Live and Love with No Regrets

We’ve jumped over to MeWe and hope to repost a lot of our Tumblr stuff plus some new stuff in the next few days…

We’ve jumped over to MeWe and hope to repost a lot of our Tumblr stuff plus some new stuff in the next few days…

We’ve jumped over to MeWe and hope to repost a lot of our Tumblr stuff plus some new stuff in the next few days…

We’ve jumped over to MeWe and hope to repost a lot of our Tumblr stuff plus some new stuff in the next few days…

We’ve jumped over to MeWe and hope to repost a lot of our Tumblr stuff plus some new stuff in the next few days…

We’ve jumped over to MeWe and hope to repost a lot of our Tumblr stuff plus some new stuff in the next few days…

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

We’ve jumped over to MeWe and hope to repost a lot of our Tumblr stuff plus some new stuff in the next few days…

Well, I’m late to this party of having something to say about the announcement Tumblr made today, but fuck it, I’ve still got some things to say, and I need to get this out - even if it’ll only live here for a few weeks.

We’ve had a lot of messages today, asking for our thoughts, and for most of the day I’ve not known what to say. The shock has left me a little speechless. Now I’m home and not putting out fires at work, and I’ve had a few glasses of a really good 2001 Shiraz so fuck it - I’m feeling more inclined to put down some thoughts.

Both Mrs. and I have a had some things come up in our lives that we’ve had to deal with that have been very difficult. As have many of you. It helps give some perspective to what this is. Is it the worst thing in the world to happen? Is it as bad as some people’s situations all over the world? No to both of those.

I’m not trying to minimize what happened today and how many of us are feeling. It’s a fucking sucker gut punch - and it fucking hurts - it fucking hurts a lot - and it fucking sucks. It makes me angry, sad, and a lot of other emotions. It’s a huge disappointment. This is one of the most Monday things of Monday’s I’ve fucking heard of in a long fucking time.

That being said, we’ll all find a way to move on - but most importantly we’ll hopefully find a way to move on still in contact with those we’ve met here that we’ve made genuine connections with. Tumblr can’t take that away for good.

That’s the most important thing to us. The connections. We’ve made some amazing connections with people here. Real people just like us. Normal everyday people who found a safe place to share their desires and thoughts around sex (and many other topics). We’ve gotten to know some fellow Tumblrs very well. Some we’ve had the chance to meet in person, and some we’ve even gotten to fuck. All in all a pretty fucking great experience overall.

This place has not just been an escape for us, but also a continuing daily lesson into our desires. We’ve learned so much more about what excites us, and it’s helped us grow so much over the last few years - as people, as a couple, as sexual human beings, as swingers - it’s been eye opening and it’s helped us be able to communicate with each other about things we see, ideas it gives us. We’ve felt accepted, and okay for our desires. Not ashamed of what we do, or what we share. Fuck you Tumblr staff for making it seem like we should be ashamed of having NSFW content.

The header of their post about a “better, more positive Tumblr” was such a horseshit title. I mean fuck you and your self righteous moral posturing. You know what’s positive? Deciding to share with others your experience, thoughts, desires, and showing all sizes, shapes, and colors of body types. Now not only will there no longer be no adult content allowed, they’ve gone so far back with regressive pre-1950’s censorship bullshit like “female-presenting nipples” as content that won’t be allowed. Fuck that. While our blog may not completely go away - we do have a few SFW posts over the last five + years, not sure we’ll try to keep it going for very long after the 17th.

I know some people consider what we do “not classy” - frankly I don’t give a fuck and won’t feel ashamed for sharing what we decided to share. It’s who we are, it’s real, it’s honest. It’s positive and Tumblr can quite frankly fuck off they don’t see it as such.

We won’t disagree that child pornography is completely abhorrent and not something we support either. I find it hard to believe they don’t have a way to monitor that better, but still allow consenting adults to post adult content. But let’s be honest, with all their high moral posturing, this is also about money and their ability to monetize a platform and turn this into another Instagram.

Five + years - that’s how long we’ve had this blog.

Over 328,000 followers, and over 122,000 posts - over 4,420 of them our own personal content posts.

We’ve taken ninety eight different photo sets and shared them here.

This is what it comes down to?!?

I said it before - this fucking hurts. I hate having the rug pulled out from under me and that’s exactly what this feels like. We’re grateful for so much here - the people we’ve connected with, what we’ve learned about ourselves, what we’ve been able to share that’s been appreciated - there’s a long list of what to be thankful for - and we genuinely are.

Where to go next for us? I don’t know. It’ll take some time over the next few days to find the best options. Open to suggestions. Again, most importantly, we’ll find a way to keep connected to those we’ve made friendships with. That will outlast the bullshit of this decision.

As I’m writing this, listening to some music to help process this, these words came across my headphones to my ears and heart…

This was an apt title to the very last broadcast episode of a favorite TV series of mine. The reference is, of course, to the old saying “All good things must come to an end.” Such is the case with good old Tumblr apparently.

Word has it that the suits at Verizon (Tumblr’s parent company since their acquisition of Yahoo) have decided to shoot themselves in the proverbial foot and ban all adult and other NSFW content as of December 17th. As far as I’m concerned, this move is the death knell for one of the last Internet social platforms that was attractive because of its lack of constraints on content and the freedom of expression it fostered.

So, after running two Tumblelogs for nearly six years and amassing nearly 65,000 followers, I’m pulling the plug in two weeks. I’m afraid I won’t have a lot of time to post new pics as I’ll likely be busy archiving the 2000+ images I have liked over that span.

In this post I just want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who followed my Tumblelogs, liked and/or reblogged my posts, submitted great content of their own, and communicated directly with me through messages. It’s been a fun ride. But, all good things …

Soup.io - well-known alternative to Tumblr. Reblogging, post types, themes, collab blogs, dashboard, artsy, great community already there. Soup can auto-import everything you’ve posted on Tumblr.

TypePad - Includes reblogging. Dashboard and post types similar to Tumblr.