there is a long rambling post inside my brain about this but i don't have the energy to write it, i think.
all i can really say is it's exhausting seeing people write paragraphs upon paragraphs lamenting the state of tumblr and the followers they've lost and how they refuse to move to other platforms. i get it, i sympathize. that's a really harrowing and awful thing to deal with, exponentially so when your artistic livelihood rests precariously on the eyes of your followers on your stuff.
but you gotta stop putting all your eggs in one basket.
especially when that basket is yet another closed-source, corporate-owned social media site.
but i don't like twitter!
but the algorithms!
yes. i get it. do you know what also don't have algorithms? deviantart. livejournal. literally any ActivityPub protocol site (of which there are many). even and especially your own website.
but i don't want to learn to code!
alright fine but look i only have so much sympathy. if you truly need to make a living as a freelance artist or even just want your web presence to not suddenly someday just be gone you're going to have to do some things you don't like. you're going to have to be on some websites you hate, or you're going to go down with whatever single ship you've crammed all your hopes and dreams onto because you didn't make any kind of contingency plan because you thought this one specific website and its userbase and interest would live forever.
no website lives forever. i remember the popularity of livejournal and there were things about it that sucked ass sure, but i miss those days and i miss livejournal and tumblr is a horrendously dogshit excuse and replacement for it. but i know its days of being the center of popularity are over, that people moved on to places like tumblr, and no one wanted to listen 8 years ago when i was saying it will happen to tumblr too, don't assume that because you hate the other websites that this particular one you like will always be what you want, that the inscrutable whims of the rich fucks who own it will always or even ever align with what you want.
this is why i said "fuck it" to everything and made this site, made a journal here. i don't want the popularity or the social interaction, if people want to see these posts they can come here and read them themselves.
but even then, even if you do desire eyes on your work, if you aren't willing to make a website yourself, which websites are ALWAYS YOURS, the source code is YOURS, if you don't like a webhost you simply pack up and LEAVE and GO TO A DIFFERENT HOST and reupload all your shit like nothing happened...
...you have to accept that you will always be at the whims of the corporate shitlords. that when, not if, WHEN, tumblr continues to decline in users and features, when twitter's rules and algorithms get worse, when instagram pushes even more of your content off your friends' feeds, that you have no control over these things. even if you download all your twitter or tumblr posts, where will you reupload them? what frameworks are there to get your content back online once you haul it all off a giant corporate hellhole?
i don't know. i don't know what the point of saying this is. i'm not even really trying to blame people for any of this so much as i just want to shake some of them. to look them in the eyes and say you can't expect to control tumblr any more than you can control the rain or wind! branch out! learn new things! try out mastodon or an art-focused site! do you REALLY want your livelihood to go up in flames when tumblr inevitably bottoms out?? you don't even have to leave tumblr! just mirror your stuff to other places if nothing else! so you aren't eventually left out in the cold!
like. just. please stop trusting these corporate shithole services.
discord is a narc. i'm incredulous every time i hear of a new instance of people getting busted because they used discord to organize their activism.
like use them for whatever you need to but please for the love of everything good in this world stop trusting they won't betray you.
i don't even expect neocities will be good forever, but hell. i already have a backup webhost in mind ready and waiting, and am on the lookout for a few more backup webhosts. this site also lives in several mirrored local backups. if neocities went down tomorrow the most i would do is grumble about a few lost recent changes and the annoyance of having to upload everything at once to a new place which would take maybe an afternoon.
sigh.
i guess this was still pretty long and rambling, but believe me, the post originally living in my head was even longer.