Okay, folks. So. Tumblr’s jumped the shark in a big way, and I’m not even just talking about indiscriminately blocking all “adult” content on a platform that IS, in fact, primarily 18+.
Many blogs, like the wonderful @blackkatmagic , that are not especially NSFW have vanished.
(And I for one LIKE being able to go to curated porn blogs run by actual people and have a chance of finding stuff to my taste, it was one of the things that kept me on this hellsite, but that’s another issue entirely.)
I know lots of people are talking about migrating, but none of us are sure to where yet. Pillowfort seems to be an option, some people are talking about Twitter. But for now, it’s a mess, and even if we knew where we were going, it’s often a huge process, and a lot of us have stuff on tumblr that ONLY exists there.
One possible quick solution to save your blogs, both NSFW and personal, is to import it to WordPress. I found this solution through from frantic googling on how to save an entire blog, text posts an all. There are several apps for downloading all the pictures from a tumblr, (Plently for Windows, but only a few paid ones for mac, of which Tumbelog Picture Downloader is working for me so far) but this is the only solution I’ve seen so far that allows you to save EVERYTHING. I downloaded my NSFW blog in like 10 min. My regular blog, which is significantly larger, is in the process of importing, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I will, of course, update you if I have any.
This tutorial I found worked really easily. http://quickguide (.) tumblr (.) com/post/39780378703/backing-up-your-tumblr-blog-to-wordpress
I put parenthesis around the .’s like we’re back in FF-Hell, just in case tumblr’s new thing about outgoing links kicks in. You know what to do.
To break it down, just in case:
Sign up for a WordPress.com account at wordpress (.) com/start
You’ll have to create an account, with your email, a username, and a password. They should send you a confirmation email immediately, check it, activate it, and you’re good to go.
On the site, it will ask you for a site name. That page asks you a bunch of other information too, but you only have to fill out the site name.
Then you have to give your site a URL. If you’re lucky, your tumblr URL is still available, if not you’ll have to come up with another one, sorry.
It will tell you if that option is still available for free.
Then it will ask you to pick a plan. Free is really good enough, I swear.
Now you’re set up! You can import your tumblr!
The only differences from the linked tutorial are that the Import button is now on the first level menu, not in tools.
Hit Import, then you have to follow the link for “other importers” at the bottom, to find the option for Tumblr.
Then you’ll have to sign in with tumblr, using your normal tumblr credentials. You’ll be redirected there automatically.
You’ll have to allow WordPress permissions on your blog.
Then your blogs, including all your sideblogs, will show up in wordpress.
Hit import, wait a WHILE depending on the size of your blog, and you’re done!
ALSO!!
I made my NSFW blog private for now, since I don’t know WP’s policy on NSFW.
This means that to access it, someone has to have an account and request access. But hey, part of our problem on this hellsite has been people going places they aren’t wanted, so I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. They can send a request from the landing site on your blog, you get an email, click a link in the email, and PRESTO, they have access.
To make it private, go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Go back and check, it took me changing the setting twice for it to actually stick.
tl;dr, you can import your entire blog to wordpress in just a few steps.
I’m going to tag the hell out of this, in no particular order. PLEASE reblog this and spread the word so people know it’s an option. If you’re having trouble, PM me, and I’m happy to help.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (COUNTDOWN: TWO WEEKS UNTIL I AM STANDING THERE IN MY VERY OWN SHOES) has put a metric ton of its publications online, and I’ve been working my way through them.
I know tumblr likes its badass dangerous women, and I myself have written papers on the art of the Gorgon, so I thought I would recommend this publication on Medusa and how her treatment in visual design and use as a magical icon evolved throughout the classical art world. It’s a really fascinating look at a complex and evolving legend.
A while back a ton of people saw a video of a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose. I was one of them. It was very sad.
So when places started proposing we ban plastic straws, I was like…
“Yeah! Fuck straws!”
But then the disabled community spoke up and tried to inform everyone that plastic bendy straws are essential for people with various health issues. Without them, people might end up having to make the choice of whether or not they can consume liquids in public. And that really sucks.
This community put a lot of thought and research into this and was unable to find another material that could be a suitable replacement in every circumstance.
They proposed a system where you could just ask for straws rather than places giving them out all willy-nilly. This would still reduce the use of plastic straws significantly without screwing disabled folks.
I assessed this new information and…
I CHANGED MY DAMN MIND.
*gasp* “The Frogman is a flip-flopper!”
Naively, I figured most people who consumed this new information would do the same.
