So, today, out of a mixture of boredom, disgust with censorship, and just a sense ofĀ āwhat the hell?ā I randomly reblogged some of the stuff that came through my feed. Iām 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 Iām going to move (which I havenāt). So, this was more just to pass the time constructively <cough> than anything else.
1) OMFG, generating traffic by reblogging other peopleās stuff is so much easier than actually creating your own content! Makes sense, right? I mean, thatās 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 āart.ā 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 Iāve witnessed over and over: āblog exhaustion.ā Someone starts a Tumblr, decides that theyāre going to rule their niche, and they post insane amounts of stuff for about a year. Often, though, they just canāt keep it up, and they say āFuck itā 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, itās always been moreĀ āslow and steady.ā With a lot of variety.
3) The fact that I actually managed to claw my way to 20,000 followers (okay, 19,999, but whoās counting?) by creating only originalĀ āartā <snicker> seems a little more noteworthy than I had previously given myself credit for. It sure wasnāt easy. And thatās 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 peopleās 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 hasnāt arrested the slide in my followers. Iāve lost about 4% of my viewers since Tumblr made my blog inaccessible. So, the platform is continuing to deflate, and Iād suspect that a lot of my current followers donāt even log on any more. I donāt 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 canāt be a good long-term indicator. Then again, thatās 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 Iām on my Android tablet, I can surf to a blog and see everybodyās older images, uncensored. I donāt know who Tumblr thinks theyāre kidding. This is just stupid. Couldnāt you have just done a better job of policing kiddy porn (and Nazis, too, while youāre 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.
6) Finally, this business of blocking my entire blog, when I have literally hundreds of images (mostly Sissy Stuff,Ā ātis true) that are nothing more than risque, is, as they say,Ā āBullshit.ā Tumblr, if your tools were truly sophisticated, youād honor the work of the bloggers that built your platform, all of them, by at least attempting to automatically try to determine,Ā āOh, this pictureās cool; this one aināt.ā Instead, youāve simply blotted my entire blog from the face of the planet without so much as a howdy-do. Jerks.