#the mass exodus of people from twitter to here

[gamebunny-advance]

Hoo-wee~

Getting any kind of attention from anybody I admire is just too much for my poor heart.

[ravenwolfie97]

okay i have to say it

i hate this revisionism that’s happening where tumblr is extending its hand to former reddit users while shitting on twitter refugees

as if we didn’t also give twitter users the same guide to tumblr as we are for redditors, as if we didn’t have tumblr also persuade them thru their own twitter account and via ad space, as if we weren’t just as welcoming to the twitter refugees when they were initially fleeing the musk takeover

yes, be kind to the redditors, that’s great. but there is no need to slander the people who came from twitter, especially after we had given them the same respect

[twink-satan]

Hiiii! With everyone once again making a mass exodus from You Know Where, I'm promoting myself a little to find new folks~ Do you like my VTuber design? Do you like the art up there? Are you LGBT?? Do you love gay people??? ARE YOU AT ALL COMPELLED? Great ^_^ I'm going to copypaste my VTuber intro here now:

Hello~! My name is Mephisto and I’m a VTuber. As Satan’s second in command it’s my job to  trap mortals in Faustian Bargains and take their souls for myself    do his bidding and usher passing souls destined for damnation to hell.  I’m an artist who wears many hats. I make 98% of my streaming materials myself, my Live2D model and rigging included! Catch me streaming art, YT videos, ASMR or video games Friday’s @ 8PM-10PM EST. (Any other time I stream on an ADHD fueled whim in the evenings guerilla style) You can find me here (hi), and these places: Twitch | Twitter | Youtube | Tiktok | Carrd

Thanks! 😘

[andmaybegayer]

Bringing myself up to speed on Cohost since I mentioned them earlier but primarily interact with like five people who use it through RSS.

I said Cohost looks in a bad place financially, that's mostly in reference to their financial statements as of 4 months ago:

https://cohost.org/staff/post/1690393-h1-2023-financial-up

At this point they were losing a little over $40k a month, and taking on a lot of debt to keep functioning.

Their latest financial report seems to have them balancing out their very imbalanced finances, which I think is a combination of new choasters realising they should pay for this and Bluesky absorbing more normie users looking for non-twitter destinations.

I like Cohost's design and flexibility (see @lexyeevee's CSS crimes) but I don't love that they're still very much a walled garden. It's a very accessible walled garden, I'm subscribed to RSS feeds from friends through it which is something Bluesky and Twitter don't do, but it is no fediverse. I know I say that from Tumblr. Glass house, stones, etc. We have RSS here too you know!

if people keep paying for cohost at this rate it'll probably be fine. Bluesky taking the bulk of the heat off of them might let them escape the five point palm exploding heart situation they walked into when they opened free registration during the Twitter exodus. Handling a small subset of weirdos is sustainable in a way that mass social media isn't, ask SomethingAwful.

[nikethestatue]

It’s so sad, I feel like all the 2017-2022 elriels have gone :,( it seems like a lot of elriels are newer. Which is great that they’ve joined the fandom but I have noticed an influx of elriel posts of screenshots from antis which is honestly really annoying to see every time I scroll on twitter or search the tumblr elriel tag. Feels like there’s been a large turnover in the fandom and the people who experienced the ship war in 2021-2022 aren’t here anymore :/

Honestly it feels like this has even happened on the G side. I know people joke about gloating when confirmation day comes at last, but I don’t even know that there will be anyone to gloat to lol. The Gs now are all newer and for the most part haven’t been here for the worst of the ship war. I don’t even know that there will be review bombs or a mass fandom exodus when the announcement comes. Sure some will leave but… Everyone’s just gone already it seems. Was this BB’s strategy? To wait it out long enough that the really passionate people from 2021 leave and the backlash won’t be as bad?

Waiting for 3 years for a book, amidst this contentious environment is very difficult. I am not surprised people fell off.

Gwyns have even less canon to go by. And I can't imagine sustaining excitement over a made up ship for 3 years. It's a lot. And a commitment that only a few can pursue with any level of devotion.

