#the twitter rebranding is SO ugly

[mxgoldenwood]

I still haven’t uninstalled the Twitter app from my phone even though I haven’t actively used it in almost a year— just got a mini jump scare from the new icon sitting there amongst my shortcuts and honestly that might be the thing that pushes me over the edge to get rid of it for good already ❌

[dejwrld]

it’s something very morbid that when it comes to black writers on here in the animanga community getting hate, people don’t send general hate like “your writing shit” “your blog ugly as hell”…they go right go so low to hell with ronald reagan & queen elizabeth and go the anti black & slurs hate route.

and i hate to say that i don’t see other people of color get slurs about their race thrown at them because i wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. but seeing many black people on here receive the shit i be seeing is sad.

and it’s time for everyone to stop gloating about tumblr being this holy grail of social media sites because it’s just as bad as twitter, tik tok, & instagram. you guys just rebrand it with white quirkiness.

[dwcmarshalarts]

IMPORTANT DWC BULLETIN

Dear friends,

Another Twitter exodus seems imminent given a seemingly permanent and disastrous rebranding of that site. The blue bird logo is gone, and has been replaced with a much more sickly and frankly shoehorned-in “X.”

Doesn’t take much to notice how unseemly that looks. Look, for a site that was already deep in decline, this is just salt on the wound.

It might seem frivolous to rag on something so trivial as a logo change. But the fact of the matter is that logos exist for brand recognition. The soft, rounded Twitter bird remaining (for the most part) at the header of every Twitter experience, even in the post-Musk acquisition days, at least gave a sense of site identity. The bird was a kind of esprit-de-corps, and at its best gave the impression that the site was simply Twitter in rough waves, just “temporarily occupied by Elon.”

What the logo change represents is a frontal, inorganic, and ugly cattle brand by the miscreant, a statement that says less about the site itself and more a pouty “I own this now.”

My friends, I fear that a further substantial collapse of the site’s userbase is coming.

Until further notice, more and more flagship operations will be given to my Tumblr here and to an extent, my Instagram. Twitter will remain my flagship operation (not by choice, as I have the largest following there) until otherwise entirely impractical.

Thank you.

-DWC

[mudwerks]

(via Daring Fireball)

CHANGING ITS NAME TANKED X’S DOWNLOADS IN APP STORE AND PLAY STORE

Speaking of Twitter/X, Eric Seufert, writing on Threads:

Twitter has seen a dramatic decrease in its Top Downloaded chart position across both platforms since the app was renamed to X. Why? The situation presents a fascinating case study at the intersection of brand equity and mobile platform dynamics.

The case is somewhat unprecedented: Twitter built a ubiquitous, household-name brand over the course of nearly 2 decades and then simply abandoned it, leaving it to be exploited by competitors, unopposed, through the mobile platforms’ branded search ads. [...]

My hypothesis is that, while the terminally-online are entirely aware of Twitter’s rebrand to X, most consumers aren’t, and their searches for “Twitter” on platform stores surface ads and genuine search results that are in no way redolent of Twitter.

So if you don’t know that Twitter changed its name to X, and search for “Twitter”, the top result is a paid ad from a competitor (Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), and the result for X doesn’t look anything like Twitter. It doesn’t have the name, doesn’t say “formerly Twitter”, and isn’t even blue. It’s just the ugly X icon and the insipid slogan “Blaze your glory!”

At this moment, Threads is #2 on the App Store’s top free downloads list, and X is #51. On the Play Store, Threads is #6 and X is (scroll, scroll, scroll...) #66. This rebranding would be a firing offense if the mastermind behind it didn’t own the company. (So much for Threads being the one that’s supposedly gasping for air.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[We’re now getting a Master’s Degree Level Course on how NOT to run an online platform. - ed.]

[awesomefringey]

Just found out about Uncle Vizzy on twitter… I don’t know what to think. Some stuff is interesting, mostly on holivia pr, but the guy is not a Larry. I never know who’s trustworthy. Many people have intel/receipts but somehow they’re never the same, so who’s saying the truth?

Ew… forget about the account immediately. They’re full of shit. They make up rumors to cope with their own hate for Harry and their obsession with Olivia.

