When porn star Arabelle Raphael began the adult industry a decade ago, her tattoos made it difficult to find work. “I didn’t meet the porn industry’s sweetness requirements,” she told Mashable.
In 2010, she joined Tumblr, where she found her audience.
“I just…built everything myself, my following and everything,” she said, “just managing a Tumblr site.”
Tattooed porn, LGBTQ porn, and fetish porn were all popular on Tumblr at the time, inspiring Raphael and others.
Before Tumblr’s 2018 “adult content” restriction, which quickly removed all sexually explicit postings, the location was a hotspot for intercourse staff, queer youth, and anybody else who needed to demonstrate their sexual pursuits with other facets of their self. Tumblr was unique on the web, and that is likely to remain so due to current and future laws.
Tumblr’s golden age
“Tumblr porn had a certain look,” said intercourse employee and porn performer King Noire, who utilised Tumblr with Jet Setting Jasmine.
“Tumblr porn” usually means photos with delicate lighting and lovely posture. While similar content may be found elsewhere, Tumblr exploded.
Noire said, “People actually put time, power, and energy into something magnificent that may have been erotic art.” “Most people wouldn’t call it pornography.”
Tumblr has so much niche stuff that Noire had no idea what else was out there. There was; Tumblr was home to “SFW” art and writing, “aesthetic” content, shitposting, and fandom communities. They would often indulge in pornography.
“I associate Tumblr with followers and fandom,” said Maggie MacDonald, a University of Toronto Ph.D. student researching pornography sites. Tumblr was a location where people, particularly LGBT youth, could watch porn that wasn’t on “straight websites” like Pornhub. This porn, on the other hand, was extra loving, queer, and “weirder.”
Tumblr’s followers could make things sexy that weren’t meant to be.
– Maggie MacDonald, College of Toronto researcher
Porn often seeped into Tumblr fandoms. Tumblr users decontextualized moments by GIFing them (like the Supernatural brothers).
“Tumblr fans might turn things erotic that weren’t meant to be erotic,” MacDonald said. “They made their own porn. That’s where the Tumblr fan group grew up to be pornographers.”
GIF erotica was a staple on Tumblr, regardless of its TV-relatedness. Some movies were also made into GIFs.
“Tumblr porn – GIF porn — allowed followers to learn into the grain of what the unique porn was saying,” MacDonald stated.
Porn scene seconds were extracted and rendered as the editor desired: slower or faster, black and white or oversaturated. Faceless porn GIFs usually represented mainstream celebrities or characters.
Tumblr users could show their porny love for their favourite “ships” (relationships) through GIFs, fanfiction, fan artwork, and picture changes gathered into “units.” Followers queered a TV show that was not at all LGBTQ. They created sexiness and spread it to their followers, MacDonald said.
This explains why Tumblr porn was unique: it didn’t come from the top or from a webmaster. Customers made and shared Tumblr porn. Tumblr porn (especially fandom porn) was a collective endeavour.
Tumblr also offered a seamless blend of pornographic and nonpornographic content. X-rated porn GIFs and G-rated “squees” over a favourite coupling coexisted on one’s “sprint.” Usually they were on the same post.
“It was one of those places where you could simply present all of the various facets of yourself,” Noire said of Tumblr, “and people looking for whatever your area of interest or model was would naturally gravitate towards it.”
MacDonald speculates that one of the reasons Tumblr was lucrative before 2018 was because it allowed customers to be diverse. With a single user id, someone on Tumblr could talk about both knitting and, say, furry erotica.
“I could build off of my reputation as well as big boobs,” Raphael said.
Pre-ban Tumblr did not separate one’s sexuality from their other interests, as MacDonald stated. You wouldn’t know it if you went surfing in 2022, but sexuality is just one way we want to connect with others. Tumblr was one of, if not the only, social network that kept our social lives mixed.
According to MacDonald, Tumblr’s popularity was also due to the ability to establish an identity. Unlike Facebook, you could be completely anonymous on Tumblr if you wanted to be. The anonymity allows customers to discover their sexuality in a protected environment.
Likewise, it was simple to establish friends or join a group. In addition, the sprint’s endless scrolling allowed you to interact with a variety of consumers. Fans and artists flocked there since it was simple to meet others with similar interests. Tumblr was nameless but social.
Tumblr’s decline (porn)
Because Tumblr had child pornography on it, Apple removed it from its App Store in November 2018. The following month, Tumblr completely banned adult content.
The identical year, FOSTA-SESTA, a bill to stop people from aiding or facilitating online trafficking, was passed. However, in its first three years, FOSTA-SESTA has only resulted in one trafficker punishment, and has been touted as the reason internet firms remove consenting online intercourse workers from their services.
The passage of FOSTA-SESTA in 2018 did not stop Tumblr from banning content. According to Tumblr’s Director of Platform Engineering, David Galbraith, the only reason for the changes is to comply with Apple’s App Store Pointers for content they deem inappropriate.
Other digital firms, like Facebook, use the term “objectionable.” Like MacDonald, the phrase itself is risky.
