also to all my new followers

hello

welcome

i’ve been waiting for you

I genuinely think @staff should give us an official Bot Kill Count where it ticks up every time a bot you reported is officially taken off by the tumblr team and when you hit a certain number you get gruesome little trophies. Gamification can be of the devil but in this particular case I need a little treat for doing my daily chore of taking out the trash

(Please god I had to block like 15 of them today)

Ok Tumblr it's your Elder here to remind you that yes, the Northern Hemisphere nights are dark and the cold is getting into your bones and maybe you think everything's going to keep getting worse forever and you'll just get older and older until everyone and everything you love is dead: but you're only partly right.

Because yes sure we are all gonna die but in the meantime and maybe even because of that, there's joy. Even if it's only a bird half glimpsed from a moving vehicle, even if it's only the warmth in a cup of coffee, even if it's only the memory of someone who adored you as whole-chestedly and unconditionally as you deserve to be adored, joy is real in the world.

And tomorrow morning as I write this, the sun will shine along the passage at Newgrange and the sun daggers will frame the petroglyph in Chaco Canyon, and that is evidence that the long slow celestial mechanics of reversion to the mean will pull us inexorably back to springtime and the first green things growing out of the earth. The elders before me built these monuments to remind me to remind you that the sun will return.

And in the meantime let's hold hands in the dark. Let's tell the bleakest jokes we can think of at funerals to try and get the bereaved to laugh. Let's hug each other to coregulate our tender nervous systems that are trying so hard to keep us safe and alive. Let's watch how fast the efficiency of solar power is overtaking that of fossil fuels (effectively free energy by 2035: let's live to see it.) Let's revel in gods like pigeons and coyotes that can learn to coexist with humans.

Let's remember that there are more ordinary people of goodwill than we can possibly imagine: people who observe stop signs and pull over to let fire engines pass and who pay their fucking taxes and never cross pocket lines: normal working people who are kind to animals and who love all children and who feel solidarity across race and class and gender lines. Let's be those people and raise our children of blood and choice to be those people, the infrastructure of the world, the sunbeams shining into the dark.

I fucking hate the “explaining = invalidating” when it comes to apologies. Yes, sometimes a person means to invalidate you by saying this, but sometimes we genuinely just want to fucking explain our side so we can properly communicate.

I do not know what the fuck is wrong until I’m told what I’ve done wrong and feel the need to explain in order for us to see both of our sides

I like getting explanations with apologies because for me it helps lessen the damage that was done or can help clear the negative emotions.

I’ve had multiple people say it’s a sign that I’m a bad person that I don’t apologize right away, or that I’m giving excuses instead of owning up and apologizing (which is fucking hard for me to know if I’m actually in the wrong or not and people doing this shit does NOT fucking help). Apologies aren’t always just a “Sorry” one and done deal thing.

if I could give advice to any beginning fic writer, it’s to be careful with wrapping up your identity in a co-writer and don’t become too dependent on them.

Before I continue, I should take a second to say this: By no means do I mean to imply anything negative about my ex-co-writer as a person; please don’t misinterpret this. I’m not trying to dig up any old grudges or arguments or anything of the sort. This post is about fic writing and my own fannishness/writing process—nothing more.

That said, what I mean by this is that I became overly-reliant on having a co-writer, on being Part Of A Team. Not only did I sorta hide behind that and use it as a crutch to not carve out my own fandom identity, I also became super SUPER dependent on having someone there to get me unstuck when I’m not sure what to do next in a story. Stuck? Just hand it off it’s fine they’ll take care of it and I’ll do the same if it happens with them! But guess what, now I’m trying to go at it alone and MAN. Man! Do I ever wish I would’ve written a few more things by myself when most of my output was with another person! Even if I hadn’t published it! Because maybe I wouldn’t be stuck in every. single. fic.

The last couple things I finished were for a zine and they’re really fucking great if I do say so myself, but it took me SO LONG to finish them. I really, really wanna finish all my FMA WIPs—some of which I’ve been working on since freakin FEBRUARY, some of which were supposed to be done in May—but I’ve almost fallen into this self-fulfilling prophecy of “See? You really can’t do this alone, so what’s the point?” Which is dumb. Real dumb. The point is I love the ship and the fandom and the characters, and I want to make these anime dudes kiss each other, and I want to foist it upon the rest of the world, especially the people who also want to see them kiss.

