St John Starling

Retired jazz musician, he/him, adult Author of WHAT MANNER OF MAN 🦇 and A COMPANION IN VICE 🫀 Follow me on BLUESKY in case this place goes down. All factual errors in my posts are on purpose, actually.

[stjohnstarling]

ST JOHN* STARLING; a bird of ill omen and author of unorthodox queer novels. My artist and editor is @beastliness.

For my nonfiction work on how we can start rebuild the internet that we want, read Regreening the Digital Wasteland.

For the creatures I make, see #my little guys.

My next project is A COMPANION IN VICE — a subversive tale of obsessive love and mad science. 🫀

Martin Rem knows that Dr. Avenroyth isn’t dead, because he brought him back with his own hands — although that’s more than he can say to the police. When people connected to Dr. Avenroyth start dying under mysterious circumstances, Martin must find a way to protect his own dark secrets, as well as the life of the man who may be trying to kill him. Can love survive the frightening transformation the doctor has undergone? What lies at the heart of this labyrinth of institutional corruption, professional ambition, jealousy, sex, and death?

A Companion in Vice is soon to be published serially, a chapter per week, in my (free!) newsletter.

JOIN THE EXPERIMENT HERE ->

Also available: WHAT MANNER OF MAN — a blasphemous gothic romance about a priest and a vampire. 🦇

Read WHAT MANNER OF MAN 💌 (free) or get the complete & final edition on Itch.io / Amazon

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🗡️ PATREON | KO-FI | BLUESKY | NEWSLETTER 🗡️

[dreadwedge]

“My Fellow Americans.” Instead of saying “happy pride” to me on June first I propose that you construct a substitute phrase that similarly combines two emotions moving outward from the center of this emotion wheel.

[stjohnstarling]

In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

Extremely good idea - how are you doing it? Through the contact us option?

[stjohnstarling]

Yeah it’s one of the options on the Contact Support form:

[dreadwedge]

As a transsexual woman 👩 who has had multiple experiences ‼️ I have found 🔎 that the biggest block of cheese 🧀 is usually the one ☝️ that has the largest size 📈

[dreadwedge]

mature content

[stjohnstarling]

In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.

[beastliness]

ORNATE

[shinesurge]

clingy

[3liza]

we are learning a lot about tumblr today

[sreegs]

today:

pjackk was unbanned because @3liza finally got through to staff about a fucking weird bug with the support form that got the metal bastard banned because it claimed he posted some Bulgarian nationalist shit (this was not a real post that pjackk ever posted). other high-profile bans like @garaks-padded-bra was hit with the same bug and its being investigated

there was a new feature added that lets people see your comments on your blog page in a tab like your likes or followers. everyone was mad that it was not toggle-able. it was actually toggle-able.

pjackk was either banned again or he deactivated and we'll know in 30 days when the deactivation grace period is up and his blog is renamed

[stjohnstarling]

Very exciting day on Tumblr dot gov.

[stjohnstarling]

We are having fun. On the internet

[stjohnstarling]

Very exciting day on Tumblr dot gov.

[sreegs]

turning a big dial taht says "pjackk is banned" on it and constantly looking for approval like a contestant on the price is right

[sreegs]

You should take some time to read @3liza's post documenting the Phantom Report Bug (which she deserves praise for doing, thank you eliza) and see how fucking broken Tumblr's report tool is. I also want to reiterate something she is once again correct about: no one files bug reports. I have first hand experience working at Tumblr and I remember having to tell web devs on Staff "i saw a post about someone talking about a bug" and they were unaware because no one followed through to file a bug. I have fixed bugs that I saw people posting about that were in my domain (I'm a mobile dev) but were not in the system. No this is not an endorsement of "complain about it enough and eventually someone will see it", this is an endorsement of "file a bug report directly to computer companies and people will most likely read it and probably fix it". I mean it this is not a Tumblr-only thing. I've seen this at every company I've worked for. Just fucking file a bug report please I beg you, software gets complicated and the devs are just unaware that there's a bug until you bring it to your attention. And they want to fix the bug! I promise!

[3liza]

WHAT AM I ALWAYS SAYING TO YOU PEOPLE. COMPLAINING GETS THE GOODS. YOURE NOT ALLOWED TO GET MAD UNTIL YOUVE COMPLAINED ABOUT THE PROBLEM TO SOMEONE WHOSE JOB IT IS TO FIX IT

[3liza]

POLITELY

[stjohnstarling]

In light of Tumblr's reporting system being straight up broken and banning people at random, if you want to make sure we don't lose touch, here is my newsletter.

[3liza]

none of you ever doubt me again

[pjackk]

Dont be very woried about me since i deserve all of this

[3liza]

IM HAVING TACHYUCARDIA

[snarp]

??????

I don't think I reported this @bobacupcake "h-hello?" from 2023

What do you mean you applied a content label

[bobacupcake]

dont worry . staff reviewed my appeal that i never submitted and unmarked my whole blog as mature (?)

[3liza]

something weird is going on with the reporting system. T&S is now officially aware of it, but nobody knows what exactly is going on yet so i have no further information sorry. someone said a user received an email like this about pjackk? if you know who it was, link me

[quinnifredtt]

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/orcboxer/811920161422622720

Here is the post you are asking about

Reblog by @orcboxer · 3 images

💬 60  🔁 3970  ❤️ 7003 · ???????????????????????????????????????????

[3liza]

what the fuck?

[3liza]

tumblr support just sent me a message informing me they reviewed this post^^^ and determined it did not violate their community guidelines so they didn't do anything except apply a mature content label. but i never reported this post. why would i report this post. why would they put a mature content label on it

[scanning4lifeforms]

at the risk of sounding paranoid, istg they do this so that when posts and blogs get censored/deactivated that "aren't supposed to," they'll be able to point to a glitchy system and say "see? we just haven't worked out the bugs yet, we're not nuking people on purpose"

[3liza]

^^^ second user agrees with you abt this. @zingring, you got any idea what's going on?

[3liza]

this is confirmed to be happening regularly

garaks-padded-bra (not) reported by dungeonsanddragonsfifthedition and pegglefan69 and at least one other person, and then banned based on the bug apparently (all GarakPB does is post about star trek, ive never seen them break site TOS at all)

bobacupcake (not) reported by snarp for saying "h-hello??"

pjackk (not) reported by orcboxer for saying "Bulgaria is Following in Greece's Footsteps. Here's How We Stop It." and then getting banned for it(???!!!)

no i dont think anyone on tumblr staff is doing this on purpose, there's no political or personal reason that would target this kind of thing at a star trek goof blog and a nice little illustration blog or a funny blog about medievalisms. i mean sure pjackk had enemies from killing all those dogs but this just looks like a really weird bug. much like pjackk

QUESTION: HAS ANYONE WHO HAS RECEIVED THESE EMAILS TRIED TO REPORT IT TO TUMBLR SUPPORT? if so, what happened?