goddamnitlady

[goddamnitlady]

i have a storytelling thing i like to call "making the jailer". its based on world of warcraft where in its eighth expansion shadowlands in order to up the stakes of the world it was decided that all of the previous villains where just pawns of a bigger badder guy called The Jailer. and it was terrible. it retconned so many previous storylines because none of that was ever planned. people hated the jailer. live service and long running series's will inevitably run into the moment where they want to up the stakes even further and when this time comes they may be tempted to create the jailer. You must avoid making The Jailer at all costs

[goddamnitlady]

I did my own expression meme that took longer to do than I would like to admit lmao

This is free to use, but don't crop out my usernames :d (reblogs > reposting)

[goddamnitlady]

I'll assume everything's ok

taking this out of the reblogs of my last post @deez-no-relation because I think it's important and its own thought.

There isn't any place similar to Tumblr on the internet. Here and now is the last shreds of an internet that was, an internet that could exist without monetization. An internet that lasted through so many ~pivots to video~, an internet that is text and gif and photo first. An internet that is driven by serendipity and the impetus of the user to do the searching, the digging, the work that is just handed to you by algorithms on other sites for the purpose of better advertising to you.

The best part about Tumblr is the reason why it can't monetize and I have been hitting up against this wall for literal years. There's magic here because it's one of the places that hasn't been overrun by ads. Every social site's business model relies on those midrolls, prerolls, in between story slides, because the money is what keeps them running.

Someone joked about making Tumblr a UNESCO World Heritage site and honestly? That's where my brain goes, too. Tumblr is a library. Tumblr is a museum. Tumblr is a third place. Tumblr is where people can go to be inspired and go feral over shit they love and indulge in passion and process their shit. How do you monetize that safely?

@taylorswift honestly this is your moment to bankroll Tumblr and save the internet (just kidding....) (unless.....)

[goddamnitlady]

Unless staff says there's a problem, I'll assume everything's ok.

do you have a general guess at how long tumblr is likely to last atp? days? weeks? months?

Ok, hear me out: I've no idea. I already say that I've no internal information of any kind.

I think I've made a big mistake with being so open about my own speculation in the past. Sure, I worked here and I probably know a bit more about the bits and pieces that make this site run than your average Tumblr user, but I haven't worked here for two years, and I also won't ask anyone, current or recently departed staff, about what's going on internally (because all of them knows I'm a big month and I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable).

But every time I post about my own fears or speculation about Tumblr, even if I explicitly state that I've no info and it's just me speculating, people take it as if it was one step down from an official @staff post, or if I was some kind of whistleblower surfacing information

So I'm going to tune it down by several notches. I think I've made the lives of current and former staff harder by letting my own internal discourse out in the open unchecked: people can't tell between me "spilling the tea" and me doing some theorizing (and no offense, but this, and the other two similar asks I got in the last few days, is the proof).

So yeah, sorry, I've no idea, and in the future I'll probably just shut up about this subject for anything that's not encouraging people to join the fedi (which you should do no matter what happens with Tumblr)

[goddamnitlady]

A boy can dream, can't he?

[goddamnitlady]

The voices in my head.

[goddamnitlady]

Every time there is some scare about Tumblr closing down, a sizeable part of the Tumblr community discusses how seriously about if there is a way to make Tumblr user-owned, or make it something similar to how Archive Of Our Own is owned by a non-profit funded by its own community.

Then a bunch of us over there try to explain that AO3 model doesn’t work for Tumblr because the volume of both users (Tumblr userbase is one order of magnitude bigger than AO3’s) and the kind of media (one single tumblr post with a particularly large gifset may be bigger than an entire year of new fics in AO3. And that a Kickstarter to buy Tumblr collectively wouldn’t work because the problem is not the price you could buy it for, but the monthly costs of keeping it running: you can expect to kickstart hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, forever.

What people don’t realize is that what they want, a user-owned, user-managed, non-profit, trans-friendly, anti-capitalist Tumblr is just within easy reach if they just accept: dropping the trademarked name, and giving up on keeping the Tumblr archive.

If you really would pay for a user-owned Tumblr, you can do it already. Get a web server and install Wafrn or Goblin. Install Misskey or any of its variants. Hell, install mastodon and set the post character limit to 10k. Invite all your Tumblr mutuals. Connect with the servers of other Tumblr users jumping to their own servers. If you don’t have the technical skills to manage your own server, throw some coins to those who do to help them to pay for a server. If you can’t afford spare the coins, move your content to one of those servers so more people are more easily convinced to do the jump.

Once there is a critical mass of Tumblr users moving to user-owned, federated servers, then Tumblr users, in practice, would have migrated the tumblr community to a version of Tumblr that is just what we all have wanted for years.

We can do this, the pieces are an in place. We just need the collective will.

(This post have been written in goblin.band, my own Goblin server, and auto imported to tumblr. Most of my posts on Tumblr are actually written in Goblin since a year ago)

[goddamnitlady]

genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

[goddamnitlady]

It feels like this every time I write a fic

[goddamnitlady]

taking this out of the reblogs of my last post @deez-no-relation because I think it's important and its own thought.

There isn't any place similar to Tumblr on the internet. Here and now is the last shreds of an internet that was, an internet that could exist without monetization. An internet that lasted through so many ~pivots to video~, an internet that is text and gif and photo first. An internet that is driven by serendipity and the impetus of the user to do the searching, the digging, the work that is just handed to you by algorithms on other sites for the purpose of better advertising to you.

The best part about Tumblr is the reason why it can't monetize and I have been hitting up against this wall for literal years. There's magic here because it's one of the places that hasn't been overrun by ads. Every social site's business model relies on those midrolls, prerolls, in between story slides, because the money is what keeps them running.

Someone joked about making Tumblr a UNESCO World Heritage site and honestly? That's where my brain goes, too. Tumblr is a library. Tumblr is a museum. Tumblr is a third place. Tumblr is where people can go to be inspired and go feral over shit they love and indulge in passion and process their shit. How do you monetize that safely?

@taylorswift honestly this is your moment to bankroll Tumblr and save the internet (just kidding....) (unless.....)

[goddamnitlady]

Folks, backup your Tumblrs, for real this time

[goddamnitlady]

This is amazing. I love them.

Kanami doodle featuring cute date idea: Hand to hand combat followed by some tender loving aftercare

[goddamnitlady]

Oh god it's back

Tumblr live has returned from the dead oh god

R U N

[goddamnitlady]

i think what bothers me about a lot of "girl power" narratives is that they function on the implicit idea on the idea that women can become worthy of respect. and i happen to think that really caring about women means believing they already are worthy of respect. that historical seamstresses and soccer moms and forgotten sisters and sweet polite little girls and someone's weird grandma matter just as much as the warriors and politicians, even if they, personally, never accomplish anything "cool."

[goddamnitlady]

I’m sure someones already said this but I often see Tumblr described as a hellsite. This is fundamentally incorrect.

Tumblr is the faesite. Everybody is super confused and lost, you keep running into random places. Somehow you end up stuck there forever after interacting a couple of times. The people are all strange, everybody simultaneously seems to be from the future and the past as if time is meaningless.

[goddamnitlady]

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

[goddamnitlady]

I'm so glad I live in a world where there's Archive of Our Own