Fuck you tumblr staff. Is this Fahrenheit 451? (aka where did dailyinspirationquotes go)
So I will share this story once and for all, because I want to warn you all! This is 100% so make your own conclusions.
I had a tumblr for I do not know how many years - probably over 6-7. My main blog was about quotes - there is a high chance you might have seen some of my posts, or maybe you were a follower. I had over 300k followers, my posts were regularly featured on the explore section, and my audience was growing steadily. I had tens of thousands of blog posts and needless to say countless hours of my life were spent building this up.
The way my blog worked was the following - I would queue up the maximum amount of posts, and post around 50 posts a day so my followers had a steady and fresh stream of thoughts. Year by year I followed this strategy and it paid off - and as I said, I had over 300k followers before I was banned.
My blog was dailyinspirationalquotes.tumblr.com.
So why and how was I banned?
Well, one day, a few moths ago, I receive an email from tumbr with the title: Tumblr Account Terminated. As you can imagine my heart stopped for a moment - after all I have given YEARS to this account. For those who are curious - below is the full email:
Now lets see, apparently I was contributing to self-harm: “While you may not be supporting this behavior, we feel the content of your blog contributes to the growth of disordered eating and deliberate self injury as expressions of distress. So, with regret, we are terminating your account.“
Notice here we do not have specifics, and they don’t even tell me which blog is problematic, I can only assume it is my main one where I was posting most regularly. They don’t have warnings, they don’t have shit, straight to termination baby.
Now the most fucked up part is this: “ This termination is final, and replies to this message will not be reviewed. “
This one really scared me, because it doesn’t give me an option to talk back to them and understand the situation. Apparently, if tumblr staff FEEL (that;s their exact words) like something is abusive, they can say fuck this guy and it’s all done for all the years that you put into something. Hasta la vista, baby!
Anyway, after the initial shock, I put on my big boy pants and began searching for similar stories. Mostly I found people who were banned, but had their account reinstated after they contacted tumblr. This gave me a bit of hope, so I contacted them and asked for an explanation.
After all - I was sure I wasn’t promoting self-harm. Of course I asked for proof of where I promoted self-harm, eating disorders or whatever reason they terminated my account.
Anyway… a week later I realized I am not getting an answer, since they didn’t reply at all.
I went through this cycle over 5-6 times (contacting them and asking them to give me my account back) before I gave up. They answered me only one time - again, nothing specific, just telling me to check my email for the terminated account message and that everything is explained there. I replied to their email asking again for something specific - for fucks sake, i was just posting quotes, What the fuck were they talking about?
No reply.
Now here’s the deal. I did not posts fucking shiny positive messages all the time. I posted real things. I posted beautiful quotes, and beautiful quotes don’t always mean sunshine. I believe there is inspiration in being understood, too. So if I post a post about love not being easy, for fucks sake we all know that’s true. But I never consciously posted something that might promote self-harm.
What I think happened is the following:
Either some fucker who is competing for the top spot created fake accounts and began reporting me. If that’s the case Tumblr should be wiser than this and should check the full contents of a blog before terminating an account with over 300K followers. Of course there are going to be people who don’t like my shit, that doesn’t mean I should be banned.
Or lots of people who were also following self-harm/eating disorder specific blogs also followed me, so tumblrs automatic algorithms assumed I was one of those blogs. Which is retarded, but it’s a possiblity.
Why am I sharing this?
Because I think you need to know. Not because all of you have a shit ton of followers that you can lose. Fuck that, that’s not a big deal anyway, although it stings, it passes.
You see, this account that I am posting from right now is a personal one. I post my thoughts here. In my older account I had similar one: http://expressingatyphoon.tumblr.com/,
But it is gone. I didn’t post there often, but when I posted, it was something from my heart. It was when inspiration hit me, and I just wanted that thought recorded. A lot of people have similar blogs. I kinda feel like this is Fahrenheit 451 where they burn books. Some of the posts there were from my fucking heart god damn it, and they are the only place I recorded them. I didn’t post them anywhere else. And now they are fucking gone. Lost.
So fuck you tumblr staff. I love tumblr. It’s beautiful that I can express here. But your staff SUCKS. The universe is creative. It expresses through everything, and there is beauty in everything. When you see a butterfly with beautiful wings and you fucking rip them off just because you can, with no fucking reason and no need for explanation, you are doing the same thing tumblr did to me and is still probably doing to many others like me, that just wanted to create and express.
What inspired me to post this is, I remembered a short thought I shared in expressingatyphoon (my old personal blog), which I felt should be here as well. Then I thought about it and I felt like all of them should be here, but I can’t remember them all. And that made me angry.
What is the lesson:
If there is something of value you share in your blog, back it up somewhere else as well. Also when tumblr staff act like they fucking care about some shit - realize that you’re just a statistic to them and they don’t give a fuck about you or your blog. Fuck them.
Please reblog this as a warning to everyone!
For reference, here’s the thought that expired me to write this, which was posted in my banned blog:
