johndarnielle:

wilwheaton:

I really hope Yahoo doesn’t fuck up Tumblr like it’s fucked up … well, every single thing it’s ever touched in the history of the universe.

See here’s the thing though. The only way to prevent something like this would have been to make Tumblr an unwelcoming space, and that’s where we run into the Usenet Paradox. If you try to keep a cool thing to yourself, you get called cliquish, elitist, a snob. But if you don’t work to police its borders — which you probably shouldn’t do, because the people calling you cliquish probably have something of a point, and being an actual border-policing snob saps the fun right out of the thing you’re ostensibly trying to protect — then the people with the money are coming for it. Every single time. Forever. And they will do what they do, because it’s what they do. I can’t speak on behalf of my friends, but I’d hazard a guess that my old buddies Alternative Rock, Rap, Jazz, Independent Film, Things That Are About Vampires and/or Zombies, and The Neighborhoods of Several Large American Cities will co-sign me on this. 

*I just invented this paradox. If you wanna option it for a film please do holler, I see immense prospects for development