With
skill and humor, this exercise can fill the void with engaging
nonsense. But instead of confining such mind-flexing and tongue wagging
to – let’s call it “small talk raised to the nth” – mindless authors of
visual and audio communications commit their stuff to digital media,
paper, or art materials. Their allegorical erections may look impressive
but a few of us do sense the hot air in excursions common to sociology,
behavioral “science,” and symbol-minded treatises like The
Interpretation of Dreams. We notice too how useful a ploy this can be
for selling ideas.
“I
don’t like to think,” a young man once told me ( his exact words). This
stunning confession from an otherwise fine young person was to me
direct evidence that his mind was deformed by a defective system of education that dates back to John Dewey. It marked him as an asset of amoral strategists who care more about an agenda
than the welfare of their fellow human beings. It is beyond sick that
the young in America who, like this individual, “don’t like to think”
must depend on “authorities” and “experts” who despise the collective
wisdom of people smarter than they, garnered over many centuries,
regarding the most important things in life.
The
drift from reality in so many young minds today – thanks to the
progressive dismantling of intelligence in the public schools – must
halt if living in a civilized society still means anything at all.
Legit, does the apple store not feature Twitter or Pixiv app? Because both those are swimming in NSFW content and thats is where the artists are fleeing to. And we can use that to gauge if Tumblr will (sigh) see reason and ultimately lift the NSFW blacklist as that has neither stopped the bots or appeased Apple.
Since Tumblr’s fate ultimately depends on allowing NSFW content, its a question of how far they’re willing to push NSFW content out since its also crashing their notably large NSFW user base. So at some point Tumblr either has to cut its loses with Apple or drop the ultimate bomb by changing its TOS and banning NSFW entirely.
As i’m using tumblr primarily to find artists to commission, let me
give my perspective on why Tumblr was the best platform before the NSFW
blacklist (which ultimately effects even SFW commissions when whole
accounts are invisible). A lot may be obvious considering people will
crawl back after being deleted time and time again, but openly
acknowledging why is necessary to find a replacement.
As while I might flex the effort to expand over multiple sites: I’m
going to guess most people/potential customers are going to stick to
one because, as recurring, Time.
1. Its mobile :
nothing can compete unless it has a mobile friendly app. I mean thats whats killing it right now, people can’t get the app! And compared to
say, Deviantart app, Tumblr is a good one (blasphemy). For example,
even if there is a feature on Deviantart’s app to delete art
notifications without going to desktop, the fact i haven’t found it is
BAD. Even if Piczel had more features it NEEDS an app. This is why Furaffinity
and Hentaifoundry are negligible alternatives. ( FA has an unofficial
app but that’s just asking for your account to be hacked)
2. Scrolling is the business: not even swiping comes close.
Just having to click on a icon slooows the process down exponentially.
With scrolling its very easy to keep up with current events such as “I
just opened my commissions”.
Oh and i also don’t have to delete the vast majority of notifications
since i just scroll on by. Time is Money.
3. Being able to reblog beats the snot out of just saving in a gallery: Its just helps
everyone. I’m not going to rattle on too long about the obvious here but
if Its easy for artists to make status updates, its easy for me to keep
track. Fellow artists and customers can spread the word. I don’t follow
mere onlookers on Pixiv or Devianart, but I do here and on Twitter. I
can remember who does commissions, whose open at the moment. I know when
they close. etc. etc.
4. Journals and updates in the first place:
again, if for instance Pixiv mobile has artists journals/status/polls
etc. The fact I haven’t found it is veeeery bad. Which is very annoying
when I’m trying to use these platforms to give artists my money.
5. Not just personal messaging but instant messaging : even if another
competitor’s private messaging system (and be damned if you don’t even
have that) is technically at the speed of light, if its not that
scrolling response, its killing response time. Having to refresh and instinctively
treating all interactions like an email. Not in today’s world.
