I just read this reddit comment about yesterday’s staff post and … 100%
People in the notes of the post don’t seem to understand how massive of a move this is. Sure, this is not the Tuileries palace storming, nor the execution of Louis XVI, but it very well could be Tumblr’s storming of the Bastille.
See, what happened yesterday was a bunch of trans staffers very politely saying “our boss is full of crap, what he is doing is absolutely not ok”, and also “the official line he had been posting narrative of everything being peachy with moderation is bullshit, we acknowledge the systemic problem, and we demand addressing it ASAP”.
Now, this has probably been possible just because of the exceptional circumstances: Louis XVI (Matt) is on vacation on his summer palace, and the person who he had left in charge of the court has refused to order the army to quell the internal strife… so they have stormed the Bastille to ask for the abolition of the ancient regime. Mind you, that doesn’t mean we are at a point where they are in the middle of a revolutionary coup to create the Paris Commune: that’s not in the cards right now. This is more about the people rioting to demand the king powers to have checks and balances. this is about demanding a constitutional monarchy instead of the current absolute king.
The people in the notes don’t seem to understand the exceptional situation that the post creates. We are at a point where Matt Mullenweg has been called out by his own employees. His company, in his absence, had allowed his employees to break with the unified PR narrative that usually is forced to follow whatever path the CEO points to.
– the king / Matt acknowledges he had been in the wrong (either honestly or just because he doesn’t feel powerful enough to win a civil war), accepts to get his powers limited, and allows some partial reform to address people’s demands. This is obviously the best option for my friends still working for Tumblr. That doesn’t mean tumblr would become a queer communist paradise, but at least we would see things improving.
– the king refuses to engage: he moves the court to another city (names a new Tumblr CEO reporting to him) and move the army to Paris to repress the rebellion (fires the people behind the post, double down in the current moderation policies). Things keep being the same, but without the people who asked for improvements.
– the king gets fed up of having to deal with ungrateful rabble and decides to just make an example out of Paris and orders the army to reprise the St. Bartholomew night, but on Paris population this time. This would be Matt firing everyone involved and closing Tumblr two months from now.
Right now, I wouldn’t know which of these three options is more probable. Matt has been very quiet since yesterday, and whatever he posts next would be a big signal of how he is going to react to this development of The Situation.
at some point you have to realize that you actually have to read to understand the nuance of anything. we as a society are obsessed with summarization, likely as a result of the speed demanded by capital. from headlines to social media (twitter being especially egregious with the character limit), people take in fragments of knowledge and run with them, twisting their meaning into a kaleidoscope that dilutes the message into nothing. yes, brevity is good, but sometimes the message, even when communicated with utmost brevity, requires a 300 page book. sorry.
this post is apparently going around terf circles now so i feel like i should let y’all know that you are agreeing with a transsexual lesbian who fucks nasty. get the fuck off my post and also your “feminism” is anything but.
