True, but under the circumstances I think this is one of those rare times when the broken clock is right, or at least has a good idea.
This I agree with. I’ve seen other posts go around about it, so it wasn’t just that one person.
But to make it clear, I’ll take the time to explain to people why participating in Crab Day (and financially supporting Tumblr in general) is important:
It’s unfortunate, but in this day and age, large websites like this one can’t function without an exorbitant amount of income. For other social medias, the bulk of this income comes from Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions, often in the form of selling user data.
The thing y'all need to understand is that wealth is VASTLY different in the B2B economy than it is with B2C (business-to-consumer) economy. In fact, this is a huge reason why we’re in an economic crisis…because the US is a nation with two economies, and the power of the dollar is astronomically different between the two of them.
Tech’s standard of wealth is based in the B2B economy. Because Tumblr is in the Tech sector, it needs to play according to Tech wealth. Unfortunately, the way you earn Tech wealth is by selling Tech-related B2B products, and for social media websites, that product is user data.
It’s a competitive market that sets a new standard of rotten with every transaction. In order to acquire data that’s more valuable than your competitor’s data, you have to be less ethical about how you source it…and also be willing to cross moral boundaries in regards to who you sell it to.
If Tumblr finds no other way of sourcing income, they have no choice but to participate in this data market or shut down.
However, Tumblr is the home of the secret third thing. In this case, this secret third thing is to work with the community rather than exploit it.
(That’s what it looks like to me, anyway. I nether trust nor doubt Tumblr’s words; that’s not what’s winning me over. Instead, I’m curious to know where they plan to go with this, because this is unusual as far as business practices go and I think it would be cool if they’re trying to set a more holistic precedent for the social media of the future. I won’t be able to see that conclusion if they go bankrupt though.)
So yes, participate in Crab Day. Just because one unpleasant person also condones it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.
The issue that I’m having with the idea is that this assumes that the entire losses of tumblr’s finances can be erased by a one-time crowdfunding-style event. But what’s much more likely is that these are accumulated ongoing costs, and unless y’all want to make it Crab Day every day forever until you run out of money too, it’s not gonna change anything.
The investors that have tumblr in a chokehold now don’t care about one-time income. They want to see infinite growth and infinite ongoing profits.
All of this is a very naive way of looking at the issue. And it operates under the assumption that every single registered tumblr user is actually active and able to spend money on stuff like this. It’s just a waste of money, and next thing you’ll see afterwards is users blaming other users for not participating or not participating enough when it inevitably doesn’t work.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I think Tumblr 100% knows this. If they had a solution they wouldn’t be throwing out every hat trick in the book and still coming up short.
But the economy is going in a weird way right now. SEO is basically dead in the water, and raw information doesn’t make money like it used to. AI like ChatGPT have cheapened information to the point that knowledge is what’s in demand.
This shift means the entire data-driven business model is starting to implode in on itself, because knowledge by definition information that enriches human cognition…and human cognition is something these companies rely on subverting in order to make their millions.
Here’s my guess: We’re seeing the rapid decay of other social medias—Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc—because their executives are making one final cash-grab before fucking off overseas. They see the wave looming in distance, and they’re scrambling to throw as much money into their briefcases as possible before hoofing it.
If Tumblr’s executives wanted to get in on this mad scramble, they would have started mining data the moment Automattic snapped it up. But they haven’t, which begs the question: What are they planning?
Inquiring minds want to know, and I’m more than happy to bet $3 for the chance of finding out.
Good morning to the trans man loudly slamming his girlfriend in the bunk above convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and ONLY the trans man loudly slamming his girlfriend in the bunk above convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell
Batman: I need to make this billionaire sex trafficker miserable, AND I need to give my girlfriend an orgasm, but I don’t have much time!
[beat]
Batman:
Tragic news: They moved Batman out of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s cell
Funny news: The replacement hates her too because she’s literally stinky
Hey non-Jewish leftists and progressives who consider yourselves allies to Jews or, at a minimum, not antisemitic: now is an exceptionally great time to step up
This is shockingly similar to Henry Ford — i.e. an automotive mogul seen as an innovator in the general public uses his fortune and outsized influence to establish a large media presence and spread antisemitism.
There are some important distinctions, but nothing that makes me feel better about the situation.
1. At its height, Henry Ford’s publication, “The Dearborn Independent,” had a circulation of 900,000. The largest circulation in America at the time was 950,000.
While it was certainly influential, it wasn’t unmatched. In comparison to Musk’s 140 million followers, Ford reached a relatively small number of people.
2. Ford marketed explicit antisemitism, which eventually led to the downfall of his publication — you’ve probably heard of “The international Jew” and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
However, as with most antisemites (on both the right and the left), Musk hides behind the thin veil of dog whistles and oversights, leaving a layer of barely-plausible deniability.
