#how do they not notice tons of people abandoning tumblr for Twitter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onesheeptwosheepandachicken · 2 years

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We get it you hate women and black people so you stalk them on twitter. You're very original Seeker, you're just like every other shitty male Bumblebee fan who has to defend RWBY by mocking and harassing any minorities who don't like RWBY.

Do you think that a person's gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity prevents them from being bad people? Or predetermines they will good people?

Did you consider that I was dealing with people who were bashing Monty, his friends, and their work? and that their physical traits have NOTHING to do with my disagreements with them?

Oh, so it ONLY applies to RWBY Fans...and NEVER to RWBY Critics.

That's quite the double standard you critics have.

Let's look at some RWBY Quotes , shall we?

Oooh, Sun is only interested in Blake because she's a faunus...While Blake wants people to recognize her for WHO she is...not WHAT she is.

People love YangxBlake because Yang focuses on WHO Blake is as a person, and CARES about her Opinions...while Sun is focused on a woman based on appearance?

Sun abandons his team and kingdom while people are dying to chase after and stalk a woman who repeatedly tells him to leave her alone.....Blacksun fans claiming that Blake OWES Sun? for him stalking her?

THESE are the people who are “non-toxic” and somehow Bumbleby fans are “Toxic?”

I get regular harassment from Blacksun fans, and all you people do? Is lie about us harassing you?

So....let me make this clear. I do NOT criticize a person because of their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity etc. That's what they are...not who they are...

I criticize people who make up bullshit..i criticize people who say shit like THIS>

Like the above ^ where RWBY Critics ignore every last shred of detail and context in the show....and instead come up with the most insane mental gymnastics that could ONLY be gained from never watching the show, but instead a tunnel vision delusion.

Blake looks at people based on their character.

Sun?look what he said about Ilia.."she doesn't even look like a faunus"....wow...

Maybe you need to think about what RWBY tries to explain in its themes.

Look beneath appearances...look for context.

Sun Wukong abandons his teammates on a regular basis, commits theft regularly because he can, insults his partner in a library in front of everyone AND in front of people in Vytal, and judges others based on appearance.

Yang talks with Blake about her opinions, cares about her judgement, tries to understand where blake is coming from, and cares about Blake for WHO she is.

Tumblr has tons of screenshots from twitter...are you seriously saying you've never taken a screenshot of something going on? Or is it only bad when somebody you don't like does something to debate you?

you said these people "don't like rwby?"

Yet they claim to be fans...in the same breath that they insult the writers, the show, and the studio.

So which is it? Are they fans? or are they just like every other shitty blacksun fan who has to insult rwby by mocking anyone who enjoys and likes RWBY?

You'll notice i didn't mention genders, sexuality, or race?

Because it does NOT matter WHAT you are...it's WHO you are that matters...the only WHAT that is involved? is What you do as a person.

Its what you CHOOSE to do that defines you...NOT what you are born with...or maybe I can put it to you a different way?

How's that? Or am I still not getting through to your head?

I criticize RWBYCritics for being pieces of work who claim to be RWBY Fans in the same breath that they trash talk the show, the writers, Monty, and RWBY Fans.

Gender and Race have NOTHING to do with it....

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mittensmorgul · 4 years

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I would like to get my fics seen more, increase visibility; should I have a blog just for my fics? I don't really have one that i maintain regularly, nor do I really have the desire, and if i made one for fics, it would just be to get higher traffic from the tumblr crowd over to Ao3. So i'm wondering if it's worth the trouble. I don't write just to get views/kudos/comments, but i have to admit it is a little disheartening to put a ton of effort into something and get little response.

Oh gosh, hi. :D

I long ago abandoned my writing sideblog, @mittenwraith, which I only made because I was dumb enough to choose a different pseud when I signed up for AO3, and I figured people would be confused if they found me talking on the tumbls about my fic but with a different name... I realized I’m of the “we blog all our nonsense in one place” types of people. Either that or I’m just too disorganized to maintain two blogs, and most people who are here for fic are already following my main blog anyway. It seemed like a lot of work for little result.

I have no idea how, but I seem to get a lot more traffic on my fic on AO3 than I do on tumblr. I might get 100 notes on a fic on tumblr, but thousands of hits and hundreds of kudos on AO3, so I have no idea how that works. I’ve also been here writing and posting fic for nearly five years now, and had time to build up a decent subscriber list, so a lot of those people generating hits and kudos likely clicked through from the AO3 email, too, and never went through my tumblr at all.

I wish I knew of some sure-fire way to increase traffic on my fic. I don’t typically write tumblr one-shots, and I always post multi-chapter fic all at once rather than dragging it out WIP style (which generates an artificially inflated hit count anyway, and I’m not here for artificially inflated anything... if my works are gonna have hits, I want them organically... :’D)

And yeah, I absolutely do write because I want to read my stories myself, whether or not anyone else cares to read them. I love it, but it just hit kinda harsh doing that top ten tumblr posts thing and even with my (relatively, compared to like... gif makers and artists, and even the popular one-shot writers) paltry original post notes totals, none of my fic even came close to being among them. I get most people probably follow me for SPN meta, because following me for my original fic would be an exercise in tolerance considering I only post new fic on average about once a month. Hopefully the people who DO read and appreciate my fic are happy with what I post, though. In the end, that’s what matters most to me. Are we all having a good time? Yes? Then I feel really awkward complaining that I average something like 300 kudos on a fic. Because to 300 people, that fic was important to them in some way.

As for tumblr notes... I’ve been at this (writing fic) for almost five years now, and I haven’t discovered the magical secret to getting notes, so I think it’s probably about 90% luck, honestly. To everyone who has liked and reblogged my fic posts, I LOVE Y’ALL THE BESTEST. :’D

I used to think I would be happy to “artificially inflate” my notes total by posting chapter by chapter, but I realized I just... don’t care about notes bad enough to bother doing that. I figured if it was something I was truly fussed about, it would be worth it to me, but meh...

I’ve also noticed a large migration of fic writers to twitter, and considered publicizing the fact that I do have a fandom twitter account that I pretty much never, ever use... and just tweeting my fic there. My regular twitter is not for fandom stuff. I’ll occasionally reply to fandom twitter with it, but most of the people who follow me there aren’t in the fandom, so I avoid crossposting from tumblr, or posting my fic there. That’s probably another avenue to getting your work seen, though.

There’s also using the tags-- destiel tags, of course, and some of the fandom community tags if you’re part of something like the @profoundnet or the @writersofdestiel. Reblogging other writers’ works also leads to those writers reblogging your works. Participating in challenges that reblog your works to a wider audience can help, too, on top of having your works as part of those collections on AO3. It’s like having your fic shelved in the bestseller section, you know? The hope is that people who otherwise would never have found your stories will see them through those collections. And on tumblr, there’s also reblogging your own fic, several times over the first few days after posting, but also randomly throughout the year. For example, I reblog all my holiday fic around the holidays every year, and even four year old fic will see a nice little resurgence of interest. Outside of that, I think it’s just a matter of luck regarding which fic will take off.

