Tumblr

Tumblr is a free microblogging platform owned and operated by Verizon. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs, as well as make their blogs private, if desired. Much of the website's features are accessed from the "dashboard" interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear. This enables, in theory, a stream of content even if a given blogger is not able to actively update that often. In practice, Tumblr's ability to reblog individual blogs tends to lead to a lot of flat-out cropped content from other blogs, but that's not what brought it to /tg/'s notice. The site wouldn't really warrant any interest from the *chans or /tg/ in general if it weren't for the fact that there were a number of artists on tumblr catering to some of /tg/'s many interests, and its often stormy relationship with the chans for reasons too complex to describe in depth within the scope of this article. If you really care go ask ED.

Notoriety

To make an increasingly long and irritating story short, Tumblr's heavy association as a gathering place for the terminally offended and their crusade against all things fun and entertaining clashes with *chan's atmosphere of no-holds-barred, obnoxious irreverence. Additionally, microblogs, specifically the emphasis on every user having his own name and writing about himself, tends to cause friction with a userbase of (mostly) anonymous masses that shun all notions of identity. For what it is worth both groups have more crossover than they would generally care to admit, as evidenced by the "/co/umblr" phenomenon.

Of course, Tumblr isn't all leftist whackjobs circlejerking from their college's Starbucks. Much like how neo-Nazis and paleoconservatives drown out the ancaps and libertarians on /pol/, the filter-bubbling, popularity-contest atmosphere of Tumblr means that of the varied political opinions found on the site only the whackos ever make their way out. Most of the site is memes and porn, artists putting dicks on things that should never have dicks, and some hobby-related complaining mixed with batshit insane wackos trying to ship fictional characters with the seriousness of an elderly grandparent who wants grandchildren. Bear in mind that, thanks to algorithms trying to determine what content to suggest to you on the site, clicking mostly on things that offend you will eventually result in only seeing things that will piss you off and enforce a confirmation bias that the site is full of your political opposite.

Our suggestion: Come for the art, stay for the porn, leave when people start talking about their opinions.

Later history

Or rather, that's how it used to be. In late November 2018 Tumblr found its app removed from the Apple store because of all the spambots. Spambots advertising porn, that have been doing so for years with no action to actually do anything about it until their money was threatened. Rather than crack down on spambots, Tumblr staff told their algorithm to start banning porn accounts with a lot of search-engine prominence. Naturally this only banned the actually good artists and didn't solve any of the problems, causing a massive backlash as artists scrambled to get unbanned. On December 3rd, Tumblr's corporate overlords announced they had learned exactly the wrong lesson and issued an ultimatum: Tumblr would be forever SFW, and the remaining porn artists had two weeks to GTFO. Following this, many NSFW content creators have taken Tumblr's advice, and have made a mad dash for greener pastures. The social justice bloggers will most likely return to Livejournal from whence they originally came, whereas the artists have spread to a wide variety of websites, vast majority going to Twitter, though in a strange turn of events has caused Newgrounds of all sites to regain popularity after over a decade of irrelevancy.

The aftermath of the Tumblr Exodus was massive and was felt throughout the site. As it turned out those NSFW artists didn't always make NSFW content, so when they left, the people who followed those blogs for SFW content also left, causing a ripple effect of mass leaving. Entire communities up and vanished from the site, leaving abandoned and deactivated blogs to the winds. In a macabre twist of fate, even after the supposed ban that was supposed to get rid of the pornbots, those bot accounts are still out and active. In fact, they are arguably worse now than before, now absentmindedly adding hearts to comment sections to try and pump their numbers. The algorithm in place to monitor for porn was and still is notoriously terrible, with things that are in no way related to porn getting flagged. Meanwhile, several Furry artists have figured out that if you drew porn that didn't necessarily involve genitals, or made the proportions so ridiculously exaggerated that they barely resembled any semblance of human anatomy, you could totally get away with posting porn. In other words, all their huffing and puffing about "females presenting nipples" only served to kill any interest in it being used as a platform for creators. Tumblr would eventually be sold to Wordpress for a paltry 3 million dollars, which is a sliver compared to the 1.1 billion Verizon bought it for. Having become all but defunct, Tumblr's remains stand as a testament to the failure of a bunch of short-sighted, greedy executives who did not understand their viewer base.

Art Blogs and Shit /tg/ Actually Care(d)s About

Many blogs contain mixed SFW and NSFW, in varying degrees. Several are dead due to the Exodus and related events.

General

• tg weavers trash heap; monster girls, you love them, I love them, we love them. A casualty of the Exodus.
• Cuteanon, another /tg/ monster lewd and request artist. Another casualty of the Exodus.
• The artist Guoh, known for taking /tg/ art requests as well as providing Kobold porn.
• bolloxtothat, another artist who also does /tg/ art requests... and Kobold porn.

Pathfinder

• Creature Codex, a blog that gives Pathfinder stats for monsters from various sources, such as other games or mythology.

Shadowrun

• Shadowrun, the official Tumblr account for Shadowrun.
• Into the Shadows, a Shadowrun and general Cyberpunk art blog.
• Shadowrun Inspiration, a more generalized Cyberpunk art blog, with emphasis on Shadowrun.

Comics

• Elfquest, the Elfquest main Tumblr.

Magic: The Gathering

• Blog of Mark Rosewater, head designer of MtG. Primarily a Q&A page, with occasional links to fluff pieces or other Magic related nonsense.
• Why MTGCardsmith?, an unofficial page that mockingly illustrates why custom Magic cards are a bad idea. Abandoned.