The sad thing about this is that Tumblr had a unique platform that fostered a kind of inclusiveness not seen anywhere else. It’s interactions happened a different way. A way that encouraged sharing and inhibited dog-piling. The changes to increase interaction (without adequate blocking protections) in recent years had been leading to predictable increases in drama and harassment, but the original ethos still went a long way.
Without Tumblr I never would have continued to live with a bunch of ill-conceived misunderstandings about trans people. I probably would have continued to struggle with understanding my own identity, and alienated my cis friends, too, as I failed to understand that they weren’t non-binary either.
Without Tumblr I would have continued with a number of unfortunate misconceptions about race and other marginalised groups. I would not have understood about cultural appropriation. I would not have understood nearly so well the living plight of Native Americans or the Roma and Romani.
Without Tumblr I would have missed out on, just, ACRES of women’s history and queer history. ACRES.
Without Tumblr I never would have realised that I could actually attract more readers saying what I really thought than by smothering my anger. There’s no other platform I could have expressed myself so freely on without fear of dogpiling.
Without Tumblr I would never have written my most successful published work: “Remembering Margaret Cavendish” – I didn’t write it on Tumblr, but it was written up from a number of Tumblr posts and prompted by Tumblr posts. It was then published in Speculative Fiction 2012, which went on to be nominated for a Hugo and won the BFS Award for Best Non-Fiction.
Without Tumblr my output in the last 6 years of sickness would have been far, far less.
Without Tumblr my Twitter account would not have grown the way it has, even though I have been very lazy about changing the auto-tweets into something intelligible.
Without Tumblr I would not have made so many amazing friends.
Without Tumblr, I never would have played Dragon Age. Seriously, the nipple-demons put me off; all your artwork and squeeing and memes made me give it a go.
And… I have serious concerns that Pillowfort will not be sufficiently similar. It’s going to have a comment system very similar to LiveJournal, and I remember only too well how that bred drama and stress.
I don’t want to go. This place did a lot for me. But it doesn’t look like we have much choice. @staff don’t want to have users anymore.
<3