I mean, with the series ending in just a few months, I expect there to still be a happy little community of fandom creators that will hang around, but we’ve already lost a ton of creative types to the tumblr nippocalypse, to regular fandom turnover, etc. Like original Star Trek, there will probably always be SPN fandom online, even if we’re not as active as we’ve been in the past. I figure if I’m going to continue creating for this fandom, it’s something I’ll have to set expectations to, you know? Because I’m not going anywhere, you’re stuck with me forever :’D

#the mysterious ways of fandom creatives #Anonymous

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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Pornhub’s Content Purge Has Left Fetish Creators Wondering What’s Next

Before the purge that disappeared more than 75 percent of content on the platform, Pornhub hosted a lot of videos and photos that weren’t humans having sex. There were full-length movies, memes, and video game playthroughs that you might see on a non-adult site like Twitch, but there was also a ton of animation, 3D renderings, audio erotica, music videos, fanfic from furries and bronies, and stop-motion animation like LEGO minifigs fucking.

Pornhub became a dumping ground and safe harbor for a lot of stuff, and a lot of these creators didn't necessarily want to upload a photo of themselves to a huge porn corporation's database in order to get verified. They were just throwing things on the site for fun, to share with others in their respective communities, and the wider world. Compared to a site like Milovana (an adult message board and the birthplace of Cock Hero, videos of which are mostly gone from Pornhub now) or the furry fan art forum e621, Pornhub was a way to reach a more mainstream audience. With last week’s action, a lot of that stuff is now gone.

For victims of abusive imagery and non-consensual porn, as well as anyone who's had to deal filing takedown requests for pirated content uploaded to Pornhub, the removal of unverified content is a positive: between Pornhub's new policy for only allowing content partners and performers in the model program to upload and download, and the retroactive suspension of all this content pending review, the platform seems to be making long-overdue changes that sex workers and victim advocates alike have asked for. But by applying a blanket solution to a complex problem, it's caught small, independent creators from niche communities in its net.

Several creators told me that Pornhub's damage-control scramble has created issues for verified users, locked many unverified creators out of their own content, and left many more wondering whether there's even a future for indie and fetish works on the site.

“It was a betrayal”

In a month when sex on the internet is being attacked from all sides—from Instagram's new terms of service, to TikTok kicking sex workers off the platform, to payment processors leaving Pornhub—some creators are concerned that losing one of the most popular porn sites in the world as a platform is another blow against fetish and outside-the-mainstream content on the internet as a whole.

For a lot of creators, Pornhub's melting pot was a source of inspiration for artists, Lifty and Sylox, hosts of the Furry Frequencies podcast, told me in an email. "Many of the videos that were uploaded onto Pornhub from the furry community were sexual videos of furries partaking in sexual acts in fursuit," they said—which could include videos of furries in fullsuit with “strategically-placed holes” performing solo or with one or more partners. "Some furries perform with just their fursuit head, handpaws, and feetpaws to provide better nude content. An unverified, but significant amount of this content catered to specific fetishes of the furry community, such as feet fetishism or watersports."

"Furries won't abandon PornHub immediately," Lifty and Sylox said, noting that more creators will likely migrate to Onlyfans or communities like Furaffinity to post content. "Changes like this tend to take time before the effects can be measured… PornHub's status as a repository for one-stop furry porn content will eventually diminish significantly."

It's not just illustrators and furries who have lost Pornhub as a platform in the last week. Audio erotica creator Goddess By Night told me that she lost all of her content—about 40 videos. She's been making audio erotica for five years, and in the last two she'd made a business out of it. She makes Gentle Female Dominant and Dominant Mommy-themed stories, as well as Futanari role play and other kink-related fantasies.

"Most of my work is a niche within the adult entertainment industry, and Pornhub allowed me to reach a broader audience, so it’s a pretty significant loss," she said. "However, my community has been incredibly supportive and intend to follow me to the next platform(s) I choose. I don’t plan on returning to Pornhub because of this. It was a betrayal, especially to the loads of creators they explicitly welcomed after Tumblr’s ban two years ago. I know some creators who lost work that they may never get back because Pornhub didn’t offer a grace period."

Each of the creators I talked to, whether they were verified or unverified, said that they weren't given any warning before Pornhub's content suspension took place. Pornhub used the word "suspension," not "deletion," and told Motherboard at the time of the suspension announcement that this meant content would be "removed pending verification and review."

Creators whose content was removed saw a message in place of their uploads that explained the video was "flagged for verification" and invited them to apply for the Model Program or Content Partner Program in order to re-enable the videos, or wait for the new verification process to start in 2021.

They were locked out of their own content at that point and were unable to even download it from the platform.

When Tumblr removed all NSFW content from its platform in December 2018—similarly for allegations it hosted child sexual abuse imagery, but also to appease Apple—the social media platform gave creators about two weeks of notice to get their stuff off the site. Pornhub's announcement came at 7 a.m. EST on a Monday and went into effect immediately. By the time most people saw the news, the suspensions were underway, and more than 10 million uploads were gone by 9 a.m.

This is especially bitter news for creators who, in 2018, took Pornhub up on its invitation to move to the platform from Tumblr.

"Amusingly [Pornhub was] very happy to take advantage of the Tumblr refugees back when all that went down, inviting us to upload all our galleries there," adult content illustrator IzzyBSides told me in a Twitter message. "I think most of us on Twitter know we're living on borrowed time, people have backup accounts set up and occasionally plug them to their followers letting them know to follow it in case their main account randomly disappears overnight."

Because the mass suspensions were meant as a broad solution to get unlawful, abusive content on the site under control, allowing users to download their content would miss the point of stopping the spread of any abusive imagery. But the move also meant that a lot of content that wasn’t abusive and fell well within Pornhub's terms of service was removed in the process. People didn't have the chance to choose whether they wanted to pack their bags and go elsewhere. If they want to recover their own content, they'll have to play by Pornhub's verification rules, which have yet to be announced and won't start until sometime early next year.

One animator who asked to remain anonymous told me that they lost about 20 videos, "including story animations, which I loved very much …This was sad for me as the videos were deleted without warning," they said, but added that they luckily had a backup of their videos saved to their hard drives. "However, I didn't have any income from Pornhub, so it's okay, the videos are saved and I'll just move them to another site."

That illustrator wasn't verified, but even being a verified user didn't save some people from the purge. Pornhub's policy changes were intended to skip over verified accounts, but some users still saw their verified content taken down.

