Ashels Writes

(Source)

Whoever is left running this godforsaken website clearly still thinks that It Must Be Made Into Twitter, regardless of the fact that The Website Formerly Known as Twitter is an absolute hellhole that now literally generates AI child sex abuse for Nazis, and still is failing to get the picture that Tumblr users do not want Visibility Engagement Maximization or whatever the fuck tech word slurry. Nobody uses their real names. Everyone absolutely hates when their posts go viral. Nobody wants to Get Their Precise Portion of Notes and nothing else. We do not want to Increase Our Profile Or Market Share. We want to be left the fuck alone to post our stupid memes and have our stupid little in-jokes and our stupid little gay fanfiction. Tumblr, as usual, has completely missed the boat.

So we're all pissed at the new update as we should be and I've been seeing many people proposing blackouts, which is amazing! But all the dates are different and people might get confused at what's happening when, so I just want to organize every blackout (at least that I saw) in one place.

So far I saw six people with dates.

The earliest one, organized by @yourlocalfandomfriendo begins on March 18th and will last 48 hours.

This overlaps with a second proposed blackout by @veejiez for March 19th.

There is also one on the 20th proposed by @daysleftofsecondterm and another one on the same day from 6AM UTC to 6AM UTC on the 21st by @everythingwsnormalhere.

These three days are all very soon so not everyone may see them in time to participate, but if you are able to participate for any or all of these days, I highly encourage you do. Otherwise there are two more blackouts coming up:

The next one after these will be on March 24th as organized by @aroacesafeplaceforall who suggested doing 12 hours.

And the last one, which I personally have a lot of hope for as it's a major day for activity on Tumblr and a blackout then could be especially impactful: April 1st, as proposed by @darkwood-sleddog

There is also a discord set up by @yourlocalfandomfriendo and @aroacesafeplaceforall for anyone interested in joining in!

SO OVERALL, it may sound like a lot, but no one expects everyone to participate to every date here. But PLEASE try to participate in at least one or two of these, even if you feel it may not do much.

Typical strikes, the ones we hear about all the time, win by withholding their labour for consistent periods of time; that's the power people have at work because that's what's exploited.

For blackout strikes, we need to withhold our attention; the resource we own which is exploited through the selling of both advertisements and data.

My comparison of blackout strikes with regular strikes will be for a whole other post, but for the time being, just know that

withholding our attention is our digital bargaining weapon

Tumblr literally lost 63% of its monthly traffic from 2024 to 2025; they are not in a position to play around with those of us still here.

So PLEASE try participating. We cannot let every decent online space get enshittified with no care or consideration for the communities using those spaces.

Can't wait to feel emotional pain and be in awe at the same time