Dear Jeff, thereâs still time.
It may be too late for Tumblr, but itâs not too late for you.
I wanna give you some things to think about before we get to Dec. 17.
Tumblr is a great product. It is.
Despite all my criticism, itâs definitely a digital institution of gravity and has a solid presence on the Internet.
Itâs like 4chan but prettier, with a better user interface and your own micro-blog. You could find hardcore porn of any fetish and then cool down with relaxing aesthetics and mood boards.
Now, letâs get hypothetical.
Letâs assume you DIDNâT want this to happenâŠ
Youâre in a shitty situation.
Verizon has a gun to your head.
Your corporate overlords are forcing you to do something you may find morally repugnant. Theyâre forcing you to say things you donât want to say, or at least writing them for you and putting your name on it.
(âFemale-presenting nipplesâ? Jeff, please, you donât want to be associated with that phrase.)
Theyâre destroying one of the greatest social media on the market, and youâre the fall guy.
They threw you under the bus, didnât they, Jeff?
You couldâve resigned. You could have quit in protest, Jeff.
You could have walked out of the room or hung up the phone the moment you heard this was coming.
Donât bother justifying or making excuses for them.
Yes, this IS about âfreeâ speech.
Verizon is a private entity and may own the medium and thus may have a ârightâ to control their content.
But, even if it canât be considered an
âattackâ on free-speech, it certainly is an outright REJECTION OF IT!
They may only be banning visual âadultâ content, for now. It will only be a matter of time before written âadultâ content is purged, too.
Itâs also about branding and visibility.
Without any content that could be labeled âadultâ, what is Tumblr?
Itâs Instagram, but blue.
Thatâs your âedgeâ now, Jeff.
Tumblr is over. Itâs a lost cause. Thereâs nothing that will stop Verizon from rendering it irrelevant.
There is no true equivalent social medium to what Tumblr will cease to be.
Thereâs nothing you can do to stop any of this.
But you still can save your self, #JeffDâOnofrio.
Today is December 10, 2018.
Youâve got SEVEN (7) DAYS, one week, to quit.
If you do, I promise to take down all the negative things Iâve said about you on here.
If you really ever did care about a âbetterâ Tumblr, you have a week to prove it. Donât wait for them to fire you, and make you go down as the guy who killed Tumblr.
You probably wonât ever see this message. But at least you can never say: âgee, I wish Iâd thought of that before I made the worst mistake of my career.â