but for my money, nothing quite comes close to the floating, optimistic vibe of Min Bærende Bjælke. It sounds like a very particular kind of lasting romance, which of course is also what the lyrics are about.

7. Hozier - Blood Upon the Snow

We'll get more than one Hozier song on this list, but Blood Upon the Snow stands out to me as a song which easily transcends the videogame soundtrack promotional tie-in nature of its conception. Bear McCreary's hurdy gurdy and lyrics about surviving through adversity by holding on to existence with your teeth and nails... yeah, it hits with me. There's something real in that.

"The trees deny themselves nothing that makes them grow, no rainfall, no sunshine, no blood upon the snow." Something about that feels real.

8. The Beatles - Something

idk if I really need to write anything about George Harrison's most famous love song that hasn't been written more extensively by a million dad-rock enthusiasts before me.

I will say, this is one of the few songs I listen to regularly that justify the expensive audiophile headphones I invest in. There's a LOT to hear on a good, lossless, original mix of this song, if you're the kind of pervert who gets off to listening to a song a hundred times to focus on different parts of the soundscape. (it's me, I am the pervert)

9. Blink-182 - Adam's Song

I discovered a lot of my music taste as a young man from extremely low-resolution AMVs that my friend used to download off sketchy file-sharing sites. Blink-182 entered my musical lexicon through the one above, specifically, piggybacking off of my teenage love of Dragon Ball.

I never really grokked what the lyrics were actually about, until relistening to the song years later, but something about the minor-key wail of the thing really sat with my angsty teenage soul and has stuck with me ever since. I cannot listen to this song without that music video playing in my head, the song will forever belong to Vegeta.

There's remastered versions of this AMV out there, apparently, but if it's not 144p with tinny audio, it's just not right. That's not what the song is supposed to sound like, not to me.

10. Blink-182 - Miss You

Blink-182 is one of those bands I discovered via anime AMVs and listened to obsessively for a period as a teenager (The Offspring will show up later on this list), and then fell entirely out of touch with for years until discovering much later in life that they did, in fact, keep releasing music. I Miss You from their self-titled 2003 album felt, when I discovered it sometime in the early 2010s, like a much more mature and interesting sound from a band which had gotten stuck associated with my adolescent superpower kung-fu fantasies which I was, at the time, feeling a bit embarrassed about.

The song had a resurgence on TikTok a little while ago as a meme template, which made me listen to the albums again, and rediscover yet again that Blink-182 is, in fact, still putting out albums.

---

The rest of the list is here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

[ms-demeanor]

i mean realistically many people do deserve to be the victims of targeted harassment campaigns. if you're being an asshole you deserve to be screamed at by everyone present until you stop. some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

damn following up the last ask, ig it was someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out. my bad lol thought that was part of ur main post

I mean this is something that's still worthwhile to bounce off of even though you're not actually responding to me.

First of all, no, I pretty much don't think that anybody deserves to be the focus of a targeted harassment campaign. At least not the kind that are spun up on tumblr or twitter. I generally think that targeted harassment campaigns don't work to change minds, they only work to torment, isolate, and attack people, which will often further entrench them in their positions.

Sometimes people doing serious antifascist work will make a discovery like, for instance "the principal of X school is a vicious antisemite" and will run an *exposure* campaign to get them removed from a position of power, but with very few exceptions when you see an online callout post for a random internet user it's nothing but abuse and an attempt to bully them off of a specific website, not an attempt to protect victims or inform people of a genuine threat. "ABC is the new alt of this person with a documented history of starting cults, DNI, block and move on" is very different than "This specific user who is on staff posts harry potter fanart and is why fascists continue to exist on tumblr, let's make sure they know what tumblr thinks of them."

You are trying to frame bullying campaigns as normal consequences for antisocial behavior, but the antisocial behaviors under discussion here are "user posted fanart broadly disliked by the community and associated with specific ideologies long after the initial fandoms were crystallized" and "is the CEO of a social media website that is implementing features that the users dislike."

