The plan for the 17th, when the adult content ban comes in, is to protest.
To do that, we are making as much noise either side of the 17th as possible, and using the site as normal.
On the 17th, dead silence.
People are saying log off but what they really mean is don’t open the site or the app.
But, on the 17th make as much noise as possible on every other platform. Tweet about it and post on facebook and instagram and everywhere else.
What this does is causes a massive dip in ad revenue for one single day. That does not make staff think ‘oh everyone’s gone let’s shut down.’ What it actually makes them think is ‘oh shit people aren’t happy and if people don’t keep using our site we’re out of money and out of jobs.’
A boycott reminds a company that the users (consumers) have the power to make their site (business) worthless with one single coordinated decision.
If you want to join in, here’s what to do:
Do:
Close all open instances of the app and site on all your devices before the 17th
Make posts before and after the 17th on tumblr and other platforms, talking about why this ban is bad
Make posts on other sites during the 17th. Flood the official tumblr staff twitter and facebook with your anger and your opinion
Come back on the 18th and check in
Don’t:
Delete the app from your phone (this doesn’t affect their revenue and since it’s off the store at the moment it’ll be hard to get back)
Delete your account. I mean you can if you want to, but if you keep your account and don’t use it you’re saying to staff that there’s still time to save it. If you delete it’s hard work to come back.
Open the app or website (including specific blogs)
Make any posts (turn down/off your queue and make sure nothing is scheduled)
Go quiet elsewhere. Make it clear that this is just about tumblr, not a mass move away from all social media.
Remember: the execs don’t care about anything but money. Shutting down the site means there’s $0 further income from it. That’s their last possible course of action. If we make it clear we’re not happy, they’ll have to do something or we can do more and more until it becomes too expensive.
Protests take commitment. They’re a defiant action against a business that is doing something wrong. They will try to scare you into not participating, because they’re scared. We hold all the power here, sometimes the execs just need to be reminded of that.
Peaceful protest pointed at ad revenue, spiking activity elsewhere. Genius.
Okay, so my friend Chloe just pointed this out, and it’s amazingly accurate:
“Because of the scarcity of Dwarf-women, their secrecy and similarity in
appearance to males, and their lack of mention, many Men failed to
recognize their existence.”
Okay, so?
Well, Tolkien was a philologist, and a Norsist, and that means he knew Völuspá well enough to pull the names of every dwarf from Dvergatal and he had a pretty firm grasp Old Norse grammar.
In fact, he grasped it well enough that he knew if you dropped an n from a name ending in –inn, it changes from the masculine
definite enclitic
to the feminine.
Well, what the hell does any of this mean?
Well, I give you the names of the Dwarves from the Hobbit, as they appear in Dvergatal (stanzas 14-16) and in the order they appear:
Now, you notice something with the way those names got changed? That’s right, he changed the masculine -inn definite suffix to -in, which is feminine.**
That means that, at least grammatically, Dwalin, Dáin, Thorin, Thráin, and Glóin are female Dwarves.
Since we know Tolkien was meticulous about his grammar, this was done most likely as an in-joke (lol we’re so learnèd about Norse grammar that my comment on Dwarf women being indistinguishable from men is hilarious because of this grammatical funniness)
But there’s a not-inconceivable chance that the Dwarves were using the masculine pronouns in Westron because that’s what the Men who met them used, despite the fact that a third of the company was female, and
hey, it’s kinda neat to think he wrote a bunch of Dwarf-ladies going on an adventure.
**He also dropped the double-r suffix, but -r as the root is still, in general, a masculine grammatical feature
I’ve said it before, we know two things about the genders of the Company: that dwarf men and women are indistinguishable to outsiders, and that Bilbo is an unreliable narrator.
i genuinely believe that 2012 was the optimal tumblr experience. like if you didnt live through 2012, you havent fully understood how much of a hell site this is. to jog some ppl’s memories:
francieum
quirkybrittany
justgirlythings
“I like your shoelaces” “I stole them from the president” and people actually fucking doing this in public
we still called porn fics “smut” and “lemons”
“you must be fun at parties”
cole sprouse’s tumblr social experiment, and some people taking it so seriously that they threatened mass suicide
mitt romney
hetastuck (hetalia and homestuck fandoms were moirails i guess)
hussieruya (people unironically shipping the creators of hetalia and homestuck)
andrew hussie actually asking about hussieruya in his twitter
the obsession with andrew hussie’s lips
superwholock fandom (this was their prime)
supernatural has a gif for everything
“Fuck you watson” somehow being praised as the best comeback possible?? ok lol
hipster side of tumblr vs fandom side of tumblr, and all those pictures of the two coexisting to bring some sort of peace? as if we were at war with each other?? wtf was up with that
the dumbest fake stories holy shit, and everyone believed them
benedict cumberbatch everywhere
that sherlock gif of benedict cumberbatch looking into a door’s peep hole and people saying how if you cover one side of his face he looks confident but if you cover the other side he looks sad, so they said he’s the best actor in the world or whatever
gangnam style everywhere
people being shamed from using memes or even saying the word meme
“Oh, you facebook people think tumblr is boring? Well, we’ll find you…Supernatural fandom, grab your demons! Sherlock fandom, grab your Watsons! Doctor Who fandom, grab your Tardises! Harry Potter fandom, grab your wands! Homestuck fandom, grab your strife cards! Hetalia fandom, grab your pasta!” proceed for 1628519 more fandoms
“im pretty sure thats taylor swift” “no thats becky”
the dancing chandler gif from friends
“Reblog if you dont have a problem with gay marriage!” followed by ten mile long additions of rainbow gifs and pictures and 9gag memes
potato jesus (i’ll admit, this was actually funny)
the reblog button being at the top of posts
cuil theory, aka “i give you a hamburger”
27 comments on a post just saying “INSTANT REBLOG” or “PRESS PLAY”
song mixups from people “accidentally opening a bunch of tabs playing music” but it was actually from a pop mix album
“ah, the scalene triangle”
XD vs 😀 discourse
the most reblogged picture on tumblr
doge
men of tumblr
the cursed long ass “fedoras arent that bad!” post
touch my butt and buy me pizza
spread this like wildfire
tumblr university (complete with uniforms)
tumblr island
tumblr nation
these all would lead to the creation and failure of dashcon
tumblr prom
Reading this gave me both nostalgia and fight-or-flight response.
Thanks i hate it
How could they forget the endlessly long “here’s all the different colors of the sky” post
And “Can you give me directions to the nearest olive garden?” “No, but I can give you directions to a real Italian restaurant.”
you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
At some point, a reader will have read all the Terry Pratchet books, and will want another book to read. That’s where you come in.
charls-lamen.tumblr.com 