On leaving Tumblr
I’ve been on Tumblr for about six years with this blog. It’s a niche blog with a small number of followers (but WHAT amazing ones. I love you guys and girls) - at least when we look at the numbers that some of the bigger blogs have. Numbers are not important to me. And the number of followers doesn’t say anything anyway. I love this blog, and my only interest always was to create a blog that I would want to follow. And apparently, there are a handful of people who have the same kind of interests as I have. My photography-blog @tvoom is bigger. The number of people following this blog and the number of notes on some of my photos - to me personally - are mindblowing. Even though this blog probably still doesn’t count as a big blog, I would have never expected that my photos will ever attract this attention. My more experimental photo-blog @tvoom365 is very small. One reason certainly is that I rarely post anything and hardly ever “promote” it. Or maybe the photos are not as good ;) But the feedback was always astoundingly positive.
One of the biggest mistakes I made in my time on Tumblr was to delete my writing-blog. Two years of writings and recordings were gone. I deleted the blog because I realized that the reason I made that blog in the first place was not a “reason” for me anymore. I was stupid enough to think that just because that one thing in my life which made me start writing (again) changed, I will have no reason to write anymore. HA! Well... at least I still learn. I might be stubborn but not THAT stubborn.
I learned two things through that:
a) Stories don’t have a meaning beyond the meaning that we assign to them. And we can assign any meaning we want to. So a story changes by how we read a story. You as the reader and I as the author are equal parts in the creation process. And neither your opinion nor my opinon is the “right” opinion or the “correct” way to understand or interpret a story. Because what’s in your head is nothing I can change anyway. So... I will not apologize for what’s in your mind. Because I didn’t put it in there. It’s the old “When a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it - does it make a sound?” thing. No, it doesn’t. The falling of the tree creates changes in air pressure. But "sound” is only created by the listener. And what that specific sound means to the listener... that’s dependent on the listener and highly personal. So much for “objectivity” ;P After this face-palm moment, I started to write and record again and gathered a tiny but wonderful audience.
b) Tumblr is not @staff or @support or a CEO or any person who “pulls the strings”. Tumblr is you, and me, and everyone who has a blog. A community only exists because of the people who take part in it. Agreed, the boundaries changed, but what we put within these boundaries... that is upon us. In the last five years or so, I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into doing my part in creating an environment in which a community can grow. I met dozens of wonderful, creative and amazing people, I was fortunate of having the privilege of being part of some of the coolest projects that I can imagine. And all of these things are and were only possible because of the people involved. People who do and did what they do and did DESPITE all the hardships. DESPITE all the problems. Who just did what they love doing and not to gain anything from it. I have the deepest respect for all the creators and curators of all sorts of genres on Tumblr. Because I KNOW how hard it is to keep something going for years and years and years. Thank YOU for doing what you do. And to those of you, that I have the privilege of working with directly (too many to mention): I love you all. And I am grateful for you. All I did and all I do was only possible because of you and the thousands and thousands of supporters, artists or no. Leaving Tumblr would mean that I’d not only give up on what I’ve achieved and what I’ve been doing for years, what I was part of building up, but it would also mean that I’d be giving up on myself. Heck... it took me decades to find out who I am. I will not give up on this crazy dumbfuck that I am ;P Because that is what I am. I am a person who creates, I am a person who loves to share knowledge, beauty, art, and sometimes (well... quite often) a stupid joke. I love to share my experiences and art in all sorts of ways. And since Tumblr never was a platform that allowed me to do this in exactly the way I wanted to, I always used other platforms as well. Tumblr’s video-player is probably the worst in the history of the internet, so I’ve been posting my videos to YouTube. Tumblr’s audio-player is a bad joke, so I post my audios to Soundcloud. And I embed that all in my Tumblrs.
Tumblr’s “adult content ban” will most certainly go down in internet-history as one of the most hypocritical “internet moves” ever. The interesting bit is that it probably will be known as “the porn ban”. Which is not even true. I’ve seen people post claims like that “Tumblr now defines nude-photography (or anything that the dysfunctional algorithms flagged) as porn and therefore bans it”. That’s not true. The truth is worse. The truth is not even that Tumblr bans genitals and therefore also porn. Yes, nudity and genitals are banned. And porn is banned. Smarter people than I wrote in much more intelligent ways than I ever could what’s bad about this. But rarely have I seen anyone write about the real big problem. The big problem is that the new community guidelines of Tumblr are sexualizing women by banning female nipples except for photography of breastfeeding and medical reasons. So, the legality of showing parts of the female body is based on the function. If the photo does not depict this function, the photo is deemed sexual. And sex is forbidden. While male nipples don’t have any other function (at least not that I’m aware of, please educate me) other than being an erogenous zone. Just think about this for a moment. Male nipples are allowed. Because banning male nipples... that is prudish, isn’t it? But looking at how incredibly hypocritical and bigoted the western world (and especially the US) is at the moment, this just fits, doesn’t it?
The question is: Should we let the idiots win? Only the unorthodox, the ones that pushed boundaries, the non-streamlined, the experimentalists - in short - the “un-normal ones” make the world evolve. “Conservatism” derives from “to conserve”. And we only conserve what is already dead so that it doesn’t start to smell. It’s too late Tumblr. This doesn’t smell. It already stinks.
Some people will HAVE to go to other places to not compromise on their art or self-expression, leaving Tumblr only a stump of what it once was and maybe will never recover from. Unless we creators find a way to stay true to ourselves and use the base of what is still here to create something new and amazing. As a curator of (also) artistic nude-photography, an occasional artistic nude-photographer myself, and an artist who also makes “adult-themed” art, Tumblr is dead for me in this specific area. Will I use a different platform for these things? Since “adult writing” is not banned (yet) I can continue here. For the rest: Maybe. I might re-open my Flickr (Flickr belongs to the same company btw... and allows artistic nudes... hypocrisy much? Edit: I learned that Flickr was sold to SmugMug) or I might start a DeviantArt account. I don’t know yet. I will certainly reference these new places in case I’ll decide to give it a go. Fact is that I will expand. Creativity is change. And no, we will not like each and every change. But hey... that’s life. As long as we change, we live. Also, I will certainly not let stupid, bigoted, greedy, hypocritical liars limit me. And the big lie is that it was never about “making Tumblr a better, more positive place”. It very much sounds like “Make Tumblr great again”, doesn’t it? It’s the same set of mind. The same priority: Greed. It was always only and exclusively about money. And apparently, Tumblr can make more money with actual Nazis still around and with nudity banned. I am German, my great-grandparents lived through a time in which real artists had to flee a place and the Nazis stayed...
Another thing: How is Tumblr a better, more positive place with the porn-bot problem still not being solved? Granted, we will not see any visual porn anymore, but the bots are still there. And they still follow and reblog posts, they add or even replace the original content (”thanks” to the prior Tumblr “improvement”) with links to shabby sex-sites and “sex offers”. That is your more positive Tumblr, @staff . Congrats! You fucked up royally. Because now it’s even evident that this was never your concern anyway.
Since @pwsfineartnudes cannot continue after December 17th, 2018, and I was asked to join @abstract-challenge (after Amy sadly left Tumblr for personal reasons), maybe that is one way to expand. So I will happily and gladly try to find ways to contribute to this - for me - very new and very different fascinating photographic adventure. Thank you for the challenge and the trust you put into me.
Rock on, my friends! You are Tumblr! You will only get out of it what you put in. You are amazing! Always have that in mind.
- Pete
