prestisssimo-tempestuoso

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challenge: can i make up for six months of tumblr content in one month

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#just when i was feeling unusually hopeful about my life this morning too

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#oh my god. all the meta. #all the merlin meta.........been sort of into merlin again lately #this news seriously has me feeling so unwell

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literally have breezeblocks playing in my head right now

#please don't go. i love you so

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To be clear, unless staff trips over the trail of extension cords keeping the servers running, Tumblr likely isn't going anywhere any time soon.

What the info we've seen suggests is that updates are going to slow down, maintenance is maybe going to get a little shaky, and we're going to see more glitches as time goes on and the remaining staff gets further behind their workload.

Is this a good thing? No, absolutely not.

Should you be panicking, jumping overboard, running for the hills, etc? Also no.

So what does it mean?

Well, for myself and several other creatives you all saw tagged in that post, it means we're looking around trying to figure out what to do in the long run. We're not running for the lifeboats. We're just eyeing the iceberg in the distance and getting our shit together in the event that the worst comes to pass.

Speaking for myself, I intend to crawl through the walls of Tumblr until they pry me out of the air vents armed with a broom and oven mitts. I'm not going anywhere until the lights go out, and even then, I'll be chewing on the wires.

But that doesn't mean I'm not looking around for somewhere to land when the time comes.

Myself and several others are not panicking about this, but we are trying to be organized about it.

I'm just old enough to remember when fandom websites being nuked overnight was a very real thing. You'd go to bed one night and wake up the next day to find friends you'd known for years were just gone with no means of contacting them because the site you'd been using got wiped. Entire collections of fandom history were just destroyed in the blink of an eye.

We don't want that again. And the good news is, we have time. We have time to back up our shit, time to swap contact info with our friends, and time to find a new place to exist within our communities while also staying here because Tumblr ain't dead yet.

She's just slowly going to wind down over time.

Unless, of course, they trip over the cables. Then we're fucked.

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re: tumblr

hello! I work in tech and here are some important things to know about "tumblr is going into maintenance mode." please note I do not work at tumblr, I've just worked at tumblr-adjacent sort of companies for my entire adult life and i've gone through this before.

what does maintenance mode mean?

literally what it sounds like -- Automattic is not going to be hiring new staff, investing in new product features, or doing anything new on tumblr. the staff that remains working on tumblr will be maintaining the status quo. most of the staff will be allocated elsewhere (or possibly laid off, though it looks like from that memo that's not what they're planning to do). it does not mean tumblr is shutting down. you should still buy premium, get merch, etc, because this is definitely step one of the shutdown process, but a maintenance mode designation is basically to see if tumblr will generate a revenue without putting more money into it than strictly necessary.

why did this happen?

obviously I do not know directly. from my observation, it's in part because Yahoo had absolutely no idea what to do with this platform, and then when Automattic bought it they also... struggled... but it is also in part because the user base has been so viciously anti-monetization that most attempts were killed outright.

yes, the user base is part of the problem. the absolute feral anti-premium, anti-ads, anti-tipping, anti-everything tumblr tried to do to make money is part of the problem. it's not the only part of the problem by a long shot, but I would be remiss not to mention it.

what do I do now?

use the platform. just like, keep using tumblr. do not abandon ship. buy premium, get yourself some badges, get yourself some merch, but use the platform. ad revenue is based on impressions and clicks. if a ton of the user base gives up, that revenue disappears.

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tumblr is extremely special. I've never seen anything like it in my 20-odd years of being Very Online, and I was a minor BNF in WolfStar during LiveJournal days. I don't know that it can be recreated elsewhere. I don't know where fandom will go. I know that something else will exist after tumblr and that nothing gold can stay, but i don't think the specific kind of joy found here can be recreated. i say this not to be a downer, but to be realistic. I guess I should find a Bluesky invite.

I've been here since 2008. I'm not going anywhere as long as this site exists. hope you'll stay here with me.