To give you a little intro (and outro)

When they started focusing on Holivia it was harmless at first until they started creating rumors and rebranded themselves as insider and PR expert

They created a photoshop story (Olivia and Harry sat on a balcony in London for one of their “let’s hope to get seen” outings) where they conspired Harry was sitting with an assistant, not Olivia and dropped their tweet under any Larry twitter they could find until it got traffic

They tweeted TERF, pro Trump and qanon conspiracy shit up to 2021

Once they were big enough they claimed they’re “not a Larry” including tweets of the usual insults against Larries - yet Larries are the main followers…

They get most of their fake rumors ideas from Larrie and Harrie tumblr they then label “INSIDER SOURCE” instead of (saw an anon) and will send us asks to tumblr on anon to back up their own created narrative

They got their knickers in a twist in the past when we ignored their asks or saw us debunking them, so they went as far as attacking Gina directly. They‘re pretty well informed and awfully offended for someone who thinks we’re all a bunch of delusional weirdos and shouldn’t even hang out on here.

They’ve never been right or knew anything in advance ever. They say “when I tweet trust it” (read: source: trust me dude)

If they hit the mark somewhere between logical predictions and good guesses, they made sure to retweet it to say “told you so, trust me”. Everything they post is raked together from Tumblr, entertainment news and their vivid imagination. (Their “sOuRcEs” told them DWD would go directly to streaming platforms, as you can see it’s utter bs. They know nothing.)

They called Harry a rent boy, who is shallow and only in it for the money. Made up that Olivia was physically abusive to Harry, discussed openly how ugly Olivia’s body is after giving birth to two kids, that Olivia was spreading rumors that Harry was a cocaine addict.

It’s up to you if you what you do with it, but if I read Harry discussing the ugly corners of Twitter - THIS is exactly the account comes to mind. Not Larries. Never Larries.

[prezohhh]

do you feel like the whole rebranding of twitter as x and all the changes being implemented on there have effected how you use the app? cause it definetely has for me but I feel like I don't really see a lot of bigger creators talk about it.. just curious!!

i haven't been using the app as much mainly because of verified people taking over the top of the replies i think. and knowing that these big fuckass meme accounts (and bigger people in general) generate the most dumb shit engagement bait tweets of all time so they can make a bag. responding to dumb shit doesn't seem as fun anymore because i'm not really gaining shit from it! the x shit is ugly and if this the death of the app i'm happy to spend my twitter time on other shite

[narachilde]

twitter’s rebrand is so embarrassing like atp i don’t even want to keep the app for updates 😭😭 i will but dear god it’s ugly

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

I don’t know how people will feel about this, but the fact that Frances was posting Evan on social media was like… the thing that bothered me the least. We are in a social media era, and she is part of the demographic that uses social media the most, so I can’t expect a young 22 year old to not post pictures of her boyfriend, regardless of whether he is famous or not. There is no way to know how Evan felt about casually being on her Instagram feed, so her posting him social media alone, to me, is not enough to not like her. The instagram live, her private fin-Dom Twitter and all her posts on there and tumblr about her “rich boyfriend”, all the posts about being “jealous of nepo babies who have a nothing life”, her lack of work ethic yet wanting to be famous… I am not going to doubt the possibility of her having feelings for him, cause again that’s only something Frances can answer, but those things I mentioned were what really made the whole thing seem not-genuine.

i agree in that personally, i don’t think frances owed it to any jealous fans to hide her boyfriend away so they didn’t have to see them together. i don’t even think you can truly say one way or the other whether or not evan cared about what she did post. as it pertains to her social media behavior, the only thing that i will say about frances is that it is disingenuous for her to pretend she was trying to “hide” herself, her relationship, or anything.. the reality is that anyone who was trying to avoid engaging with fans would not post all of the things she did. once she saw the reaction, the wise thing to do would have been to leave it off social media. as i said, i think fran let her worst inclinations take hold and when she could have potentially contained the situation, she escalated it. we would quite literally know nothing about her and evan if she didn’t post about him. so the problem for frances is more so that she gave people already foaming at the mouth to hate her ammunition - joking about her old sugar daddy getting cancer, posting about her throwing temper tantrums and getting her “rich bf” to buy her things, calling people ugly, and just leaning into acting as an entitled princess slash onlyfans creator who made jokes about how women shouldn’t have fought for the right to work. so naturally, folks are going to look at this girl dating a guy she calls her rich boyfriend and think she’s using him. and everything just went to hell in a hand basket, as we all well know. the legitimate criticism got lost in a sea of hate.

