E.K.

I am going to say some things about the leaked movie that might not make people happy; as well as light spoiler/ Alleged material. Especially have some words about the Creators of Bryke and extra why my thoughts will be spicy. If you like them and follow me, recommend scrolling away.

Otherwise, here we go.

Not sure how much of my words will hold weight to anyone, but just want to get my thoughts about all of this mess after sitting with the news about the movie leaking from the last 48 + hours.

I want to start off my take with while I have not seen the leaked movie, I am not really as hyped about this movie as everyone else is or see the excitement for it. Yes the animation looks good, and I will give the animation credit that there are times when the fight scenes happen - from the images I have seen, they look fluid and I can see the effort put into it. I would never take that away from animation studio as I know the medium is hard as is. So commend them as it sounded like it was hard to complete this project due to some debates with the animation studios last I heard.

That is all I can say just from the images as I have not found nor want to currently look at clips with audio, mostly because what I did hear was - admittedly - cringe even for me. And I am not as afraid of being cringey as I used to be. But some of the dialogue I have heard was like... really?

That being said...

Now then.

A key takeaway from the massive amount of almost universally negative feedback to the reblog change should have been: Tumblr users do not, as a rule, care about clout. We do not want quantified "credit" for how good our addition to a post is, and we don't want influencers who are anointed as more important than everyone else because they are popular. That's not what we do here; it's never been what we do here. If we wanted that, we could get it from ANY other social media. The fact that we're here instead makes it pretty clear that clout is not important to us, and in fact is actively repulsive to us. Anointing particular Tumblr users as "top Tumblristas" and putting them on an "advisory board" that gets special access to new features and the opportunity to give feedback on them would constitute the exact type of hierarchy we despise.

Furthermore: When a corporate entity proposes an "advisory board of power users", what they're actually doing is trying to pre-empt wider user pushback against executive decisions, by creating the illusion of user buy-in while using social pressure to enforce decisions that have already been made. The actual reasoning behind selecting "top" users is because they are popular, which suggests they have influence over other users. The idea is, rather than convincing the community as a whole, you convince a smaller subset of influential people, and then they convince everyone else. Again, this depends on a kind of hierarchy and clout-based "influencer" system that we don't have and don't want.

As for the "top users" board themselves: By choosing someone and telling them "you're a Top User and you get to be on the special committee and have special privileges," you are giving them something (supposedly) desirable: social status, (the appearance of) influence and power, etc. And you can take it away. That means now you have power over them. If they don't want to lose their special status, they will avoid displeasing you. Which means they are less likely to give you significant pushback, and they are more willing to pressure others to go along with what you want to do. That makes them incredibly useful to corporate, but completely undermines their supposed role as a voice for the community. We see this already with influencers on every other platform, who become de facto spokespeople for corporations and brands and stop meaningfully criticizing them out of fear of losing the access that is critical to their status.

I'm not saying all this because I think it's news to the CEO of a tech company. I think you know all of that perfectly well already. I'm saying it because I think you assume we don't know it, and because some people might not. But I have played this game before and I know how it goes. It never benefits the community. It is always a way to control the community.

They were going to have a council of elected People Of The Community, elected by users, to advise the staff on policies and suchnot.

One person ran on a platform of "for the lulz; vote for me and I promise absolutely nothing." I don't remember if they got on the board, but they did get a lot of votes.

At least one fandom person got on the board - and had to go dark, because of the combination of hatemail and demands they were getting to fix things that were outside of their control.

Of course, all the actual discussions/meetings with staff were covered by an NDA. The public had no idea what was going on; it only served to kill that person's fandom community connections.

Livejournal didn't have a second election a year later. The user advisory board was quietly disbanded and vanished.

This plan terrible for the community and the only possible value is if Tumblr staff got so much confusing feedback from it that they had to start listening to users before implementing major changes. I don't think that's the way it would work.

Also worth nothing: Even if you believed that it'd be a good idea to have a pack of Tumblr users advising staff/the company about things, the best people for that role are not necessarily "the most popular posters," or the "influencers" of Tumblr (let's pretend, for a moment, that we have influencers) - those are not necessarily the people who'd best understand the implications of potential feature changes.

"Our record label is considering changing the machinery & software we use in our studios. Let's poll our customers for the most popular bands, and grab representatives of those to advise us."

This is a STUPID plan.

The most popular users may be the best at navigating Tumblr's current technology. (Not necessarily; the basic system at Tumblr is very simple, and some are popular just because they make amazing content, not because they've sorted out all the bells & whistles.) Even if they do understand all the current system - how tags work (how tags used to work and don't anymore), how search works (or doesn't), how to hold a conversation in the notes, and so on - that doesn't mean they'd immediately understand what would be different if something changed.

Tumblr's reactions to troublesome changes in tech or TOS is not usually articulated by the most popular blogs. They're the ones who spread the info that's assembled & explained by the niche geeky blogs with a narrow focus.

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.

Tumblr is rolling out a new reblog/notes system that completely disregards creators. In their new system, they're taking a twitter-style approach where reblogs will have their own notes that DO NOT contribute to the original post's notes.

Because of this, creators will no longer be able to see an accurate display of likes/reblogs/etc. This is completely altering the way feedback and responses to works are going to be received on this website.

If you come across a fan work that you enjoy, please take the extra step to go to OPs original post, and leave your comment/like/reblog there. Or go one step further and send an ask to OP directly to tell them what you liked!

That's not censorship. That's being nice. Fandom is an escape for a lot of people. Warnings, tags, notes - they're so important. Even the minimum. Various writers take various approaches but my gods are tags amazing.

I have fandom friends across multiple fandoms who are so grateful to know the thing that might ruin their day is noted either in tags or notes. Even just in the bare minimum of "choose not to use archive warnings."

Fandom etiquette has change over the years and I think tags and warnings are some of the best parts of it. Makes that escape a little better for everyone involved.

I read fic back in the day. I'm quite content with my warnings. Even if it's in the endnote over the tags.