“Sex workers are under attack everywhere”

Another confusing aspect of Pornhub's cleaning spree is the effect it has had on verified creators and performers. Many have reported on Twitter that some of their verified content has been disappeared, seemingly at random, even while other uploads have stayed online. Others in the comments of Pornhub's own verification policy page say that they were verified, but now they aren't. From the outside, there seems to be no consistent reasoning for this.

Before the policy changes, there were three types of verification, according to Pornhub: Content partners, users in the model program, and verified users. The last category is now gone, and only uploads by models and content partners remain. The users reporting verification issues were likely in that last category—verified based on the old standards Pornhub used, which involved sending Pornhub a selfie with your face and holding up a sheet of paper with your name written on it. Those users are all now unverified. But inconsistencies remain.

Riley Cyriis, a performer who's been verified on Pornhub for more than a year, told me that most of her free videos and around 40 of 120 paid videos were removed, along with 20 videos she had set to private, only viewable by her.

"My best guess would be certain tags, like 'teen' or 'daddy,' but it's really just a guess," she said. "The majority of flagged videos were my most successful ones ranging from 200k to 700k views, so maybe it's just how they came up? My profile is pretty obviously made by a real person and I listed my age publicly."

She wasn't using Pornhub as a main income source (although many performers do), so she's planning to focus more on other platforms like Onlyfans and Manyvids.

Pornhub has said that it will restart the verification with new requirements in 2021. But the gap is a long time to wait if you're losing an audience and relied on the site for income. Many performers have already lost significant income due to Mastercard and Visa's decision to drop Pornhub. Performer Mary Moody said in a video about the payment processing news that she was making enough money from Modelhub to cover rent each month.

And the verification process, which still hasn't been clarified publicly by Pornhub, could bring up new issues for anyone who wants to get their content back. IzzyBSides said that they'd received verification rejections before Pornhub's content purge, because their avatar—a fire sprite—obviously doesn't match their real-life face. The reason Pornhub gave for their rejection the last time, before the content suspensions, was that their avatar didn't match their verification photo. "We need to see your face to confirm," Pornhub's customer service email to them said. According to Pornhub, this method of verification is now outdated.

It's unclear how verification will work in the future, but Pornhub has said that identification of some kind will be part of the process. There are obviously many reasons that not everyone would want to use their real face as their avatar on a porn website.

"I'm not sure how I'm supposed to get verified with those sorts of requirements," IzzyBSides said, adding that performers who wear masks or keep their faces cropped out of videos would be excluded from verification on these terms. "It would force anyone experimenting out of the closet."

I asked performer Dylan Thomas how a verification system with even more strict requirements for identity could impact trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming content creators and performers. He said Pornhub could avoid excluding these groups by consulting with, and hiring, them to help create the new system.

"Some of us with intersectional experience in both creative strategy, the digital space and sex work would like nothing more than to serve our community and get everyone back online, generating income and having an enjoyable, safe and sexy time," he said.

How Pornhub’s new verification policies and process will unfold in practice is yet to be seen, but by including the voices of people who use the site, it could avoid future mistakes—just as it could have avoided this month’s backlash—and listen to the sex workers and content creators who've been asking for things to change for a long time.

"Pornhub was blatant about their disregard to what appeared on the site. But sex workers are under attack everywhere," Cyriis said. "Aside from the payout issues caused by Visa/MC, YouTubers and celebrities are flicking onto our platforms and basically doing whatever they want with no real financial repercussions. The consequences fall squarely on the shoulders of sex workers who built these platforms."

Pornhub’s Content Purge Has Left Fetish Creators Wondering What’s Next syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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megacircuit9universe · 4 years

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MOVEMENT

FRI JUN 12 2020

So, we’re nearing the end of week three, of the nationwide protests that began in Minnesota after the public execution of George Floyd and it has gone from scattered pockets of social unrest, to a full blown national uprising in which citizens of all 50 states have been clashing seriously with jack booted police in riot gear every single night... to a solidified movement against systemic racism and fascism in the US.

Officially known as the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) the latest battle cry has become, “Defund the Police,” and basically calls for law enforcement as we know it to to be disbanded and replaced with a much more compartmentalized system of different local agencies to deal with the multiplicity of different issues that, currently, all full under the blanket of gun-toting, badge brandishing cops.

And I fully support this idea.

One department to deal with homelessness. One to deal with domestic violence. One to deal with traffic violations. One to deal with mental illness. And, etc.

And the foundation of this infrastructure is already in place, with our current 911 emergency system. If your grandmother falls and can’t get up, you call 911, and they dispatch EMTs in an ambulance to take her to the ER. If your house is on fire, 911 dispatches the fire department.

And for decades, we’ve all been encouraged to call your local police department (rather than 911) for almost every COP related task other than a grave crime in progress, like a murder, or a home invasion.

If your neighbors are being too loud after midnight... call the local police department. Not 911. If you think you saw a shady character doing a drug deal down the block... police department. Not 911.

In truth, most of what police do is take reports after the fact, and file paperwork about crimes and complaints. Most of the arrests they make are either on the scene of a domestic abuse (arresting drunk guys) on the scene of a traffic stop (usually for expired or revoked credentials, drunk driving, or possession of contraband like drugs or guns) and... arrests for no other good reason than to harass minorities in poor neighborhoods.

That last one, however, has, over the decades gone from mostly intimidation and harassment, with brutality in small pockets... to widespread execution of black people on the streets in broad daylight in every major city, and some not so major cities.

It is true that smart phones have made this egregious conduct a lot more visible than ever, so yes, it probably was worse in past decades than I think it was, but there’s also no doubt that racists have gotten a lot more bold under the Trump administration... sensing they can act on their deadliest impulses without fear of repercussions.

Racism has always been a deadly flashpoint in America, since it’s founding, but over the second half of the 20th century, we did seem to have made some real progress at putting the worst of it behind us.

For a few decades there, racists... especially the violent ones... had to hide in the closet. In public, they had to behave themselves. And white supremacist groups, and neo-nazis seemed like extremely fringe groups who we laughed about... just powerless nut jobs whining from the sidelines of history... watching helplessly as the world moved on without them.

I feel like this began to change after 9/11. 2001... beginning of a new century... and an unprecedented attack on mainland USA. Not some Island we owned in the middle of the Pacific, like Pearl Harbor... but New York City, and Washington DC!

And who were to blame? The browns! The towel heads! The Muslims!

9/11 gave racists a reason to come out of the closet again. No, they couldn’t shit talk Jews, Mexicans, or Black Americans, but... they could spit their vitriol against the terrorist Muslims aloud without much push back.

And that breath of fresh air in their racist nostrils went a long way toward renormalizing the kind of open, flag waving jingoism society thought it had left behind with the McCarthy era.

Fox News, of course, was already around... and the internet too, was taking off it’s dial-up training pants and using the broadband like a big network. Racists found one another... began to establish new codes to present their agenda in public, while establishing new dog whistles to signal one another over the same airwaves.