Objectively, I know I’m a good writer. My AA fics I wrote in the winter are good. My fma zine fics are quite good. I really don’t have anything to worry about. But so much of my previous fandom experience was “oh that’s that person that writes with that other person! Cool!” And now I’m like…. Yeah no it’s just me, and I’m kind of a disorganized, nervous wreck on my own. Which, I don’t know, I started writing fic on my own! I was pretty prolific for a while (to say nothing of some of the quality lol). I do so much wish I could go back to feeling confident enough to produce as much as I did in 2017-18 by myself. But it’s difficult to do when you became dependent on another person as part of your writing process, and you have to find your own groove again.

LOL THIS IS FROM A YEAR AGO NOTHING HAS CHANGED it’s gotten ✨much worse✨ actually!

What makes JKR's shitshow even harder to process is that she didn't just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don't know if I'd call it "underground," but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss's career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there's the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep...Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that's not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there's a thriving culture of "Harry Potter adults" with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the "bookish" community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we've all seen what a disaster that's been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it's just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn't seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don't want to seem like you're condoning JKR's bigotry but can't divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don't expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it's still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don't support her, it's just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I'd have a mild identity crisis. I'd ask myself "Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?"

So ultimately, JKR didn't ruin "just" a book series or even "just" a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series's legacy even without JKR's personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn't just tarnish her legacy--she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

it’s crazy having been super-involved in the HP fandom for more than a decade and watching the fallout from this

quidditch (the real sport) has changed its name to quadball

the harry potter alliance (a nonprofit) has rebranded to fandom forward

the sub-subcultures that sprung up within the HP fandom have now distanced themselves from the main fandom and have become independent groups in their own right

HP was so integral to the development of early online fandom (as OP’s mentioned) that now there’s sort of just a weird... hole in the internet

for many HP fans, it took up a lot of their life. three conventions a year, wizard rock shows, HPA fundraising, granger leadership academy, nightly fanfic, podcasts, quidditch games.

when fans (rightfully) shunned JKR and began to leave the fandom, a lot of them (myself included) were left rudderless. how do you reconcile the fact that most of your friends, hobbies, sometimes even jobs, were due to the work of such a hateful person? as OP said, did i waste my life?

i’m obviously not saying that this is the worst part about JKR’s bigotry (the worst part is, of course, the bigotry) or that HP fans are the worst-done-by victims (who are of course trans people)

but it is WILD to see such a juggernaut of internet fandom be virtually scrubbed away

(Tags by @mainecoon76​) Really important additions IMO. “Well I always knew it was trash” or “Read literally any other book” are comments that pop up whenever the discussion comes around, and they’re not just useless, they entirely miss what the discussion is about. It’s about a massive cultural phenomenon that has been brought down by its living creator’s hatred and bigotry. It doesn’t matter whether the original content was ever any good. There are plenty of fandoms built on mediocre-at-best content and it absolutely doesn’t matter as long as it brings people joy. The issue here is that the entire material is now so poisoned that it has become hard to interact with it while it’s simultaneously hard to avoid. All the while remembering the joy that once was there and that has now been poisoned. Most Harry Potter fans have read plenty of other books. Many are active in other fandoms as well. “Read another book” is completely beside the point.

This is exactly why I feel so uncomfortable with the "read another book" people. I'm not even big into HP, but like... if this happened with any one of my current blorbos, ESPECIALLY the ones that have been there for me on and off over decades, I'd be super upset.

Because it's not about how amazing a particular work is or isn't. There are classic stories, yes, that most humans agree are good even after a long time, but there are also stories that are just good enough everybody knows them, whether or not this will be the case a generation later. And it's not wrong or bad to like those!

Fandom is, most often, about the person seeking a fandom looking for a lens to understand themself and their experiences better. To impose a pattern on them that helps the chaos of life make more sense. I have a modified body, but I'm not (to use an example that's not HP, so people who hate HP won't accuse me of lacking imagination or something) ACTUALLY an evil cyborg that oozes goo and possibly won't die.