I know that if Elriel doesn't happen, I'd be devastated, but at least I have a good foundation and a decent 90% of Elriel happening.

When you dont have a foundation, and like .5 % of it happening, I'd leave too.

I think when the book is released, many will return, at least for a period of time.

But honestly, I feel like the exodus AFTER the next book will be even more widespread. I feel like BB and SJM have made a lot of mistakes in the past 3 years and I think there will be a price to pay.

[astraltrickster]

Oh boy.

Look. You know what? While I know a lot of us don't want to admit it, yes, it's true that a lot of people who know nothing else are growing to prefer or at least expect algorithmic content delivery. That's...a whole massive can of worms about safety and privacy and data security, but on a cultural level not one that tumblr has much control over. So, with a big wave of new sign-ups, I will BEGRUDGINGLY admit that making algorithmic features easier to access...is an idea with some understandable logic behind it.

But tumblr. Upper management. Anyone on @staff who's totally okay with how this is going down. Listen to me. Listen.

Listen.

If you get RID of the ability to default to the following dashboard?

People will leave.

Your ESTABLISHED user base, broadly speaking, FUCKING HATES algorithmic feeds. We are here BECAUSE we like not being inundated with things we did not ask for. This community is largely the HOME of the "revive the small and midsize internet" movement. For many, defaulting to the following dashboard is a SAFETY issue, because it minimizes the odds of running across flashing lights that can make people physically ill, eye strain hazards, or obscure PTSD triggers. It is THE central draw of the site. Blocking people from defaulting to it WILL cause another mass exodus.

But you can prevent this! Super easily! How?

Just give people an easily accessible toggle to pick what they default to! Maybe even an "advanced options" drop-down menu to let people pick a different view to default to (blog subs/subscribed tags/etc.), if you want to improve things for new AND existing users alike!

You don't have to take control AWAY to make things easier for new users who don't know anything but TikTok and Twitter, I promise.

Also, please don't start collecting more data to "improve" the algorithm. For your own sake, especially not while a huge chunk of the site is already in an uproar over Threads trying to turn up the heat on the boiling frog that is online privacy.

[vesperewrites]

Hey i wanted to say I agree with offdutymodel in how well you handled the discussion because I would've absolutely started fighting these anons. You were so calm in the face of .. whatever the fuck that was.

I've been here since December so I've seen many blowouts in the fandom (mass exodus of authors and mass deleting/privating, twitter fights, transphobia and grooming allegations, tumblr dumpster fires) but I can say the quality has not decreased because that only means they haven't been reading the new fics (i agree with the anon that brought up mooniepond and nocturnal_pollinator who came in both with a bang).

And there are still ongoing fics of insane quality (non abo like: give you back to me by anon, forget me not by unohanabbygirl, the beast you made of me by maidenmothercrone, hands searching slow in the dark by monkkeyslut, love and anarchy by yieldmaden. Or abo ones like love is a misty dream by corviids, like the stars that shine by wynchwood, all i had to give by monkkeyslut, vice and violence by garmr). Those are just some of the ones I managed to read because I can't keep up despite reading solely lucemond for almost a year now.

Other authors too like riderbub, hypothesistest, offdutymodel, qiuwithaq, maya28, myl0rdstrong, draconarius, hellomellowyellow, beatwice, asklena, minos_TT, brokecherry marmiel, lucerile, oceansoflove continue to write great works for the fandom tirelessly and deserve appreciation and recognition.

+There are the existing works of avonne, nottodaythough, grimsoul, lucerysinthesky, thehundredthpoet, lockandkey, future_medicine, sasha_bo, 10tacles, aeucerys/bladeyinyuejun that are all available to read.

I'm doubtful that this was anything but bitterness speaking because the fandom is far from dead. This is the kind of entitlement and talking down that got us in many of the issues that plague this fandom, speaking about freely given content made by someone through sweat and tears only to call it "not pulitzer worthy" is just.. stomach churning at best. I invite them to start writing something themselves just so they'd see how grueling it can be, especially with life coming at you and people criticizing you. Rose colored glasses for the past are whatever but we're not going back in time are we?