All through the Bush Administration, these newly coded racist and nationalistic viewpoints were given the full benefit of the doubt by the mainstream media... just, another side, to our grand political discourse.

But the left, especially from my generation (X) were not idiots and not having it. We called them out, and we created push back. We created enough push back, in fact, that in 2008, we managed to get Barack Obama elected as our nation’s first black President... about fifty years earlier than anybody expected!

That was a MASSIVE slap in the face to the hardcore racists in the country who had only just begun to start feeling their oats again, and had all kinds of plans for how to wield the power they felt was nearly within their grasp.

They lost a lot of ground over the eight years of Obama... as Millenials grew up to wield social media in ways never before dreamt of... for normalizing very progressive social issues, from women’s rights, to black rights, trans rights, gay rights, decriminalization of marijuana, etc, etc... until we got the prize of the century, legal gay marriage in all 50 states overnight!.. again... about fifty years earlier than expected.

But while young Millennials proved themselves unmatched wizard masters of social media, putting old-hat conservatives, white nationalists, and xenophobes alike, completely to shame... they had one Achilles heel.

...They turned out to be totally useless in actual elections!

The young Millennial Left had done all of their magic under the protection of the Obama administration... and the technology it brought us... and the progressive political atmosphere it afforded us.

But it was a coalition of GenX and Boomers who, after having fought Bush for eight terrible years, gave them Obama, and reelected Obama again, while they were all still too young to go to the polls.

When 2016 came along, and it was their turn to actually show up and vote in the primaries for their boy Bernie... they didn’t show up, and Hillary took the nomination.

Then, in the generals, they again stayed home because... why are you making us vote for Hillary? Fuck you!

The older lefties also dropped the ball. After eight years of Obama, they’d become a bit overconfident, and a bit lazy. Many, I’m sure, assumed the Millennials would show up in numbers that were... far higher than zero.

Trump, meanwhile, had played to those disaffected dregs of humanity... the racists... the white nationalists... the old-hat conservatives... speaking their code, and using their dog whistles. Make America Great Again... not so much like the 1950s... but like the early 2000s... when they were respected!

He not only tapped into their racism, but their hatred of the left... those goddam Millenials who stole the stage from them, and got gay marriage legalized.

That’s how he edged out the nomination against all his more normal GOP rivals, and... when the generals came... of course they voted for him, because what did they have to lose?

Thus, the golden era of Obama, our first black President, was immediately answered by our worst white nationalist President since Andrew Johnson (who immediately followed Lincoln), and our worst President period.

And that brings us back to now... 2020.

Over four years, we tolerated all the repugnant tweets, the racist travel bans and caging of immigrants at the border, separating them from their children, then losing track of the children... the sympathy for Putin, and Kim Jong Un... the abandonment of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of natural disaster... because he didn’t respect the President of Puerto Rico (himself)... the lies, the hatred, the mass shootings condoned, the conspiracy theories, the crimes.

We tolerated, but we resisted, and we waited on the Mueller investigation.

In 2018, once again... Millennials failed to show up at the polls. Despite all their grievances, the nightmare, as it was, wasn’t bad enough to get their asses off the couch to go vote. Easier to stay home and bitch on Twitter and Tumblr.

The rest of us did at least show up and flip a ton of State Houses, and Senates, and Governorships... and the US House of Representatives... to put Trump on notice.

And this resulted, not only in the legalization of weed in several new states, but also... Trump’s impeachment. Not too shabby, for a salty resistance movement who couldn’t count on any support from the youngsters on election day.

In 2019, Bernie Sanders again, caught fire! This time, not only with GenX and Millennials, but also GenZ... who were finally hitting voting age in time for the primaries of 2020! It looked like we were finally gonna bust everything wide open!

But when the primaries came, in early 2020, not only did the Millennials not show up... but they’d passed on their apathy to the up and coming Zoomers, who, instead of going to the polls, stayed home to make TikTok Memes about, “Don’t make me vote for Joe Biden.”

Don’t make you vote for Joe Biden?

Don’t YOU make ME vote for Joe Biden, you spoiled, slack ass little TWERPS! What are you talking about? You have a vote now! Bernie doesn’t win the nomination without it! Without all of your votes, you... dancing to sound clip idiots!

Who taught you to think it was the old people’s job to hand you a general election candidate.... oh yeah. Right.... the Tumbler Blog, YouTubing idiots you grew up idolizing.

WE’RE FUCKING DOOMED!

But just then... SarsCoV2 came to town. It came to shut down the economy on the Millennials who were only just finally starting to get ahead after it shut down on them in 2008 (when they were graduating high school just like Z is now)... and it came to shut down the schools, to send all the Zoomers home for the spring... summmer... fall... eternity.

It also hit the elderly, minority, working, and poor communities especially hard, either by direct infections, or financial hardship, or the hardship of being a largely unprotected “essential worker” on the front lines.

And even as it became famous for forcing all Americans to wear masks... Covid19 also UNMASKED Americans in a way no calamity has in modern times... in their selfishness, as with the hoarders of toilet paper, and the protesters for haircuts... and in their science denying ignorance.

And it was only a matter of time before it would rend naked, the murderous culture of our police, in broad daylight, before a captive, nationwide audience with nothing else to distract them anymore.

No jobs to go to. No classes. No retail shopping to do. Fed up with quarantine. Fed up with Trump’s total failure of leadership on the pandemic. Fed up with his do-nothing Senate resisting any financial aid.

Fed up with all the bullshit of the past four years.

And fed... the fuck... UP... with systemic racism, police brutality, fascism in general... and those god damn confederate flag waving, racist grandchildren of the losers of the god damn civil war, and all their motherfucking confederate statues erected to glorify the treasonous traitors in their family trees.

This week, not just in America, but in many other western countries, statues dedicated to racist slave traders, and confederate generals alike fell. In some cases they were taken down by authorities, but in many others, they were toppled by mobs, beheaded, and rolled into the rivers.

The Black Lives Matter movement has become global now, and it’s got teeth.

Shark teeth.

Not only are racist statues dropping like flies, but the confederate flag is on it’s way to join the Nazi swastika flag in the halls of infamy... this week being banned by none other than NASCAR, as well as other organizations.

The US military is considering re-naming all bases currently named after confederate generals (we had those??? WTF???).

Laws are being passed to outlaw choke holds by police... to appease the angry populace, while full defunding and restructuring of law enforcement is totally on the table, and being taken seriously.

Across the country, governmental power is on the defensive, and in many quarters, conceding to demands... looking to negotiate... desperate to calm the storm that is the Black Lives Matter Movement... even while jack booted cops are still lobbing tear gas grenades and pepper balls at the protesters in the streets, beating them with clubs, and shooting rubber bullets at them.

