just going through an awkward phase from 12 to 29

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
houseboatmac
the-asexuality-blog

Just to make my position on the subject of Crab Day clear, since word is going around that the idea came from a highly objectionable person, I’m going to quote rather than reblog @skaldish:


This I agree with. I’ve seen other posts go around about it, so it wasn’t just that one person.

But to make it clear, I’ll take the time to explain to people why participating in Crab Day (and financially supporting Tumblr in general) is important:

It’s unfortunate, but in this day and age, large websites like this one can’t function without an exorbitant amount of income. For other social medias, the bulk of this income comes from Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions, often in the form of selling user data.

The thing y'all need to understand is that wealth is VASTLY different in the B2B economy than it is with B2C (business-to-consumer) economy. In fact, this is a huge reason why we’re in an economic crisis…because the US is a nation with two economies, and the power of the dollar is astronomically different between the two of them.

Tech’s standard of wealth is based in the B2B economy. Because Tumblr is in the Tech sector, it needs to play according to Tech wealth. Unfortunately, the way you earn Tech wealth is by selling Tech-related B2B products, and for social media websites, that product is user data.

It’s a competitive market that sets a new standard of rotten with every transaction. In order to acquire data that’s more valuable than your competitor’s data, you have to be less ethical about how you source it…and also be willing to cross moral boundaries in regards to who you sell it to.

If Tumblr finds no other way of sourcing income, they have no choice but to participate in this data market or shut down.

However, Tumblr is the home of the secret third thing. In this case, this secret third thing is to work with the community rather than exploit it.

(That’s what it looks like to me, anyway. I nether trust nor doubt Tumblr’s words; that’s not what’s winning me over. Instead, I’m curious to know where they plan to go with this, because this is unusual as far as business practices go and I think it would be cool if they’re trying to set a more holistic precedent for the social media of the future. I won’t be able to see that conclusion if they go bankrupt though.)

So yes, participate in Crab Day. Just because one unpleasant person also condones it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.

confuzedspamblogger

Wait- - how do you even send crabs??

the-asexuality-blog

This is for desktop; someone else will have to explain the app: Click the little house icon in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. In the TumblrMart box, scroll all the way to the right. You will then see two scrollbars on the right side of the box. Use the inner, smaller one to scroll down until you find the Tumblr Dashboard Crabs option.

crab day
stripedshirtgay
memewhore

image
collidedscope

the “bad guys” in hallmark movies end up always being the most respectful men ever.

because they will find out their girlfriend of 3 years (that they were about to propose to) went off to a random farm in minnesota, hours away from were the two of them built a life together, and she decided to just… stay there without even consulting him.

and then he decides to take a trip to make sure she’s okay, because this is generally alarming behavior, and then sees that she literally fell in love with her ex within one (1) week- and he wasn’t there, but you can TELL that they’ve made out a couple times.

and then she just strings him along for a few days, until fucking christmas eve, when she just breaks up with him and is like “i know we used to have the same values, but i’ve never loved you. mark makes me happier than you ever did. and you ONLY care about work, whereas i like christmas and fun, like a Good Person.”

and then, after finding out his entire relationship was a lie and he had his life turned upside down in a week and he got dumped on christmas, this guy’s just like “ok yeah that makes sense. i only wish you the best of happiness with mark. i hope you guys build a great life together in christmastreefarmville. thank you for everything.”

teashoesandhair

An AU where two Hallmark Christmas Bad Guys are both getting flights back to New York after being dumped by their respective Smalltown Blonde Girlfriends, and they bond over their shared experiences and fall in love in the departures lounge

ghostcasket

@teashoesandhair your wish is my command :)

Probably, Levi should be more upset.

Probably he is still in shock. Right? He looks out of his taxi window (it's not technically a taxi, just some guy named Corey who offered him a ride to the airport, because Uber doesn't operate in fucking Tinyville, Bumfuck Middle-Of-Nowhere, Utah) and tracks water droplets racing each other down the glass, because of course it's raining, and his bad knee is killing him. 