now, a year later, frances is in the middle of a rebrand. she’s gone from sugar baby who dreams of unemployment and being a kept woman, to a creative artist who lost her spark while dating evan. she complains about capitalism and poverty in the same week she’s been posting about a month long trip to italy. she’s complaining about her past relationship causing issues for her, when she reveled in the tit for tat so long as she was enjoying the spoils of dating evan. and still, when she’s cash strapped, desperate for engagement and patreon subscribers, she looks to the same people she admonishes the most: his nosy, prying fans. she opens up her previously privated instagram page and allows all the people she once denied access in. she’s started posting asks that are clearly alluding to evan and their relationship. all this says to me is that she has always wanted the attention it brought her to date a celebrity if it was going to move her to social media influencer status, it just didn’t work out for her. with that said, i also agree only she knows what she truly felt for evan. i don’t think any of this necessarily means she didn’t love and care for him. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[adragoncalledcat]

Okay I was just on my phone and got absolutely jumpscared by twitter’s rebrand. For reference this is what it looks like now:

It was so ugly that I said out loud in my room by myself “ew”

[its-ashley-95baybe]

Wasn't I just saying yesterday that he never has any specific stories about her? And now the one he shares is one we all know is a lie? Bro give up the fucking ghost already. Man needs a fucking rebrand.

That’s because he can’t hold a interview all by himself. No offense but his life is pretty boring without Z. Z sells. She was trending on Twitter the other day because people thought she was ugly and everyone came to her defense. Tom can’t do that unless it’s….”well he’s dating Z tho so it doesn’t matter”

He really needs to shut up….or not because this is the opposite of a private relationship

[guywithbotheyes]

and over here in the Tumblr weeds, we have Live to provide the X.

[lazunight]

My twitter app finally updated to the ugly rebrand so i finally fully deactivated. Pretty sad bc of all the cool artists i followed who were only really active on twitter but i just cant stand elon musk.

[sillylittleclowncat]

still not over how elon actually rebranded the entirety of twitter to X literally so ugly now and boring and unnecessary

[mattybfree]

Tumblr keeps

changing the web ui but it just gets worse every time. This newest update or rebranding (whatever you want to call it) is just a 1-to-1 carbon copy of twitter’s ui. It’s so ugly!!!!! Idk if Tumblr hired ex twitter employees or what but they need to fire them and revert the layout @staffTumblr

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Dream SMP Recap (February 21/2021) - Tommy’s Visit, Guard Training Day

It’s the day for Tommy’s final prison visit, one last visit to see Dream and gain closure. Things don’t go exactly to plan, though, and the situation takes a turn for the worse...

Jack Manifold and Quackity discuss business plans, Eret returns to start collecting taxes, and Sam decides it’s about time to get some helping hands, getting Bad and Antfrost on the job.

A summary of the week’s total events can be found at the end of the post.

---

VOD LINKS:

Foolish

HBomb94

Tommy

Tommy (Again)

Jack Manifold

Eret

Awesamdude

Foolish (Again)

Ranboo

---

- Foolish works on building HBomb a giant mansion in the savannah village.

- HBomb and Niki build a Bellsprout Pokemon head attached to Ponk’s tree in Lemon City.

-

--- Tommy’s Prison Visit ---

-

- Tommy comes online to visit Dream one last time in prison, for closure. Even though Dream is locked up and out of sight, he still feels miserable, a little bit empty.

“I think it’s because I haven’t shut the book. He’s still in my life, y’know?”

- He heads over to the prison. He is greeted by photos of BBH and Rat. The pictures George put on the entrance are still there.

- Tommy comes through to the lobby and greets Sam. Sam asks the questions.

“When was the last time you visited the prison?” 

“A bit ago...like a while back. A month. A month ago.”

“Where is your place of residence currently located?”

“My home over there, down yonder. The hotel. The Big Innit Hotel, Sam.”

“Do you believe that the prisoner is deserving of being locked up?”

“Yes, yeah, I absolutely do. I think he’s a wrongen. I don’t think he deserves death, though. I should make that very clear. I don’t think he deserves death.”

“What are your prior relations with the prisoner?” 

“I think he’s a bastard, he’s ugly, and um...I’d say...We manipulated one another. He...he manipulated me, kind of a bit of the villain, kind of an evil guy, kind of the ‘Dr. Octopus’ of the Dream SMP universe.”

- Tommy puts his items in the locker and they go through.

- Tommy comments on how every traumatic place he’s been in has been made of blackstone.