Thank you for highlighting authors because God knows they deserve appreciation, and so do you. I thought to send this as anon but I won't just so you'd have an idea of who's behind the words.

Anyway i really didn't want to dwell on negativity, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite authors and works but get dragged to speak by my annoyance lol.

Hi there, first of all, thank you for telling me <3 I genuinely appreciate it and this is incredibly kind and sweet.

There’s so many incredible authors here, like you mentioned. I don’t know who is a fandom oldie or who isn’t. But I don’t see why it matters if the “quality” lowered in their eyes. This is fic, and it is free! All I know is that we’re writing our silly little incest ship in a small space. And I’m really happy to be here. I’m enjoying what I’m reading and that's what matters. :]

If someone doesn’t enjoy the fandom, I cannot control that. No amount of “hate” or "insults" or “discourse” (it wasn’t, lol) can change my own individual, unique experience.

The only thing I can surmise from the anon asks I got were: someone embittered with what the fandom offers. Or a bitter/jealous person who supposedly left the fandom/still hanging on. Or thirdly, a person that isn’t part of the ship at all that thrives on the chaos. Maybe all of the above. Also, weirdly, weirdly obsessed with Lita for some reason based on what both me and Offduty received recently.

I don’t know. That was before my time, so I’m not fully aware of everything. But, I sincerely wish those hurt by whatever happened, that they genuinely heal and find a good outlet. Sincerely. Camping out in my ask box and other writers’ ask boxes isn’t normal or healthy behavior.

Last but not least, the only thing I can do? Support and give love to fics and fan art. Create, like you said. And I will.

[baronaliswritingcorner]

On Fandom Loneliness (Social Media, Boundaries, etc.)

Have I discussed leaving Twitter here before? Maybe there was a quick mention every now and then. At any rate, the reasons are obvious: I knew Elon Musk's farce of a takeover would prove disastrous -- with all the demagoguery, chaos, and the naked, relentless bigotry and harassment it would entail -- and refused complicity with such a foolhardy venture. I left immediately on my main, but much as I tried to weather the storm with my fandom persona, the unyielding assault of anti-user initiatives after initiative proved too much, and I finally vamoosed after half a year.

I bring this up because I logged into Twitter last night to check on something -- have I mentioned how stupid the whole "durr you gotta log in to see replies" nonsense is? -- and, out of curiosity, made the mistake of checking my feed. The fandom zeitgeist was just as I'd left it: a steady supply of fanart, innumerable one-paragraph ficlets, and, even amidst all the chaos, a healthy network of like-minded individuals indulging in their passion.

They say Twitter is at death's door, but no matter many branch closures, ad departures, financial declines, and PR disasters impede it, I've come to recognize it's never actually felt like it's dying. There's simply too much entrenched infrastructure; too much to lose for people to just walk away. Tumblr's proven itself an adequate refuge, but when it comes to fandom, Bluesky is simply bone-dry. And there's no sign it'll improve anytime soon.

I recognize why not everyone can't, or won't, make this choice -- many made their livelihoods on the hellsite and with its countless communities in everything from fandoms to support groups for the marginalized, even just tearing yourself away from embedded interpersonal relationships may be too much of an ask. That's why my fandom-self stayed, after all. But as I pride myself on firm morality, what would it say about myself if it's not adhered?

Even so, with how many boundaries and self-imposed restrictions I've set, it makes me wonder if this fandom venture's been worth it. It's enough that I've made people happy, I suppose, but when it comes to interaction I keep squaring myself into tighter and tighter boxes, and between everything from "not everything you write will be successful" to "popular writers and community leaders can be petty and cruel", I've had to learn some very harsh lessons over the past three years.

I just never thought that "spontaneous takeover courtesy of a billionaire's mid-life crisis will permanently alter and fracture social media as we know it, but not enough to induce a mass exodus" would be one of them. tl;dr: fuck Elon Musk.

[this-is-where-i-hide-my-bullshit]

Seriously stuff seemed to calm way down on tumblr in general after the mass exodus caused by the porn ban, and most of the time when you see someone starting stupid shit they're from Twitter or tic tok.