But it ended up being a mixed bag of mostly sullen disappointment.
As I read the comments on various articles I noticed a weird phenomenon where people magically transformed into materials scientists.
Disabled groups thought long and hard about this. These groups did some great in-depth research. And all these groups pretty much came to a unanimous consensus that there are currently no satisfactory alternative solutions. They also found that plastic straws are actually a drop in the bucket of our waste issues. Furthermore, the “straws on demand” solution would make that drop pretty frickin’ tiny. The overall risk to turtle noses would go way down.
Despite seeing these conclusions thoroughly presented to them, people would think about the issue for about 30 seconds and be like…
“Okay, but what about paper straws? What about reusable straws? What about this? What about that? I have a metal straw that works great! Surely that will do!”
These internet dunderheads actually believed their 30-second brainstorm would come up with a sufficient solution that has not been thought of yet.
As if the entire disabled community is going to be like, “We did all of this research, spent all of this time looking for alternatives, committed all of these resources to spread our conclusions, BUT WE NEVER KNEW ABOUT PAPER STRAWS! Thank you, kind stranger! You have single-handedly solved this dilemma!”
I just have trouble wrapping my head around the kind of ego one must have to think they could solve an issue like this with an internet comment.
What makes it worse is some of these “what about” comments would be replies to actual disabled people. These sudden experts in the science of materials would start suggesting straw alternatives. And these disabled folks, who are probably exhausted and at their wit’s end, must decide if they should give these individuals explanations of why these genius suggestions won’t work for them.
“I know you aren’t feeling well, but can you do all of the research for me so I don’t have to spend 2 minutes googling shit?”
And when you try to tell these people they are being ableist and kinda shitty, they act like a wounded animal. Suddenly they are the victim. THEY WERE JUST TRYING TO HELP! Not trusting people who live with these problems is the height of privilege. And forcing them to make their experiences relateable while remaining calm and polite is exhausting.
Then someone made this amazing chart that couldn’t possibly make it any easier to comprehend.
And people were still responding to it with…
“OKAY, BUT WHAT ABOUT…?”
In conclusion…
IT’S OKAY TO CHANGE YOUR DAMN MIND.
Also…
YOU’RE NOT AS SMART AS YOU THINK YOU ARE.
(Unless you actually are a materials scientist and you are developing an alternative as we speak.)
@sirfrogsworth thank you for this, and for perfectly encapsulating what this whole experience has been like as a disabled/ill person who a) recently found out using a plastic straw greatly reduces my neuralgia pain and risk of aspiration, b) talked about it on the internet and c) has been living with relentless hate email, and redundant “but have you tried…” comments ever since.
And thank you for thinking about the subject with critical compassion and changing your mind, and being open enough to talking about the fact that you changed your mind. I think some people think changing their mind means they’ve made some sort of moral failing sometimes, and would rather continue to be wrong/hurtful but feel right, than actually address their own behavior and question their motives.
So thank you. Again. For this and the *barks internally* caption, it’s a mood 😂
2009 – GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites
2010 – FFN forums deleted
2011 – Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence
2012 – major FFN crackdown on porn
2014 – Quizilla shuts down
2015 – Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank
Didn’t quizilla have purges before finally shutting down? And I know basically every vidding home hot destroyed, repeatedly taking out the entire history of vidding online.
… they deleted Fandom Wank???
Well, not specifically. Journalfen failed completely and has never come back. FW was on Journalfen, so while you can see some entries on the Wayback machine, I think (?), the long comment threads aren’t archived.
2007 – Youtube starts using its “content ID” system to identify (and block) works that include copyrighted material in their database.
2009 – Greatestjournal shuts down, taking down fandom’s biggest collection of blog-style RPGs
2012 – Megaupload shut down by FBI; some (many?) fanvid archives lost
I thought there was also some kind of purge at Deviantart, but I don’t recall the details.
I’d like to remind folks that there was literally wank last month about why do we need the OTW.
Well, this would be why: we sincerely believed in the internet values of a decade or two ago, which involved owning our own servers if we wanted to see our projects remain stable, in the long term, online.
Worth mentioning: Yahoo purchased GeoCities, and was behind the decision to shut all those sites down.
Yahoo’s incompetence destroyed Delicious.
Yahoo owns Tumblr.
1356: 50% of monks.
People just… completely forget. I was there for all of the bans on fanfiction.net. You don’t know panic until you go to log in one morning and find out a bunch of your works have been deleted, gone forever, because some asshole arbitrarily decided that they wanted to ban something.
Mooncustafer 