But the evil cyborgs who ooze goo and don't die are helpful, because there are parts of my experience that their story captures and describes, so I'm invested. More than anyone would "need to" be, really, because of the specific things about me that make it personal.

Which is what bothers me about the way so many of us treated Potter fans. Dump it, get rid of it, lose it, find something else. Turn on a dime, no matter what this meant to you and no matter what it does or doesn't have to do with how you feel about trans people OR WHETHER YOU YOURSELF ARE TRANS. No matter what it got you through or showed you that you could face, because for all the faults you fear will overwhelm you, at least somewhere inside you have a Gryffindor's courage or a Slytherin's cunning or a Ravenclaw's wit or a Hufflepuff's steadfastness.

I still maintain that shunning was unreasonable, and still deeply wish we all had chosen "She Who Shall Not Be Named is dead to us, long live Hogwarts" instead of... acting like a cult on a purity purging kick.

So choose it! I refuse to stop reading and enjoying HP fanfiction just because JKR is a horrid TERF who is pathetically trying to convince herself that fans of HP must still love her if they love HP fandom. She's just using an invidious variation on "the lurkers support me in emails", and some terminally online folks are buying into it. No, just because JKR claims that liking Harry Potter is supporting her views doesn't make it so--she's what we might call an unreliable narrator. No one is forced to choose between supporting trans rights and enjoying Harry Potter; it's a false dilemma imposed by a bigoted liar. Harry Potter belongs to the fans--you can already see the change-over. "Epilogue, what epilogue?" and "Cursed Child doesn't exist" are major themes on AO3. It's like when Highlander fandom collectively decided there was only one movie and a decent TV series based on it. Fandom, not JKR, has decided what they'll accept as canon or not.

"She's just using an invidious variation on "the lurkers support me in emails", and some terminally online folks are buying into it."

Yup.

I think I may regret getting anywhere near this, but I'm beginning to be perturbed by the sheer level of focus on quashing Harry Potter Fandom activity as a way to support trans rights, because it is so incredibly useless.

Its this incredible combination of all the worst ways to do activism. It looks silly, so you can trivialize it (eg. "just read another book") but it actually feels, for most people the instruction is aimed at, very effortful (as Fierce has said better than I can, its tough to lose a fandom), and the result is just... nothing. Fandom is still very niche. No amount of change in fandom is actually going to exert real cultural or economic pressure on JKR. Its not going to undo any of the very real, very practical damage she is doing to trans people.

And all the energy being spent leaving Harry Potter fandom or arguing about Harry Potter fandom or feeling guilty about Harry Potter fandom, is definitionally, not energy being spent on something useful. Like, you're not resting and reviving yourself doing something that makes you happy, its unlikely your learning anything, and its not a fundraiser, or a letter campaign.

I spent about two months last year playing phone tag about the fact that only half the gender neutral bathrooms in my work place had a place to put menstrual products (because someone changed the signs but didn't think it through) and I totally utterly failed. I had 0 success.

And I still think it was more use than arguing about a fandom.

Yeah. That’s part of why I’m saying I wish people as a group had chosen differently. I as a person can and do choose not to assume “I’m a HP fan” means “I’m a transphobe” unless the next sentence is “JKR is a freedom fighter “ or something.

But I can’t and don’t control that the rest of the internet assumes these things go together for some weird reason, and that’s what makes me sad. The “I feel suspicious of anyone I see walking around with a hogwarts crest” thing.

That’s what I wish was different, and what me personally not doing that only does so much to change.

there's a particular kind of person I've encountered in about every fan space I've ever been in where they very clearly actively hate the source material they're fixated on but don't realize it and thus think every other fan who does like the source material is doing something wrong. I don't think a "fuck canon" attitude is an inherently wrong way to do transformative fandom, I think it's perfectly normal to get creative inspiration from something you don't like, but the key is being able to recognize when you're doing it and not get mad when other people do actually like the original thing. like when I hear people say "well of course I love [x], I just have strong criticisms with the protagonist, the secondary characters, the antagonist, the plot progression, the execution of themes, the core message, and the artistry" what I'm hearing aren't criticisms, they're that person being fundamentally opposed to the project of the thing they're fixating on and mistaking it for being a failed version of a project they would have liked better. again, I don't think it's a bad thing to do fandom for a work you don't like, I respect the fixer upper attitude, but sometimes there are coherent works that were executed exactly how they were meant to be that you simply don't vibe with and that doesn't make the original work wrong.

whats great about the internet is that you can just ignore people who are fucking stupid and not waste your time on them, i say, white knuckling the sink and staring into the mirror

Context:

The original video, for anyone who hasn't seen it:

And the relevant album cover:

Sessler was a teenager when "We're Not Gonna Take It" it was on the charts. Probably had MTV so he saw the video.

