#or maybe they do want to be the queerest place on the internet but like

[red-dragon-archfiend]

Honestly I kinda wonder if the reason hate groups are allowed to post freely and break the TOS on the reg is because Tumblr staff (specifically the CEO) hopes they'll chase the rest of us off so they can stop pandering to queer people

[whycaninotfindausername]

Rambling rant/vent about queer impostor syndrome and the difficulties of discovering your queerness later in life, skip if it's potentially triggering or you're just not interested

So I'm 28 and AMAB and been living as "cishet" pretty much my whole life. I've been passing as straight my entire life because in school everyone using "gay" or a slur as their default insult basically made me just not want to engage with queerness at all so I kind of shoved those feelings away, and then for most of my adult life I have been in a relationship a woman. I admitted to myself that I was bi a couple years ago, but I never really explored that part of my sexuality outside of private thoughts and fantasies.

Now, I'm recently single and wanting to experiment and explore my sexuality and gender but I feel so distant from other queer people. I know that I'm attracted to more than just women, and I spend way too much time looking at egg memes and secretly trying on girls' clothes and wanting to be cute and pretty to realistically keep identifying as a cis man in the long term, but because pretty much everyone perceives me as just another cishet guy, I don't know how to actively engage with queerness. It's especially disheartening when I'm around queer people and they make jokes about me being a "token straight" or someone will reference something like drag race or something that's part of "queer culture" that I'm unfamiliar with and just say I'm too straight to get it. It just makes me feel like maybe I can't be queer because I don't fit in, and while I know that that feeling isn't based in anything rational, I still feel it.

Also seeing younger queer people so confidently assert their identities in such an open and celebratory way is bittersweet for me. It brings me so much joy to see them exploring themselves and being out and open, but at the same time, I feel envious that I haven't been able to do the same yet. I know it's never too late to come out and everything, but I wish I would have been able to do it at a younger age, when it feels more comfortable to be experimenting and trying new things. When I was at university, I experimented a lot, I hung out with different groups of people, I explored new interests, learned new ways of thinking, and all this sort of stuff, but now everything in my life is so stable that the thought of going back to that experimental and developmental stage in my life is kind of scary.

I haven't really seen/heard people voice feelings like this much before, so idk if this is going to resonate with anyone at all (especially on what is probably one of the queerest spaces on the internet) but I just wanted to get these feelings out somewhere and I figured this was probably the best place I have to do it

[talisidekick]

This whole situation with Predestrogen is making me wonder where I should go next. Do I just exist on Ko-fi? Do I take my OnlyFans account which just exists to hold my name and make it into my blog? Do I go to cohost? Or is there another service for 2SLGBTQIA+ people thats actually supportive of transgender people?

I'm all for sticking heels in, digging down, and making a space for myself. To exist in a space because I'm human and deserve the same level of mutual respect that two straight and cisgender people show eachother. I do this in my day-to-day life. It's important to fight for what's yours. However, Tumblr is a platform. I don't own the data-space my blog takes up on Tumblrs servers. Tumblr is a United States company, and by their constitutional rights, Matt Mullenweg and those he designates as executors of his will gets to choose what content is spoken, written, or otherwise made available on Tumblr. I believe this is the First Ammendment that states this. This is why they can remove trans peoples transition timelines, ban people for any reason, and delete the public facing aspect of peoples posts with as little explanation as "we don't want them on our platform". That's their right. This is why I'm considering exporting the over 1100 posts I've made on Tumblr and nuking the blog down to a single redirection post to all my other social media accounts.

If photomatt and by extention Tumblr doesn't want the platform to be the "queerest place on the internet", then maybe it's time to help someplace else take that title. If Matt and Tumblr won't exercise their rights to remove bigotry, which they don't, then it's probably best to go somewhere that will. I know the trans and queer staff at Tumblr are really risking a lot trying to fix this, but I'm a corporate employee myself, and the best intentions of the workforce doesn't mean shit if the supervisors, leadership, bosses, and owners have different plans/ideals. And if Matt has different plans for Tumblr, either before this whole ordeal, or after then Tumblr Staffs words, as awesome as they are and as brave as they have been, won't be worth the digital space they take up. When Matt gets back, I expect sweeping changes, and from experience I'll err on the side of caution that it won't be good for the transgender users like myself.

