Beast's Teeth

The internet is changing, and sometimes I can't believe I'm watching it in real time.

I'm a chronic lurker. I always have been, due to a near-debilitating mix of social anxiety and some other cocktail of neuroatypical obsessiveness that probably isn't healthy.

But I've been there through a lot of strange bouts of internet history. I remember the days of cease & desist order from Anne McCaffery and Anne Rice. I saw the echoes of FanFiction.net's purges. I was on the fringes as I watched LiveJournal's community fracture. I've seen the strange ups and downs of NeoPets, how it went from college-student hub to sad corporate shell. I watched y!gallery be handed off to an admin that booked with funds, and then watch it get wiped off the internet in one go.

But I think this is the first time I've been present for an Event -- really present -- and thought: wow. This one's big.

Ostensibly, the Great Tumblr Purge would leave me largely unaffected, just like all the others. I'm not a content creator. I could barely be called a content curator, what with followers totally less than 50 combined across all four of my blogs. I'm not even in fandom in any real way outside of an incredibly casual observer. I'm not a sex worker, and I'm only a little embarrassed to say that I probably get 90% of my porn from FurAffinity.

If Tumblr becomes a ghost town, I'd have probably my biggest time-sink and source of news gone, yes, but even then that's not a big impact for me personally. My life would, by and large, be mostly unaffected.

But it's not about my daily life. It's not about how it affects my livelihood, or even my social circle.

Censorship creates ripples, and those ripples end up turning into tidal waves at the fringes of society. The marginalized are always most affected, and I admit that I do have a personal investment in that.

I don't think there has ever been such a sudden mass migration off such a popular platform before, because I don't think there has been such a sudden and sweeping policy change before either. I don't know what it means in the long-term, but I do feel confident in saying this: things are changing.

I can only hope it'll be for the better, but I don't know. Not now, not in this political climate. Not with the staggering power of corporations.

But I can hope. I can hope that these are the catalysts for positive change, even if the road will be hard. I can hope that I, in my limited capacity, might be able to help.

Because right now, hope is about all I have.

... well, aside from a puppy on the way. But he's more or less hope made flesh, so. You know. Thematically appropriate.