Almost like the shitheads who start shit for attention moved to more popular platforms when they saw tumblr as unpopular and some are slowly seeping back into the ecosystem to poison the waters.

Any time I see someone like "I moved here from Twitter/tik toc!" I'm like "don't bring your shit here!!! Be chill or gtfo!!!"

ESPECIALLY the people who complain that tumblr isn't enough like Twitter or dic cok. If you don't like it, then go back to Twitter and tic tak!

[toshio]

ok so basically a TL;DR about the mass twitter departure from my extensive (5 minute research)

el*n m*sk bought twitter back in april 2022, but it only became effective on october 27th last month

he made it so “verified” users have to pay $8/a month to obtain a blue checkmark next to their username, these users will have full access to twitter, people WITHOUT checkmarks are essentially shadowbanned (wtf)

so basically a max exodus is either flocking back to instagram/tumblr at the moment, that’s all you need to know for now. also lots of good nsfw artists on twitter are having an identity crisis, this is really fucked up and tragic

but also anyone who’s been loyal to tumblr ever since like 2016-2018 is just kinda sitting here like “ok” which i think is hilarious

[agirlandhergock]

sorry if this is a huge mess. i'm really struggling to phrase this a non-accusatory, inflammatory way. not my goal. i feel like a question should be asked and it seems like a lot of people in the community are missing the forest for the trees here. what are we actually going to do, though? posting hyperbolic hate (fully justified hate by the way) geared at the ceo isn't really going to do anything. i've made a couple of these posts myself, and sat with them, and asked what i really wanted to accomplish with them besides vent some anger in a funny way. they're not gonna change the situation- i don't even think they'll make things worse. staff has made it extremely clear through their actions that trans women, and ESPECIALLY black trans women are not welcome here. it can't devolve far from that. trying to initiate a mass exodus to a new social media platform is probably not going to work on a practical level and is also a band-aid solution. twitter is run by a guy who openly boasts about his hatred of minorities. most people just don't really want to restart somewhere new either. it's not going to change or fix anything. people are archiving posts and talking about a lawsuit. this is really the only actionable idea i've seen getting kicked around and one we should all be keeping a lot of interest and focus on. we need to be ready to throw money and energy at something that could, even potentially, improve the situation for trans women online. who's going to initiate this though? i'm dumb as shit and lack the connections to meaningfully get the process started beyond posting about it. so what are we going to do, actually, on an actionable level? i don't know. found some spaces made us, for us. strengthen our political presence through organization. try to fight back as much as possible beyond simply posting on the site that the guy makes money off of. something. anything. and i cannot stress enough. no one person or popular group of people or entire community is at fault here. this is not a callout post on the tma community here or anything of the sort. i genuinely want to know what myself and others can be doing to make things better. it is hard to fight when things seem to keep getting worse. it is hard to not become defeatist and apathetic about the way things are turning out both online and in the real world for us. i am often crushed by despair and directionless anger and the feeling of not being able to do a damn thing. but we have to do something more, right?

[tiefling-ocs]

Due to the Twitter Mass Exodus, it’s a good time to advertise this blog once again! 

Hello! Do you seek tiefling content? Do you want to see people’s tiefling OCs, specifically? This might be your blog, then! It’s filled to the brim with nothing but tieflings, making sure to reblog only from artists on-site, and avoiding reposts and such, in order to support people around here! We also have submissions open so people can ask us to reblog their art

Reblogs would be appreciated, the more people we get to see tieflings, the better! (Also, check out the sister blog, @drow-ocs !)

[reilukah]

Hey everyone! Hope the weekend is treating you well ☺️.

Due to the chaos going on in Twitter I’ll prob start trying to use tumblr for more than scheduling posts and running off. Tho tbh I’ve never used tumblr for more than that (even before the mass exodus) so I’m still thinking of unique ways to engage with y’all here and I might make a second blog for doodles + showcasing/reblogging other art and stuff since engagement here is more directly driven and I wanna show y’all art from friends and people that I like too! But I’m also pretty busy so idk how long it’ll take me to figure all this out, just wanna share the stuff that’s going on in my head.

