Thoughts about Day 1 of “Pure” Tumblr

First day of the “new and improved” Tumblr seems to have found a ghost town here. I could still see nipples, significantly fewer than per usual, but still.

It seems to me that a good number of blogs will continue as before, because the photographers were less into portraits and human form. That’s not very reassuring, because the community which I and people like me have been used to, included both figurative, abstract, street, conceptual art. Take one big chunk out of it, the machine can still work, but a lot of emotion and honest interaction between us is going to vanish. We’ll see how the community adjusts to the “new order”. I’m not optimistic, and I already miss the eclectic scroll through my feed. Migration to Ello or similar isn’t going to fix the major…tumble of Tumblr, because it’s impossible to just transplant an online community to a different web address. I, for one, am going to check back with this place for a while, but the whole thing feels like a painful and ugly post-divorce settlement. We’re left bitter, frustrated, and without much of a clue to what’s next.

Congrats, Tumblr, on a job…done.