Tumblr Is Always Dying

  • “The mainstream narrative has declared Tumblr dead for years.” ⤴️
  • “The porn-ban user exodus and the ineffectiveness of hastily implemented content filters. The 2019 sale of the site from Verizon to Automattic. The deeply confusing mass tag ban in 2021. The semi-regular flare-ups over interpretations (or misinterpretations) of the language in staff-authored posts.” ⤴️
  • “Much of the aforementioned tumultuousness happened in Tumblr’s Yahoo/Verizon era—the porn ban and bungled content filtering chief among them—but there was also a persistent sense in those years that under the ownership of a massive faceless media conglomerate, Tumblr could be shut down on a whim.” ⤴️
  • “hopefulness in the contrast, that perhaps a smaller, friendlier organization might not just keep Tumblr online but actually want it to succeed.” ⤴️
  • “Automattic has been explicit about the fact that the site is hemorrhaging cash at an unsustainable rate. Monetization experiments like being able to “blaze” posts into strangers’ feeds, a merch store in tune with the site’s sensibilities, or the beautifully implemented joke, in response to the launch of Twitter Blue, that let Tumblr users buy not just one but two useless checkmarks for $8, have apparently been modestly successful.” ⤴️
  • “many of the big changes, from a widely reviled livestreaming feature and altering the dash to look like Twitter to breaking the core functionality of reblog chains, were all aimed at luring in mythical new users—and they’ve all angered Tumblr’s existing and deeply entrenched user base.” ⤴️
  • “When Reddit began imposing fees on third-party developers, some subreddits went dark or began posting humorous protest content, but a fair number of Redditors migrated to Tumblr. For weeks, the site was awash with welcome posts and guides to Tumblr functionality and etiquette, and former Redditors regularly shared their observations on learning and embracing the site.” ⤴️
  • “eemed invested in learning how Tumblr worked—a clear counter to the trendy idea that the way to appeal to new social media users is to make a platform look exactly like all the others” ⤴️
  • “an extraordinary amount of content generated on the site winds up screenshotted elsewhere” ⤴️
  • “That culture is partly due to Tumblr’s core functionality: With its chains of iterative reblogs, it’s long been a sort of “yes, and” improv space,” ⤴️
  • “omeone writes a paragraph with advice on a situation, and half a dozen others chime in with different perspectives in reblogs” ⤴️
  • “those who cut their teeth in the “Tumblrina” era—the rise of Your Fave is Problematic and social-justice warrior-hood that made Tumblr a punch line on the rest of the internet—often reference dynamics (and users) that migrated off the platform and onto the rest of social media years ago. (That’s not to say that stuff has left Tumblr, but it’s everywhere now.)” ⤴️
  • “The porn ban had an undeniable and detrimental effect, especially for the sex workers and NSFW artists whose livelihoods and safety were threatened when they were forced off the site, and I don’t intend to downplay that in any way. But the suggestion that Tumblr was only about adult content prior to 2018 is false—and the idea that there’s no adult content there now is also false.” ⤴️
  • “I’m a firm believer that our social media spaces would be better if they were less broad. I don’t want everyone to use Tumblr; I want it to work for the people who want to be there.” ⤴️