"People deserve to be screamed at until they stop the bad behavior" is punitive and shitty and so broad and open to so many interpretations that you're basically saying "it's open season on screaming at people." I think that it's bad behavior to support neoliberal political candidates who prop up capitalism but it would be horrible for me to run harassment campaigns against everyone who says "vote blue no matter who" even though I think that attitude perpetuates real world harms. (And it also wouldn't convince those people to change their minds! The fact that I think they are doing something harmful doesn't give me the social license to send hundreds of people to harass them! And it wouldn't work! These kinds of campaigns don't effect change they just isolate people and erode trust and civility jesus fuck we need to be coalition building not posting callouts over whatever activity has been deemed "freak behavior" this week)

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

oh buddy, I think I get where you're coming from here but considering the kinds of behavior under discussion this is just straight up fascist. You are literally saying that people should be banished from society for wrongthink because nobody under discussion here has actually committed an act of cruelty.

(one of the things that i'm putting under the heading of "tumblr conspiracist thinking" is "staff is currently and continually intentionally flagging certain LGBTQ tags and bloggers" - there is ample evidence that the current staff is working to unfuck flagging and blocked tags that was done long before this crew was working on it. People talk about "tumblr had to settle because their filtering disproportionately impacted lgbtq+ creators" and that is TRUE however that was a filter that was established under different owners with different policies and different staff; the implication that the current staff is guilty of trying to stifle LGBTQ+ content because a lawsuit started before the Automattic purchase of tumblr ended in a financial settlement is just bad, wrong, incorrect, faulty logic. And if I might indulge in a bit of my own conspiracist thinking: I actually suspect a lot of the flagging and tagging and blocking of trans women specifically might actually be targeted attacks of individual users by terfs - many of the things that are getting flagged as needing a community label are things that use tags that terfs follow to attack and if enough users click "this needs a community label" the post will get flagged - I don't know that that's what's going on but just operating on occam's razor I think it's a lot more likely that terfs are coordinating attacks on trans people than that there is a secret group of cryptoterfs on staff taking time out of their day to ensure that trans users get flagged, if only because I think that the vocally trans positive former members of the staff would have said something about it.)

So, given that my position is "it is unlikely that anyone on staff is intentionally targeting LGBTQ+ groups HOWEVER prior policies enacted harm against LGBTQ+ groups and there is visible evidence that the current staff is trying to repair that damage" I'm not seeing any behaviors here that call for individual employees or users to get targeted with harassment from thousands of users.

But anyway, back to the specifics of the ask:

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

Do you have any idea how frequently amends are made and never circulated as widely as the callout post? Do you have any idea how frequently callout posts are incorrect, and exaggerate the things that need to be amended? I'm reminded of Lindsey Ellis, who was the victim of a years-long targeted harassment campaign and made multiple apologies over the years who was finally driven off of her primary platform because she carelessly misspoke and the people who had been targeting her for years were able to make a post that she had long disavowed and was a relic of her dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence go viral. The internet doesn't let people make amends; people see accusations. They see the first post, not the follow up. That's why starting these campaigns is shitty and dangerous even if you *personally* believe that you'll forgive an individual once they "make amends." (and the "amends" people usually demand are "i want this person gone from the internet forever and cut out of this part of their life" - that's not really something that's fair to ask of people when so much of the world is online these days.)

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

No they don't. Straight up. If the manager of a wendy's sprays you in the neck with a milkshake you have the right to escalate your complaint right up the chain, take your business away and never come back, warn other people "hey the manager sprayed me with a milkshake, stay away," but you don't have the moral right to escalate the situation by screaming at them (and you certainly don't have that right if you happened to get sprayed with some milkshake while the manager was attempting to fix the frostee machine when you came to pick up your order, which I think is actually more analogous to what is happening here).

someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out

A big point that I think you're missing here is that @-ing staff when there is a problem on a post or you see harassment is generally pretty acceptable (though much less effective than filing a support claim), but the issue under discussion isn't @-ing staff, it was pointing thousands of angry people at two specific people who are *part* of staff and holding those two individuals responsible for all the problems that users see with tumblr.

partyjockers got nuked because their post directed a flood of harassment at one staff member in a post where they had highlighted that user's URL and name:

This is explicitly saying "users like the one I screenshotted are the reason you're being attacked by terfs" because one member of staff posted fanart from two franchises that tumblr-the-userbase has deemed off limits.