Meanwhile, those gun-toting, 2nd Amendment ass hats who were protesting to get haircuts last month, are nowhere to be seen. They’ve gone back into hiding, and they’re quietly asking...

How are these lefties getting so much leverage, and so much change in such a short time? How? When we were winning?

The short answer?.. Numbers.

78% of the American public now supports the BLM movement.

This is damn near an 80/20 split now, against Trump, and against all levels of fascist bullshit, Federal, State, and Municipal.

The old, “silent majority,” they used to talk about in the Nixon era, presumed to be conservative... has now shifted much further to the left... and is also no longer silent, as of three weeks ago.

And never, did the silent majority of the Nixonian era come close to 80%.

NASCAR is scared. The cops are scared. Power... is scared. This is dynamite.

Nobody cares about 2nd Amendment loser with their guns. Clearly those idiots were brainwashed to vote against their own interests long ago... to hate science... revel in magical thinking... hate their countrymen based on superficial bullshit like skin color... child’s play to gaslight and manipulate that crowd.

But these other 80%? Angry and taking to the streets?.. fearless?.. fed up?.. wide awake and ready to go to the matt now, on everything? Fuck!

Old and Young alike? Fuck! No holds barred?.. just beheading confederate statues and telling the southerners to deal with the fact that they lost and get over it? Fuck!

Allies in every western country on the streets doing the same?

Even the Amish out there on their side?

FUCK!

HO-LY FUCK!

So... my first entry about this was entitled, “Civil Unrest.”

The next one was entitled, “Uprising.”

This one is entitled, “Movement.”

What they, in power, are now desperate to prevent... is a situation that I would end up telling you about in an entry entitled, “Revolution.”

We’ll see what comes.

Apologies for the long length of this entry, but... we’re living through interesting times.

Nonetheless...

It’s time for bed.

0 notes

1295048306607 · 6 years

Text

Callout post for Rhiannon / tumblr user irl-harleyquinn / not-yandere-kuudere / otaku-umaru-chan

I have been planning doing this callout for a long time but I haven’t since it’s mostly personal beef between me, my boyfriend and aer. Now I’m at that point I can’t let this pass and I want aer to take responsibility of aer actions. I’m very sorry for this being so long. I’m going to make another post if I recall more.

tw for: abuse, suicide, stalking, pedophilia, incest

EDIT 12/8/2017: This post has been updated, ae has deleted some of the posts mentioned, but theres more evidence on their abusive behavior now.

Summarized version: Rhiannon has been abusing both me and my boyfriend since we met aer. Ae has sexually harassed both of us, sexually abused my boyfriend (the other callout on my byf), been generally unapologetic, copied my whole personality and done lots of bad things in general. For me ae caused episodes regularly; one time ae even ignored when I was this close to killing myself, ignored my triggers, ignored my well being in general, started copying my interests etc.

All in all ae is very abusive and this callout post is mainly made for aer to realize what ae has done wrong and try to change aer behavior in aer future relationships since straight-up telling aer doesn’t seem to help as proven by both my boyfriend’s and my experiences.

EDIT: Ae didn’t admit to any of these and lied about being sorry:

But then on my IMs (censored my irl name for obvious reasons):

NOTE: I have never done a callout post before so I dont know how to structure this well. I also don’t have lots of ‘proof’ or screenshots since I deleted our convos (most of the stuff happened on Skype) and blocked aer everywhere after breaking my ties with aer because at the time I thought ae would learn from aer mistakes, but I was wrong. Most of these are from aer blog or from what I could recover from my old blog.

1. Causing breakdowns on me, not taking me seriously, triggering me

Since I started talking with aer I got this ugly feeling inside my chest to which I probably should have listened. Ae was very clingy toward my boyfriend, ignoring that I had abandonment issues; I am diagnosed with both BPD and DPD and ae knew this. Despite this ae didn’t honestly think about my feelings at all. Below is one example of the gross things ae did to my boyfriend (which caused me to dissociate and have a panic attack) and didn’t change aer behavior even after this.

EDIT 12/8/2017: It has been revealed to me that ae used to sexually abuse my boyfriend which makes this all a lot of worse. Please check the details from my main blogs byf or on his blog.

Rhiannon also ignored me and changed subject when i was clearly in need of help or someone to vent to. This is me talking about my abusive childhood:

And this is me talking about my abusive mom in a middle of episode:

I honestly felt like ae might have been jealous about me because ae obsessed over my boyfriend so much. Me telling about my age regressing and young mental age and aer response is this:

A convo I don’t have screenshots of was me nearly killing myself and ae treated me the same as in previous convos. Ae was the only person online that late so ofc thinking ae was my friend I contacted aer. A mistake. This honestly scarred me a lot because there was a really big chance I had died that night and ae wasn’t helping me at all.

Rhiannon also talked a lot about aer sexual abuse which is kind of a triggering subject to me because of my own experiences. Ae knew this but constantly brought it up. Sometimes ae would talk sexually about my IDs which also made me have break downs. One time ae sent me a picture of aer nsfw art knowing it would make me uncomfortable. According to my boyfriend ae talked a lot about sex to him even though it made him uncomfortable.

Ae also was weirdly coming onto me even though ae knew at the time I identified as aromantic (censored my irl name again):

No Rhiannon it’s called being uncomfortable.

2. Obsessive behavior, stalking, copying, being abusive and manipulation in general, lying

Rhiannon bases all aer abusive behavior to “being mentally ill”. This is complete bullshit since ae does realize ae is being manipulative.

As mentioned before ae was really obsessed with both of us; but mainly with my boyfriend. Ae never stopped talking about my boyfriend when ae talked to me which made me frankly annoyed and triggered my abandonment issues. According to my boyfriend ae spammed him 24/7 and wanted to video chat every single day. Ae got upset if my boyfriend didn’t want to hang out with aer and during group chats commented on every single thing my boyfriend said. Ae spammed me too and after we broke our ties apparently still talked about me a lot as if we still were friends to my boyfriend which I honestly find creepy.

Aes obsessiveness sometimes got very creepy:

Even admits it:

I live in Finland and ae brought up moving here for a few times all over from America after my boyfriend which always turned alarms on inside my head. Here’s one of them and ae is making it seem like ae is half joking; ae isn’t since ae brought it up so many times (censored out my boyfriend irl name just in case):

Ae clearly didn’t notice my discomfort with this or rather didn’t want to notice. Ae also made fun of my grammar even though English isn’t my first language. My boyfriend told me later that ae was in fact a bit racist; ie. making remarks on my boyfriends ethnicity.

Rhiannon has/had?? a fp who ae was even more obsessed about and made a text post (which ae deleted after awhile) where ae wished that this person would break up so ae could be with them. This has also been confirmed by my boyfriend. Ae also admits falling in love yet another friend of aers:

Ae does stalk others too. After cutting with aer, my boyfriend blocked aer on text, facebook, twitter, tumblr, snapchat, skype and youtube, but ae still managed to reach him via pinterest with a long and hateful message.