No fuckin' idea how he thought it was in support of "traditional American values."

Never not reblog. Dee Snider is iconic and queer as fuck for a cishet man.

-fae

Additional history note, for people who aren’t aware of it: In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder) as a mental illness. Before that time, it was officially listed as, and treated as, a psychiatric disorder, like schizophrenia: a condition that requires treatment, with the goal of removing it, or minimizing its effects if that wasn’t possible.

How happy someone was with it wasn’t important - it was considered a disease. Anyone who was happy being gay was considered to ill to realize how damaged they were.

Claiming that Kirk and Spock might have those feelings for each other was a hard clash against mainstream psychology. It was a very controversial opinion, because it meant not only looking at the series and saying, “I’m seeing a relationship that I’m pretty sure the writers didn’t consciously intend,” but also, “oh, and the entire AMA and the combined wisdom of its doctors are clueless about how human relationships work.”

Believing that two people of the same sex could have a healthy, loving relationship was an act of defiance all on its own.

I see that this post is trending today, so I’m going to take this moment to reblog it myself with the important addition of the comments from @elfwreck (Thank you for these, @elfwreck !)

I’d like to add a bit more historical context myself. Until the 1970s, years after TOS had finished its run, sodomy was a felony in 49 out of 50 states of the US – a felony which was punishable by prison or death. Throughout the 60s and into the 70s, I can remember reading carefully-worded news stories about gay men being arrested and given decades-long prison sentences.

For being gay.

Think about this for a moment. When TOS was on the air, not only was a white man kissing a Black woman a crime in a third of the country – but one man in a consensual, loving sexual relationship with other was committing a crime so serious he could be imprisoned or killed in every state but one.

I’ve seen tags from people and received questions about why Spock and Kirk were not allowed to be out on TV, since they were so clearly in love.  This was not remotely possible at that time. The average American understood a man who loved another man to be mentally ill and his behavior to be criminal.

@elfwreck put it beautifully above: “Believing that two people of the same sex could have a healthy, loving relationship was an act of defiance all on its own.”

In the early years of writing slash, one had to be very, very careful about who knew you read or wrote such material. Women and men both went to jail for violating obscenity laws. Just letting people know you entertained the idea of “The Premise” of K/S love could (and did) have people openly questioning your mental health, your morality, your character, your ability to do your job, and the safety of children in your presence. I know a woman who lost all rights to visit her own children in a divorce, when the court found out she had K/S slash material in her home.

OH this is so interesting! And so cool to see firsthand accounts of fandom history like this 🥺 But that last paragraph, especially the last line, holy crap. It’s still happening, too: a former friend of mine in maybe.... 2018-2019 was going through a divorce/custody battle, and her awful ex-husband kept threatening to show the judge her ao3 account to prove how ~sick~ she was and that she was unfit to be around children. I don’t remember what, if anything, came of that, but it was Texas, so she was understandably freaking out.

This is not a drill. Our new Community Guidelines are here. 

We recently introduced Community Labels to give everyone more control over their dashboard experience. With this new feature, you can adjust your feed to your preferred comfort level by setting the types of content you want to see. It was our first step toward a more open Tumblr. 

Today, we’re taking the next step: We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form).

So, even if your creations contain nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes, you can now share them on Tumblr using the appropriate Community Label so that everyone remains in control of the types of content they see on their dash. 

We have updated our Community Guidelines to reflect these changes; the rest of our content policies remain the same: We still don’t allow hate, spam, violent threats, or anything illegal, and visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr (if you want to know more about that, our CEO Matt recently explained why it’s not feasible for us to safely and successfully support porn communities at this time). If you come across these types of content, please continue to report them to us.

