#when no one else got me I know extremely niche forums that look straight out of 2004 got me

[deoidesign]

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[jemandrr]

Thoughts on the NSFW Purge

So, like, I’m nobody and my thoughts are unorganized, but hey, it’s my opinion time.

First of all, I don’t consider the concept of sexuality to be inherently corrosive, including for minors.  I can’t personally draw a line that defines what age someone is suddenly ready to explore their sexuality.  It’s probably a futile endeavor, to be honest, and there’s always drawbacks to any way you could handle it: If the parent controls it, then they could groom their child, oversight of any kind really could facilitate forced out-ing, etc. (Though, sex is not the only kind of abuse that can be harmfully ideologically groomed for by an adult who can control what media their child has access to...).  And no matter what, kids find porn.  It’s basically an open secret.  Adults’ job is not to enable it, is all.  When I was 11, like half the dudes in my grade talked about it at some time or another. 

It’s a complicated subject and it isn’t tumblr’s job to navigate that, as the laws are what dictate that.  I didn’t go into that to say there was an easy answer.  It’s just relevant.  For someone whose value system considers keeping porn out of the hands of kids to be of paramount moral importance in order to keep the chaste purity of the generation that will guide the future, or something like that (i suspect they don’t actually think that far ahead, reacting simply to the negative stimuli rather than any particular consequence), then I can see why they’d consider this a move worth making moralistically.  I don’t believe in that consequence, and I don’t consider porn (or porn-adjacent content, given the restrictions) to be a negative stimulus, so that tells you a bit about how I weigh the situation.

And on that, I want to note that economics are not on my mind.  Verizon will act on money.  That’s not something I’m equipped to argue with.  I don’t care or know, and I have no idea if they’re financially in the right.  But plenty of people agree with the move, or are only bothered by the side effects and juxtaposed inactions (Which isn’t to say that I disagree with these latter two points, nor that there aren’t people who use them to support beliefs similar to mine).  I may infinitely begrudge Verizon, but my quarrel is with those people, who are moralistically opposed to me.  Verizon has no beliefs, so there’s no point arguing with them on that axis.

So there’s a couple points that I want to add/complicate on top of the more popularly discussed narratives, which I’ll do in whatever order.

The first of which is the relatively underwhelming presentation of most tumblr blogs.  Blogs aren’t designed to shower you in content; as each element is curated, there’s generally more focus on individual posts than on other sites that allow nsfw.  On the creator side, that means posts are longer, images and videos are better supported, and both of these things tend to be expressed in preview without needing to open the post separately.  That’s a totally different user experience that also influences content creation/curation.  Other websites have different primary goals, which is why migration is both difficult and imperfect.  This general concept also applies to things like tags (which are used for a variety of things on tumblr.  The existence, implementation, AND COMMUNITY TREATMENT of tags on other sites are all different).  

These types of implementation details can change the tone of things a lot.  It can be a lot more personal, connecting you with a person and allowing you to see other things they’re interested in, or how they communicate with people.  Plenty of blogs with porn on them aren’t just porn blogs.  

There’s also massive interconnectedness due to reblogging.  And it’s not the same as having a video in your playlist that you saw in someone else’s, or retweeting.  There’s context and captions and the choices people make to add to, remove, or replace them.  It serves as an extremely easy way to find yourself in similarly-curated content, it gives you a better sense of how active a post is than a view count.  Its also harder to be a purely passive commenter.  It’s easier and more beneficial to like/reblog things you enjoy and incidentally create a porn side-blog if you already have an account, than it is to have a half-decent pornhub or twitter account.  In that way, you get more vectors of exploration and more curated content.  Sure, you might retweet all the porn you like, but it’s really not going to be the same for a user to navigate (though the vector of exploration aspect is there, sure).

Also, images and short clips just seem to flow through tumblr a lot more smoothly than the alternatives.  There’s also something to say about the centralization of videos and stuff.  If pornhub is working, then there’s one video, and you go there.  On Tumblr, you don’t *go* anywhere unless you want to.  