Rhiannon admits stalking aer ex:

A really minor thing but Rhiannon used to copy my interests a lot. If I were interested in something ae was too overnight. This wouldn’t bother me as much if I didn’t have identity issues such as BPD and DID. My boyfriend noted ae did this to him too.

EDIT 12/8/2017: This wasn’t as minor as I thought it was. As I browsed through my old tumblr convo with ae I noticed that every time I told something about myself, ae seemed to become the same over night. Ae was stealing bits and pieces of my identity. I told ae about my mental health problems, ae had the same ones suddenly. I told about the fashion trend I was into, ae was suddenly into it too. I told about being an age regressor, ae was suddenly too. I id:d as bigender, ae suddenly did too! I told about being aroace at the time, ae became one as well!! My boyfriend noted that at some point suddenly aer blog was pink as was mine and reblogged and posted similar content as I did at the time even though ae had always been stating ae is goth and had dark blog before. Here is about me telling ae about how me and my alter like fairy kei:

Then later:

Ae didn’t bother even use the right terms.

Rhiannon also guilt trips a lot and threatens people with suicide. This is debatable if it’s serious or not, but every time things won’t go aer way, ae will make text posts guilt tripping how ae wants to die and how everyone abandons aer which was one of the reasons I forgave ae tons of times.

Ae also lies regularly. one example is when ae told my boyfriend aer IQ, then later admitted to lying about the number. Then again ae said ae was "lying about lying" about aer IQ. So ae is not a credible source and will likely manipulate the situation as ae sees fit.

3. Guilt tripping both of us while breaking our ties with ae

After I finally broke my ties with aer after withstanding aer behavior for almost a year, ae started guilt tripping me telling I shattered aer sense of self even though only thing I did was stopping being aer friend. I had constantly stated how ae could change aer behavior but ae never listened.

My boyfriend however got it worse. After he got fed up with aer too ae has constantly, I MEAN CONSTANTLY, been vagueing and name dropping him. My boyfriend hinted and tried to set boundaries but this didn’t help. Rhiannon is trying to paint my boyfriend as this awful backstabber even though ae was the one breaking boundaries.

Here is

A Few

Of them

WARNING!! They get really creepy, just showing how obsessed ae was with my boyfriend

Additional stuff:

Rhiannon has reblogged incest: (the characters are sisters in canon)

Rhiannon also approves a pedophilic ship:

AE REBLOGGED LITERALLY SEXUALIZATION OF A MINOR (note that ae is an adult too)

Theres a lot more in aer yoi + aer kin tag.

Ae also obsesses over an underaged character:

Ae talked a lot about this character, sexual stuff too, and it kinda freaked me out since she’s only 14.

Ae did stuff like this without our knowledge which is fucked up (note that my mom is a single parent and this freaked me out even though my responses seem calm):

Admits wanting to commit a crime????

The most recent thing ae has done is claim calling aer out on being manipulative is ableist. However, it is ableist to blame mental health for abusive behavior; this claim demonizes mentally ill people as a whole. (I edited out our names again; I’m black and my boyfriend is blue)

Not 24 hours before stating the above, ae wrote this:

Ae is showing clear hypocrisy here.

Rhiannon, please listen. All you can do now is apologize, try to change your behavior, dont make excuses blaming abusive behavior on you mental illnes. Just write an apology and then we can move on. You can’t get us back, but you still have hope for becoming a better person for your future friends. I will keep this callout up until you make a proper apology.

EDIT 12/8/2017: Since Rhiannon didn’t make an actual apology to me or my boyfriend and with the new information of ae sexually abusing my boyfriend, this post will forever be here.

7 notes · View notes

jmkitsune · 7 years

Note

1-59

1. selfie

I’m lazy go to my instagram and like one of the selfies I posted recently lol and if you’re not- follow me there too :D

2. what would you name your future kids?

don’t want kids

3. do you miss anyone?

plenty of them yeah

4. what are you looking forward to?

hmm twitchcon this year :D finally get to go

5. is there anyone who can always make you smile?

all of my friends ^.^ they’re quite good at it in their own unique ways

6. is it hard for you to get over someone?

yes and no

yes emotionally but no mentally, once I close the door- it’s closed, the emotional linger things are what take a while

7. what was your life like last year?

uhhh not good not bad it was life-y

8. have you ever cried because you were so annoyed?

yuuuuuup

9. who did you last see in person?

my sister- she just went out XD

10. are you good at hiding your feelings?

uhhhhh I SAY yes....my friends say I’m shit at it soo maybe?

11. are you listening to music right now?

sii

Halcyon- On and On

12. what is something you want right now?

star wars episode 8....twitch con....a puppy

13. how do you feel right now?

alright, can’t complain yet

14. when was the last time someone of the opposite sex hugged you?

uhhhh....*thinks*...uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I think...last august....unless Eden hugged me after that, but I dunno did Kyo or Eden hug me before leaving on Election night, I forget

15. personality description

Ambitious...very ambitious, driven but easily distracted, oblivious to a lot of things but perceptive to some stuff. tries to be calm and relaxed more than not but winds up stressed and cluttered minded. I think...dunno ask my friends lol

16. have you ever wanted to tell someone something but you didn’t?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahah

17. opinion on insecurities.

they suck...like they ruin great things bout people cause people have all his greatness in them but the insecurities make it hard for them to even live

18. do you miss how things were a year ago?

nothing much has CHANGED sooo

19. have you ever been to New York?

I have

20. what is your favourite song at the moment?

uhhh just a little faster by there for tomorrow

21. age and birthday?

26, 2/20

22. description of crush.

moving on

23. fear(s)

abandonment/replacement

sensory deprivation

whatever lurks in the DEEP fucking ocean

die hard conservatives

24. height

5′7ish

25. role model

mm I used to always say some streamers and fictional characters but recently I’ve noticed I still look up to them but don’t wanna be them, I just borrow bits of them I like, I am trying to be my own role model now that I’m older

26. idol(s)

see above

27. things i hate

stress, having to work to survive- hey no one likes it I’m admitting that personally hate it, my depression/anxiety, most food lol

28. i’ll love you if…

see if I tell people that they’ll abuse that information, best learn one on one not giving EVERYTHING away that’ll be kryptonite

(but a sneak answer- snickerdoodles- I love those things)

29. favourite film(s)

star wars

30. favourite tv show(s)

futurama

simpsons

arrow

flash

legends of tomorrow

supergirl

star wars rebels

brooklyn 99

31. 3 random facts

I have six tattoos want tons more

still wear my class ring

picky as fuck eater

32. are your friends mainly girls or guys?