Problem is, I don't know where else to go. If anyone has information on any good alternatives, or just better platforms, I'd appreciate the help. I'd like to see the options before I make a decision. In all likelihood I'll rwmain on Tumblr, but I want to exit quickly if things go south.

[orchidbark]

Tumblr has been such a formative site throughout my adulthood. Yes I'm a tumblr old, I'm sorry. But when I was a kid there wasn't anything like this. We all made geocities or angelfire websites and shared our cringy writing and art that way and we loved it.

But tumblr took me out of my tiny comfort zone many times. I learned a lot of stuff about myself and about other people that I might have learned about eventually anyway, but idk... my mind was open then, and maybe it would have been more closed off later. Who can say. But I can safely say that without it, I would not have come to understand my identity as it is, when I did.

Tumblr feels as close to the old internet as any site could nowadays. It was never perfect, not ever, but it always sort of felt like the lesser of many evils. We're all aware it's been circling the drain for a while. What's happening now, sadly, isn't anything new, but it seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back for many people.

I made a Bluski a little while back, I just made a cohost today, I've had a furaffinity page for a bit now, and I don't know, maybe there'll be more too. I encourage you to follow me on these places, and mutual please let me know if you have an account on these sites too!

But that sucks doesn't it? We're already all here now, and if tumblr dies tomorrow, everyone's going to choose the places they go to, and they're not all going to be the same. Twitter was never a big deal to me, but when twitter started falling apart that was a huge loss for so many people who had staked their following there. The parallels are obvious. Tumblr was already pretty small to begin with and that means the people that make up "the queerest site on the internet" will subdivide again, creating smaller and smaller communities.

There's no possible way we can coordinate a complete move to another site, and even if we could, there's no way to tell if that site will be around longer than a year, or if a userbase ever manifests. Discord servers are a great idea to keep in touch with folks, but I'm not a fan of those as a replacement (though obviously it's perfect for folks who just want to keep in touch but do not want to attract attention).

I like tumblr, insofar as you can like a social media website. But tumblr as a site is nothing without the gay little weirdos. And if my fellow gay little weirdos aren't here then what's the point of being here? It feels like Cohost might be the way forward, but we can never know for sure.

I plan to stay here as long as there is a here to stay, but I guess, idk I'm gearing up to leave at a moment's notice. That's just how it looks like it might be from now on, unless something changes to correct course. If a move never comes then great, but I'd rather be prepared.

[catcatb0y]

You know. No one's really going to see this, but man Tumblr slowly pulling thr plug feels like such a :| moment. "Users didn't like thr changes we made 🥺🥺🥺 The changes that made it more difficult to work the app and also completely crumpled the style that Tumblr had been putting out for over a decade now like a tin can in order to make it a shitty knock off of other sites 🥺🥺🥺" "Why don't our users want to buy badges and monitarily support us when we keep flagging transfem posts as explicit and don't do anything while calling ourselves 'the queerest place on the internet? 🥺🥺🥺" "What EVER could we POSSIBLY do to make this website more monetizeable?? 🥺🥺🥺 We've ignored everything our users have told us 🥺🥺🥺"

Like maybe it's cynical, but this just feels kinda like a little 'we're not friends anymore!' because people left bad reviews on the app store complaining about the new site changes. I dunno, I just think maybe this could have been prevented if the past couple months hadn't been spent making the app look almost unrecognizable.

SO many people bought those stupid checkmarks. So many people bought into the 'haha, cute #Tumblr thing!' until Tumblr started stealing posts without credit... and flagging trans positivity posts... and taking the shittiest ideas from other apps that are nothing like Tumblr and turning the app into a frankensite that damns both old users and the tiny, tiny trickle of new ones.

I dunno.