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can't believe i am literally so attached to a webbed site

#i want to cry #but what about all the temeraire posts?!?! #all the black sails posts?!?! #all the gifsets and fics and fic recs?????? #can't they think of the fic recs????? #okay. by not paying for premium i am part of the problem #i know #looking at pillowfort and bluesky and feeling absolutely desolate #as for twitter (formerly known as x)......well. unfortunately not my thing

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if tumblr is gone i will -

#......not sure what i will do #ik there is nothing one can realistically do #but i would certainly. not be well #seems like i had better start using tumblr again #contribute my little share of Engagements and Data #however much that helps #it's like. a lot has happened in the last six months that caused me to be away #but whenever my life gets to any sort of better place. if that happens. #i would definitely want tumblr to be there??? as part of my cyber routine/escape??? #if nothing else there's tons of fandom history here #I Have Literally Been Here For Twelve Years. #that's twelve years. of my life. such as it is #i mean yeah. economy stagnates. companies cut costs. a seemingly unprofitable project is the first to go. i get that. but. #perhaps i should get a premium..... #can't we just have One Good Thing in our lives?????

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when you see your little kitty walking toward you at a leisurely pace and say "hi baby!" bc you're excited to see her and she starts trotting a little bit faster 'cause she's excited to see you too. that's what life is all about i think

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good essay by Jeff VanderMeer on “climate fiction”. feels relevant, re what literature can and can’t do, to other conversations. also relevant re the idea of “hope” more generally:

But, hooked on hope, perhaps reflecting a jaded attitude toward its own future, the book world, ever selling, requires an affirmation of the positive from climate fiction authors not required of, say, the writer of the darkest serial killer noir thriller. Again and again, I am asked to locate the hope in my novels and dissect it for the interviewer in a way I was not before I was pinned like a butterfly to the collection board of “climate fiction.”

Perhaps the underlying message is that you’re supposed to entertain the reader, but more and more, I greet the question with a weary smile-grimace that reveals the skull of me that’s likely to be buried in the ground sometime in the next twenty to thirty years. The search for hope is hopeless or beside the point. Fiction can’t save us in this particular way, although it can pretend to, but if in a book a heroine survives climate crisis, this has no corresponding nexus or loci in the real world, no matter how strong the will of the reader that it be otherwise.

“hope” as something you buy and consume, the hegemony of calls for “hope” and “hopeful” stories and “hopepunk”. an abstract, fiction-rooted “hope” won’t save us; collective action might.

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“This character is dead in canon” to you. They’re dead in canon to you. To me they’re fine

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it's that time of year again and I made a thing bc I've seen Some Shit

#why do you need an app though when the mobile browser works perfectly fine #it's not like ao3 is going to be one of those sites that deliberately fuck up their browser version to force you to download an app

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Bottle green and pale gold sea. Details: Stormy Seas, 1922, by Diyarbakirli Tahsin.

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“You cut up a thing that’s alive and beautiful to find out how it’s alive and why it’s beautiful, and before you know it, it’s neither of those things, and you’re standing there with blood on your face and tears in your eyes”

— Clive Barker (via princess-mary)

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“When she applied to run in the Boston Marathon in 1966 they rejected her saying: “Women are not physiologically able to run a marathon, and we can’t take the liability.” Then exactly 50 years ago today, on the day of the marathon, Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes and waited for the race to begin. When about half of the runners had gone past she jumped in. She wore her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a pair of boy’s sneakers, a bathing suit, and a sweatshirt. As she took off into the swarm of runners, Gibb started to feel overheated, but she didn’t remove her hoodie. “I knew if they saw me, they were going to try to stop me,” she said. “I even thought I might be arrested.” It didn’t take long for male runners in Gibb’s vicinity to realize that she was not another man. Gibb expected them to shoulder her off the road, or call out to the police. Instead, the other runners told her that if anyone tried to interfere with her race, they would put a stop to it. Finally feeling secure and assured, Gibb took off her sweatshirt. As soon as it became clear that there was a woman running in the marathon, the crowd erupted—not with anger or righteousness, but with pure joy, she recalled. Men cheered. Women cried. By the time she reached Wellesley College, the news of her run had spread, and the female students were waiting for her, jumping and screaming. The governor of Massachusetts met her at the finish line and shook her hand. The first woman to ever run the marathon had finished in the top third.”

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Death the King (1901, woodcut) - Robert Bryden, after William Strang