6. Tags Tags Tags:
Perhaps i’m using Piczel’s gallery feature wrong, but i’m having a hell
of a time pulling up anything with its tags feature. And a working and
robust tag system is essential. One of the many reasons why Twitter is
such a bad alternative. Limited characters means limited tags, and even
though Tumblr’s website wide search is silently limited to the first 20
(or 5), its way better than Pixiv’s ten or having to sacrifice talking
about the piece to cast the widest net on Twitter.
7. Sub- accounts are god-like:
Hey, remember when Ted Cruz’s twitter “liked” that porno? Yea, being
able to hide your likes, who your following etc is great feature as even
online aliases need anonymity these days. More over, not having to make
a completely separate account to divide your personal life, art life,
SFW/NSFW, political or whatever is amazing and again saves time.
To
not belabor my point, streaming and gallery sites just won’t do. Even
as I cast nets over instagram and Twitter and Newgrounds and whatever else. On Tumblr, it feels like
I’m browsing for an artist instead of hunting for one: which has
ultimately dramatically increased the number of commissions I’ve been
able to order over the past several years.
Even through all the mess, nothing comes close to Tumblr. Pillowfort, way off in the distance, may ultimately usurp the title but until then its the starving artist’s stock market crash.
Its doubtfull that pillowfort will ever amount become much of anything as long as it doesnt offer free accounts, and because sites like newgrounds and deviantart limit what you can do unless you are willing to pay for it, there isnt any other site that is as risk free , and free in general as tumblr is or was.
That is certainly true and it is only the hope that after it officially opens and its start up costs are resolved that it can move to an ad-based revenue system. As there is only two realities: the user is the customer or the user is the product.
The cause for doubt being that being openly NSFW friendly will deter advertisers like leprosy. I’m not too deterred by a “premium” feature (its honestly a miracle/redflag that Tumblr doesn’t have one) if its within reason. But again, these are distant aspirations.
Crowdfunding in mind, I’ve seen a number of artists move to the open source Mastodon system which is both Tumblr-like and, depending on the user run “instance”, NSFW friendly. But this Wild West style system has its risks. Being run by the community, it WILL ultimately need said community to support it financially and with bodies willing to work for free as administrators and programmers. Oh and its stability will subject to the whims of net-revolutionaries who tend to fall out and in with drama like your mother’s favorite 80s band.
In order to be a true succesor to Tumblr a site has to be a combination porn, politics, and other interrests blogging site, be lgbt friendly, be free or at least have free accounts, and have a large community. Now because any site that becomes the place where the tumblr refugees move to will get a large community, that last one isnt an issue, however any place run by fickle net revolutionaries cant become a bloggjng site like tumblr simply because the personal views of the revolutionaries might result in topics suddenly being off limits making those kinds of sites less interresting for the exodus.
When the wind, behind our eyes swell Starring down all, who generalize well A chemical change of the spirit Will be the exchange for our visit
Putting more makeup on the masks that we wear Turning our nightlights on in the daytime to scare
If we say that (we want it) We only want it with the lights out If it’s a game, well (we want it) We only want it with the lights out
If we enter, through the front door With the keys we stole the night before Now we have right to be the masters Of the tangles of disaster
Ladies and gentlemen it’s time to unveil If this is the moment now to ask do we dare?
If we say that (we want it) We only want it with the lights out If it’s a game, well (we want it) We only want it with the lights out If we survive this (we want it) We only want it with the lights out So delegate it! (we want it) We only want it with the lights out
Turning our nightlights on in the daytime to scare If this is the moment now to ask do we dare?…
this post will be updated as I find more websites to add! please check with the original before reblogging to see if there’s an updated version, and message me with corrections or more suggestions if you have them!!
websites in red have explicitly forbidden the posting of NSFW content.websites in orange allow certain types of NSFW content or have questionable / unclear guidelines.