I think the MAJORITY is still girl, quite a few are guys now, some are non binary/gender neutral so I’d say it’s balanced out

33. something you want to learn

probably everything to some degree

34. most embarrassing moment

goooood question, probably when I got my first kiss, my mom brought me, her, and our friends home from swimming at the local Y, well I walked her to the door, she actually PICKED ME UP kissed me like not cute kiss but like yeah and put me back down before going inside, my mom/friends gave me shit the whole ride home....I was redder than my hair I think

35. favourite subject

history/literature probably

36. 3 dreams you want to fulfill?

see all 3 books of mine published

become a partnered streamer with a community I am proud of

own a puppy and cat in my own place on the west coast

37. favourite actor/actress

uhhh carrie fisher right now

38. favourite comedian(s)

colbert

39. favourite sport(s)

soccah

40. favourite memory

hmmm I still remember watching star wars (the original one) for the first time in my living room when I was like 6, I was like SOOOOOO into the movie and during the trench run I was like running back and forth on the couch asking my mom and step dad if Luke was gonna make it, was the Empire gonna win, I was HELLA invested....and that started my obsession

41. relationship status

single pringle

42. favourite book(s)

grisha trilogy, percy jackson books, harry potter, any of the Star Wars EU (legends and canon)

43. favourite song ever

I’m still here- from treasure planet

44. age you get mistaken for

apparently early/mid twenties? when I shave though like CLEAN shaven probably 16-18

45. how you found out about your idol

yeah see question bout idols lol

last idols I had were twitch streamers who my brother showed me when they were on YT

46. what my last text message says

don’t text soo sorry

47. turn ons

ya know if you REALLY wanna know this one ask off anon just cause then you can get a direct answer lol

48. turn offs

racism, sexism, prejudice (of any kind), intolerance, umm gore (like HELLA gore to the obscene amount), anything like abuse/r*p* and the like

49. where i want to be right now

somewhere NOT HOTH (it’s cold and snowy here...I hate it)

50. favourite picture of your idol

yeah skip

51. starsign

I’m Pisces in human form

52. something i’m talented at

apparently writing scenes that can break hearts :D

53. 5 things that make me happy

friends, video games, puppies/kittens, music, and sleep

54. something thats worrying me at the moment

dentist tomorrow

HATE dentist appointments, partially cause fuck dentists and second cause I have to be awake for like...8 am

55. tumblr friends

@thescarletbxtch @iamthelizardqueenx @lunar-lolo @kyostiel @queen-of-acheron @catherineparrs umm I have a lot actually like I talk to a lot of people on here but if we can on other things (discord/fb/twitter/whatever) we talk on those. I don’t MIND talking on here but if they have options I have we drop this for something else lol

56. favourite food(s)

pancakes, snickerdooodles, grilled cheese, french fries, cucumbers, cheese poofs

57. favourite animal(s)

Foxes, huskies, and munchkin cats

58. description of my best friend

1- constantly stressed out, can’t sit still, enjoys bugging me, short as hell, big eyes, can be cute when she wants to be, loves animals and has to be told “no” a lot when wanting to take in strays

2- clever, like way more clever than she realizes. Pensive a lot but can be loud, in charge and opinionated when you get her going. I buck heads with her sometimes but it’s mostly cause how alike we are. A ravenclaw true and true.

3- smart, kind, funny, dependable, loving, such a deep understanding of people emotionally even when they’re at their brink and want to crawl under a sink to hide forever. They are wonderful towards people and animals alike even if the people don’t deserve it

4- dead pan smart ass, feisty and giggles/cackles easily, extremely lewd but not offensively, loving and cares more for those around her than herself sometimes but allows us to care for her. also do not turn your back on her in a game, you’ll get shot lol she has no shame

5- very bookish, incredible easily fixated on a project they started, tends to be very considerate and needs to think of her OWN well being more than others- speaking of- make sure you eat somethin today dammit.

and they has a thing for trash guys, memes, and loooooooves women, but mostly the ones that can bench press her oh and brooooooody as fuck guys yeah those too lol

59. why i joined tumblr

honestly- I wanted to build a community/audience. I was at the time JUST finishing my first book before getting ready to start publishing it so I figured tumblr was “the new popular place” for that stuff

#Anonymous #askmestuff

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luxus4me · 5 years

Link

Webmonkey http://j.mp/2EpUYt8

Julia Baritz is having quite a week. The Austin, Texas based developer is the founder and lead architect of Pillowfort.io, a community-oriented social media blogging platform that's quietly amassed around 20,000 users in its first two and a half years. Since Monday, however, Baritz has been inundated with more than 8,000 requests from people clamoring to join her site. Traffic to Pillowfort’s homepage has been 10 times higher than average, she says.

Baritz has porn to thank for this interest. On Monday, Tumblr announced a ban on all “adult content”, and creators have been frantically searching for a new place to migrate their NSFW art and porn blogs ever since. Pillowfort emerged as a potential safe harbor via word of mouth on social media. The site allows NSFW content to be posted with few restrictions, as long as it doesn't break any laws.

“It’s funny that adult and sexual content has become the linchpin and turning point of our popularity in a way, but I’m not surprised,” says Baritz.

Sexual content has always been a part of fandom communities online, from LiveJournal to Tumblr. And communities have a history of abandoning platforms that don’t support the free expression of adult material. It was LiveJournal’s crackdown on NSFW material back in 2007 that broke community trust in the site and initiated the mass migration to Tumblr, along with the creation of fandom sites like An Archive of Our Own. Now Tumblr’s facing its own porn-related exodus, because NSFW content appears to be at odds with its business goals.

For Baritz, the experience has been head-spinning. Pillowfort is still in beta, and this kind of spotlight is a huge test for the site.

If anyone understands what Baritz has been going through, it’s Denise Paolucci. As the co-founder of Dreamwidth, a web 1.0-style blogging platform that shares Pillowfort's user-first philosophy, she has seen a similar spike on her site this week. Dreamwidth is more established—it has existed since 2008 and has 53,595 active users (and 3,453,932 total accounts)—but traffic to the site has also surged to 10 times its typical amount, she says. Many Tumblr users are tweeting about their plans to migrate to both Dreamwidth and Pillowfort.

Both sites adhere to an anti-advertising, anti-VC funding, anti-corporate model that centers user privacy, control, and freedom. That's what makes them such appealing options to many disaffected Tumblr bloggers, but the challenges they face underscore why the dream of an independent web is so hard to achieve, even when there's demand.

Microblogging Like It's 2009

Dreamwidth began as a side project after Paolucci and her co-founder Mark Smith felt that LiveJournal, their former employer, had lost its way. Paolucci worked there as a community manager, Smith as a developer. They built Dreamwidth on LiveJournal’s open source code, which was already 10 years old at the time. A decade later, they still co-run the site. “The other day I realized I’ve been working on this code base for about 20 years and I had to go lie down for a minute,” Paolucci says.