“It’s a slippery slope because ‘objectionable’ might apply to everything…
although it might also relate to anything sexual. However, it does not cover all sexual concerns “D. MacDonald For example, you may see misogynistic pick-up artist materials online that is supposedly not “objectionable.”
Baby porn is definitely offensive. Tumblr decided to ban even of-age consensual porn because of that.
“Why is anyone else going to Tumblr anymore?” Noire said after the ban. He departed, and he wasn’t alone: Tumblr’s traffic dropped 30% in the months after the ban. Visits to the browser website and apps fell 40% over three years.
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It cost roughly 70% of interaction for Emma, a Dutch NSFW artist who chose to go by their first name for privacy reasons. They saw a purging of both adult and gay content.
In addition to the NSFW content, some SFW and gay content was also removed from the platform, Emma said.
Because of the ban, they quit Tumblr a month later.
Aru, another NSFW artist, told Mashable that several of their SFW pieces were removed post-ban. Tumblr provided them no explanation and it seemed arbitrary. It was pink backgrounds, Aru assumed, as similar things with no pink backgrounds were not highlighted, despite the fact that they included scantily clothed characters.
Raphael said the restriction made it clear Tumblr was no longer “a factor.” She returned to the platform afterwards, but was supposedly shadowbanned (an account remains active but content is hidden); a Tumblr official refuted this.
She admits she doesn’t miss Tumblr and that many intercourse staffers didn’t get paid. Regardless, she slammed the e “It should be there,” Raphael said of certain content on Tumblr.
Tumblr’s team sensed the outcry, therefore they weren’t happy to make a change that displeased users. Even those who disliked adult materials objected with the ban.
“It felt unmanaged and contrary to a basic Tumblr tenet: freedom of expression,” Galbraith said.
Tumblr’s workers learned of then-CEO Jeff D’Onofrio’s decision in reaction to Galbraith. To comply with Apple’s guidelines, D’Onofrio told The Atlantic in 2021 that he was looking for a way to restore NSFW content material on Tumblr. In January 2022, D’Onofrio left Tumblr as CEO.
Consequences of Tumblr’s adult content prohibition
Tumblr porn — and, by extension, Tumblr — was gone. Tumblr has experienced a revival as it “become popular for being out of date,” as The New Yorker described it. Tumblr reported a 55% increase in revenue from July 2021 to January 2022. Regardless, it’s a shell of what it once was. It isn’t typically NSFW and if it is, it’s always cropped images with a suggestion to look at the artists’ Twitter for uncensored alternatives,” Aru stated.
Tumblr currently has 9.5 million daily postings; in 2012, there were 62 million daily posts.
While Aru could previously peruse for hours without stopping, he can now complete each update in a few hours.
The restriction also hinted at further digital cleansing. Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok all cracked down on sexual content in 2018. OnlyFans, another platform known for particular content, removed it due to reaction. Afraid about being shut down due to MasterCard’s new requirements, several websites resort to bulk deletion intercourse staff content.
“Apps that built their following on our types or our followers ridiculed and victimised Intercourse personnel,” Noire said. “As someone who introduced some people to Tumblr, it is always insulting.”
As a result, Tumblr has not altered.
The post-ban Tumblr was harder to find and connect with others who shared my experiences and interests. They now use hard-to-find Discord servers or Twitter.
Apps vilify and victimise Intercourse employees for a variety of traits.
– King Noire, porn star and sex worker
Twitter, which still allows porn, is the closest we have to Tumblr, yet even there, intercourse workers like Noire claim they’re shadowbanned. Like Tumblr, Twitter users can filter NSFW content from their feeds.
Due to the current state of the web, it is unlikely that a true Tumblr alternative will ever exist. “The control of sexual media means that our online pornography has become ghettoised,” MacDonald said, citing both laws and platforms.
Intercourse and pornography have been marginalised online, resulting in a clear separation of our sexual and non-sexual selves. “The way we eat pornography now is so disconnected from our life,” MacDonald stated. “It is singled out, not integrated into our activities or our sociality.”
That is the antithesis of Tumblr at its peak: a platform where people may be both sexual and non-sexual.
Sadly, the FOSTA-SESTA outcome may be repeated if the EARN IT Act, a surveillance bill, is passed. EARN IT, like FOSTA-SESTA, is anti-exploitation in concept, but may impact consenting intercourse workers and other vulnerable groups. According to the Digital Frontier Basis, EARN IT would allow states to roll back online safety protections, allowing private firms to examine content.
EARN IT has the potential to stifle healthy and safe sexual expression more than FOSTA, MacDonald says.
If none of our data is encrypted, and private firms may examine it, then our private records and chats may be governed.
While big porn sites like Pornhubs are positive. Online intercourse is now permitted, but only from straight, white, and occasionally wealthy and powerful creators. These incentives may harm intercourse staff and marginalised creators, precisely people who starred on Tumblr in its prime.
Tumblr porn may never exist again — but we hope it does. “The Tumblr porn group was actually one thing that…defied the monetization of porn,” MacDonald said.