Oh also I finally hit 10k followers (I was at 9k before the exodus so I never thought I’d actually hit the big number tbh xD) so thanks to all the new folks for joining and thanks to the old folk for sticking around!

[motch-ey]

The minecraft stan community just bullied a girl to suicide.

this might read weird because i wrote it in word but i don’t know if im going to be able to record it so have this transcript, it’s got everything in it:

 Over the years there’s been some pretty horrific occasions of certain fandoms going too far with their enjoyment of certain media and brash defensiveness of particular shows, actors or characters  -I’m sure anyone’s who’s been on the internet long enough has at some point stumbled across the term “shipping wars”. Some of the worst examples are often traced back to certain fandoms that have either since of previously developed a reputation for toxicity – think of steven universe and the multitude of absolutely insane discourse escalation that happened back when that show was big: a tumblr user by the name of zamii070 being  harassed and encouraged to commit suicide over drawing a plus size character skinnier than she appears in the show, as well as other examples that received less coverage like that time a grown-ass man running a fan channel started beef with a make-a-wish kid over him getting early access to information on what the writers were planning for the story, one of the writers getting harassed off twitter by fans over her choice to explore the relationship between a certain pairing of characters over another, and another case I witnessed personally of a teenager being harassed en masse on Instagram and called a paedophile for wanting to see the protagonist of the show kiss his girlfriend.

Putting that diffuse deep dive aside, incidents like this have been cropping up in online fandom spaces for well over a decade now, and with the mass exodus from irl to twitter prompted by the pandemic, the issue only seems to be getting worse. For the last few years, especially on sites like twitter (although thankfully with the end of covid usage does seem to be dying down a bit) you’ve probably seen the word “stan” thrown about a lot to describe those mega fans overly invested in their communities, most notably K-Pop and the Minecraft and wider video game communities. If you’re above the age of fucking zoomer, you’re probably familiar with the origin of the term in the song “stan” by Eminem as a descriptor of a crazed fan who’s obsession leads him to do… unsavoury things. In more recent times, the term’s gone through somewhat of a reclamation event and the most dedicated of fans of any given thing have taken it on as a badge of honour to show that they are the most devoted to whatever master it is they serve. And this kind of behaviour has been encouraged and dare I say stoked by certain figures in the community- most notably Dream, arguably the biggest content creator in the MCYT community for the last 2 years. Although it should be noted that due to his size his encouragement of stans did not exactly go unnoticed and some of his comments here made up one of his MANY cancelling events. But that’s a video for another day.I’m doing all this setup to essentially to make the point that people who participate in fandoms can be really intense. And the combination of the added focus on intersectional leftist progressive politics online with a whole generation of teenagers being forced online by lockdowns created the unholy lovechild that is the twitter Minecraft (or mcyt – standing for Minecraft youtube) community.

More hyper vigilant and self-censorious than pretty much any fandom that had come before – the fans were some of the most dedicated ever witnessed for any piece of media that the internet’s ever enjoyed. For almost 3 years there was a new major cancelling event coming out of this fandom every couple of days. And it wasn’t even limited to the creators the way some of the internet’s most infamous drama has been (think beauty community or onision). Like, you’d have the usual tweet mining to find something deemed inappropriate that some major streamer said 10 years ago, but people were doing it to people who were just like big names in the fanbase. You’d have fan accounts with upwards of 10 or 20k followers doing callouts on each other for posts they liked or people they followed -it was chaos. A lot of this came to a head in the summer of 2021 when the mob conscious of the twitter fandom decided their next target would be notable youtube streamer Technoblade. It’s unclear whether the mass targeting of this one specific creator began in part due to his rivalry with dream and thus as a result of the dream stans wanting an excuse to hate him publicly while making themselves seem virtuous in the process, the mob may have just wanted a new witch to hunt- but I’m certainly not discounting it as a factor. Either way, old clips resurfaced to be taken out of context and weaponised and the onslaught eventually led to Technoblade leaving twitter. Months later, after a period of relative radio silence on all platforms, techno returned with the announcement that he had been diagnosed with sarcoma, a form of cancer.