- Tommy doesn’t need to see Dream, “Unless one of my close friends dies...”

- They make it to the lava wall. The lava descends, and Tommy enters the cell.

- They greet each other. Dream’s lost his clock since the last time Tommy visited, and Tommy cracks a joke.

Dream: “That’s the Tommy I know...”

Dream throws Tommy some potatoes to regen health.

- Dream says he’s happy that Tommy came to visit. It’s been a while. Tommy tells him that it’s his last time visiting. Dream asks why, and insists that he’ll get out eventually.

- Tommy asks about the crying obsidian. Dream explains that it’s a security measure, and he likes to watch it drip.

- Tommy says it’s his last visit again, and the conversation grows more tense as they argue about exile, and Tommy says that he can’t even go into plains biomes now without trembling.

- Tommy then asks about the books he asked Dream to write, to which Dream replies that he burned them.

- Tommy opens the chest and sees the thank you letters. Tommy asks if Dream knows anything about the Egg. Dream doesn’t know much about it.

- The subject of it being Tommy’s final visit comes up again, and Tommy tells Dream that he doesn’t want him in his life anymore, that he ruined L’manburg and almost killed Tubbo.

Dream: “I did bad things, but...everybody thinks they’re right from their perspective.”

Tommy: “That’s not true. That’s not true!”

Dream: “I think I’m right. I did bad things but I did them for good reasons, but I’ve learned, I’ve...I did bad things and I’ve learned that I shouldn’t have done them.”

Tommy: “What good reasons? No, please, enlighten us.”

Dream: “I just wanted a...I just wanted to bring the server together, have it be...a happy family, y’know?”

Tommy: “Bring the server t-- you f-- Dream, you blew up L’manburg, Dream. You tried killing me! You tried killing everyone! You tried hurting people’s loved ones, man, it’s like what the fuck! You’re delusional, man, and I’m fucking sick of it. And I...but I don’t need to go through any of this stress anymore, alright? Because this is me doing this to me now, not you. You’re fine now, you’re locked up now, you’re a bitch. I’m the one that’s giving me the stress here now...but I’m better than that! I’m better than you, alright? So I’m done here.”

“You ruined my past, Dream, but you will NOT ruin my future.”

- Dream continues to insist that he’s changing. All of a sudden, Tommy hears TNT explosions.

Dream: “Sounds like a security issue.”

- Sam disappears. Tommy calls to be let out.

Tommy: “Dream, it hasn’t been an honor knowing you, but it will be an honor forgetting you.”

- The explosions continue.

- Dream says he wrote the 7-days waiver and thinks this might be a security issue, but he doesn’t know what’s going on.

- Dream and Tommy continue to argue.

Tommy: “I KNOW YOU. You haven’t changed! You’re the fuckin’ monster of this server, alright!? Not the Egg, not anything like this, YOU ARE!”

- Tommy only has one life left, so if he dies in here, then he dies for good. 

(Dying by the lava wall to get out would be a canon death)

- Tommy panics and starts burning Dream’s books in the lava. And the item frame. Dream takes the rest of the books into his inventory.

- Dream hands him a book and says he could write a story.

- Dream continually insists that he’s changed, and that he didn’t have anything to do with the TNT.

Tommy: “You’ve not changed, you’re the same old...you’re evil. You’re just evil.”

- Sam messages saying the prison is on lockdown, and to hang tight.

- Dream hands Tommy more potatoes, but he doesn’t have many left. They’ll have to wait for the automated refill.

- Tommy asks how long it’ll be. Dream guesses up to a week, like the waiver says.

“Oh no...”

Tommy ends his stream there.

---

- Jack logs on to check on the hotel and is confused by where Tommy is. He checks Twitter and finds out that Tommy has been locked in prison. He asks Sam to confirm. Sam tells him that there’s been a security issue and no one is to approach the prison.

- At first, Jack is outraged that his plans have been foiled again. But then he realizes that, with Tommy in prison, he’s now gained ownership of the hotel! He rebrands it to the Big Jack Manifold Hotel.

- Jack goes to rebrand and Sam Nook greets him at the hotel. Sam argues with Jack, not wanting Jack to take ownership.

- Jack speaks with Quackity, telling him that Tommy’s in jail. Quackity talks about how there’s soon to be an established currency: the diamond. Jack agrees to pay two diamonds for leather.