The benefit of code that old is it’s incredibly stable, has been fully patched and security-audited, and it’s efficient. This week it has handled 10 times its normal traffic smoothly. “We have designed Dreamwidth to be very expandable,” she says. “We did have a big increase in traffic when Tumblr made its announcement and no one noticed because we set up the site so it can scale in an instant.”

But what it gains in stability, it lacks in new features. Dreamwidth can barely handle images, as some Tumblr exiles have noted on Twitter, and currently has no option to upload video. GIFs should work, Paolucci says, but users get only 500 megabytes of image hosting on their accounts, at least for right now.

“Unlimited image hosting is one of those features that people have gotten used to that are VC-subsidized on most websites,” she says. “We can’t afford to offer that same kind of unlimited, endless image hosting.”

Instead, Dreamwidth is a text-based community, full of everything from fanfic to erotica to you name it. Tumblr's new ban, however, focuses on visuals, like NSFW photos, video, and GIFs; the company says written content like erotica is still allowed.

Paolucci understands that Dreamwidth may not be right for all Tumblr exiles. “We are definitely thinking of this as an opportunity for users who are fleeing Tumblr to discover our philosophy and business ethics,” she says, “but there is also a certain level of people who are used to Tumblr and Tumblr's features [and Dreamwidth] may not be what they are looking for.”

Dreamwidth has been “a good lifeboat service for a lot of people,” Paolucci says—a landing place for people who have had to leave other platforms for some reason. When beloved services are shut down or change their terms, people can lose their communities and work. “Even those who have their primary hangout elsewhere use us as a permanent redirect to wherever they're socializing most," she says, "because after ten years, people are beginning to trust that we mean it when we say we're planning to be around for the long haul.”

Not Ready for Primetime

Pillowfort, on the other hand, looks a lot like Tumblr, but it can’t yet handle the traffic that comes along with popularity.

Baritz created Pillowfort in 2016 to be exactly what disaffected Tumblr bloggers are now in search of: an open-minded site that can host images and videos; allows reblogging, commenting, and community building; encourages a strong artistic bent; and doesn’t censor NSFW content. It improves on Tumblr, in some bloggers’ opinion, by offering nimble privacy features—like allowing you to make certain posts private to certain followers, while leaving other posts public—and focusing on customization. Pillowfort's terms of service also currently prohibit posts that target or harass other users, which some bloggers may crave in a new community.

It is meant to look like Tumblr but harken back to the original LiveJournal era, a simpler time on the web, when people could create small, cohesive, and specific communities without worrying too much about arbitrary censorship or ads. Baritz says she fell in love with LiveJournal when she was in middle school, and longed for a way to combine its creative, independent ethos with more modern features.

When Tumblr bloggers looking for a new home came to Pillowfort on Monday, though, they found a site that had been offline for ten days for security maintenance after a Tumblr user posted that they had found a bug in the site’s code. Baritz and her two developers got the site up and running by the afternoon, but then the surge in traffic overloaded the servers. The site is still unstable, and Pillowfort doesn’t have the money in the coffers to just add server capacity overnight. For some Tumblr users, the experience has been frustrating.

Baritz is facing a very tricky challenge: make the most of this opportunity without bankrupting her company or betraying her conscience in the process.

“If our server costs increase by 10 times the way our overall site traffic has, then we won’t be immediately bankrupted, certainly, but it’s more expenditure than I planned for,” Baritz says.

Her plan is to approve new requests to the site in batches so that she doesn’t overload server capacity, and so that she has time to take in the money from each new user in order to pay for the server capacity to host them.

Money, Money, Money?

Both Pillowfort and Dreamwidth embrace a business model that charges users directly and aims for relatively small profits—a radical idea in a web dominated by ad revenue and data sales.

Like LiveJournal did when it first launched, Dreamwidth makes money by charging users for premium accounts, at annual rates of $35 or $50. With the paid subscriptions, you get more Dreamwidth tokens, which can be used to access perks like user icons or the ability to rename blogs.

“We’re not making a whole ton of money but we're not losing money and we have enough people who really value what we are trying to do from a business ethics standpoint that they will support us,” says Paolucci. Aside from her and Smith, the site is run by volunteers.

Premium accounts is the same business model Baritz is planning for Pillowfort. She and the team are about six months away, she estimates, from launching that pay functionality. She’s currently crowdsourcing suggestions from users about what features they want and are willing to pay for.

Until then, Pillowfort keeps the lights on by charging new users a one-time $5 sign-up fee. Baritz has also turned to crowdfunding campaigns. She raised a little more than $5,000 on Indiegogo to launch the site in 2016. This year, she quit her job as a developer at a software company to focus on Pillowfort full time, and raised around $60,000 from a successful Kickstarter in August. That money is earmarked to pay her two contractors, and to hire another full-time developer to work on scaling the company up.

“What’s central to how Pillowfort’s being planned is we’re going to be getting our money from our users. We won’t be beholden to anyone but our users, so we won’t have to worry about third parties or outside forces,” Baritz says.

Those are laudable future goals. But they don’t help right now, when suddenly 8,000 people are “knocking down my door,” as Baritz put it, and Baritz doesn’t have the money to go out and buy extra server hosting immediately.

“We have to make some sacrifices, like keeping the site relatively small right now. If we did go a corporate route then I would be nervous then we’d be under a lot more pressure to turn a profit and inevitably it would influence the way we build the site, and I don’t want to compromise on user privacy and user control,” she says.

Even without taking VC money, however, sites and platforms can still be vulnerable to outside forces, including the services they rely on to function. A number of internet infrastructure companies have taken action against users this year, from PayPal, Stripe, Joyent, and GoDaddy all kicking off Gab to PayPal cracking down on the ASMR community. Dreamwidth has had trouble with PayPal, too, when the payment processor wanted it to censor some NSFW material in 2010. And Pillowfort tweeted earlier this week that it plans to change domain names, after learning that .io domains don't support NSFW content.

And even if Baritz were willing to go the VC route, it's not a sure recipe for success. Small social media companies have raised millions from Silicon Valley in the past, only to crash and burn. Take IMZY, a site founded by ex-Redditors who wanted to create a nicer, gentler, safer version of Reddit. In 2015 IMZY raised $11 million dollars from VC firms, but after generating lots of excitement and getting thousands of users, it shuttered after less than a year. The reason the founders gave was that they couldn’t find a place in the market, but with the money they had raised they were under pressure to not just find a small niche, but to actually compete on profit with bigger companies.

IMZY was a great example, Paolucci says, of the old “underpants gnomes” business plan, a reference to a Southpark episode about the concept. (Step 1: Collect users. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit.)

She admires what Baritz is doing with Pillowfort, and hopes that the site can handle the sudden surge of interest. “I think that the web needs a lot more of the kind of sites and communities that are created with motives other than profit in mind,” says Paolucci.