[emeryofthestate]

i am so sick of yall. pitching a fit every time staff does literally anything. do yall realize how fucking entitled and whiny u sound constantly lmao

tumblr has to appeal to more than just your gay ass to stay afloat as a company. god knows none of you cunts constantly decrying the greed and selfishness of tumblr staff are going to do anything to ensure the site stays afloat, especially monetarily. they need advertisers. they need investors. they have to give those people and boards and organizations at least some of what they want in order to get money. they need to get money in order to continue existing. im not sure if yall realize this part, but they need to continue existing for you to continue using their fucking site you hate so much.

by all means criticize them when they do something wrong. the community tags censoring queer shit is absolutely an issue, yeah. but think about it for even a second. do you truly think tumblr believes it can afford to suppress its lgbt base? or do you think maybe they mightve done that bc of all the nsfw stuff that is also in those tags? and bc of how famously things like the App Store dont really want nsfw shit connected to them? of course theres a middle ground to be reached there, but yall Are Not trying to do that.

and now yall are mad bc they said 1/4 of the userbase is queer? how much of it do you Think is queer?? yall remember we're a minority group, yeah? and yall know how big numbers work? there are millions, with an S, of users on tumblr. if there were only four million users, a quarter would be what? thats right, a million users! now imagine if there were ten! or twenty! or fifty million! see how that smaller number starts to grow with the big one? and the statements "queerest place on the internet" and "1/4 of the userbase" can both be true!! a quarter is a significant fucking chunk of the people on this site!! what do you think facebook has? i bet its not fucking 25%!!

yall keep trying to say that the people running this place are arrogant and ignorant and never do anything its users want them to. and you know, maybe thats true! i dont know them, and i dont know what the fuck it is yall want lmao. but from where im sitting it looks to me like yall are doing a whole lot of running your mouths about shit you dont understand, and seemingly dont care to understand, as well. tumblr has to survive as a business to survive as a platform. tumblr has to make money. tumblr has to grow. thats capitalism, babey. and you all should know full well that just Not Participating in capitalism is not a fucking option!

i fully agree that staff has done some stupid shit, plenty of things no one wanted or engaged with, plenty of things that were absolutely shitty, but half the time yalls criticism boils down to "stop appealing to the people paying you to stay afloat!" "stop trying to appeal to us for money!" "stop trying to make money and focus on running a website!" and your ultimatums boil down to "fix this or we'll leave" but baby, if they dont do at least some of the shit you dont want them to, there wont be a site for you to leave.

[angeloncewas]

dont wanna make this ask long bc i am tired and dont have the energy to be a well spoken (?) person rn but it probably will be long anyways, so sorry!! but like. as somebody who has hyperfixated on both idubbbz and schlatt (along with a plethora of other problematic content creators, i really know how to fuckn pick em!!) they absolutely foster a dogshit community, at least outside of platforms like tumblr, where like. you cant really avoid fandom culture like you can on twitter or ig, if that makes sense. on here, if you wanna post about your favorite youtuber, whether you tag it or not, other fans will likely see and if you say some bad shit, you will likely get called on it, whereas on ig basically only your followers will see it even if you use a hashtag and on twitter its like if you arent in a subtwt/fandom then you basically dont interact with any subtwt at all unless its an accident, ya know?

so like. i think what im trying to say here is that while ive met a lot of fans of both these creators, especially schlatt, who are great people as far as i can tell, i am also specifically on the fandom side of things and as soon as i step out of that space i realize that a lot of people who watch them are not actually minorities like me and my mutuals who can catch on to satire or who watch their more behind the scenes stuff where you can see them act like a decent person or even call out people for the things they usually joke about which just. fucking sucks. it sucks that, as much as i do believe schlatt is actually a good person (and sort of idubbbz, although i dont really watch him much anymore for a plethora of reasons, mostly related to the fact that i cant stand his jokes anymore even if he is playing a character as he's said before), he also keeps doing terrible fucking things and im really glad his actual friends have been calling him on it recently, especially after that jackbox video (which is a whole other thing on its own bc it literally seemed like nobody wanted to be there basically the entire video?? like as somebody who watched all the jackbox videos before that one, it was really fucking off in that call and the jokes were next level fucking upsetting), but sometimes it's just kinda like. exhausting. bc his community is already fucking bad now, you cant undo accidentally fostering a community of fucking racist homophobes who dont get that you're playing a character, unless you kinda drop off and build a whole new community from that, which would be stupid to do at this point in his career. not really sure where i was going with this tbh, but i thought i would chime in on this discussion as a viewer of mainly schlatt, but also a past idubbbz viewer who is basically a seasoned fucking vet at dealing with shitty fanbases because of him and many other dumb youtube white boys

(also, note on that anisa thing: ian's main fanbase was definitely pissed just bc she does sex work and a lot of them are too fucking young or just too fucking dense i guess to clock the fact that he's putting on an act bc, like i said before, they either dont watch his behind the scenes content, or they do and they kinda just miss those moments between still trying to entertain where he gets genuine. that being said, a lot of people outside of his fanbase were also pissy bc anisa is a less than spectacular lady if you really do your research on her, kind of a bad person but it's not something a lot of people know about, especially since one of the few videos made on it was by fucking creepshow art)

sorry for the rant again, i feel like i do this every other week now and i apologize, you just seem to have the best discourse and i enjoy partaking <3 hope you have a good rest of your day/night/whatever time you're reading this!

