StarbaseK

So, today, out of a mixture of boredom, disgust with censorship, and just a sense of “what the hell?” I randomly reblogged some of the stuff that came through my feed. I’m not going to put up any new material of my own (even though I have literally hundreds of new captions already drawn and ready to go) until I figure out where I’m going to move (which I haven’t). So, this was more just to pass the time constructively <cough> than anything else.

Things I learned:

1) OMFG, generating traffic by reblogging other people’s stuff is so much easier than actually creating your own content! Makes sense, right? I mean, that’s literally what this platform was designed to do: make it stupid easy to pass along things you like. I always sort of suspected this would be the case. But I was determined when I started my blog five years ago that I was only going to post original “art.” But yeah, in one day of aimless screwing around, I generated more Notes and Reposts by a factor of about three than any day previously.

2) I can see, though, how tiresome it would be to have to continue such a high rate of posting. And this is something I’ve witnessed over and over: “blog exhaustion.” Someone starts a Tumblr, decides that they’re going to rule their niche, and they post insane amounts of stuff for about a year. Often, though, they just can’t keep it up, and they say “Fuck it” and disappear. (Either that, or 1) their content niche was so narrow that they ran out of interest, or 2) their dicks simply fell off because of constant wanking to their feeds, or 3) they just got a life.) For me, it’s always been more “slow and steady.” With a lot of variety.

3) The fact that I actually managed to claw my way to 20,000 followers (okay, 19,999, but who’s counting?) by creating only original “art” <snicker> seems a little more noteworthy than I had previously given myself credit for. It sure wasn’t easy. And that’s not to denigrate people that just repost. After all, where do you think I got the images and inspiration for a lot of the captions I created? From other people’s feeds, of course. And I thank you! But getting to 20,000 followers by posting nothing but originals: not a bad showing.

4) Even having what I previously would have considered a great day hasn’t arrested the slide in my followers. I’ve lost about 4% of my viewers since Tumblr made my blog inaccessible. So, the platform is continuing to deflate, and I’d suspect that a lot of my current followers don’t even log on any more. I don’t know if Tumblr as a whole has seen a 4% drop off, but if the trends on my blog are typical of the platform, that can’t be a good long-term indicator. Then again, that’s been going on for a while: this may just have accelerated it.

5) I still get plenty of hardcore porn in my feed. Likewise, if I’m on my Android tablet, I can surf to a blog and see everybody’s older images, uncensored. I don’t know who Tumblr thinks they’re kidding. This is just stupid. Couldn’t you have just done a better job of policing kiddy porn (and Nazis, too, while you’re at it), and call it good? Was gaining new viewers in Indonesia really going to pay your advertising bills? I scoff at the very notion.