Next, Curation of sex content is super important.  I’ve yet to find twitter or pornhub accounts that approach it quite the same way, though I admit I haven’t looked too hard.  Anyways, tumblr porn blogs are generally suited to an individual’s taste (or an aspect of it).  This is actually super important.  As a byproduct, you can often avoid overexposure to the branches of even niche fetishes or focuses that you’re not into.  There’s a lot of often subtle variation in taste and extremism that is absolutely huge when navigating this.  Not just for sheer ease-of-fap-ness, but also in learning about what you’re into, what your limits are (and what they might be in real life, often different from what you’re capable of getting of to the idea of), etc.  Further, any minority or people into something niche (and harmless) has something to gain when it comes to representation and stuff.  I’ve found it very difficult to really find good content along specific lines on other platforms.  (Though I’ve already outed myself as a deviant, I ain’t giving examples).  And when I do, it tends to be super mixed in styles and extents.  

Now, in both of the above categories, I touched on exploration (both the ability to do it, and the enabling of a range of things to explore that can be meaningfully different).  And that’s, like, super super important and adjacent to the ultimate point I intended to come to.

And that’s (indirectly) because allowing pure porn to mix with casual subjects in the same platform makes a massive difference.  That’s the crux of it, to me.  The idea that you go to some sites for porn and some sites for memes and that there’s no point in intersection is what gets me the most.  That’s certainly a sustainable way of doing things, and most people probably get by in that manner.

But it absolutely affects peoples’ behavior on that platform in a unique manner.  Like...say what you will, but a forum where people can just argue while nudes are being posted along the same thread is fundamentally a different experience and you can totally expect that the topic and way the conversation goes will be influenced by that.  It’s a different type of being open, that influences behavior and interpersonal communication.  Talking to someone who knows what you’re into, even if you’re anonymous, is unique.  It’s a vector of understanding.

And this type of unique environment can be huge for communities centered around a sexual orientation.  Which is where my life comes in.  I’ve been on places that mixed politics, cute things, funny things, and gay sex for...a long time.  Longer than I was even aware I was gay.  (Not because I knew what being gay was and I was in denial, but because there was such a lack of narrative around homosexuality that even when I came across things that were explicitly gay, it never crossed my mind.  I also didn’t think of my life in straight terms either, really.  Though I had crushes, and urges, and looked at things, it took a long time for me to actually consciously realize that there was this part of my identity that..existed.)

I have no idea how long it would have taken me to realize, let alone explore, my identity without that kind of place.  It really helped a lot with learning how to process and express my sexuality and what that did and didn’t mean about the rest of my life.  I got to know a lot of people, learn a lot of things, hear about a lot of life experiences, good, bad, unverifiable.  Major influences, and I won’t pretend that often times these major influences were enabled because i was a horny teen with a crush or who had a particular interest in someone’s taste.  (Oh gods, I still hate the fact that I can now say teen entirely as a retrospective)

To some extent, what I know about boundaries and self control and respect and consent is because of overpursuing people (aka being a creep) and being shut down.  Part of the reason I prefer to be compassionate than cynical is because of interactions and stories that crop up because sex and sexuality often lead to very earnest conversations about the darker side of life.  I had and have no way to verify that other guys weren’t just, y’know, being overdramatic or ‘attention-seeking’ but it was conversations like that that made me realize i didn’t want to be the kind of person who overlooked these things if they were true.  And it was there I decided that even people who just want attention probably need it.  You see different sides of people in that kind of community.  I’m not saying anything in this paragraph is the only conclusion to the same situation, just that I question what opinions I would have without these experiences.  I regret that I have so little memory of a lot of these things that I know shaped me.

Exploring your sexuality is huge on its own, but the other opportunities to explore yourself that are opened up by being in a place where you can freely express and explore your sexuality.  That’s big too.  

And the place I had a majority of those kind of experiences, at some point years ago, got a separate channel to put nsfw.  And that just...was a fundamental change in the community.  Especially when old people left and new people came who hadn’t been socialized in the old ways.  It’s hard to succinctly describe, which is why I’ve simply said it’s unique so many times above, but things change a lot when you just put the nsfw elsewhere, even if you contact the same people between the nsfw and non-nsfw areas.  Not just in obvious ways, or even ways that really have a visible cause and effect.  But I’ve seen the shift a few times and I do believe it to be profound.

That’s the reason that I, someone who has never put anything visually sexually explicit on my blog, utterly protest against this change, and why after the change goes through, I’ll let my queue run, and I won’t just leave, but I fully expect and intend to gradually migrate off.  And I hope there’s some platform out there to catch me by the time it’s tapered off to nothing.