just found out you can´t change which blog your primary blog is

bonus panel

I've been here for fourteen, almost fifteen years pretty damn consistently. I have become very jaded to things that will "kill tumblr". I have a post about it somewhere, the way that panic happens in one form or another about every six months. I wonder if it's getting notes down a reblog chain lol.

The closest it's gotten was the porn ban, after which the site's numbers and relevancy never recovered. But it has continued to truck along and be a weird little home for a specific kind of internet user.

It's had its ups and downs. It has, from my understanding, basically never been profitable, which has led to some absolutely bizarre business decisions and plenty of reasons to think the site might find itself suddenly shuttered because the money simply ran out. On top of which, the user base in general despises change and screams like a baby otter going into the water for the first time at the merest sniff of it. A lot of changes to the site that people have hated have settled into new normals relatively fast. The site has basically always been low key broken. Users have always relied on extensions like Missing E and Xkit to make it functional. Changes to the site have often come in without warning to extremely hostile reception. I don't have at all the kind of time to get into the bigotry and the bots and all the other reasons this site is a shithole. There is always a reason, every few months, to believe tumblr is dying. There are always people threatening to leave. I've been here for all of it. I'm taking all of it into account when I say this.

This…

This, in my genuine opinion, will kill tumblr.

Not the site, not immediately, it isn't going to just blink out of existence because of this. It'll continue to mosey along. There will still be users. Probably for years. But it *will* kill the exact brand of humor and interaction that is what tumblr is known for, is the reason the people who live here still stay here, is the reason we still get screenshotted and reposted to hell across other sites that still want our humor and bizarre insights.

The lack of ability to see where your OWN POST is going, what's being said on it, is both, as many other people have pointed more eloquently, actively dangerous on a site that already does not handle harassment campaigns or misinformation well, and also lethal to the very type of engagement that built the site. There can be no more joy in a haiku-bot or other gimmick blog additions, in gif reacts, in funny comments, in "investing at 1k notes", there can be no more "stop being funnier than me on my own post", no more free exchanges of resources and information that all go back to the person who first asked for them, no more collaborative storytelling, no fun little drawings of someone's cute pet, no more playing with jpegs like dolls. None of it works when we silo off the reblogs. None of it works when people aren't invited back into the fun, to trade comments back and forth, to *interact*.

The site will continue to exist, but if this update persists, the spirit of it will die. You have poisoned the well.

And it may happen slowly, but people *will* leave. Creators. Writers and artists. Business owners. Gimmick blogs. Prompt blogs. Aesthetic blogs. All of them but the biggest accounts will see their engagement dwindle or vanish, and conclude it is no longer worth posting here. The aggregators and curators will follow, when there is nothing left to curate. Eventually, gradually, but eventually, the dwindling of the site's last main appeal and relevance will take away your users, and that will ultimately take the site with it.

It might be intentional.

Maybe it was inevitable. Engagement and interaction has already been struggling, as the many posts about the reblog vs like ratios will attest. Maybe tumblr has been very slowly sliding into an offbrand version of twitter for years, the sort of social media equivalent of a cheap plastic action figure labeled Captain Steven Roger. Maybe even without this specific change, tumblr would continue to find smaller ways to discourage the very foundations of its community and appeal, the same way it already has by altering the UI to make it more difficult to reblog a post with tags or commentary than anything else, and eventually we'd slide far enough that that playful interaction would peter out regardless.

I'd like to believe that is an avoidable fate. Regardless, this change will *massively* hasten the process.

Tumblr the site won't go anywhere for a while. But unless this gets rolled back or altered to continue to allow people and especially OP to still see notes in aggregate, this *will* kill the only real reason people still come here.

Despite its many, many flaws, I have a genuine and fond love for this site. I know I am not alone in that sentiment. It is the reason tons of us who are still here, have been here for a decade or more. This update rips away the foundations of why we love it.

diluc reaches the end of his wandering, in the midst of a sneznayan snowfield.

on survival

I highly recommend watching this testimony from Aliya Rahman, the disabled woman who was dragged out of her car and kidnapped by ICE on her way to a doctor appointment in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.