Levi sniffs and rubs at his eyes and then pulls out his phone and books a ticket back to New York, wincing as four hundred and twenty-six dollars are deducted from his bank account. 

And, like, he should definitely be more upset.

He just got broken up with. He was engaged, for God's sake. A four-year relationship… over. Just like that. 

Corey says, "Ten minutes to the station." 

Keep reading

original fiction
genderkoolaid
the-final-sif

I try to stay away from a lot of fandom discourse, but since I’ve been seeing this on my dash again and in tags, I feel the need to make a statement on this, particularly for any young fans who follow me that might get drawn into this mindset.

Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. It’s very easy to get drawn into it

Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually it’s pedophilia. Funnily enough, that’s also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because it’s an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, it’s nice and easy to say “Oh so you like pedophilia” rather then actually engaging with their argument.

The logic goes like this, although there’s many forms of it.

  1. “Pedophilia is bad.” -> Obviously, you agree with this. You’re a reasonable person, and the idea that anyone would do something like that to a child is horrible. This is a normal human reaction.
  2. “Because pedophilia is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.” -> Here you might hesitate, but it adds up, doesn’t it? The thought of pedophilia in any context probably gives you a bad feeling, that makes you inclined to go along with this logic. 
  3. “Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia is also bad.” -> Maybe you pause here, or maybe you don’t. But still, it adds up, it’s a very easy flow. After all, we’ve decided that that is Bad, so why would anyone Good want to create something like that?
  4. “Since people who create content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia are just as bad as people who engage in pedophilia in real life, it’s okay to harm them.” -> Here’s where you might pause again. The argument might not win you over entirely, you might not be willing to do harm yourself, but you may be a lot more willing to turn a blind eye to harm being done to someone. Or to consider it ‘justified’.
  5. The pattern now repeats for anything else that’s considered “morally impure”, and “pedophilia” is expanded and expanded, often to ridiculous points, such as merely shipping two underage characters. “Abuse” becomes any ship that the person pushing doesn’t like, for any reason. And so on and so forth.


This is the foundation of “anti” culture, and it’s important to be aware of it so you can catch this false equivocation. Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity. It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. 

A very handy trick for when you encounter this sort of argument, is to replace whatever the selected purity term is with murder. After all, we can all agree that murder is bad, but at the same time, we understand that a murder in a book =/= a murder in real life.

Let’s see that argument again, shall we?

  1. “Murder is bad”

  2. “Because murder is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.”

  3. “Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of murder is also bad.”

  4. “Since people who create fictional explorations of murder are just as bad as the people who commit murder in real life, it’s okay to harm them.”


Hopefully, it’s now easy to see why the above argument is fundamentally flawed.

Keep your eye out for purity culture in your fandom spaces, and when you see it, refuse to engage with it. Warn your friends if you see them falling into the same traps, although try to be kind about it; this is a very easy thought pattern to fall into. I don’t recommend trying to argue/debate anti’s. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Don’t let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and don’t control or shame others for what they create or consume.

Also, as a note, let me be clear about something. If you are uncomfortable with any of the above discussed things, or anything in general in fiction (ie, underage ships, murder, incest, abuse, penguins, needles, etc), that’s perfectly fine (it’s also called a squick, for those that haven’t heard that term before). Absolutely control your fandom experience by blocking people, filtering tags, unfollowing, etc. However, just because you are uncomfortable with something, does not give you the right to control other people. Other people have no right to control what content you create or consume, and you have no right to do that to them either. 

Okay?

necklace-of-sin

“It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. ”

coffee-queen448

“Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity.”

iwhumpyou

Fictional characters are not real people.

