punching ghosts since 2011

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.

I can’t reblog it now because the shitstain who started it is deleting responses that they don’t agree with, but if you want to go read everything then just click here to do so. It’s the version that someone else responded to, but mu comment is on there as well. In fact, go read that first, and then come back here.

I gave them a chance to show that they actually wanted to change and apologize to the people that they hurt, but instead they are deleting all responses to their tumblr post that are even remotely negative or close to pointing out the real truth of what happened. I am taking this as a sign that no, they do not want to change, and that they will keep coming back to the other website involved and dredging up hurt feelings. I was going to leave them alone, but if they’re not going to give the same courtesy, then all bets are off. They won’t be able to delete a post if someone else makes the first post.

Before I begin, I will be using the name ‘Nova’ to describe this person, and I will be using they/them pronouns. Because the last time I heard (two days ago, as of the writing of this post), those were their preferred name and pronouns. If that changes in the future, then okay, but please do not go off on a tangent about misgendering and dead names. Nova has used this tactic to successfully derail criticism about them in the past, and I have no doubt in my mind that they will do it again.

Also, this entire post carries a content warning for talk of suicide. Because that is the main way Nova manipulates people.

Nova used to roleplay on a website called Dreamwidth. It’s a journaling website, and one of the bigger groups of roleplayers out there. Nova was a mod at a game called Cosmographia and also played in a couple other games.

In November of 2015, there was a huuuuuge incident at Cosmographia, which resulted in a player being banned, several mods quitting, and the game being deleted entirely. Explaining everything that happened would take ages, but you can read the relevant information at this post here. (as a note, Nova was going by ‘Tora’ back then. Look for the name Tora in the posts and comments.) Get yourself a drink, it’ll take a while to read all of that.

During that incident, it finally came to light that Nova was bullying people into doing what she wanted them to do. They usually did this over private messages, and would often outright lie to get what they wanted. This happened to over a dozen people, some of which knew Nova in real life. The original post where everyone started talking about the stuff Nova was saying in private can be found here, and of particular note is the thread here where it shows that Nova is willing to use someone else’s suicide threat to manipulate people into not arguing with her. Also read this thread, where once again Nova uses suicide threats to bully someone into doing what they want. In the latter’s case, they were trying to bully their co-mods into not banning a problem player. This is a common tactic for them: if they are not getting their way, they will threaten suicide or say something like ‘I bet you wish I had killed myself when [bringing up previous incident’.

So Tora was kicked out of the Dreamwidth RP community and banned from several games.

A month later in December of 2015, Nova tried to sneak back in to DWRP under a fake name. They got caught and banned again, of course. But one of the other players involved in both this and the original incident in November knew Nova in real life, and they tried to get him kicked out of college. Thankfully Nova got banned once again.

I cannot for the life of me find the links to it, but Nova came back again in April of 2016, trying to ‘make amends’. Of course, they didn’t actually apologize for anything and was trying to make it all about themselves. Once again, they were told to go away.

Which brings us to a couple days ago. Once again Nova came back, this time making anon comments that vaguely talked about being run out of DWRP. Eventually they admitted to who they were, and everyone pretty much just said ‘GO AWAY’. Because, once again, Nova made it painfully clear they wanted buttpats, not to actually apologize.

There are others out there who can say it better than I can (I played in a game with Nova, and we did end up in a situation where we had to plot out an event together, but I was never a target of theirs), and I invite them to respond here and say everything they have to say about Nova. Because if Nova is going to keep coming back to our playground and stir up shit every time they want someone to say ‘no honey it’s okay, you’re fine’, then okay. We’ll bring this shit back to THEIR playground. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they were pulling the same stunts here, and nobody felt like they could speak up because Nova was doing it in private.

Sorry that this is my first post on tumblr on a while, even as far as reblogs. Lately I’ve been busy with just about everything else under the sun. But I have some feelings I want to share and some advice I want to get, and I figure a public blog would be the best place for those things. Just a warning, this post will discuss things related to suicide and feeling suicide, so please free feel to scroll on past this post if that’s all stuff you don’t want to read about.

A couple of years ago I severely hurt a lot of people, many of whom I’d been very close friends with up until that point. I was selfish and arrogant and treated others like garbage. It didn’t take long for the weight of my actions to come down heavy on me though, and it lead to me attempting suicide and becoming hospitalized for a short time. I’m not a victim though. It was my own actions and their consequences that caused me to want to end my own life.

However these feelings have still continued to haunt me and come up to disturb me in my everyday life ever since, to the point where I had to ask my therapist what I should do to find some peace of mind. I ended up going back to my former group of friends and attempting to apologize, not expecting or even wanting to be forgiven. All I wanted to do was admit the wrong that I’d done, then maybe I could finally, really start to move on.

I ended up finding out I hurt these once good friends even more than I ever realized previously, to the point where some of them considered me their abusers and had breakdowns just from seeing me again when I came to try to make some amends (successfully or otherwise). It turns out I wasn’t the only person who felt suicidal after what had happened between us all, and this is what’s weighing on me now more than anything. Now I feel like a monster even more than I already did, and I’m scared I’m going to feel that way for the rest of my life.

The first thing that comes to mind is similar to what I felt back then; depressive suicidal thoughts. “Kill yourself and you won’t feel guilty anymore!” But I know, I’ve learned, that isn’t the answer. That won’t truly put myself or anyone I hurt at ease. The problem is now I don’t know what will. I may not ever be able to ease the pain of those I hurt, because I can’t make anyone feel better, no matter how much I’d like to. But maybe there’s still hope I can find some way to make myself feel better and not like the scum of the earth for possibly years to come if not longer.

So that’s why I’m posting this. I’d like to know what you, reading this (something I thank you very much for doing, by the way), think I should do. Because right now I really am at a loss. I don’t think moving on is going to be as easy as letting more time pass and just one day magically somehow being “over it.” I want some help figuring out what it is I need to do next.

Nova. I only played with you once, for a short time, in one game. I consider myself lucky for having got off without much damage. But I am friends with people whom you have impacted for a lifetime, and there is nothing more frustrating than seeing you just not get it. You want to help the people you’ve hurt? You can do so by thinking about THEM for once, and leaving them the hell alone. Don’t talk to them, don’t talk ABOUT them, don’t try to reconnect. None of that. They don’t want you in their lives. Period. 

And since you asked for advice, here it is; throw yourself into something else. Tumblr RP, forums, DnD, some other hobby, whatever. Just go for it. It may take years, but eventually you’ll forget journal RP and how much you miss it. At the very least, the sting and ache will subside, even if you actually longing for it does not. You just have to break out of the obsessive cycle of thinking about it, and thinking about what could have been. Go toward the future. Remember good things, but don’t dwell. I know it all sounds so much easier said than done, and it is. I personally used “fake it til you make it” to change my negative personality traits. I pretended to be the person I knew I could be. I DAILY examined the ways in which this person differed from the person I was at the time. By slowing making changes, by seeing what I could do in small doses, I got better.