what even are any of these “alternative sites to tumblr in case it dies” everyone’s suggesting like i’ve never heard of any of these in my life do you really expect me to create an account on babar the elephant dot com or some shit and follow you there
Again going to mention MeWe they even fucking roasted Tumblr on their twitter page for their social media site basically saying that they aren’t going to do any of the bullshit Tumblr is doing. And guess what they actually address the problems on MeWe Tumblr should have addressed instead of doing this garbage they’re doing right now.
Oof. Idk, I thought about what I love about Tumblr and decided that the thing for me to do is to look at each of the alternatives and see what kind of queer community each one has.
I downloaded MeWe, signed up, searched open groups for “asexual” and “queer” and I forget what else, and found nothing. So I clicked on “lifestyle,” which seemed like where most sites categorize that stuff.
The groups that jumped out at me in the first few pages: “Christian American Patriots,” a firearms trade/sell group, a gun dealer, an open carry group, a group with a photo of guns over what looks like a “don’t tread on me” flag instead of a description, “SIG Pistols and More,” four separate groups that were suspiciously emphatic about being “WOMEN ONLY,” two groups that look a whole lot like evangelical cults, a militia, and a “pro-life” group.
There were lots of other groups, but they were all… Facebook-bland. I don’t mean all Facebook groups are bland. Just, like, they all reeked of something you would see your aunt share posts from.
I mean, other than the groups at the bottom that were basically for very niche personal ads. And, I guess, other than a ton of “homesteading” groups that seemed to either be “let’s trade eggs and stuff!” or “Fundamentalist Christian homesteaders that are secretly in militias!”
Ok, I just found the “alternative lifestyles” category, and it turned out to essentially be goths, atheists, nudists, and hippies. I’m very confused right now.
Holy shiiiiiit, then I clicked on “activism” and I need to go take a brain shower somehow. I get it now, it’s a primarily libertarian site that skews EXTREMELY conservative, and significantly older than Tumblr does. I’d bet anything that this is majority Gen X and Baby Boomers – either that, or their culture just comes off as much older than it should.
The activist section is mostly far-right groups: “preppers,” “deplorables,” “patriots,” more militias, “truthers,” people who want to discuss the “deep state oligarchy,” people who say they’re for transparency in government and then add “to dismantle the deep state”….
(That last one was especially disappointing because their name was too long to show up in the list, and cut off at “ActivistsUnitedFor Trans”)
I need to get one of the lists of alternatives people are passing around, and do the same with the rest of them.
Thank you for this excellent public service.
Also, regarding this or any other platform’s claims about never doing this: Literally two hours before this went down, I saw a post on my dash from staff talking about how they care about our creative freedoms and freedom of expression.
Companies lie for money. It’s what they do. The only centralized authority you can trust with something like this is gonna look an awful lot like OTW.
(And yes, I’m including pillowfort here. I absolutely trust they have the best of intentions, and they’re definitely structured to passively avoid a lot of tumblrfuckery – but organizations change. I do not trust that they will never pull a purge of their own for a damn minute, and neither should you.)
This is why i have that Bad Feeling about pillowfort – I suspect it’s only decent now because it’s a smallish community afaik – and why I’ve made a dreamwidth account, because as fair as I know it’s Livejournal: Ao3 edition
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