Similarly, if you come across content on Tumblr that doesn’t appear to be appropriately labeled, please let us know. This is how we’ll work together to create safer spaces for everyone on Tumblr, whatever their interests and needs. 

We hope this shift creates more room for artistic expression to flourish on Tumblr while empowering each of you to craft your own experience and safely explore and discover the things you love.

I’ve read that explanation and I still have no answer for why sites like Twitter and Reddit can allow porn content, but Tumblr can’t. It’s not about going back to ‘Go Nuts; Show Nuts’, where every fifth post on your dash is porn, it’s about why can’t we have porn on the site, but just censor it by default like Twitter and Reddit. And until some god-sent answer makes it absolutely clear why this discrepancy can happen, I’m firmly gonna believe that porn is still banned on Tumblr because y’all aren’t interested in investing the resources into making a good enough spam AI that can tell the difference between CSPAM and Adult pornography. Tumblr didn’t get banned from the App Store in 2019 for having porn. It got removed for having Child Pornography that was easily accessible. And instead of taking care of the problem at-hand, y’all fucked over a large part of your community while simultaneously letting porn bots run rampant, which is still a problem we’re reporting against, to this today. You censor posts by default, remove them from iOS entirely, hide them from search results, and even go the step further from other sites and censor profile pictures too. There’s no reason sexually explicit content shouldn’t be allowed under the current censorship guise. Even if that meant doing what PornHub did, which means requiring users to verify their identity before being allowed to post NSFW stuff. I don’t care if y’all came out and said something like “we don’t have to resources to make it possible” or “we just don’t wanna test the waters yet” but this excuse of “it’s not allowed anywhere on the internet” smells like a big lie, given what we can see other social medias are able to do and get away with.

This is not a drill. Our new Community Guidelines are here. 

We recently introduced Community Labels to give everyone more control over their dashboard experience. With this new feature, you can adjust your feed to your preferred comfort level by setting the types of content you want to see. It was our first step toward a more open Tumblr. 

Today, we’re taking the next step: We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form).

So, even if your creations contain nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes, you can now share them on Tumblr using the appropriate Community Label so that everyone remains in control of the types of content they see on their dash. 

We have updated our Community Guidelines to reflect these changes; the rest of our content policies remain the same: We still don’t allow hate, spam, violent threats, or anything illegal, and visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr (if you want to know more about that, our CEO Matt recently explained why it’s not feasible for us to safely and successfully support porn communities at this time). If you come across these types of content, please continue to report them to us.

Similarly, if you come across content on Tumblr that doesn’t appear to be appropriately labeled, please let us know. This is how we’ll work together to create safer spaces for everyone on Tumblr, whatever their interests and needs. 

We hope this shift creates more room for artistic expression to flourish on Tumblr while empowering each of you to craft your own experience and safely explore and discover the things you love.

“visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr” ok so what’s the change then? beyond now having to label the stuff you already allowed (which I’m not against, ftr, but it feels like lowkey gaslighting to spin it as ooooh you have sooooo much freedom now)? am I the only one seeing this? lmao what the hell.

i do not at all mean this in a perjorative manner, but i do think it’s important to be able to consume a piece of media and go, “i’m not the audience for this” and be able to just walk away 

there doesn’t have to be something wrong or “problematic” about something for a person to not like it. personal taste is personal taste. but something not doing it for you doesn’t mean it automatically has to be wrong or bad. it’s just not for you. 

Not people saying “Fandom has always been like this” in that vent post I made. No. It hasn’t always been like this. Fandom has NEVER been like this until recently and if you were in fandom pre-tumblr purge, pre-twitter, pre-netflix boom, pre-tiktok….then you would fucking know it was nothing like this.

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.

We call Art & Fic Content now, completely stripping the value of what it is to a level of consumerism instead of personal entertainment & community bonding.

