"please buy crabs so that Tumblr doesn't have to implement changes we hate to become profitable" right, let me explain something about capitalism.

Tumblr didn't change course because they need the cash and are down on their luck. they did it because corporations want growth.

and that desire for growth is gonna be the same whether they have negative infinity money or positive infinity money. a corporation seeks money and growth.

if Tumblr suddenly became profitable after announcing these changes, it's not even that it would send the wrong message, although it would.

it's that Tumblr wouldn't be taking care of us better if only it weren't for the cruel realities of the world. it's a subsidiary of a corporation. it doesn't care.

it's still going to keep the changes that it thinks are profitable, and ignore changes it thinks won't be. Tumblr is not our friend, it is a website we use, and it wants to profit from us regardless of if that's in our best interest and regardless of if it has "enough" money. that is the relationship. don't get it twisted.

why is “report hate speech” not one of the default options with “report spam” instead of “report sexually explicit material”. i’m not a cop so i don’t care if people post hole & pole but i would love if i didn’t have to explain every time why it’s bad when there are nazis

you can’t be a gay icon if you leave your shopping cart in the middle of the fucking parking lot

Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?

They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.

Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?

So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.

And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn't compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn't sell.

And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at... putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.

If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn't have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that's what they did.

I don't know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.

just remembered shows used to have 20-25 eps per season

really funny that every website is in an arms race to make itself as bad as possible and immediately someone makes a firefox extension to fix it

I cannot put into words how much I Fucking Loathe the fact that when you search something on youtube now it will randomly intersperse blocks of "people also watched" and "for you" into the results. That's not what I searched for, youtube. I typed in a search query because I wanted to see search results, not random unrelated garbage you have placed in my way apparently to either inconvenience me or force me to scroll further for actual results. I despise your wretched little games and every time I see it I can only instantly close the tab as I am overcome with the urge to burn something down.

“National parks have been vital in protecting huge swaths of land, including sacred sites and unique ecosystems, from land developers and other forms of destruction and are some of the last places in the continental United States where many animals are able to live safely from overhunting and unnecessary culls.”

and

“National parks are, just like the rest of the US, land stolen from indigenous people who are now denied access to the lands that their ancestors lived on and cared for for thousands of years, even when having access is vital for a community’s survival, whether that’s through food sources in the form of hunting/fishing/gathering or the ability to continue cultural practices.”

and

“National parks provide places for people to feel connected to nature and to able to observe plants and animals and land masses that they’d never be able to see otherwise, and many national parks also include other services like horseback riding lessons and educational events to help people better understand their planet.“

and

“National parks, including with the famous motto ‘take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints,’ push an ahistorical and frankly dangerous narrative that separates humans from nature, turning people into observers of our world instead of active participants, and does damage to the plants that adapted and evolved at the hands of foragers to benefit the most when they’re harvested.“

At first Netflix said, come write for us. We’ll save your cancelled shows and write about whatever niche story you want. Our algorithm says people will watch it!

Then a few years later they said, regardless of our promises or contract obligations we are cancelling shows after two seasons without telling anyone. Turns out no matter how loved a show is, we get less subscriptions after the second season.

How many subscriptions did we bring you? Netflix won’t say.

So writers started writing two season shows. Just give us two seasons, Netflix. Like you promised.

Then Netflix said, oops sorry! Turns out your show didn’t premiere at #1 and the views in the first day weren’t what we wanted so we’re cancelling your second season.

What were the numbers? How many people watched our show? Netflix doesn’t say.

Then, they did something extra special. They started taking shows and splitting their first season into two halves. Inside Job was not two seasons. It was one season split in half.

Oops! Sorry! The second half of your first season didn’t do as well as the first half, so now your show is cancelled!

Why? How many people? How much money? These companies are making cash hand over fist and they refuse to tell people the truth: people loved your show. Loved it. But some corpo exec wanted an infinite money making machine. Do you know how long shows are in production for before you watch them? Years. Like, 5+, even 10+ years. And Netflix gives it less than a week before they decide whether you’re getting cancelled.

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