- Eret comes over to the hotel and Quackity and Jack speak with them. They tell Eret about Tommy being in jail. Eret calls it a “hostile takeover of Tommy’s hotel,” but Jack tries to convince him that it was bad for branding for Tommy’s name to be on the hotel.

- Quackity tells Eret that he’s setting up a big gathering for the opening of his business soon.

- Jack and Eret argue about hotel pricing.

- Quackity tells Jack to not be intimidated by competition, and also describes a plan to create a network of easily-accessible roads. He doesn’t like the wooden path, and says that Jack’s hotel would be a good destination for business. 

- Quackity questions what Jack will do when Tommy gets out of prison. Jack insists it will be fine.

- Jack works on rebranding.

- He then speaks with Badboyhalo. Bad finds out about Tommy being in jail and is surprised. Jack theorizes that maybe he tried to break Dream out.

- Bad discusses having a room in the hotel. Jack asks for payment.

- Eret comes up with a plan to tax the shit out of everyone.

- Sam starts stream at the prison. He doesn’t know what the explosions were.

- He calls for Bad and Ant, as he’s going to make them guards. They’re part of the Badlands and he trusts them.

- The two arrive. Sam fills them in: Tommy came to visit Dream, as he had already 2 or 3 times, and there was TNT going off near the prison. He needs to figure out what’s happening, but he can’t leave the prison and he can’t be in every place at once, which is where the guards come in.

- He opens Locker 2 since Locker 1 still has Tommy’s stuff in it. Sam then starts filling them in on what each lever does.

- Sam walks them through navigating the prison and then shows them the guard-specific areas like the locker room and stasis chamber.

- Sam then shows them the spawn traps. Ant and Bad set their spawns. Each guard gets three full sets of Netherite, three chances to stop whatever security issue may arise.

- At the end of the next tunnel is something top secret that can’t be showed on-stream. 

- He also shows the chest with the waivers, including Ranboo’s in Enderman.

- Sam declares Ant and Bad officially guards. They are happy to finally be employed. Sam says he’s not paying them anything except the satisfaction of knowing they’ll be helping to keep Dream in there.

- Sam, Bad and Ant find Eret’s tax request.

- Ranboo works on building a farm, starting his farmer arc.

- There’s a secret message spelled out in his inventory that reads: “HE IS IN CON(T)ROL.”

Upcoming Events:

- Quackity’s business reveal

- Whatever is going to happen in the prison now...

END OF WEEK RECAP:

2/15 - Ranboo finds his wall signs changed

2/16 - Tommy’s hotel opening, Karl and Sapnap name Kinoko Kingdom

2/17 - Foolish, Ponk and HBomb’s lore, Bad confronts Puffy about the propaganda

2/18 - Bad and Antfrost confront Puffy about the propaganda

2/19 - George vandalizes the prison, Captain Puffy’s Prank Wars

2/20 - Nothing much happens.

2/21 - Tommy gets trapped in prison, Jack and Quackity speak, Eret returns

[thisdancingheart]

Remember YFIP?

My Year of Grief and Cancellation

What was I trying to accomplish with my anonymous Tumblr?

By Liat Kaplan Feb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/style/your-fave-is-problematic-tumblr.html

If you were on Tumblr in the early 2010s, you may remember a blog called Your Fave Is Problematic. If not, its content should still sound familiar to you. The posts contained long lists of celebrities’ regrettable (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ethnophobic, ableist and so on) statements and actions — the stuff that gets people canceled these days.

That blog was my blog. I spent hours researching each post; as you can probably imagine, my search history was pretty ugly.

Your Fave Is Problematic had around 50,000 followers at its peak, in 2014, when I was a high school senior, but its influence was outsized. I got in a feud with a prominent young adult fiction author over his inclusion. One actor submitted himself, perhaps as a dare (or a plea) to dig up his worst. “Problematic fave” became a well-worn meme; even after I stopped posting, my blog was cited in books, articles, podcasts and think pieces. Through it all, my identity stayed private.

The blog started, as so many anonymous online projects do, as vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism. I was fine-tuning my moral compass and coming into my own as a feminist. So when I noticed classmates making sexist jokes on Facebook, including some about me, I started taking screenshots to post on a Tumblr called Calling Out Sexists. My policy was that I would take down a post only if its author publicly apologized.

