A Hole Made For Me

Came across this poll today that was in response somewhat to the rumours that Tumblr is becoming a skeleton crew. This is a repost of the reblog I made on my art Tumblr.

(Everyone who reads this blog already knows this) For the past two years I have been slowly building a stable digital island by archiving everything on my site and tending to my newsletter + blog (if Tumblr ever goes down, anyone who wants to keep following me won’t lose access to updates, resources or old and new work – I’d suggest subscribing to my newsletter/blog or bookmarking my site to prepare for the inevitable).

I am not too worried about Tumblr coming down anytime soon, though I am annoyed once again that I have yet another platform in my queue of things I have to manually export to my site, in addition to Deviantart and Twitter. I really, really have to start making this a week long intensive project cos the languid way in which I have been migrating art/content is too chill. And I have something like over 10 years of internet presence to consolidate.

I always joke that if Tumblr goes down, I will retire from social media completely. I still have enough curiosity to sign up to things, maybe even scroll a bit, but I don’t know if I want my relationship of being online to be the same any more. Even on Bluesky, the newest social media that I am fairly active on, I’ve been very hands-off. The old way of scrolling through a timeline forever and forever, being an osmotic part of a digital culture, and dancing for an algorithm as an activity – the way of being online between the late 00s to late 10s – is no longer viable.

I don’t think I’ve ever had such a strong affinity for an online culture to anything besides Tumblr; not even Twitter inspires that feeling of belonging, despite posting a lot there at one point. It fulfills that combined passion for blogging, reading, resource-gathering, archival and community, and the fact that the feed remains chronological… well, this is my hole and I am made for it. It’s the only social media I am actually happy to be on. When Tumblr dies, that’s it for me. I will revert to blogging and RSS and forums.

#I am not at all panicking or anxious about Tumblr’s state rn
#like it’s bad but it’s just gonna coast for a while
#I still think it’s good to start archiving and exporting things tho
#god idk how to archive my inspiration/resource/normal meme blog