If I kill off a character, I am not a murderer.

letsmakeitwrite

Also, creators are not obligated to explore so-called ‘problematic content’ in only certain ways. Creators are allowed to create things simply for the enjoyment of it and do not need to justify their reasons for it or use said creations as a proclamation of their real life views and morals, because those things are not synonymous.

ao3 is a blessing fandom wank i jusr spent like an hour looking for what my ao3 tag was (and getting distracted by my own reblogs) cuz i haven't been active on tumblr in far too long
meeedeee
brettdoesdiscourse

Antis hate ao3 because their report button doesn’t function the same way Tumblr does. Each report is actually checked into by a real person on ao3 and thus, authors not breaking any tos don’t get taken down. Whereas Tumblr is shitty at best and often deletes blogs if a certain number of reports come in, regardless of if that content is actually present and breaking tos.

elfwreck

So before reporting a fic at AO3, read the TOS and figure out if the fic is actually against the rules, not “ugh this is so terrible it must not be allowed.”

AO3 was created to host fics that a lot of sites decided were too terrible to be allowed.

Also: Every single new tag on AO3 gets reviewed by an actual human being; wrangling is not an AI or algorithmic process. Tag wranglers know the current tagging trends in their fandoms.

Antis are also unhappy about this, because it turns out that a tag of “If you ship X/Y I will break your kneecaps” is considered a threat and not allowed.

ao3 wank yes i come back to tumblr specifically to reblog this
kawaiijohn
sproutfits

Hey. Minors following me. Internet safety is key!! NEVER include these in your bio/byf:

  • Medical diagnoses - this is nobody's business but yours. You don't owe anyone an explanation for why you are the way that you are
  • Trauma - same reason as above
  • Triggers - people can use these against you! Don't give people tools to hurt you. No one has to know what tags you block. Just block tags to stay safe!
  • Age - age is okay for adults to include but is iffy when you're a teen. Predators want this information, don't give people more than they need. Just state that you're a minor, that's all that anyone needs to know.

In general: stay safe. If you're not comfortable with every stranger out there having access to this information, you shouldn't post it on the internet.

Play devil's advocate and ask yourself about what would happen if someone searched for your information with intent to hurt you. You do NOT owe anyone an explanation!

casperscove-deactivated20221016

adding on to this post, i agree w all of OPs points, but i also highly advise against super young teens posting their face on the internet, its so easy to take peoples selfies + name and find stuff out like your school and then figure out the rough area in which you live. same with your phone number. be super careful about what you put out there. once you post it, it really is here forever.

psa tbh i was raised in the era of 'everone on the internet is a predator and wants to hurt you' so posting any sort of personal information feels very wrong like i don't have a linkedin cuz the throught of putting my real information in a publicly accessible place like that is abhorrent it honsetly scares me the sort of information kids these days will broadcast to the entire world apparently i'm an old fart now
nonbinaryrobot
evilwriter37

Saying “this niche, properly tagged, warned, and rated piece of fiction could theoretically hurt someone” is not a good argument. This properly labeled cookie with the allergen information at the bottom that contains gluten could theoretically harm me very badly, but only if I consume it. Tags are like nutrition labels, and warnings are like allergy information. If you know you have an allergy to something, the logic is to stay away from it. It is the same with fiction. I’m not running through stores yelling at people to take all the products with gluten off the shelves just because it could hurt me. Instead I ignore it and go to the gluten free section and find cookies that are right for me. And if running through a grocery store yelling sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. Stop doing the same with fiction.

kidgephobe

this is the best way i’ve seen this put!!

lynati

And just like with food, what might be harmful for one person to consume could be quite *beneficial* for others. One man’s trigger is another man’s catharsis.

randomslasher

AND if you lack the maturity/self control/awareness to stop yourself from eating things that could potentially harm you, you either 1) are too young to be making your own food choices and should be supervised by a parent/other adult who is supposed to be responsible for you (and the store clerk who put the food on the shelf is NOT) or 2) need to take accountability for your own actions, because if you deliberately consumed something you knew could hurt you as a fully autonomous adult, then you really have no one to blame but yourself.