(Do you have any idea how extreme a bubble this is? Do you walk into barnes and noble and sigh because the managers are fascists who want trans people dead because there's harry potter merch everywhere? JK rowling is a terf and a horrible fucking person and I am no longer personally comfortable engaging with that fandom but people posting fanart of a franchise are not personally attacking you even if it feels like they are disregarding your humanity; you cannot consider other people's participation in huge, popular, mainstream fandoms as a sign that they are plotting against you this is why i'm calling this conspiracist thinking the entire scorched earth conspiracy spawned from someone interpreting a staff member's art as esoteric signposts signalling their hatred of trans people. Do you remember when the stupid harry potter game came out and this entire website was despondent because it meant that people didn't care about trans people? That's not actually what it meant! What it meant is that the vast majority of people on the planet have neither a twitter nor a tumblr account and have no idea how shitty JK rowling is to trans people and they don't interpret "harry potter imagery" as "covert terf signal" they interpret it as "possibly the most mainstream fantasy series in the last fifty years")

This isn't someone calling out the manager after they spray you with a milkshake. The manager asking someone to leave after they started screaming that the cashier's earrings were hate speech.

This analogy got out of hand but please just understand that there's a difference between @-ing an account that people are paid to monitor as part of their jobs and that they have support and coworkers to help with and @-ing someone's personal account.

Nobody got a post deleted because the used @ staff, they got their posts deleted because they focused viral negative attention on individual users.

[artsekey]

I really hate how ads have taken over the internet. On one hand, I know that hosting a website costs money, right? And ad revenue is one of the simplest ways for free-to-use websites to cover their operating costs.

My question is-- and I would genuinely love an answer-- is this ever going to stop? Tumblr ran for a long time without ads. So did Youtube. I know that the cost of hosting so much media has gone up, but there are a lot of users on these websites that make the content that drives people to use the service that don't see any of the money generated by this revenue. On Youtube, there's at least a way for creators to make some money from what they do. For most, it isn't much, but the opportunity is there. On Tumblr, well... the ability to convert the visibility of my blog into any financial gain practically nonexistent, though they did at one point promise that users would be able to make money from ads run on their blogs (whatever happened to that, Staff?).

"You can pay to avoid seeing ads!" Tumblr says, as if the views on my main blog alone over the past few years have not generated more than enough ad revenue to cover the price they're asking me to pay, the person who is actively making content that brings eyes to their ads.

I'm not mad at Tumblr for hosting ads. I get that it has to happen because it's the easiest way to keep the site free, and honestly, I imagine Tumblr's staunch opposition to monetization has been a real obstacle for the team building Tumblr. But at the same time, it feels like yet another small concession in the usability of the site. I'm tired of ads that auto-play with blaring audio while I'm scrolling. I'm tired of adds that, if I touch them while trying to scroll past them, take me to an external site. Outside of tumblr, I'm tired of looking for information online only to get a webpage that's 95% ads and otherwise illegible. Hell, I recently got an ad on Discord. Was it unobtrusive? Maybe. But it was there, for the first time, and I know that won't be the end.

I know the first reply I'm going to get on this is "use adblock", and yes, that's a solution, but think about how much the landscape for media has changed in just ten years.

Popular forums are basically gone outside of reddit.

Youtube, without Red, is ad hell. You can't watch more than 3-4 minutes of video without getting sent to marketing hell.

Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter-- it's terrible. I firmly believe they've manufactured a worse experience through the implementation of ads to convince you to buy into their premium services.

Just Check out this video of Penguinz0 trying to watch a video on a third-party site.

There's discussion of putting ads into video games.

Remember when games didn't include micro-transactions? Blizzard is charging $70 for one mythic skin. You could almost buy Overwatch 1 twice-over at that price-point.

Influencers make a living by making their lives into advertisements.

Youtube has retaliated against users using ad-block on non-chrome browsers by artificially inflating the load times of it's videos.

What can we do about this? I imagine companies see it as an infinite money hack; users can't stop companies from hosting ads, and the action they could take to voice their displeasure-- leaving the site, using other competitive services-- has been all but obliterated thanks to the homogeneity of popular social media outlets. If someone is truly so incensed about ads, well-- it isn't like they have to engage with them, right? They can enroll in a cheap, auto-renewing service to get rid of ads entirely. Well, wait, the price of premium might just have to go up. Don't worry, it's auto-renewing! You won't even notice it. Oh, no, it's got to go up again, you won't even notice it.

There's no incentive for them to cap this behavior, and no way for us as users to pressure them to do so. We create these spaces; we fill them with color, art, activism, community, and the companies that ride on the tailcoat of the spaces we create tell us to give them more. What comes next?