Needless to say, the news was all over twitter as soon as it broke, and a lot of the accounts most vocal in their dislike of techno quickly shut up and ran away with their tails between their legs. Following a brief return to content in the intervening months largely focussed on charity work raising money for research into his illness, Techno sadly passed away in June of 2022, with his father breaking the news online. If you’re thinking the name technoblade was familiar, this is probably where you heard it- his death made international news and almost every creator online whether they knew him or not made a public statement.

Following his death, techno’s social media was taken over by his father, who took the time to answer fan questions and share memories of his son. One message which stuck out to a lot of people within the fandom was technodad’s claim that techno’s cancer diagnosis had affected him less than the harassment he received around the same time. Remember how I said the techno antis (I realise I haven’t explained that term but just think of it as the polar opposite to a stan) mostly disappeared when his diagnosis came out? Well a few of the bigger accounts went silent for a short period and then attempted to slither back into techno’s fandom like nothing had every happened. I’m almost proud to say that the fandom at large did not forget and those responsible are routinely reminded that they were worse than literal cancer. You would think that this devastating experience would have taught the fandom at large the dangers and negative effects of jumping on a hate bandwagon for a certain figure at short (read: no) notice.You would think.The video up until this point has mostly been setup and background information, and that’s a lot to do with me putting off talking about the main topic, because frankly it’s just upsetting.

An offshoot of the main Minecraft youtube fandom is that for indie rock group lovejoy, led by frontman Wilbur soot. It’s important to note that while the core fandom for lovejoy is largely separate from the wider Minecraft community, on twitter the whole Minecraft community knows about lovejoy due to wilbur’s history and continued activity as a Minecraft streamer.

With lovejoy’s rise in popularity came a rise in their own dedicated fan accounts, one of which was tatterwinged, run by an individual known as alice. The account got big from being one of the most active members of the community, from writing fan fiction based on the characters Wilbur and his friends would play during their streams to posting gig photography taken at their first public shows. During November of 2022 it was revealed that alice was running a private set of secret second accounts which contained not safe for work content pertaining to the same streamers and characters featured in her main blog, in the form of fanfiction and discussion. At this point in time alice’s main account was followed by quite a few big content creators, including lovejoy members themselves, so something like this coming out made a big splash.  Alice was sent a wave of death threats and practically the whole fandom was coming out of the woodwork to call her some variation of a pedo and a freak, despite alice being a minor herself at the time. There were also calls for and direct threats of violence thrown at her. Alice never denied any of the claims levied at her but made a thread explaining essentially what had happened from her perspective and locked her account to stave off further harassment. At this time some dms between alice and a former friend were also leaked.

 The situation had mostly cycled out of people’s view as the “current thing” when a series of tweets appeared on the tatterwinged account implying that alice had intensions to end her life, followed by radio silence. Another account belonging to a real life friend of alice started posting with the aim of getting the message out that alice had gone missing and was not responding to messages, including providing links to missing person reports from local websites.

You’d think seeing the escalation would make people reconsider whether the harassment campaign levied against a teenage girl for privately writing uncomfortable stories about real people was proportional to the crime but apparently not. For the next month we didn’t really hear much more about what was going on with alice. Her friend took over the tatterwinged account and a lot of tweets were deleted ( a lot of what you see in this video was archived prior to deletion), but beyond calls for her safe return from a few voices there was nothing

As of the time I’m writing this, it was announced on the 29th of December that alice had been found dead on the 27th, presumably by her own action. And people are still going after her.   I just don’t have words anymore. The fact that a person can get to the point where they see the news that a teenage girl killed herself over what is essentially 2022’s answer to cyberbullying and their first response is to say that she DESERVED IT and get angry that people are calling out the people who drove her to it is just…

[colorsinautumn]

I love how people came back last month cause we thought Taylor was coming back to Tumblr and now here we are again with like a mass fucking exodus from Twitter.

[grlisagun]

so excited for the mass exodus of people from twitter to tumblr when the former inevitably goes under and becomes more of a far-right corporate hellscape than it already is. they're all gonna get here and lose their minds. those of us who never left after 2015 are gonna be so powerful