3. Ford was eventually forced to publicly apologize after he made the mistake of attacking Jewish attorney Aaron Sapiro for more than a year, until Sapiro eventually sued Ford for libel (i.e. he fucked around and found out lol). Ford eventually lost the case and was forced to publicly apologize (his apology was written by associates and his signature on it was reportedly forged). The magazine was shut down soon afterwards.
While I can’t predict the future, something tells me Musk’s obfuscations and the current political climate will allow him to continue to operate with impunity. Dancing around the issue allows at the very least for greater longevity of your bigotry (say it with your chest you coward).
Despite everything, Ford was able to secure his position in history, albeit with some, um, unfortunate footnotes and the occasional caveat being mentioned.*
All in all, this feels very similar to Trump copying David Duke’s run for the Louisiana legislature, but that’s a story for a different day.
* some additional footnotes and caveats:
- Hitler quoted Ford in his infamous book
- Ford was a notorious union buster
- Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938, the highest honor a foreigner could receive from Nazi Germany, with personal congratulations from Hitler
- After issuing the aforementioned “public apology” in 1927, Ford said that he would like restart the publication of “The International Jew.” In 1940. 13 years later.
- It’s just my personal opinion, but we probably shouldn’t honor literal nazis, but whatever
- To this day, no one at my synagogue will buy a ford car. I don’t know if this is the norm in other places, but I imagine that it’s not uncommon.
- Yes, I’m aware that nobody explicitly praises Henry Ford anymore, and everybody knows what a shithole he was. While “Henry Ford hated the Jews” is a common refrain, specific knowledge of his hatred is lacking, and I think it’s important to point to explicit hatred in the past, because hatred is normally hidden nowadays and needs to be identified outside of the group receiving the hatred.
The Crab day person you are promoting and reblogging is a terf. However, they say they are not a terf because there's no such thing as trans people.
Take that as you will.
Oh, ew. I just looked at their blog and yeah, def not the kind of person I want to associate with.
With that said though, I am totally in favor of gifting people random crabs as an act of tossing $3 in the Tumblr-fund bucket. That person didn’t come up with the original idea, and like hell am I going to let TERFs claim ownership of something that is genuinely innocent and good-natured.
As we now know, Tumblr is $30 million dollars in debt. Oops. Tumblr has announced some major (and unpopular) changes to the site in their attempt to get back above water. The alternative is that Tumblr ceases to exist. But maybe we can change that…
How:
There are 327 million unique tumblr visits per month, and almost 500 million active accounts. If 10 million unique users (or less, if we bought more than one) bought or gifted Crabs from the Tumblr store, we could knock out Tumblr’s debt easily. Buy crabs!
When:
July 29, 2023 is Crab Day, running through August 5 (for anyone who can’t log on that day) as Crab Week!
Who:
Everyone!! If you truly can’t afford to participate with a $3 crab, (or other item from the shop) post crab memes!
Time for Tumblr users to rise again and surprise everyone…
Please I need their next financial report to have a header that says ‘Crab day’
Posting some old comics. This is vol 1 of a series of short comics I’ve been making in my spare time, under the umbrella “Phrasebook”. They’re each based on a phrase or word in Chinese that I’ve been thinking about.
Okay so I did some research, very basic research, on the user base of tumblr and how many of us there are.
There are at least 300 million unique visitors worldwide on this site. Over 500 million blogs.
Listen. Tumblr is $30 million in debt. This is Super easy for us to solve.
If each user gifts one blog crabs, which costs slightly over $3, that would be roughly $600 million at least. Far more than enough to get Tumblr out of the red zone.
If we want tumblr to stay afloat and not change something as integral about their operating system, we need to show them they can be profitable without reducing themselves to common social media sites. What we have here is special. It is different. We are the social media site people run to when theirs collapses and for good reason.
If we want this to work, we have to make it work. We can even make it into a game. Just how long can we outlast the other social media sites?
Yes that’s exactly what I’m saying.
It needs to be a holiday. Pick a date a few weeks from now, and just make it Crab Day. Maybe a Saturday as a lot of people are paid on Fridays. Just in case this post becomes more popular than any I’ve had before, lets set the date as the last Saturday in July (which for us in 2023 will be July 29th.)
On July 29th, gift as many crabs as you can without breaking the bank. Post crab memes if you cannot afford a crab.
Tumblr can pull this off. Tumblr likes doing things like this.
Sounds good to me! I can afford at least one Crabs.
Putting this on my calendar. Maybe it will become a yearly celebration, who knows!
So the past two weeks I have been hit HARD with medical bills and need to work to earn some of that back. If you’re interested in commissioning me, I have my rates listed on this ✨handy infographic ✨
Feel free to shoot me a message on here as well! Reblogs appreciated <3
I do! Admittedly, I haven’t been drawing as many horror-themes lately as I have in the past, but some of my favorites I did were in my old Inktober series. Here are some of them!
I also don’t know how much of my art I explicitly tagged as “horror”, but if you look through my “Inktober” tag, you’ll probably find a lot more!