[pitheinfiniteog]

Help Me Take My Account Back

Hi, this is Pi, Pitheinfinite, the founder of @pis3update and @pis3story & the joint founder of ts3creatorscave.

About a month ago, my original account @pitheinfinite got suspended by tumblr with no reason provided. I followed the protocol and filed my complaint but my patience got no reward. No response. Nothing At All.

It's time to take some real actions I think. Please help me by urging @staff to give my account back. Even though I've been on hiatus for quite some time and still don't have much time for the game or the community at the moment, I want to keep the place I've built for years, knowing that I always have a home here to go to.

Besides, my story sideblog pis3story, unlike pis3update, has only one member/admin, and will go down with my original account.

Please help me. Reblog this post and tag the staff, asking them to make things right. It's those porn zombie that they should go after, not the long term users. Thank you💜

[natalieironside]

A while ago, when one of y'all bought me check marks after I'd said I didn't want them, I felt real shitty. It felt real shitty to know that someone had spent real money on me trying to be nice and it had gone to waste. Like I was the asshole.

Now, though, I want whichever one of y'all bought me a month of ad-free Tumblr a couple months ago to know your gift wasn't appreciated. First of all cuz I literally didn't notice; I only found out about it at all because today I was looking for something in my spam folder and saw the email from staff letting me know my ad-free trial had expired last week. The experience of using the website was the same and I would've been blissfully unaware it had ever happened.

But Also, I feel like I've been open enough about my indigent and destitute financial situation that I have a right to be downright pissed off that someone essentially took money out of their wallet, set the money on fire, flushed the ashes down the toilet, and patted themself on the back like "I gave Natalie a nice gift :)"

I'm sure Matt appreciated the free money you gave him in exchange for nothing. I'm gonna go make a toast sandwich for dinner.

[labs]

Labs is back

Hello citizens of Tumblr! If you’ve been on Tumblr for awhile, you’ve probably stumbled upon those Tumblr Labs settings we’ve had for several years now. Originally, Tumblr Labs was meant to be a way for us engineers at Tumblr to experiment in public, in an opt-in way. Experiments inside of Labs have come and gone over the years, and some have even made their way into the product as real features (soon, Reblog Graphs will graduate to “real feature” status), and some have been discontinued.

Going forward, we’re transforming what Labs means to Tumblr. Before this week, there was no group of staff at Tumblr considered “members of Labs”; experiments were built by anyone who felt like it, and they were usually small ideas. Recently it’s become clear to us that we actually do need a dedicated group of people within the company working on prototypes of big ideas, ones that could fundamentally change Tumblr as a platform.

The core values of Tumblr are good and resonate with people. Those core values are probably familiar if you’ve used Tumblr for awhile: we’re different from other social media, we value pseudonymity and co-creation and safe spaces, folks are here for their niche more than what’s trending. However, the product itself doesn’t always resonate with those statements – we want to make it effortless for folks new to Tumblr to connect with those core values. People who love the idea of Tumblr just aren’t able to “get it” quickly enough. Tumblr needs fundamental change to be sustainable and grow more, all without losing those unique, good core values.

But we’re not sure exactly what that change looks like, so we’ve assembled a new team, called Tumblr Labs, to figure it out as quickly as possible. We’re going to be prototyping ideas, some that may feel very familiar and natural if you use Tumblr and other similar platforms every day, and some that feel totally alien and weird to us as heavy Tumblr users. We’ll be testing these ideas in an opt-in basis with people who’ve been using Tumblr for years, and more especially with people who’ve never even heard of Tumblr (a difficult group to find).

More than that, though, we want to practice “working in public” here. The @changes and @wip blogs have been our first steps in that direction, and we think this blog is the next step. Give us a follow to stay up-to-date on what we’re thinking about, what we’re building, what has worked and what hasn’t, and for opportunities to help. We want your feedback as we work, and we hope to invite many of you to try out these ideas in the future so they can be shaped by you — so stay tuned!

[malk1ns]

january 7 vs blue jackets, 4-3 S/O loss

geno misses his first game in over two seasons. cue a five-alarm meltdown on tumblr and twitter lmao.

this fic contains mpreg. i wouldn't call it a dystopia exactly, but it's also not not a dystopia. it's not a breeding program, but it's not not a breeding program. you get it.

