Tumblr: The Toxic SJW Dumpster Fire That Keeps Burning Up Corporate Cash

Posted on | February 11, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

When all the SJWs were crying about journalists being laid off at Huffington Post, none of them bothered to mention Tumblr, which is part of the same Oath Media division of parent company Verizon. Let’s recount the history of how HuffPo and Tumblr got combined:

• 2005 — Ariana Huffington founds Huffington Post.
• 2007 — David Karp founds Tumblr.
• 2011 — AOL acquires HuffPo for $315 million.
• 2013 — Yahoo acquires Tumblr for $1.1 billion.
• 2015 — Verizon acquires AOL for $4.4 billion.
• 2017 — Verizon acquires Yahoo for $4.5 billion.

During all the moaning about the HuffPo layoffs as the death of Democracy As We Know It, nobody seemed to remember Tumblr, a gigantic cash drain that has been losing vast amounts of money ever since its creation.  During the four years between Yahoo’s ill-advised acquisition of Tumblr and Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo, it was revealed that Tumblr is “effectively worthless” — the site has never made money, nor will it ever. Until 2014, I had no idea that Tumblr even existed, but after I began researching radical feminism, I quickly became acquainted with a phenomenon known as the “Tumblrina”:

An often unattractive, butthurt, and obnoxious female user of the popular site Tumblr.
Someone who complains all day on Tumblr about how oppressed they are by men, when 99% of ranting cases were provoked would be meaningless or of utmost minute significance to the average person.
Tumblr addicted female who is defined by her sensitivities and adherence to popular tumblr feminist opinions and/or trends resulting in undue drama and walls of text.
A dramatic, self-righteous tumblr-er who exaggerates prejudice and injustice . . . and tries to make other people feel shitty about existing. Also known as a social justice warrior or sjw, the tumblrina may list ridiculous “triggers” and claim that anyone unlike them has “privilege” and should apologize for being born.

It was not an accident that Tumblr attracted these people. When I first encountered the phenomenon of Tumblrinas, a longtime observer of this scene explained that Tumblr is a low-skill platform, requiring absolutely zero knowledge, because any idiot could just hit the “reblog” button and create a site entirely of secondhand content. Tumblr’s user base is about 2-to-1 female-to-male and skews very young. In a 2016 interview, Danielle Strle, former director of community and content at Tumblr, expressed her enthusiasm for how Tumblr aggregates youthful stupidity:

I mean the Reblog is incredibly powerful. You can take something from someone else’s blog to all of your followers and onto your blog with one click. It allows information to spread in a way that no other platform quite does. . . . [I]t comes into your media stream and it’s just this magical river of internet awesome, of new ideas. . . .
I think that we live in an age when so many algorithms and so many platforms are just trying to serve up more of what the computer thinks we might want, based on what we’ve clicked on in the past, but because of the human element of Tumblr, your dashboard is just full of things people have Reblogged that you might not have bumped into on your own. You’re following this blog because you’re really into retrofuturist aesthetic and they post a lot of that good stuff, but then they also Reblog some politics thing because they care and are passionate about it and you’re bumped into that idea.

Tumblr’s “magical river of internet awesome” was attracting a “community” of like-minded young dimwits, Ms. Strle acknowledged:

Young people tend to be the most politically progressive, their minds are open, their hearts are open, they’re being thoughtful about things.
This young generation of feminists who are like high-school age, they are driving feminism to the top of people’s lips.

What happens when a bunch of open-minded progressive teenage girls are given an unsupervised “magical river of internet awesome”? Among other things, an infinite demand for LBGTQ+ “support”:

 

What does it mean to support “all sexual orientations and gender identities”? Do the more than 100,000 people who’ve “liked” or “reblogged” that post suppose that I, as a heterosexual male, am in need of their support? Do they actually support male heterosexuality? Don’t be silly! The source of that particular post declares: “I’m a queer, autistic nerd. 26, from Sweden. INFP. Pronouns: they/them.”

Translation: Mentally abnormal and deeply confused.

Do you suppose that all these thousands of Tumblrinas who endorsed this expression of support from the queer autistic Swedish nerd of indeterminate gender asked themselves what they were endorsing? No, of course not — the open-minded progressive teenagers just hit “reblog” to show their commitment to infinitely “inclusive” weirdness, because otherwise someone might condemn them as a hateful bigot.

 

Yet another demand for infinite “support”:

Dear straight allies: If you’re gonna support us, support all of us. Support trans girls, trans boys, non binary kids, ace and aro kids, pansexuals, bisexuals, etc. Support questioning people. Support lgbt+ people who don’t fit the stereotypes. Don’t just support us so that you can have a gay best friend or brag about your lesbian friend, and then turn around and laugh at “76 genders” memes or invalidate non LG orientations. Support us because we’re humans and we deserve human rights, too. You don’t get to pick and choose who you support.