A group of students brought the blog to the attention of our school’s administrators, who threatened to take legal action if I continued to write about them. Meanwhile, other Tumblr users had begun submitting screenshots featuring statements from minor celebrities. With graduation hanging in the balance, I shifted my focus away from my peers and toward public figures. I rebranded. Money and fame had protected them since time immemorial. What harm could my little blog do?

So I posted photos of Lady Gaga in V magazine with her skin bronzed to an unnatural brown. I pulled out troubling quotes from an essay Lena Dunham had written about a trip to Japan. I noted Taylor Swift’s since-changed homophobic lyric in “Picture to Burn.” My most popular posts tended to be about women — which makes sense, because the celebrity press tends to be more critical of them.

As it turned out, I had bigger things to worry about than dissecting the careers of celebrities I’d never met. On a winter morning, I woke up to the news that my older sister, Tamar, who was studying in Bolivia, had been in a bus crash, and the outlook was not good. I pored over research to escape from what felt like an impossible situation: my sister slowly dying of treatable injuries in a rural area thousands of miles away.

We held a public memorial service for Tamar in our hometown. Some of my classmates showed up, including a few who had written nasty things about me online. I found their shows of kindness insulting now, during what was quickly becoming the worst year of my life.

I tried going back to school after a few weeks, but I found myself picking frequent arguments with classmates and teachers. The school made an arrangement with my parents: I would be placed on “medical leave” for the remainder of the semester. I would graduate on time, but I wouldn’t return to campus.

Stuck at home, I devoted myself to Tumblr. What was I trying to accomplish? Mostly, I was interested in knocking people off their pedestals. I also enjoyed being popular, controversial, discussed. When a comedian I had posted about name-checked my blog on Twitter, I was giddy.

Then I started receiving threats. Someone sent me a screenshot of a house from Google Maps, claiming to have found my IP address. It wasn’t my house, but still. I realized that for every person on Tumblr who looked up to my blog, there were many more, online and offline, who hated it — and me. I started posting less and, eventually, stopped posting at all.

In the years since, I’ve looked back on my blog with shame and regret — about my pettiness, my motivating rage, my hard-and-fast assumptions that people were either good or bad. Who was I to lump together known misogynists with people who got tattoos in languages they didn’t speak? I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who’d hurt me ever had.

There’s something almost quaint about it all now: teenage me, teaching myself about social justice on Tumblr while also posturing as an authority on that very subject, thinking I was making a difference while engaging in a bit of schadenfreude. Meanwhile, other movements — local, global, unified in their purposes and rooted in progressive philosophies — were organizing for actual justice. Looking back, I was more of a cop than a social justice warrior, as people on Tumblr had come to think of me.

These days, there’s no shortage of online accountability efforts, the large part of them anonymously run. Some accounts post typically anodyne but occasionally explosive celebrity gossip. Others are explicitly aimed at naming, shaming and punishing people for all kinds of actions and missteps. My own work fell somewhere in the middle, I think; the information I posted was out in the open, but I was cataloging it to make a case against the veneration of the rich and famous.

As many have noted, the coronavirus pandemic has pronounced the distance between celebrities and the rest of us. And their actions have been subject to greater scrutiny — the vacations they’ve gone on, the parties they’ve held, the access they’ve had to testing and care during a health crisis that has taken millions of lives.

But celebrity culture began to crumble long before Covid-19. Mounting accusations of many kinds, whispered between industry professionals, had become too loud to ignore. Social media, which gave celebrities more control over their images and influence over their fans, also opened them up to new kinds of criticism. People have lost jobs and entire careers because of the kinds of errors my blog cited. Others have apologized for work and behavior that, re-examined in a contemporary context, just doesn’t hold up.

For years, I’ve regretted the spotlight I put on other people’s mistakes, as if one day I wouldn’t make plenty of my own. There can be an unsparing purity to growing into one’s social conscience that is often overbroad.

My brain wasn’t ready for nuance. I was angered by hypocrisy and cruelty; what I did about it was apply a level of scrutiny that left no room for error. I’m not saying that I should be canceled for my teenage blog. (Please don't!) I just know what we all should know by now: that no one who has lived publicly, online or off, has a spotless record.

For these reasons, I’ve thought about deleting my Tumblr. But doing that would mean erasing my own errors of judgment. I almost feel like I need to leave it up to punish myself for having made it in the first place. That, and I know someone could (and probably would) just pull it up on Wayback Machine. The internet, after all, never forgets.

~~~~~~~