When Jarry lets in the second goal on the shootout and the Blue Jackets pour off the bench to celebrate, Zhenya slams his hand on the arm of the couch he and Tommer are watching from in the lounge and curses.

Tommer frowns at him. “Take it easy,” he says, glancing at the door. “We just barely got them to leave. If they hear you freaking out, they’ll make you go back to the exam room.”

Zhenya grumbles, but subsides. Tommer’s right. The medical staff had been loath to let Zhenya leave their sight, even though all he wanted to do was sit on a couch and watch the Penguins play. It had taken Tommer popping up from his meeting with the trainers and promising to stay with him before they left him alone.

Zhenya’s been taking pregnancy tests on a daily basis for the last two weeks, Sid hovering over his shoulder as they waited out the 15-minute timer. And every day, they’d both let out a breath when no second line showed up—Sid in disappointment, and Zhenya in…also disappointment, but not entirely.

Until this afternoon. Zhenya went to morning skate like normal, then came home and let Sid fuss at him before their nap. His alarm went off, he groaned and stumbled into the bathroom, he peed on a stick.

This time, though, as the countdown on his phone ticked over to five minutes left, a second faint line appeared.

“Holy shit,” Sid had said, hand sneaking around Zhenya’s torso to rest low on his belly. “Baby, look.”

They were later than normal to the arena for the game. Zhenya insisted on taking three more tests, watching each one pop positive as he swallowed back nausea.

He’s pregnant. The doctors confirmed it when they got to the rink; Sid must have called ahead, because they were waiting for them just inside the doors, whisking Zhenya away and shooing Sid off when he tried to follow. The blood test was conclusive, and Zhenya stared down at the printout in stunned silence.

He managed to avoid that particular clause in his contract for almost twenty years. He’d played his hardest, given this team and this city everything he had, and when his agent broached the topic in the off-season he put it off, changing the subject and dedicating himself to training so the team wouldn’t push the issue. If he’s playing well, after all, they’d rather keep him on the ice.

That changed with his last extension. Expectations were made clear, and even a regime change hadn’t altered them.

Zhenya hasn’t exactly made his case for anything different this year, he knows that. He’s been distracted, worn down by the extra media and public scrutiny once it leaked that he and Sid were trying. Everywhere he goes, he gets stopped by people asking how it’s going, if he has good news to share.

And there’s Sid.

In years past, Sid helped Zhenya track his cycle so they could avoid his most fertile days and extend Zhenya’s playing time. This year, though, he’d come back from the offseason, taken Zhenya to bed, and essentially not let him leave.

The attention is nice. What started back in 2006 as an arranged thing for the future of the organization turned quickly into something real, something permanent, and Zhenya will never be upset about being on the receiving end of Sidney Crosby’s considerable focus. It’s the why that’s making him uneasy.

Sid had always been different. Circumstances outside their control brought them together, but he made an effort to get to know Zhenya as a person, and the feelings that developed grew naturally, like a regular relationship. This season, though, he’s been different, fixated on the idea of getting Zhenya pregnant with an alarming level of enthusiasm. It’s infiltrated his dirty talk even, and while Zhenya won’t pretend it’s not hot in the moment, it’s been making him feel a little off, a little claustrophobic.

Technically, Zhenya can still play, for a few more weeks at least. He could probably force the issue, kick up a fuss and threaten to tell the union that the Penguins are violating his right to play while he’s still eligible. He thinks about Sid, though, the way Sid handed him into the car this afternoon like he was made of glass, and his stomach twists.

He’s a hockey player. His whole life has been structured around playing games, and getting ready to play games, and rehabbing from injuries so he can get ready to play games again. He doesn’t know how to take an extended break with no defined date of return.

But Sid’s been on overdrive all season, protective and overbearing. He’s only going to get worse now that it’s caught and Zhenya’s finally carrying his child. 

It’s probably easier if Zhenya just goes along with it, lets himself get put on IR and focuses on growing this baby.

After all, if he does a good job with this one, if it’s strong and healthy, they might not push him into trying for a second one right away. He and Sid can focus on being parents and Zhenya can get back into game shape, maybe even get one more crack at the postseason before he retires.

Sid fell in love with Zhenya’s hockey first, after all. He’ll want Zhenya to be able to play again.

Zhenya catches himself rubbing fretfully at his lower stomach, and his mouth twists.

[nekropsii]

Real Talk.