Something that really gets me with this is that, nine times out of ten, the people you just KNOW are only in a fandom because it’s Hot Thing of the Moment are the exact same people who have this weird obsession with picking apart every single tiny little flaw—or, as is often the case, perceived flaw—in canon. Not in a “this is actually a meaningful discussion” kinda way, in a “yelling at creators and other fans and being mean” kinda way. And they’ll do the same thing with fanworks. They’ll obsess over them to no end and do stuff like blow up at people for something as mundane as writing a non-canon ship. You’re making the experiences of ppl who are in it for the long haul totally miserable, and for what??? Just to repeat the process when you feel like you ~have to~ move on? Is that fun???? It doesn’t seem very fun.

Because I’ve seen some pretty concerning things happening in fandom lately, here is a gentle reminder that:

if someone tells you that you need to cut off contact with your friends to prove your morality,

if someone tells you that you need to publicly announce your stances on fandom issues to prove your morality,

if someone tells you that you need to harass people they disagree with to prove your morality,

if someone threatens you with public shame, harassment, and exile from the social group if you don’t comply with the above demands,

that is abuse

Why “Go Nuts, Show Nuts” Doesn’t Work in 2022

For those who don’t know or remember, Tumblr used to have a policy around porn that was literally “Go nuts, show nuts. Whatever.” That was memorable and hilarious, and for many people, Tumblr both hosted and helped with the discovery of a unique type of adult content.

In 2018, when Tumblr was owned by Verizon, they swung in the other direction and instituted an adult content ban that took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists – including a ban on what must have been fun for a lawyer to write, female presenting nipples. This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense, and the community labels launch is a first step toward that.

That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007. I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with “go nuts, show nuts” in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible. Here’s why:

If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money. I estimate you’d need at least $7 million a year for every 1 million daily active users to support server storage and bandwidth (the GIFs and videos shared on Tumblr use a ton of both) in addition to hosting, moderation, compliance, and developer costs. 

I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don’t know about it. They’ll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that’s a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don’t attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist.

Yeah so, misleading people into thinking you're repealing the tit ban when you have no intention of actually doing so was a pretty shit move, my guy.

People who VERY REASONABLY believed that the new content filters meant that full adult-content allowability was back got hurt. That's not cool.

Y'all are doing better than the last few managements here but your communication skills need some goddamn work.

Why “Go Nuts, Show Nuts” Doesn’t Work in 2022

For those who don’t know or remember, Tumblr used to have a policy around porn that was literally “Go nuts, show nuts. Whatever.” That was memorable and hilarious, and for many people, Tumblr both hosted and helped with the discovery of a unique type of adult content.

In 2018, when Tumblr was owned by Verizon, they swung in the other direction and instituted an adult content ban that took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists – including a ban on what must have been fun for a lawyer to write, female presenting nipples. This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense, and the community labels launch is a first step toward that.

That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007. I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with “go nuts, show nuts” in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible. Here’s why:

If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money. I estimate you’d need at least $7 million a year for every 1 million daily active users to support server storage and bandwidth (the GIFs and videos shared on Tumblr use a ton of both) in addition to hosting, moderation, compliance, and developer costs. 

I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don’t know about it. They’ll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that’s a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don’t attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist.

Most of you don't follow photomatt, who is I guess the 2020s "tumblr daddy", but I think this is a decent explanation.

Not to shill for a company that doesn't care if I live or die (even if it's ran by alright people), but remember that - tumblr doesn't sell your private data - tumblr doesn't harvest your microphone audio, your unsent message drafts, a list of your apps on your phone, your GPS, your clipboard, the times you turn on screen on your phone, and other things - like literally every other app does (especially tiktok) to some degree - "if you don't pay, you're the product" is still valid, you generate the content that attracts people, but he's vaguely correct in that you cost the company ~$7 a year (probably even w/o NSFW content being allowed) even without employee salaries and stuff. - remember that facebook, instagram and similar *make* in the ballpark of $20 from you per year; more if you are active and click ads. - tumblr, however, not being a multi-billion media conglomerate, is in no place to bargain, and even if it was, it will still gladly rat out all your details to government privacy-invasion and violence-enforcement agencies. Friendly corporations aren't your friends.

tl;dr this isn't the 90s. you can't photograph people on the street anymore.

Actually we do fight for our users, quite a bit, and have a 15+ person full-time legal team. We publish a transparency report for Tumblr (and the rest of Automattic) here: