The Book of Eibon

In the extended edition of this post, I want to take a bit of time to fondly remember and reminisce on the positive impact Tumblr has had on me as a person.

It’s hard to understate how Tumblr has helped me grow, primarily my early usage of it back in...whenever the fuck I started using this hellsite. When I logged back in today, I was alerted I had two posts I needed to review because they were “adult” content. One of them was a post from a very, very long time ago:

I’ve cropped some of the image out so it won’t get flagged, but it’s a gif of a woman boxing a giant penis.

First: Uh, yikes af?? Bad post, OP (me).

Second: It’s interesting to grapple with who I used to be, and who I am now. I said some really dumb shit and believed some really dumb shit back in the day, and exposure to differing opinions from people actually experiencing the injustices I was mocking on Tumblr slowly changed who I was.

When I first got on Tumblr, I followed friends and other blogs that posted a lot more political content, and this was back before stuff really went to shit during the advent of GamerGate. While it took me a while to come around to what they were saying, the constant exposure did it. And it’s something I am eternally grateful for, because I’m a better person now because of it.

I genuinely hope that whatever remains of Tumblr now and in the future can continue to expose lonely, angry white teens, young adults, and adults to the ideas they rail against and change their perspective.

On a more positive note, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate how media-centric Tumblr is. People give it a lot of shit for being a house of coded cards, but no other prominent social media site lets you make such interesting arrangements of media as Tumblr does. It’s why, for the longest time, Tumblr was my platform of choice. I loved finding funny memes and cool anime pictures and interesting science posts with great photos and reblogging them, creating my own tapestry of interests.

As I became a more veteran Tumblr user, I stopped being as vocal on the site about things I care about - in some regards, I feel that was a mistake, but it was partially done for my mental health, as getting into arguments online for the sake of arguing really doesn’t lead me to good places. I do wish I had been more active in talking about game development and the issues facing the gaming industry, other than just reblogging Ask a Game Dev.

And finally, I want to recommend some excellent sources of content, for two reasons: 1) Some of these blogs have great insights into things I am very passionate about; 2) If you liked the content I reblogged, you’ll likely find some good stuff from these blogs.

In no particular order:

@askagamedev, @dailyaliens, @planet-bryyo, @jakke, @wizardsmagic, and @markrosewater

And that’s that! I won’t be active on Tumblr anymore, so please feel free to unfollow me if you don’t like seeing inactive followers in your count (I know I don’t/didn’t). I won’t be deactivating, though, so my posts aren’t going anywhere, should you really have liked a specific one (not that I made many original ones).