The situation on Tumblr has gotten extremely dire. I said recently to check on your transfem friends — and still do that of course — but it’s truly time to try to look out for yourself as well.

In the wake of the CEO going off-site to harass Predstrogen, and violate data privacy laws in the process by revealing names of her various NSFW + SW-Oriented accounts (evil on its own, but heinous when you remember the original issue with the situation was Tumblr refusing to do anything about harassment campaigns launched against her on the basis of her being a transfem SWer), as well as rumors from ex-staff members of Tumblr allegedly being about to make a deal with Midjourney to sell user data to train AI on, it’s time to start considering what you want to do from here.

Ponder your options — are you going down with the ship? Are you going to set up a lifeboat, just in case? Are you moving right now?

Many people site Cohost as a solid alternative to Tumblr — one where the moderators actually do rid the site of TERFs, Radfems, and others who make transgender users unsafe — though there’s other sites that may suit your needs better, if you don’t necessarily want a Tumblr-esque experience anymore (though I reckon many do). It truly is sad how this is ripping people in so many different directions, but… Man. Tumblr at the very least gravely needs new management. The actions of Staff as of late have been deranged.

Take the steps you need. Think of what you want to do. Archive what you can.

And, again, check on your transfem friends. This may be rough for people all across the aisle of queerness, but it’s the roughest for them.

[littlestsnicket]

more disparate iwtv thoughts

- the key to understanding loustat is that lestat falls for louis for the following reasons in this order: 1 louis’ capacity for violence, 2 louis being fucking gorgeous, and 3. louis having enough inner conflict and desire for self knowledge to occupy him for at least a dozen human lifetimes. lestat falls for louis because he thinks louis would make an excellent vampire, and nothing that happens over the intervening decades changes his mind. he believes he knows louis better than louis knows himself, and, narratively, on a number of points he is right. while this would be horrifying in real life, it’s extremely compelling in fiction

- i hate hate hate the idea that love isn’t real if it’s destructive. and i actually see that at least as much from entertainment journalists as fandom. lestat loves louis. armand loves louis. louis loves claudia. that doesn’t mean their relationships are good or positive or anything else. louis loves lestat. louis loved armand once, at least. (claudia loves louis but that’s not really relevant here.)

- relatedly cannot stop thinking about assad saying armand just wants to be loved. 100% correct. the fact that this desire is filtered through centuries of maladaptive coping mechanisms does not make it less true.

- louis has never used social media of any kind. he has a desktop computer to access email and databases of property and art. computers are for work. anything time sensitive gets filtered through armand or his staff.

- armand spends a lot of time on twitter and like 8chan searching for victims. this means he can code switch into perfect tech bro. daniel and lestat find this deeply unnerving. louis doesn’t spend enough time online to really understand what armand is doing. armand used to spend a lot of time on reddit, but even he could tell that the arguments he kept getting obsessed over were bad for him so he had to stop.

- lestat is a tumblr girly. he writes questionable sad poetry and posts artsy pictures. he occasionally gets really into fandom. he is a hannigram shipper. he has the worlds most eclectic music side blog.

- daniel is on twitter in a professional capacity, but he spends enough time there, both doing legitimate investigation and doom scrolling, to be relatively up on modern slang and what is trendy with the youth.

- anyway, my point is, even though lestat and especially armand are most comfortable expressing themselves in a way that is vaguely archaic, louis is the one most likely to need technology/modern phrasing explained to him. but also not that often, he does get out of the house and interacts with real people so he stays pretty up to date.

- i think claudia would entirely mirror louis in regard to computer usage. or maybe not. claudia would be an early internet adopter. she misses usenet and refuses to use any web 2.0. she wouldn’t even use google. she runs into armand on the darknet. mostly she and madeline would run an organic farm in the french countryside using corpses as fertilizer.

- louis and armand are both switches and into violent bloody sex. the fact that most of their sex since paris has been mutually unfulfilling is an achievement. (louis just… isn’t very good at stoping armand from turning sex into trauma reenactment time TM. louis doesn’t like it but armand is very insistent and louis is often lowkey angry at him to start with. they’re both at fault here.) (i’m not going to look up the exact quote but ‘half blank half apocalyptic, what’s it going to be this time? are you gonna want to lick my boots or cut my head off?’ says so so much about loumand.) (and ugh louis wanting predictability after lestat and that being his initial impression of armand and getting mr trauma gremlin instead…)