Is it me or are they trying to get rid of rp/rp related blogs all together from the site?
I honestly don’t know. I think (and remember I’m just a random somebody and it’s just speculation and opinion) that ultimately what’s going on is that since this is an American company, we’re dealing with American politics. We already know there was influence here (a lot of it actually) during the last election. Tumblr, just like every other company, is running on profit. Therefore, what they’re doing is focusing on the advertisers and what they want rather than what the consumer base wants.
And so we started first with getting rid of the ‘adult’ content. But we know that’s not working. The porn bots adapted the day after, and the posts that they promised wouldn’t be affected are. Take for example my strawberry post. It was in early July, aka Independence day time. My post was a berry dessert with blueberries (for the ‘stars’ in the flag) and strawberry halves lined up (for the stripes) on a white frosted cake. Now if you’ve ever looked at a strawberry cut in half lengthwise, you can probably imagine what the silly bot was thinking. But it was a recipe for a dessert. There’s no reason for that to be blocked.
Also I think that the majority of the outspoken people here (and I don’t just mean active users I mean the people who reply to posts, and keep reblogging ones with more information) would be considered ‘liberal’ or ‘democrat’ people. There’s been studies that more liberal folks are also more creative. Also a lot of them are also not religious (like specifically call themselves Christians) and the people wanting to run ads aren’t targeting that group of people. It feels like they’re targeting the ‘republican’ type people, the WASP types (White American Straight Protestant is what it stands for, but it really applies to white cishet Christians). Now I realize there’s a lot of people here from all over the world, but the percentage of people here that are American is larger, since tumblr an American company. So basically tumblr is trying to please the advertisers wanting to appeal to the ‘family values’ (or the homophobics, depending on how you look at it) Christian (but the aggressive ones) etc., not the LGBTQIA+ non-religious kind which is what’s mostly here now. Though the more tumblr messes with those of us that aren’t targeted by the majority advertisers, the more we find other places to work, and end up leaving the site to those that are of that ideology. That’s what I’ve done for the most part, at least 75% of my RPing is now done over on Discord.
I’m sad that the resources I’ve found here will soon be lost, but I am also glad for all the people I’ve met here and all the things I’ve learned. We can agree to disagree and still be civil to each other. I’ll be here until the site is dead, I’m too stubborn not to. But this is also a multi-faceted lesson. Ultimately your consumers should be your #1 priority, or you’ll end up catering to the wrong people and driving your reason for existence away. Also please remember that which side you personally support has no bearing here. It not about them vs us, it’s about a company not listening to their consumers and driving them away.
