Howdy y'all. So I haven’t been greatly active on Tumblr in a long time. I used to post fic recs on the regular (see http://sterekcollection.tumblr.com/tagged/excellent for the ones I loved the most) and reblog fanart religiously (http://sterekcollection.tumblr.com/tagged/fanart), but a couple of years ago, work got super, super busy. I’m self-employed as a writer, so if I don’t work, I don’t eat!
And then…I just kind of fell out of the habit. While I still regularly browse Tumblr, I stopped posting at all, and only reblog random things occasionally. But I’ve been thinking for a while now that I need to get back in the habit. I still draft write-ups of everything I read and at last count I have literally 1,031 fic and book reviews on my computer.
Then this dumb NSFW thing happened. I’ve never made a habit of reblogging (much less posting) explicitly NSFW stuff, but I am absolutely opposed to Tumblr’s recent action on principle, and I particularly hate the terrible way that they have implemented this decision. It’s wrong, it disproportionately disadvantages marginalized communities (like the LGBT community, of which I’m a member), and it’s VERY much a slippery slope for future censorship.
It’s a good reminder that when the service is free, the user is not the customer, they are the product. We’re not being served by Tumblr. We’re being managed by it, so they can better serve their corporate shareholders by selling access to us to advertisers.
But to do that, they need to sanitze us. I may not post or reblog porn, but I still resent the hell out of being forcibly sanitized.
So I’ve joined pillowfort and dreamwidth, and maybe this is the kick in the pants I need to start sharing my fic recs again.
I like pillowfort overall and it shows a lot of promise, but it is definitely groaning under the weight of so many new users. I don’t know how long the growing pains will last, and there are many. It requires a lot of patience to use.
But the site is very similar to Tumblr, so it’s usability is high – it doesn’t take a whole lot of figuring out – while adding some nice touches that Tumblr could have used for a long time. There are some good peeps there, too – I already have a pretty nice dashboard set up.
It’s in closed beta right now, but you can get a registration key by donating $5 to their PayPal. I also have a few extra registration links if anyone would like one. Just message me.
I haven’t experimented with dreamwidth as much. It’s kind of intimidating to be honest. I like the business model, but the site feels kind of clunky, and there’s definitely a learning curve that I have not mastered yet. I’m not sure about it yet. I think it’s modelled more on LiveJournal than Tumblr, but I never used LiveJournal.
At any rate, you can find me as “sterekcollection” at both places:
https://www.pillowfort.io/sterekcollection
https://sterekcollection.dreamwidth.org/
If you decide to migrate to one of those sites, I hope you’ll look me up.
Thanks!