Thank you members, for taking the time to be here today, and thank you staff for making this happen.

My name is Aliya Rahman, and I am a resident of South Minneapolis. I am a Bangladeshi American born in Northern Wisconsin. And I’m a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury.

Not all autistic brains do this, but mine fixates on sounds, numbers, and patterns. And while what the world saw happen to me exactly three weeks ago today on video was a terrible violation it is still nothing compared to the horrific practices I saw inside the Whipple center.

So I am here today with a duty to the people who have not had the privilege of coming home, and I offer this data because these practices must end now.

On January 13th on the way to my 39th appointment at Hennepin County’s traumatic brain injury center, I encountered a traffic jam caused by ICE vehicles and no signs indicating how to get around it. I had not wanted to pull in to a blocked, chaotic intersection, but verbally agreed to do so and rolled down my window after an agent yelled, “Move! I will break your f-ing window!”

His first instruction.

Agents on all sides of my vehicle yelled conflicting threats and instructions that I could not process while watching for pedestrians.

Then, the glass of the passenger side window flew across my face.

I yelled, “I’m disabled!” at the hands grabbing at me and an agent said, “Too late.”

I felt immersed in a pattern, and I thought of Jenoah Donald, an autistic black man killed by the police during a traffic stop in 2021.

I remembered mister Silverio Villegas González, who was killed by ICE in his vehicle last year.

An agent pulled a large combat knife in front of my face, which I thought was for cutting me, and later learned was used to cut off my seat belt. Shooting pain went through my head, neck, and wrists when I hit the ground face first and people leaned on my back.

I felt the pattern, and I thought of mister George Floyd, who was killed four blocks away.

I was carried face down through the street by my cuffed arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain injury and was disabled. I now cannot lift my arms normally.

I was never asked for ID.

Never told I was under arrest.

Never read my rights.

And never charged with a crime.

Approaching the Whipple center, I saw black and brown bodies shackled together, chained together, being marched by yelling agents outdoors. I continued to hear the word “bodies”, because that is how agents referred to us:

“We’re bringing in a body.”

“They’re bringing in bodies 7, 8 at a time, where do I put ‘em?”

“We can’t use that room, there’s already a body in there.”

You have no reason to believe you will make it out alive if you’re already being called a body.

Agents repeatedly had to stop and ask how to do tasks. I received no medical screening, phone call, or access to a lawyer. I was denied a communication navigator when my speech began to slur. Agents laughed as I tried to immobilize my own neck. I asked for my cane and was told no, pulled up by my arms and prodded forward in leg irons by agents laughing and saying, “Walk! You can do it, walk.”

Agents did not know if the facility had a wheelchair.

When I was finally placed in one to be taken to interrogation an agent taunted, “You were driving, right? So your legs do work.”

I pleaded for emergency medical care for over an hour after my vision had become blurry, my heart rate went through the roof, and the pain in my neck and head became unbearable.

It was denied.

When I became unable to speak my cellmate pleaded for me.

The last sounds I remember before I blacked out on the cell floor were my cellmate banging on the door, pleading for a medic, and a voice outside saying, “We don’t wanna step on ICE’s toes.”

When I opened my eyes at Hennepin County’s emergency room, I learned I was brought there to be treated for assault.

The impacts of DHS detention on my physical, mental and financial well-being and safety have been very severe, but I do not deserve more humane treatment than anyone else, US citizen or not. And I am here today with a strong spirit and a duty to the many people who haven’t had the privilege to tell their stories or see their loved ones come home. I am extremely distressed by the pattern that violence from law enforcement has been happening to black and indigenous communities for centuries, and to DHS survivors for over 20 years.

We call ourselves a civilized nation, but we lack rules and accountability around what a person claiming to be law enforcement is permitted to do to another human being.

crossing in snezhnaya

Manga timeline lines up that they could have met a few years back in Fantasy Russia. Just saying.