—🦷

Thank you for the input (don't mind the rant !) and I hope you have a good rest of your day too <3 For post length, I'll answer under the cut :)

Yeah, I get what you mean (I think ahdsufsd). Fandom as a concept is pretty... I don't even know how to describe it, but it's the kind of thing that I feel like white male Redditors would think of as pussy shit, y'know? Like the Ricegum gang isn't a fucking "fandom" they're a... well, a fandom, but they're not gonna admit to that. So when you step outside of a community like Tumblr (the queerest place on the internet TM) you come into contact with the faces of the fandom you're dealing with and oftentimes they're a lot less like you than you might've thought from the similar interest. It's like going to a Weezer concert and realizing you're surrounded by incels (this is a JOKE).

Satire's a rough topic because some people don't think it should exist at all. Like any words that can be directly interpreted as bigoted or problematic should not be uttered. I disagree with that, I think it's one of the most interesting forms of both social commentary and comedy, but I do see the problem. There are people who watched Filthy Frank (to take an example from that other anon) and didn't know or care what the point of his actions were (I don't know what they were tbh - I never watched him, but it sounds like he's a pretty decent dude) and instead read his jokes as-is. There are thousands upon thousands of people who aren't gonna get satire and that's a problem because if they're already bigoted they're gonna see people like Schlatt and iDubbz and whoever else as truly validating.

(Largely unrelated but yo, is iDubbz still going? Are the views alright? Is the adsense popping? Has he just kept going with Content Cops? I haven't heard about him since the girlfriend thing dropped.)

"you cant undo accidentally fostering a community of fucking racist homophobes who dont get that you're playing a character, unless you kinda drop off and build a whole new community from that"

I think this is what's pertinent when it comes to discussing Schlatt. After the Jackbox video (for me at least, he might've been there before) he put himself at a crossroads. If he'd apologized, said "sorry, I took it too far, that was a mistake" - yeah, plenty of people wouldn't have forgiven him and plenty of bigoted fans of his would've said that the apology was just to placate the snowflakes on Twitter, but to the sort of in-between people it would've shown that he's able to recognize and reconcile his mistakes. He could've transitioned into content that's A) actually good (when I say that the video was bad I don't just mean in terms of racism, I mean it straight up was not entertaining) and B) less "edgy" for the sake of. I wouldn't expect him to go uwu squeaky clean, but he's already reeled in the bad people, so if he really wanted to foster a good, progressive audience, he has to do something significant to show that.

But he didn't.

Maybe for the sake of his career, maybe because he likes those bigoted fans, maybe because he just doesn't get it - I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know. I spoke earlier about doing what is right over what is easy and in the case of Schlatt it just feels like he really did take the easy way out. Whoever he is in his personal life doesn't change how he's perceived online and the kinds of people that are idolizing him for it.

(And yeah I saw the video on Anisa when I Googled her to check if they were still dating, but then I saw who it was made by and I was like oh well whatever avhfdfkj)

[dreamy-strawberries22]

Hi, I know nobody follows me bc I don’t post content which is totally fair and no one is going to see this, but I’ve been having troubles and I was wondering if someone on here could help me out since this seems to be the queerest place on the internet. I am really happy being a girl, like 90% of the time that and everything that comes with it is totally fine, and I’ve never been uncomfortable with being afab. Lately however, I’ve been having this kind of nagging at the back of my mind where I am just super uncomfortable in my own body. Like I look in the mirror or I look down at myself when I’m changing and it just feels wrong. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. It probably doesn’t make sense. It just feels to hit and sticky and uncomfortable and I kind of want to cry when I think about it too hard. I’ve been thinking that maybe binding would make it better, but it might be weird if I just did that out of nowhere. Idk what to do. If you think you know what is going on with me or you think you could possibly help please please tell me bc I am so tired of feeling like this.