Those who wish to be “straight allies” to the LGBTQIA community “don’t get to pick and choose who you support.” Basically, you must support any kind of identity or orientation, so long as it is abnormal, perverse and deviant. And I’m not sure that the 6,000+ people who’ve “liked” or “reblogged” that post have considered what manner of bizarre behaviors might be included in the rainbow-flag alphabet-soup to which they are “allies.” Nor do I suppose these Tumblrinas have reflected on whether anyone’s “human rights” would actually be infringed without the unlimited support of their “straight allies.” And gosh, what kind of people do you suppose might be demanding this “support”?

Elkhart man accused of uploading
child porn to Tumblr
— Jan. 3, 2019

Rock Hill man uploaded child porn images
to Tumblr social media, police say
— Jan. 14, 2019

Sarasota woman accused of uploading
child pornography to Tumblr
— Jan. 17, 2019

Abilene police track child porn
uploaded to Tumblr to computer
used by former ACU student
— Jan. 23, 2019

Florida man arrested for possessing
child porn downloaded from Tumblr
— Jan. 29, 2019

Local man sentenced to prison after
posting child pornography on Tumblr
— Jan. 29, 2019

Tallahassee man accused of sharing
child pornography on Tumblr
— Feb. 8, 2019

Those are just a few recent headlines, among the many stories about sexual predators and child pornographers using Tumblr. And this problem was the subject of bad news for the site last November:

The social networking service Tumblr announced [Nov. 19] that its iOS app had been removed from Apple’s App Store after child sexual abuse content had been found on the platform during a routine audit.
The platform first announced an undisclosed issue with the iOS app on Friday. Monday’s update said Tumblr uses an “industry database” to prevent the distribution of illicit content; however, the content that was discovered had not yet been included in that database.
Apple requires iOS apps to have content filters to prevent the distribution of child pornography, The Verge reported.
“We’re committed to helping build a safe online environment for all users, and we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to media featuring child sexual exploitation and abuse … We immediately removed this content,” Tumblr’s statement read.
Tumblr has a reputation as a platform with a permissive attitude towards adult content. The governments of Indonesia and South Korea have sparred with Tumblr over its handling of sexual content, the BBC reported.

Is there a connection between (a) Tumblr’s “permissive attitude towards adult content,” (b) its popularity with “progressive” teenagers, and (c) its support for “all sexual orientations and gender identities”? One might easily theorize such a connection, and gather evidence in support of that theory, which might also explain why the idiots at Yahoo were willing to pay more than a billion dollars for Tumblr in 2013, despite the platform’s total lack of any profit-generating capacity: “Hey, a site crammed full of perverts, pornography and confused queer teenagers — let’s buy it!”

Everything was sailing along nicely for this toxic waste-dump of a site, however, until Tumblr’s kiddie porn problem got them kicked off the App store, and then they announced a change in policy:

Tumblr announced [Dec. 3] it will ban photos, videos, and GIFs that show “sexual acts” on its website starting Dec. 17.
The move comes two weeks after child pornography creeped onto its website, The Hill reported . . .
“If your post has been flagged as adult, it will be reverted to a private setting viewable only by you,” Tumblr’s website said.
Exceptions to the ban on adult content include exposure to nipples in relation to breast-feeding and gender reassignment surgery, erotica, nudity found in art and nudity connected to political or newsworthy speech, Tumblr’s website said.

Also in December, more bad news for Tumblr’s parent company:

Verizon just admitted that the brand value of its media company, Oath, is almost nothing.
Verizon (VZ) announced Tuesday that it would take a $4.6 billion writedown on Oath, which includes Yahoo and AOL.
Oath’s brand value is now just $200 million, according to Verizon. That’s a stunning decrease in value since it formed in 2017. Verizon said Oath’s brand was worth $4.8 billion when it last accounted for the company’s goodwill valuation. A goodwill valuation encompasses a company’s brand value and reputation.
Verizon snapped up a number of legacy media brands in recent years to create Oath. It bought Yahoo for $4.5 billion in 2017 and AOL, which owns HuffPost, for $4.4 billion in 2015.

Oh, the “magical river of internet awesome”! Verizon blew nearly $10 billion to acquire AOL and Yahoo, the value of which is “almost nothing,” including the porn-infested swamp of LGBTQ-inclusive madness that is Tumblr. Maybe those journalists laid off by HuffPo should just go start Tumblr blogs like that queer autistic Swedish nerd.

Otherwise? Learn to code.

 

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