Trying to find my path @obscuredawareness - Tumblr Blog

Darling, you have made it through every terrible thing that tried to destroy you. You are so much stronger than you know.

I hate to say goodbye to a platform I have loved, that had let me learn more about myself and my queer comrades and let me embrace that part of me, that honestly had a huge impact on my mental health, my growth, my understanding of the world, feminism, how to move on from abuse, how to embrace a religion I was made fun of for decades... I really appreciated how this was the one safe space for my LGBT views. There is a lot of bad on here (let’s be real, it’s only that I curate a specific dash that I have such a rosey view) but I am sad to still see it die like this.

It feels like an honest attack on the queer community. This was the only place I could safely find wlw things without it making me feel like I needed to take a shower. I was able to see so much of my community and feel like I was apart of it even when my depression was strong. But so it goes. I hope the next platform rises and we take and it is stronger than ever (and without the gross n*zis and ch*ldp*rn).

If you want to follow my art, I’m here : Instagram

I mostly draw body diverse ladies, some wlw and fantasy and horror stuff. Working on something big for a show so it’s a little barren, but I have a lot lined up!

Otherwise, so long and thanks for all the fish. </3

#goodbye #fuck you tumblr #queer artist

arkadykoshka

From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:

- don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.

- archive everything on your blog you want to keep

- tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.

- tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.

- go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.

- support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.

piczeltv

We at Piczel.tv are sad to see Tumblr’s stance against NSFW artists, and would like to offer up our services as an alternative to Tumblr’s arbitrary shadowbans, deletions, and general stupidity.

We’re happy to host adult artists who are looking for a new place to call home, and are planning a few key upgrades and features.

Effectively immediately though, our gallery upload size restriction has been removed, to be likely raised to 10MB in the near future for non-premium users. As always, we support image sets, and don’t compress anything. Firstly, for those that have been using tumblr as a portfolio, you’ll need a way to download all of your art, if you don’t have backups somewhere else. We are planning a tool for Piczel.tv that will import zip files full of images, including titles and descriptions if we are able. Second, we’re planning the following upgrades to piczel in the coming weeks: 1. Bulk upload/import to your piczel.tv gallery 2. Gallery UI cleanup and improvements 3. Gallery performance improvements 4. Gallery comments with in line image and custom emote support 5. Site-wide PMs (in the vein of tumblr asks, but better) 6. Archive button for your piczel account Don’t forget to follow us on twitter, we may be deleted on the 17th with everyone else. Until then, we’ll make posts here to keep everyone in the loop Please consider reblogging this to help artists in need.

sodomymcscurvylegs

Real talk, though, because it needs to be said: as much as we all joke that porn was the only good thing this place had left, the reality is that it being the only place where one could regularly engage with and promote sexual content being gone is really not understanding at all what makes this place special. I mean we all joke about “horny on main” and all that, but the reality is that for a lot of the LGTBQ+ community, particularly younger members still discovering themselves and members in extremely homophobic environments where most media sites were banned (but Tumblr wasn’t even considered important enough to be), this was a bastion of information and self-expression. For a lot of artists too, this was a great place to come and post NSFW work and get traction that became Patreon pages that became honest jobs. The problem with “family friendly” social media is that more often than not, the ones hit the most by the whole family friendly nonsense are marginalized groups that have no vehicles to express themselves. Stuff like YouTube consistently bans or flags simple content featuring something as innocuous as two men kissing as “adult” content and makes it hard for LGBTQ+ content creators to compete with their non-queer peers for a lot of those reasons. The ultimate problem isn’t even that banning of NSFW content, it’s the general mess surrounding it and unintended consequences to these groups. For MONTHS Tumblr has had a huge problem with porn spam bots and outright child pornography, and for MONTHS the majority of the userbase has been in general consensus that both of these things needed to stop. Tumblr did NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. When Apple finally removed their app from the store, SPECIFICALLY because of the child pornography, Tumblr decided to do what any rich corporation owning a social media site with zero understanding of what makes it popular would do, and decided that the best course of action was to eat itself like an Ouroboros. Rather than admit that they have done an absolutely shit job at keeping pedophiles off this website and rather than hiring the necessary staff to carefully moderate content, they decided to loose a poorly programmed bot that literally deleted perfectly SFW blogs with thousands of followers, and rather than properly handling moderation, they decided that it was best to simply go the lazy route and block anything even remotely NSFW. They run this site in the worst way possible, and I don’t understand how @support or @staff or their completely oblivious “CEO” plans to keep this sinking ship alive.

wilwheaton

the reality is that for a lot of the LGTBQ+ community, particularly younger members still discovering themselves and members in extremely homophobic environments where most media sites were banned (but Tumblr wasn’t even considered important enough to be), this was a bastion of information and self-expression.

wide-awaaaaake

Alternatives to Tumblr if Yahoo goes any further

Soup.io - well-known alternative to Tumblr. Reblogging, post types, themes, collab blogs, dashboard, artsy, great community already there. Soup can auto-import everything you’ve posted on Tumblr.

TypePad - Includes reblogging. Dashboard and post types similar to Tumblr.

Jux - Artful posts, beautiful blogging experience

bollymusings

Reblogging cause one day it just may be neccessary.

arubbishmedic

It became necessary

mckaytriarchy-2-deactivated2018

WordPress will also import Tumblr blogs.

theveryworstthing

i’ve gotten a lot of suggestions for pillowfort and mastodon and even newgrounds, but here are some other alternatives.

justsomeantifas

You’re fucking ridiculous if you think tumblr’s porn/nudity ban actually has to do with child pornography. Literally every other site can effectively moderate this issue and tumblr has been actively closing in further on their anti-NSFW move. Many sex workers and NSFW artists were removed starting last month after the iOS app was removed from the App Store. Look at FOSTA/SESTA, look at the moves throughout the year to push sex workers and NSFW artists away, look at the way Patreon, Paypal, Craigslist, credit card companies, etc. have over-policed this issue and forced sex workers away. This is all so obvious.

Also, explicitly banning and calling out “female-presenting nipples” - note there’s an exception if it’s after giving birth or during breastfeeding because OBVIOUSLY the only way breasts and nipples are okay is when you’re fulfilling your goddamn job of being an incubator and not just posting nipples wilfully or for (gasp) money. Because obviously, when we’re talking about the banning of child pornopraphy we must target “female-presenting nipples” and let everyone know that those are the real problem. Nipples are only okay when they’re “male-presenting” and in the proximity of a newborn that is confirmed yours.

Like c’mon… FOSTA/SESTA has been presented under the guise of fighting human trafficking just like these moves are no different. If they wanted to go after these very real issues then they would and they definitely wouldn’t be (dangerously) conflating the issues. Also why can I still look up violent pro-Nazi, antisemitic imagery but not a goddamn nipple??

BTW read into how Apple has been forcefully pushing for this move & how easily they can go after other NSFW-content websites and force them to comply.

thebigblackwolfe

I HAVE TO LAUGH

africanaquarian

Welp

sketchdeath

my aesthetic is the direct opposite of minimalism and its called clutterbitch

instoresnearyou

kontzept-deactivated20181209

here’s my small festive drawing for Chanukkah. i hope you’re all having a happy celebration! ✨🕎🔯

autumncozy

gnslnger-deactivated20160804

butterflyinthewell

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish followers. May the next several days bring you light and blessings.

walterwhitemediocrity

God killing B*sh on World AIDS Day

sua-sponte-deactivated20200331

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.