Okay, I still haven't got much visible done on the Wongery lately; as I said in the last post, things have been tough lately, and while they've been looking a little better, I've still had a lot to deal with. Again, I have been working on some behind-the-scenes things for the Wongery, but I haven't actually posted anything to the site for a while. I need to change that, though; I think I'm going to go back to the policy I've briefly implemented in the past of trying to set at least one hour a day for just... writing Wongery articles. When I have tried that, I think it's generally worked out pretty well; I jutt haven't kept it up.

But that's not what this blog post is about. (Well, evidently that is what the first paragraph of this blog post is about, but it's not what's supposed to be the main point of this blog post.) It's about... well. The "hard launch", when it finally happened, was a much smaller affair than I had originally hoped, largely because I just... hadn't had the time to get the Wongery where I wanted it, nor the money for some of what I'd hoped to have, but I figured I'd put off the launch long enough and I may as well go through with it even if it was on a much smaller scale than my original aspirations. So the entirety of the so-called hard launch comprised promotional posts on three websites: EN World, RPGnet, and Tumblr.

Oh, okay, five websites, I guess, counting Mastodon and Cohost; I posted there too. (Oh, and hey, turns out Cohost has a Wikipedia page now; the previous times I mentioned it here it didn't, so I linked to the site directly. What about Ko-fi; does it have a Wikipedia page yet? Nope.)

Of the three (or five), it's the Tumblr post that got by far the most traction, with several people reblogging or liking the post. This still doesn't seem to have translated into people actually interacting with the site, but at least it got some notice that may pay off in the long run. Still, I can't say I'm totally happy I made that post. It was a Blazed post, which means I actually paid Tumblr to boost it, and... given what's been going on on Tumblr lately, I kind of regret having given Tumblr money.

In a previous blog post, I said that Tumblr was "I suppose my favorite social media site, or at least it's the only social media site I'm anywhere near active on". I did acknowledge that it wasn't perfect, but the main example I gave was (the now thankfully defunct) Tumblr Live: "To name just one current source of vexation (and this really is just one of many), it would be nice if the Tumblr admins would stop trying so hard to make Tumblr Live happen." Even at the time, however, I wasn't sure this was really the most significant issue to cite. Sure, Tumblr Live was an annoyance, but I had heard that there had been issues with moderators unfairly targeting transgender posters, and that seemed like a much more important problem. In the end, I guess I did stick with Tumblr Live as the main issue I highlighted, perhaps because I had only heard of the transphobic moderation whereas Tumblr Live I had been personally annoyed by. But it wasn't without some doubt.

Well, apparently either those issues were worse than I realized, or they've gotten worse, or both. In the last few days, the CEO of Tumblr has been going on something of a rampage. Not only has he been banning transgender users and deleting their blogs on transparently flimsy pretenses, but has followed them to other social media sites to harass them there. What the heck. What the frikkin' heck.

(For what it's worth (which admittedly at this point may not be much), the Wongery is intended as a trans-friendly site; transphobia of any kind is explicitly against the Wongery's forum rules and Public Wongery content guidelines, and has been since those policies were first written. Admittedly, given the Wongery's current level of activity, or inactivity, we've never had cause to enforce that policy, but we fully intend to do our best to do so should it come up. I and the other Grandmaster Wongers (if any) try to avoid giving out too much personal information about ourselves here, but I guess it's not too revealing to state that at least one of the Grandmaster Wongers is LGBTQ, so we do have a personal stake in standing against anti-LGBTQ bigotry. However, I'd like to think we'd hold the same position even if it didn't directly affect any of us personally.)

On the positive side, there was a post yesterday by Tumblr staff effectively decrying and disavowing the CEO's actions, and promising to try to turn things around. Still, this isn't the first time Tumblr has had a problem with transphobia, and I'm not convinced it'll be the last. And, again, this isn't the only issue; there are also reports of Tumblr suppressing tags related to hot-button issues such as (a decade ago) Ferguson and (currently) Palestine, and now there are rumors of its possibly planning to sell user content to generative AI companies. Even with all those issues, Tumblr may still not be as bad as the bigger social media sites like Facebook and (the site I am going to continue to call) Twitter, but... that's a very low bar to clear. (I feel like I use that phrase too much. I should probably look for other ways to say that.) In any case, I'm not going to delete or abandon the Wongery Tumblr account (or my other Tumblr accounts); I'm there and I may as well make the best of it; but yeah, I'm kind of ruing the fact that I gave Tumblr money... and I'm sure as hell not doing that again unless there are significant changes. And I'm certainly not going to have anything to do with WordPress, which is also owned (and was created) by Tumblr's current CEO. As I've mentioned before, I have a lot of other websites besides the Wongery (though it's the site that I'm most attached to), and I had planned on using WordPress for the backend of several of my other sites, but... not anymore; when I get around to developing those other sites I'll use a different content management system or write my own from scratch. (Yes, WordPress is free and open source and he wouldn't be getting any money from my use of it anyway... but still, given his egregious behavior, it feels tainted enough now that I don't want to use it.)

(I made a blog post before about what I would do if I were rich. Well, now I have another item to add to the list (keeping in mind the usual disclaimer that this is a counterfactual thought exercise and that I am fully aware it is never going to happen). If I had the money to do it (which I don't and never will), I would buy Tumblr and... do what I could to try to fix its dysfunctional moderation. I wouldn't even care if it made money, as long as it wasn't actively hemorrhaging huge amounts (after all, in this hypothetical scenario, I'm rich anyway); I'd just want to make it live up to what it could be. Again, of course, this is never going to happen; Tumblr may not be worth the one point one billion dollars that Yahoo! notoriously paid for it in 2013, but it's certainly worth a lot more money than I'm ever going to see in my lifetime.)

In the meantime... maybe I'll explore Mastodon and Cohost a little more, and be more active there. Again, that's (to once again use that phrase I've already said I'm overusing) a very low bar to clear; I've been posting to both those sites whenever a make a new blog post, but not beyond that. But maybe that should change. Maybe I ought to spend some time poking around there, finding other interesting users to follow, and actually making an effort to engage. On the other hand, I can't find time to do everything I want to do as it is, and time spent on social media is time I'm not spending on other things. So we'll see. But anyway, to invoke a meme that originated on social media (albeit on 4chan, not on Tumblr)... Tumblr, I am disappoint.

(Yes, I know the meme is fifteen years old. I never claimed to have my finger on the pulse of youth culture.)