instagram.com – photo and video posts, excellent tag search
newgrounds.com – an oldie but a goodie, allows a ton of media types
piczel.tv – allows both streaming and posting art / photosets to a gallery
pixiv.net – huge anime art community, allows livestreaming
vero.co – app only, similar to insta but with MUCH more privacy control
chat or forum based
aminoapps.com – community-based, has blogs + chat, custom themes
discordapp.com – great chat app, text + voice, can join infinite servers
reddit.com – literally a community for everything, SO MANY CAT PHOTOS
18+ only
bdsmlr.com – microblogging + social media for people into kink
blogr.xxx – a tumblr clone created specifically for sharing porn
fetlife.com – considered one of the biggest kink communities online
libertine.center – beautiful + modern site for posting irl nsfw and kink stuff
thefetlibrary.com – for posting of erotic stories, replaces bdsmlibrary
paid platforms
patreon.com – subscription-based access to many diff types of content
typepad.com – similar to wordpress but with reblogging and a dash
up-and-coming platforms
pillowfort.io – closed beta. should function almost identically to tumblr but with many many improvements
poizen.me – development alpha. gorgeous website for artists to post art AND track comms
this one’s still early in development but looks incredibly promising as a platform and super pretty to look at!! go snap up a username before all the good ones are taken! favouritism what’s that
qink.co – pre-alpha. 18+ only. plans to be a kink-oriented replacement for tumblr.
defunct platforms
(so people will stop telling me i forgot them)
jux.com – shut down in 2014 due to lack of funds
shoandtell.me – now redirects to someone’s personal blog
soup.io – more or less closed down this year due to GDPR issues
ways to save your current tumblr posts
use the wayback machine! you do have to archive each page of your blog individually but once you do all the content, including media, will be saved exactly as it was at the moment you archived it.
wordpress allows you to directly import whole tumblr blogs, and if i recall correctly it’s something both dreamwidth and pillowfort have said they are working on.
tumblthree is a great tool with a ton of functions including downloading whole blogs, only posts tagged with a certain tag, all the posts you’ve liked, etc. etc. along with being able to download every type of media hosted on tumblr (pictures, videos, audio, everything). it also has a proper GUI so no computer knowledge required beyond downloading and running programs!
if you have some knowledge of computers you can try this github solution which uses a python script to download your whole blog to your computer. even if you don’t know anything about programming or the command line they give a very good beginners tutorial on how to use it so you should still give it a shot!
if that’s still a little daunting you can try soarcodes’ tumblr post that also has a decent tutorial!
here’s another python script that should allow you to archive all the images from your blog or your likes, though it requires some knowledge of python and the command line or very very good google skills.
some notes
edit: please stop commenting on this post to self-promote your porn accounts on other sites. those replies / reblogs will be deleted or hidden.
please note that every site on this list will have pros and cons, and i haven’t listed them here since this post would be a mile long otherwise. please do your research before moving completely over to another site in case they have policies you disagree with.
also, because I see a lot of misinformed people ranting about this: deviantart does not own the art you post. some years ago hot topic stole a ton of art from DA and sold it on merchandise and people assumed that DA gave them permission to do it despite there being literally zero evidence for that claim. DA explictly states in their TOS that you retain copyright and sole license of the art you post.
and related, mastodon does not allow or condone CP or pedophilia. the people spreading this info are misinformed about what mastodon is. it is not an exact twitter clone; anyone anywhere can host a mastodon instance using their personal computer as a server, which means mastodon as a company can’t do jack shit to moderate them. what they DO is permanently block all users from every other instance from viewing or interacting with that instance, and add that instance to a publicly viewable list along with the reason for the block. please give their post about anti-abuse measures a read before making snap judgements.
post version 5.1, 2018-12-04 23:46 AST
Thank You for this informative post, which enlightens my own research path, even though for @ganymedesrocks, an essential part of what we will be doing as from January 2019, is likely to migrate, toward professional art trade blogging networks.
CultML 